Bloodshot Cartography

My poem Bloodshot Cartography is now a blockbuster movie! The generous Dave Bonta of Via Negativa fame is the video artist, with a reading by me.
This poem began with my wondering whether the word 'amazon' had anything to do with 'amaze,' and finding out it doesn't. Mix in a little homesickness, lack of sleep and antipathy for insects, and it's done. The poem was originally published in Crab Creek Review.


Bloodshot Cartography from Dave Bonta on Vimeo.

Joy Alert

Things like Marie Kondo’s book about owning only items that ‘spark joy’ and articles like “Arrange Your Morning around Tasks that Bring You Joy” make it seem like joy is some kind of everyday commodity, within reach just by a trick of organization. 

That’s not joy. That’s what the marketing department and the cereal packaging designers are telling you to sell books and smart phone apps and Coca-Cola. 

Beware of products that promise you joy. It isn’t something you buy or pencil into your schedule. 

Joy is a mystery. Joy is a very welcome but unexpected guest. Joy is going to surprise you when you didn’t make careful plans for it.

Joy is exaltation. Joy is overwhelming, discombobulating happiness. Joy is emotional and/or spiritual. It isn’t a glutton, a hoarder or a hedonist. It does not appear on the menu. 

Joy is not a voluptuous blouse or a silk tie or an almond chocolate bar. Those might be a pleasure. They might give you satisfaction, even deep satisfaction, but they will not exalt you. Joy is of another order. 

Here’s a goofy listicle hellbent on debasing joy at your expense: “100 Things That Can Bring You Joy.” Among the supposedly joyous activities here are things like Go Shopping, Have More Sex Than Your Friends, Organize Your Bedroom, Eat More Steak, and Make a Gigantic To-do List.

If Starbucks brings you joy every morning, what word are you going to reach for when your underappreciated, much-beloved, deserving daughter against all odds wins an award for bravery? I feel sorry for you if you group these two things in the same category: joy.  

It is exaggeration that cheapens value.

Two minutes of morning

Going to the UBahn I walk through a small park, too small really to earn the term, it’s more of a pathway with a bench or two, tall trees and what was once a sandbox, which nonetheless offers two minutes of relief from the apartment blocks and monotone of sky. I would call it a glade because of glide and because it’s leafy and keeps a cool temperature, but a glade, if I am not mistaken, intersects a thicker wood and is neither manmade nor even man-fashioned.

Along the walkway leaves have fallen in such a way that they resemble - also because sometimes they are in the midst of tumbling - sunbeams or patches of sunlight on the ground, and when I am close enough to apprehend what they are it’s both a disappointment and a consolation, a let-down because my expectations are dashed, and a consolation because they’re just as luminous as sunshine, and I have been beautifully fooled.

This morning amid the damp ambient of leaves and mud and cobblestone I see my new boots come slicing, the flat heels so comfortable I’d like launch into a run. I think of the saying “fit like a glove” which amuses because we’re talking shoes, and the German word for glove is ‘Handschuh,’ i.e. “hand shoe,” and somehow an item got mashed on backwards in translation, and it’s frosty and I don’t have gloves. 

When I’m walking in the cold thinking of running I remember the essential thing is to breathe. Have I mentioned how my face is falling apart?

Inhale, exhale.

Or had I rather say collapsing? The lengths, breadths and heights of it?

In, hale. Ex, hale. 

For months I have been considering a chin tuck. 

Inhale.

Abstractedly and noncommittally, now running past houses.

Exhale.

Dew settles on the hood of my car

Hey! I have a poem in the new issue of Tinderbox. It’s called “Poem Written After Reading a Poem With a Boat in It.” This is a poem that started with the title, and is kind of a poke at myself for liking poems with long titles. It’s also a homage to the Chinese. And an ode to motherhood, and an observation about a statue, and a nod to Weltschmerz. It’s anything you want.

Lots of poets I admire are in this issue, including Sally Rosen Kindred, Martha Silano, Donna Voreyer and Carol Berg. Carol has a poem with a title even longer than mine: “Belly-Ache Bush With Giant Sphinx Moth: Plate #15 by Maria Sibylla Merian.” As they say in Germany, ‘Respekt.’ 

Please you go read.
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This song on my iPod helped me navigate home today.