Fresh Material

[Lightning Rod]

Fresh Material

I knew we were in trouble
when she no longer laughed at my jokes

to be sure my sense of humor
is twisted as a Chinese dragon
twisted as licorice or DNA
many people don't find me funny
but she always did

I know, she's heard all my jokes
daily life overtakes love, little things become big things
the glow becomes a burn

by this time my jokes had taken a sinister turn
of all that we've spent and all that we've earned
nothing is left but the things that we learned

The only way to succeed at comedy or love
Fresh Material

[mousey1]

Yes, keeping it fresh!

No one likes a stale sandwich

even if the meat is plentiful.

Here's to keeping it fresh and your bread soft and malleable infinitely palatable.

Even liverwurst likes to be treated like pâté!

[Lightning Rod]

after I wrote the above piece
I realized it was an homage to
Jack Spicer's poem Imaginary Elegies
(homage is fancy literary language for, I stole a line from him)

------

Imaginary Elegies: IV

Yes, be like God. I wonder what I thought
When I wrote that. The dreamers sag a bit
As if five years had thickened on their flesh
Or on my eyes. Wake them with what?
Should I throw rocks at them
To make their naked private bodies bleed?
No. Let them sleep. This much I’ve learned
In these five years in what I spent and earned:
Time does not finish a poem.
The dummies in the empty funhouse watch
The tides wash in and out. The thick old moon
Shines through the rotten timbers every night.
This much is clear, they think, the men who made
Us twitch and creak and put the laughter in our throats
Are just as cold as we. The lights are out.
The lights are out.
You’ll smell the oldest smells—
The smell of salt, of urine, and of sleep
Before you wake. This much I’ve learned
In these five years in what I’ve spent and earned:
Time does not finish a poem.
What have I gone to bed with all these years?
What have I taken crying to my bed
For love of me?
Only the shadows of the sun and moon
The dreaming groins, their creaking images.
Only myself.
Is there some rhetoric
To make me think that I have kept a house
While playing dolls? This much I’ve learned
In these five years in what I’ve spent and earned:
That two-eyed monster God is still above.
I saw him once when I was young and once
When I was seized with madness, or was I seized
And mad because I saw him once. He is the sun
And moon made real with eyes.
He is the photograph of everything at once. The love
That makes the blood run cold.
But he is gone. No realer than old
Poetry. This much I’ve learned
In these five years in what I’ve spent and earned:
Time does not finish a poem.
Upon the old amusement pier I watch
The creeping darkness gather in the west.
Above the giant funhouse and the ghosts
I hear the seagulls call. They’re going west
Toward some great Catalina of a dream
Out where the poem ends.
But does it end?
The birds are still in flight. Believe the birds.

~ Jack Spicer

[mousey1]

Jesus, Lrod, I love that poem...Imaginary Elegies:IV...such a poem, a poem with pounce to seize a heart. Thank-you, what a jewel, I'm off to read a little more of this Jack Spicer.

[mnaz]

Wow... Nice cut.

Looked up the tao on wiki, and that's pretty much it... fresh, always fresh, never static...

And it seems Spicer evoked the timelessness of "time gulfs", suitably distanced yet engaged in the flow. Enjoyed. Thanks.