*Follow Your What?*

I saw the new documentary about Joseph Campbell (really, more of a rehash of Campbell's basic philosophies as interpretted by various self-help and likewise gurus) the other night at a local independent theatre. Center for Symbolic Studies and Campbell biographer Stephen Larsen apologized in advance for the film's shoestring budget. "Don't expect Steven Spielberg," he quipped. But perhaps it was those limited funds that made the film all the more moving for me. Children in costumes gathered perhaps from their own play supplies were used to dramatize the various concepts and the basic path of the Hero, a core image of Campbell's work and the common thread he found in most of the mythologies of the world.

Sprinkled in were clips from some of the many Hollywood films that incorporate the Hero's journey. Many might surprise you, such as "Casablanca" and "The Wizard of Oz". The latter should not have surprised me, since for years I've recognized its blatant similarities to "Star Wars." George Lucas makes no secret of having based Luke Skywalker's adventures on Campbell's work. The Hero's path is circular, and includes confrontation, evolution and passing the story along. In Hollywood circles, this formula makes for easy multiple sequels. In real life, the journey is not so clear cut.

"Follow Your Bliss," is the ringing refrain in Campbell's writings and interviews. But what if your bliss is just not commercially viable? What if you've spent the first fifty years of your life picking away at the edges of it, fitting in all the other journeys around it that seem to have brought you to this brick wall? Poetry is truly the only activitiy that I feel totally alive during, totally engaged. I am certainly not the best poet in the world, nor will I ever be. As I age, I do, however,have more and more to share in my own work. I have been on a few paths, many of which have felt like less than heroic endeavors. Poetry has never been my primary concern, but it has been the thing that makes most of the rest of life tolerable.

Over the last few months, these passings in my life have served to not only scare me away from toying with the romantic notion of ending my own, but to encourage me to cut away the extraneous clutter that has accumulated around me and devote more time to the heart of it all. I will never be in a better position financially, even with unemployment as my sole income at the moment. My mortgage is miniscule, and my wants are truly few. I have a basement to clear out, papers to put in order, poems to write. The office is next, to organize and truly make into a space of productivity, not merely impressive looking storage!

I still look for a day gig. I have to. "Follow Your Bliss," simply won't pay that tiny mortgage, and unemployment is bound to be cut off sometime. But I do have the time now to get a few projects back on track. I am well into the horse chapbook, the first collection I've done writing to a theme instead of putting random poems together after the fact. I am also thrilled to have two other chapbooks coming out this year. Still, I must be somewhat practical.

Can I hold bliss in my heart, know what's the fire that drives my engine while still spending my days raking the yard and washing dishes? Are these things all part of the one and same journey? What can I tell others about the paths I've taken so far?

*Time, Time, Time, See What's Become Of Me?*

I'm coming up on 5 months of unemployment, and am busier than ever. I have commited to writing for about an hour a day, and this has benefited my primary project, a chapbook with a horse theme. In fact, it may grow up into a full-length poetry manuscript if things keep going the way they are. On my to-do list is to get all the stray projects I have in careful files, boxes and folders and arrange them in my writing nook to be easily accesible. This way, when each particular Muse strikes me, and they do strike, I can grab said materials and get going on it!

Other goals I have include cleaning out the basement, cleaning off the refrigerator and rearranging the corner shelves so that I can properly display my new Jadite bowls, a foolish layaway that I choose to consider an early birthday present to myself.

One difficulty for me has been something that may be common to most artists. I have trouble justifying any time I spend writing. There's a guilty little voice in the back of my head that seems to insist I look for a job twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Then the house beckonss, and cleaning chores seem to always need doing. That call is relatively faint. I am a firm believer that even a lousy poem will have more meaning to humankind than an empty sink.

Perhaps this is why I've never been able to fully commit to writing as a life. I have never been able to really, truly acknowledge that my work has value, that it is important, to me and to others. There is of course the issue of money, which really is always an issue, but there are so many hours in a day. Why do I begrudge myself just one or two of them to devote to the only thing that makes sense, the art I have chosen above all others to express myself in?

I know I'm not Shakespeare or Plath or Jurkovic. I have my limits, but I am growing. This year in particular I am striving to reach beyond my familiar circle of friends who have supported my work and my readings for many years. Part of that is being true to myself and my work. It is my account of my days here. It is my witnessing. Right now, I have black bean soup in the crockpot, chicken fat rendering on the stove and plans to be out by 12:30 to get to the gym, and an eye appointment at 2:30. I should be home in time to make dinner, the unspoken deal I have with my boyfriend, since he is out of the house all day.

