On Civil Disobedience

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it." ~Albert Einstein

Cicada Song

The treadmill cicada whine
Blends with the television.
I feel her presence
As if she is gently tapping my back

Periodically. The way she might have
Come up behind me at my locker
Thirty-three years ago. It’s substantial,
Solid, like a good hard mahogany table.

If we had not married, would I feel the same
About the cicada sound?

She’s stopped walking now, and gone upstairs
And I miss the cicada sound.

Black Sites

A black eye smacked across the face
Lies- caught with sooty residue
Staining their empowered hands

Their sordid secrets
Scattered about the globe
Now open for all to see
Like the belly of a gutted fish

In futile denial of the screaming truth
Their sick- torture twisted lies
Stare back at the world
In dumb void

Hope

The two Maples from our backyard that a promised a week to ten days ago. Isn't this time of year really all about color? The brilliance on one hand counterbalanced with the browning and graying. At least that is where I find the beauty of the fall season. I have to look for the good in it... I miss baseball. I do enjoy the cooler days - but not the shortened daylight.

But ah! Spring will come again! That is the greatest thing about spring - that eternal hope it represents.

When I think about hope and poetry together, I immediately think of Sam Hamill. I was delighted to hear that Sam was honored yesterday with the PEN USA Freedom to Write First Amendment Award. The First Amendment Award is presented to an individual who has demonstrated exceptional courage in defending freedom of expression in the United States. In my humble view, Sam's contributions to the literary community, the causes of justice and peace, and bringing the two together in one powerful voice is a tremendously unselfish act that poets, writers, essayists and indeed people of all walks of life would do well to aspire to.
You can find out more about PEN USA here.

Peace
War
writers
Poets

So true

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." ~Scott Adams

Tuesday's mailbag

"Thank you for your submission. Although we are not able to publish your work at this time, please be assured that we value your submission."

Those form letter* words - we've heard before. But alas, the anticipation of this one group of poems I submitted and had been hanging out there a little longer than usual for this venue, is now finally over. So I move on...

Much more work to harvest. Writing poetry has so much in common with gardening. Working the soil and pruning the plants. Nurturing them along. I'm thinking now about this years crop. Has it been better then the previous year? In volume? In quality? Things to think about as the final quarter of the year slips past us.

*not to be confused with "four letter words"

Anti-social? No, just artistic - National - theage.com.au

Anti-social? No, just artistic - National - theage.com.au

I'll admit that I have found articles exploring the thought process of creative individuals very absorbing. I'm always interested in new twists and thoughts on the age old debates about creative people and their mental status. This time, I found the article more amusing then informative. Maybe Dr. Hendricks work is quite serious and scholarly. Perhaps it is the writer Geoff Strong and his choice of words that I find humorous but this piece really has me cracked up.

Starting off with the opening line... "Know any creative types: writers, painters, musicians, actors? Chances are they tend to be contrary, a touch psychotic and rebels, cause or not." I'm sucked in. I'm immediately in my self-analytical phase - picturing myself deeply indented into a black leather couch asking myself...Am I a rebel or just a cranky old man? Cause? You want causes? Hell, I got causes out the wazoo!

Ok, seriously... I'm off the couch and thinking about this article. The good doctor has decided that "all people who are creative tend to have schizo-type personalities." That is what the article says. Not some or most, but all. She has also found distinct differences between the three groups (writers, visual artists and performance artists).

According to Dr. Hendricks:

• Writers had the most extreme personality disorders - more neurotic and less agreeable "they are more at odds with the world.
• Visual artists - are the closest to normal (whatever the hell that may be) though still more deviant than normal personalities.
• performance Artists - were the most likely to want to experience new sensations and novelties, and were also the most narcissistic.

So let me get this straight, it is because I'm a writer that I am at odds with the world? Gee, and I thought it was just because of the deep rooted corruption in government and the fact that we have a President who is a moronic mad man and a Vice President who is heavy into torture.

I loved the part in the article about how the doctor tested the groups of people by giving them problems to solve to see if their solutions were conventional or divergent. The example was showing them a brick and asking them to suggest possible uses.

A non artist would for example say - building things.

Artists were more likely to suggest it could be thrown through a window (At Dr. Hendricks office) - notice how I immediately think like an artist here.

