So what’s new how’s it hanging as they say July 23^rd summer winding down mild as usual here no humidity even when all records were broken here and around the country just a while back 113 here which was like cooking when we went outside thank goodness for no more than a few days that was crazy but ok on the inside even with only fans no AC here Oh Climate Change you’re going to crush us all so much sooner than most let on or had any idea about most of us being selfish and unaware and carbon burning right and left I hear the phrase Well, shut my mouth! and I think that I could live with that just hammering away on the keyboard nothing coming out of my piehole at all Still making my playlists of old and new, live and acoustic and melodic and memorable lyrics sheer poetry and all kinds of beats from the US of A and beyond world thumps hammering away can get me dancing or contemplating all kinds of instruments and languages proving there’s no one way to anything we have to stay very open to arts and ideas man/woman are amazing what they can come up with and all this is good background for inspiring to write a poem or three feeling good in a fertile period creative juices percolating just enough not ‘wildly’ or anything but I do get urges to write lines come to me out of the blue or as direct result of someone else’s poem or a song line or something I just overhear on tv or on the street these spark something which leads to something else Wishing of course I had more days left of my life to get them all down and get ‘discovered’/ found finally but what are you gonna do you do what you can with what you have what you’re given and try not to waste time but I can’t help thinking that’s what I do most what with sleeping and chores and chores some more And do get enjoyment taking these sudden inspirations and molding them from this raw state into something with a smooth finish something that will stand up there a little piece of art in a long history of the world meaning something and satisfying me its creator and hopefully another soul or two out there somewhere and connections will be made plus leaving a small mark as evidence I was even here Still fired up about all that’s going on politically still trying to have faith and keep an ounce of fragile optimism that somehow it’ll work out but watching the bad guy Republicans and FOX trying to bring it all down right before our eyes trying to distort and send us back in time to an uglier reality and a planet on fire with uncontrollable plagues and human rights stamped into the dirt and now they’re wanting to rewrite or cover up all that happened in the past that isn’t “white is beautiful and always right” and my new mantra shout into the void is “TRUE HISTORY only!!!” and hoping that schools/teachers stand up to the effort to whitewash it all 1984-Big Brother-style these thugs are so averse to the truth they’re doing all they can to brainwash a lazy/gullible public HEY PEOPLE open your eyes and your brains and wise up you’re being conned in terms of information and ripped off economically check your pockets and brush up on your morals and the Golden Rule and besides don’t be jerks or fascists Watching a YouTube video lecture by a poet of the need for fresh imagery in poems to “show not tell”…to use images rather than ‘explaining’ things all blah as if it’s a newspaper article or instructions for how to use a device of some kind this poet, Meghan Sterling, explains things well and talks with her hands all throughout the video very dynamic some would criticize it it’d be far less noticeable if we were all in a room anyway rather than squeezing everything into a screen I’m benefitting from what she has to offer including some useful exercises to build these skills and get a better idea of the power and necessity of using images so as not to be prosaic and droning on with empty chatter.

7.25.21 Spending a lot of time doing household chores…they even exist in an apartment…no landscape jobs no snow no grass no pruning no digging and digging that but the daily putting things back where they belong again and again and the cleaning up after just the two of us plus yesterday the porch and today a little the new car trying to keep everything spotless and shiny plus the laundry plus cooking and cleaning up afterward plus keeping it all stocked done now mostly through Amazon or pulling up to stores and employees put the bags of stuff in my trunk very little to none walking down aisles and aisles in stores with my list with people breathing all over me bless their hearts I know they’re all God’s children but I’m fine with minimal interaction with the species housework it’s all pretty endless and while I do it all to music or news (trying to keep thinking of the glass half full) and thinking of life and poem pieces getting born to not make it drudgery it’s still something somedays I actually like and somedays I could do without and just have zero ‘duties’ just kick back and WORK on my reading and writing and watching and listening which fills me always with wonder and joy and satisfaction …I’m also going to the gym in our apartment complex which is nice (see photos) and seems to be largely unused except by one of the maintenance guys and me it’s not huge but it’s pleasant and has all that I need to work up a sweat I walked before on the property but this is more private and I can work on all muscles in legs and arms plus some stretching I use the treadmill and stationary bike and some weight machines and clean up afterward THERE TOO! we’ll see how long I can keep up this discipline of going I always feel much better afterward more awake and alive and stronger all good things and sweaty which has always seemed like cleaning out the system THERE TOO! and catching some good series and movies on tv not back to the theaters yet…I used to love that going during the day by myself and the place almost empty like it was all my own but there’s so many available films on the tv in comfort of my humble cave my shelter my later substitute for the womb then why venture out into the dangerous albeit exciting world pray tell and if you start something and you don’t like it you can just move on immediately to something else and no great time or economic loss And reading some poems by George Bilgere someone who like the poets I prefer/enjoy is one whose work is accessible not full of obstacles for someone to trip over get frustrated about combining the simple and everyday and the profound and eternal. Billy Collins and the recently late, Stephen Dunn, all do the same. George Bilgere resides in Cleveland, home of the Guardians.

Janitorial

All morning he drifts the spacious lawns
like a gleaner, picking up this and that,
the summer clouds immense and building
toward afternoon, when the heat drives him
under the shade of the oak trees in the quad
and then along cool corridors inside
to pull down last term’s flyers

For the chamber recital, the poetry reading,
the lecture on the ethics of cloning,
the dinner with some ambassador,
the debate between Kant and Heidegger,
the frat party, the sorority party, the kegger,
the weekend Bergman festival, the Wednesday
screening of Dumb and Dumber. He says
hello to fine young ladies, and tries
not to dwell on their halter tops,
their tanned thighs, shorts up to here.

At five he climbs into an old, dumpster-colored
olds, lights up and heads home
across the barge-ridden river in its servitude
to East St. Louis, where you know
this poem—glib, well-meaning, trivial–
grows tongue-tied, and cannot follow.

― George Bilgere

the white museum :: george bilgere

My aunt was an organ donor
and so, the day she died,
her organs were harvested
for medical science.
I suppose there must be people
who list, under “Occupation,”
“Organ Harvester,” people for whom
it is always harvest season,
each death bringing its bounty.
They spend their days
loading wagonloads of kidneys,
whole cornucopias of corneas,
burlap sacks groaning with hearts and lungs
and the pale green sprouts of gall bladders,
and even, from time to time,
the weighty cauliflower of a brain.

And perhaps today,
as I sit in this café, watching the snow
and thinking about my aunt,
a young medical student somewhere
is moving through the white museum
of her brain, making his way slowly
from one great room to the next.
Here is the gallery of her girlhood,
with that great canvas depicting her father
holding her on his lap in the backyard
of their bungalow in St. Louis.
And here is a sketch of her
the summer after her mother died,
walking down a street in Berlin
when the broken city was itself
a museum. And here
is a small, vivid oil of the two of us
sitting in a café in London
arguing over the work of Constable
or Turner, or Francis Bacon
after a visit to the Tate.

I want you to know, as you sit there
with your microscope and your slides,
there’s no need to be reverent before these images.
That’s the last thing she would have wanted.
But do be respectful. Speak quietly.
No flash photography. Tell your friends
you saw something beautiful.