I may type a poem or two up while the chicken is simmering. And oh yes, perhaps toss another resume' out to the four winds, hoping it will land in some sympathetic employer's lap who may even email me to say s/he received it.

*Poem: "Three Hours"*

Three Hours


Three hours behind me every day
and as I finally my eyes
droop before the DVD de jour,
your evening is just beginning,
supper dishes drying perhaps

if you are one of those that still does that,
or maybe the dishwasher has ceased
its recycled rumble, the sound
you’re unaware of until it stops

like the trains that pass my house
a couple blocks away, 11:04, 11:35,
and which is the wrong side
of the tracks from here?

Midnight, prime time on your coast,
sit-coms just starting in earnest.
If we had cable it would be time for Bill Beutel
to say goodnight to Roger Grimsby.
I leave the bedding of Mrs. Calabash
in your nostalgic hands.

My head tilts up on the pillow like a baby bird
hungry for any worms the night can provide,
trains huff through the backyard,
sirens for no one on the tracks.

If you were here, you’d hear the birds have
already begun their mindless chant
for sunrise, and at 4 a.m. I know
where the term, 'birdbrain' comes from.

We are three hours, three thousand miles,
several partners apart, and just as the sun
reaches the high point over the Catskills,
hides behind as many clouds as mountains,

you are ready for a second cup of coffee,
check your e-mails, watch those celebrated frogs
settle into midmorning callesthentics,
and I wonder what with all the tectonic shifts
in our friendship, how time will fly before us,

if our suns will come together, mountains part,
and we'll share a cup o' joe from the same pot.
I'd look in your eyes, colored the same
sarcastic tone as the rest of your sad bones,
eyes that have it where the rest of you is
overshadowed, shark-skinned and cautious,
chink in your herringbone armor.

Three hours, three thousand miles, a couple of
lives before, we meet again and again,
you my ambassador to the world of high standards,
red-striped ties and a sense of what
good can do in the lives of strangers
and other insidious creatures
on the left coast of life.

CAR 6/19/08

*Poem: "Love Wants To Be My Friend"*

Love Wants To Be My Friend

On MySpace I get an invitation--
Love wants to be my Friend.
After all these years Love
has been waiting for me,
browsing the Internet,
and comes across my intriguing profile.
Love wants to be my Friend, and
we should start as Friends, I think.
This time, we should go slow,
exchanging e-mails, MP3 downloads,
maybe a little YouTube if things
seem to be progressing.
Love wants to be my Friend, for once,
after all the angry breakups,
swearing off for good--
it seems Love wants to start up again.
I am ready this time.
I have my buttons before me.
All it takes is one finger
to block it all, delete Love
if things start to go awry.
Love wants to be my Friend,
and what the heck?
It's been a slow week.
I accept the offer,
and already I feel that old electric rush
coursing through the keyboard,
up through my fingertips,
into the light.

CAR 11/26/08

*Poem: "Thanksgiving"

Thanksgiving

Nibbling on crackled turkey skin for lunch,
delayed Thanksgiving roast on my own,
plenty of sage to make it right,
surprise of granny apple in the homemade stuffing,
of course I remember you, Ma,
and the smells, the good behavior, the heat
of the kitchen spilling into the open living room,
big olives pushed onto my fingers
imitating Buckingham guards,
pound of mushrooms shrinking to nothingness,
tiny pile of savory at plate's edge,
nuts we knew by a dirty name,
impossible to open, then not worth the trouble,
green olives settled for when the black ones were gone,
parade on TV featuring an occasional Long Island band,
though somewhere in New York was enough to satisfy,
balloons and early risers,
Betty White and Lorne Greene days,
sometimes cold, sometimes wet, and relatives dribbling in
to squeeze around the picnic table, our kitchen table,
sturdy and large and red and cheap,
crescent rolls left to burn, annual sacrifice,
yams from a can heated through before serving,
ours not a marshmallow family,
the pumpkin, the apple pies, the mincemeat tarts
apparently only you and I loved,
all covered, all pies with real cream, whipped
and sugared with a careful hand,
my mother's giant iron arms
handy for such a task.

*Poem: "Paul Newman at the Dodge"*

This is my latest, and a work in progress (aren't they all?) Suggestions and feedback would be much appreciated-- CAR

Paul Newman at the Dodge

At the poetry festival, passing from tent to tent,
no umbrella, my sister calls.
Without cellphones, we'd have no news at all.
This morning she says Paul Newman is dead.
I am hardly surprised. We media mavens
saw the telephoto snapshots in the raceway pits--
this spring Paul Newman was gaunt, stooped, unhandsome.

