Monday June 21, 2004

So i;ve missed a posting. i've written it in another notebook which i did not bring to Ann Arbor but you'll deal. This is the first day of residency in Ann Arbor. the spousThis is going well except that my body is still recovering from Salome's birthday on Saturday night. 12 teenagers who are really bright, but so far, more polite than i'd like. i suspect this will change by Wednesday. Maybe i'll construct an exercise that will force rudeness and general misbehavior. Marty has to teach the optional workshop today. I'll be lying down or shoting pool or something.

Today we did an exercise on 'wanting the forbidden' (no comments smartasses). We compared the poems 'Dear man whose marriage i wrecked' by Jeff McDaniel, 'For my Lover Returning to his Wife' by Anne Sexton and 'The Basque Nose' by Patrick Rosal.

Check these out. the perspective of each is different. Anne's is addressed to her lover, Jeff's is addressd to the spoude of his lover and Patrick's is a self-reflection. They all seize on the sense of the need in specific images that suggest that while their need is intense, it is not necessarily connected to the object of their affections... but like i said, check 'em out.

Marty's optional workshop was something about 'entering the dark room'. it was after lunch. i was really tired. so when she said the part about visualizing something or the other and closing your eyes, i straight fell asleep AND woke myself up by snoring one time real loud... at any rate, here's the poem, first draft, straight out the gate...

You smell like lilacs
or flamingoes cool purple
of my guitar is all
i needed - made music
out of ice-cream hotdogs
and grief

i would have kissed the skin
sutured onto your breast
like hammered-in wax
found the flock of birds living in your chest
and soared with them

Thank God i's had the chance
to love pigs and elephants
wars witches...
or i might never have known
the night
dialoguing with the wind
and whatever made me first
hold your hand in the parking lot
in the basement restaurant
in the book store
i might have blamed it on the wine
asked you to forget
i ever said i loved you

The dust is holy spirit rising
and a little tin guitar
overheard in a store in a mall
thirty-one years ago
thought to have been sent me
by some pig-like gnome
might not be here
to have me believe in improbable
unsuitable holding you and moaning

It is six AM
i can't remember what you first smelled like
it's not been that long
maybe it was the dronig of honey-bees
maybe rose-petals
maybe you're an ice-cream stain rising

that's the madness. we've since gone to eat laughed in the street at the dude with the shoe that looked like a typewriter (that was Kevin Coval's joke - i'm teaching with him, Marty and Regie Gibson).

...whioch is to say i'm now three whiskys and three beers in and it's 1AM and whatever, it's all poetry and it's love and i have so much that's conflict and beauty and confusion happening that i should just decide on sleep now. i'll have more interesting shit to say tomorrow from Ann Arbor, the land of old hippies and the Wolverines...