The love list

When I started this list a few posts back- it came into being as a result of a Margaret Atwood quote about the word love and how significant it was. I really had no idea at the time how many words that we could come up with that were synonymous with love, but I threw out three and another bloger added six more words. So here we are...

I'll repeat what we have so far:

1. adoration
2. union
3. passion
4. commitment
5. desire
6. selflessness
7. sacrifice
8. affection
9. worship

So here we are with nine... any more wordsmiths out there that want to build on this list?

It's sunday already?

A number of us from one of my writing communities attended the wedding of fellow poet/writer Scot Isom and his wife Dena last night. Best wishes to the new couple! I cringed just a bit when I saw in the program there was a reading of one of Scot's poems. I thought... he has one clean enough to read? Luckily he wrote one just for the occasion.

It is feeling so strange now without baseball. That is one aspect of fall that I hate. All the fun colors and enticing smells we come to think of with this time of year still come up short without baseball.

I have been using a full spectrum lamp at both home and the office of late. I do believe it truly helps with respect to SAD. Plus the light is so much better to read by. Our cats love to curl up and sleep beneath the one at home. Catching a few rays.

Falling in love again and again - the lost poetry of Dietrich - World - Times Online

Falling in love again and again - the lost poetry of Dietrich - World - Times Online: "Falling in love again and again - the lost poetry of Dietrich"


From her Paris hotel room, Marlene Dietrich would set at a typewriter to tap out poems to dead lovers. Among them, Ernest Hemingway and Yul Brynner, and Ronald Reagan.

Thirteen years after her death the poems were discovered. They represent quite a find - telling a great deal about her reclusive years.

Fascinating in that while Dietrich is certainly of celebrity status, she represents a virtual unknown in the literary world. Evidently, poetry did matter to her in her late life.

Poetry

Thought for the day

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." ~Henry Ward Beecher

Emails: Brown more concerned with image as deadly Katrina hits

Emails: Brown more concerned w/ image

''If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god.''

-- Michael Brown e-mailed the day of the storm.

Funny but I don't believe that is exactly why most people wanted to vomit.


Katrina
Bush

This Morning

An early morning view from my back yard into a neighboring yard.

I am awaiting the turning of the two maples in our own yard. They are just starting - I'm guessing within a week they will be awesome.

Praise for Autumn

Gasp at the blazing Maple
Stealing our oxygen

Listen as the birds bump wings
Arriving and departing in terminal C

The grass stunted and quiet now
A bit of daylight chipped from the sky

Rust, yellow, orange and red
Butterflies surround the ground of naked trees

Curling their wings upward in the crisp night air
praising autumns splendor

Transparent

Clothed in transparency
Wrinkles of age
Like crinkled plastic wrap
Mishandled in haste

Life encircles
The evening oblique
Sterile
Cold

Morning comes
The nakedness continues
Evidenced only by the auto
And a new day begins

If Fox News Had Been Around Throughout History

If Fox News Had Been Around Throughout History

This is one of those things that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Picture FOX ( our Fair and Balanced friends) news reporting on Slavery, Christ's crucifixion, Boston Tea Party, Kent State massacre, and more.


FOX News Fair and Balanced Cable news

Come On Wordsmiths...

"The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love." ~Margaret Atwood

Can we come up with fifty-two substitute words for love?

I'll get us started with a couple.

1. Adoration
2. Union
3. Passion

The comment box is open.

The World Can't Wait! Drive out the Bush Regime! : SF Bay Area Indymedia

The World Can't Wait! Drive out the Bush Regime! : SF Bay Area Indymedia


World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime has called for nationwide protests and student walkouts on Nov. 2, the first anniversary of Bush's "re-election." At last count people in 67 cities, at 43 colleges and universities, and 90 high schools (at last count) will leave work and school and gather in the city centers to declare No!

Protest Iraq Bush Plumegate

Daylight Savings Time

I'll admit I have never liked Daylight Savings Time. When I stumbled across this item written by the Canadian writer Robertson Davies, I just had to blog it.

"I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves." ~Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday

Poets catch ear of iPod generation

Is verse becoming fashionable among America’s iPod generation?

In this article:

Pam Promer, audio buyer for the Borders bookshop chain, said: “It’s a niche, like folk music, but the arrival of more lively poetry performances has meant that we are reaching people seeking an alternative to music on their way to work. And that is change.”