In this antique toy woods occupied by
allied forces of spoken and written,
Paul Newman's death, much as my own,
will be just another writing prompt,
a place for odes to go when nobody's home.

The poets here in their dollar store hefty ponchos,
Ren-fest capes, elbow patched cardigans
will beat Paul Newman's cunning eyes blue,
hang every sentimental maxim they ever read off them,
his long, beefsteak marriage fodder for sonnets,
his carved beauty beside Jackie Gleason's
rotund gentility the stuff haikus are made of.

Didn't we all want to sleep with him?
Or told that we did, obediantly half-believing
until we saw for ourselves.
Drizzle in the woods pecks at the canvas rooves.
My date for the weekend goes off to hear
the academics and their sauntering poses.
Since Paul Newman and I aren't well acquainted,
Paul Newman, to me, is alive as he was last night,
and will be come suppertime.

With so many stars shot from the Hollywood firmament,
it's hard to believe Paul Newman lived this long.
My date and I crawl back to the motel after a day's
bombardment of memoirs, pithy quips, occasional truths,
and out of respect and morbid curiosity,
we turn the TV back on after lights out,
and CNN continues live coverage late into the night
of Paul Newman's death, and nothing changes,
not the photo montage, the few details repeated
in the crawl at the bottom of the screen.

Paul Newman's still dead, same film at eleven,
midnight, one a.m. and fo a moment we
look to each other from separate beds.
I don't know the color of my date's eyes.
His beard fades to red and grey in the morning.

Paul Newman could fuck the camera with those blue eyes.
We kept looking, hoping that perfect god
would descend from the multiplex altar
to fill us with his perfect, blue-eyed dick.
That's what we paid for.
The lengthy panoramas of sagebrush and bus stations
is when we people get to roll over, light up a smoke
(these gods encourage that sort of thing)
or run out to the bathroom, for popcorn.

The rain at the festival never ends.
There is no more Paul Newman for us to fuck,
but no less than most of us had before.
We blow out of Dodge when the big guns are empty.
We forego free mums, given by the organizers
to help clear the stage they've adorned all weekend.
We're like Butch and Sundance up on that cliff.
Where to from here? There's only one way down.
They, we, always decide to fly.

We like to believe we'll survive the fall, too,
make it to Mexico and the lucky senoritas,
soak up the sunshine and the tequila
under the blue skies over the border.

CAR 10/14/08

*Poem: "Conquistador"

Conquistador

Now is the time for a cigarette,
but my asthma won't have it.

Before waking, the bathroom,
ears ringing before breakfast and

the treacherous course of the day,
again I fight so desperately, for what?

Again I scratch my sister’s chest,
red scrape, red gash, jealous apostrophe.

The pink scar shows in her prom pictures,
pink gown, red satin jacket

my mother made at the kitchen table,
sewn with the grey Kenmore

Santa brought her one year.
Again the necklace, shattered,

Shell hand-painted over Schaefers.
Again I press my ignorant, knowing body

against thin shower curtains.;
Again I drop straw hat, fedora pretender,

from the car on the way to the Catskills,
held out to feel the rush of the mountains.

Safe, awake now, no two points alike,
no phone chords connect my orange quilted throw

to the plaster conquistador lounging
in somebody's second-hand life.

CAR 5/3/08

*Poem: "Superstitions"

Superstitions

Say "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" on the first of every month for luck,
or hold a buttercup under your chin.

If it reflects back yellow, you like butter.
Salt over the shoulder we brought to the table from Bugs Bunny,

and the fantasy that stale pepper from a tin could make you sneeze.
A bruise from a pinch could bring on cancer,

and dandelions gone to seed, then blown apart
could carry a wish to completion.

The first robin seen in spring had the same magic ability
as the first star each night, to grand any desire.

I never saw shooting stars until I laid among the rocks at Cragsmoor,
far from the expressway, the malls and international airports.

Over Ellenville, perched at the edge of the Borscht Belt,
faded to a TV test pattern, all that was left there were the stars

shooting like marbles across the play yard of the night sky.
An occasional plane below teetered into the landing field

where LBJ once landed, civil rights in his left pocket.
Blueberries at Sam's Point, sweet stars of June,

fenced in for safety now, on posted lands surrounding town,
bad luck no rabbit triplets can dislodge.


CAR 4/13/08