Markers. Ants. Tectonics. X. & Pain. & Illness.

***

Ok, let’s see what Google thinks of Moveable Feast:

Less than a week later edit: OK, so it doesn’t take Google a week to get back to you. Now I just have to play around with their ad options.

Afternoon edit: OK, so the first thing I have learned is that it takes a week for Google to approve me to host their ads. We’ll see… check back in a week if you’re desperate to see an ad in a blog.

META BORING BLOG STUFF

This Blog, in case I have been too subtle (Ha, I kill me*), is partially a bit of my life as related to my schooling at the Virginia Commonwealth University.

Now that I work for VCU, I have gone from being a full time student in the Media Art and Text Ph.D. program, to being a part-time student in same.

As part of my part timeness, I consider my entire web presence to be divided between my personal life, my public life, my school life and my teaching life.

Thus, I am trying an experiment. WordPress informs me that the most popular plug-in for WordPress is Google’s Ad-Sense.

While I am now of the not at all original feeling that Amazon and Google were at one time SOOOO cool, but are now The Man. Or is that Men? I still want to try out things in case my students want to try out things so that I can perhaps save them the trouble or make a million dollars, whichever comes first.

And hey, if you’re not seeing any ads, that probably means I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to set Google’s Ad-Sense up, or Google didn’t deem me worthy. Either result is fine with me.

Now, if I can only find a way to make Amazon also my best friend. Anyone have its number?

* Oh, and I wanted to give props to Scott Adams of Dilbert Fame for the line: “I kill me”, when referring to a joke told by oneself that isn’t really funny, but does make one laugh. In this case, the one is me. I suppose it’s always me when one is saying one, but that also sounds weird. Mr. Adams (soooooo my hero for the creation of Wally, all that is right in the attitude department), used that line in the introduction to one of his books. I hesitate to even mention his name here. I’m not worthy.

As he’s dying because he’s listening to his third wife describe their latest litter of St. Bernard puppies and pondering whether to name the runt Thor in an attempt to give him something to inspire the pup to scrap beyond his scrawniness and overcome the hip dysplasia that tends to run in that particular bitch’s offsprings and his mind isn’t full in no way is he not simply not thinking of me he has forgotten me though he did not forget my half brothers who he did not get to name after Greek gods though he wanted to and his second wife rattling gin and ice guessed with me that was the reason for the divorce how she hadn’t given him an endless supply of breedlings upon which to bestow names and instead only the two of which I’ve met one and my father’s breaths pause and then pause filling the hospital room with a cloister of condensed milk because he has asked for condensed milk and because he has this way the nurses allowed the milk and he had the can cupped in his crumpled brown hands while his third wife waits but no one else as the third wife doesn’t like the second wife and neither of them know of the first wife as only he knew when he was full of life and that’s where I fit in or rather don’t but my father’s hands tremble and he can’t get the can to his lips so that the third wife takes its red and whiteness in her own hands so white that the milk he sputters onto them vanishes and her carnation fingernails match the can and he notices this synchronicity and then he says his last word, Thor, and she looks into his eyes for some recognition while he coughs once.

Fall Falling Fallen

Dusk.
Sycamores.

Cupped
Shoulders.

Salty
Vertebrae.

Carve.
Lick.

Pick Me Up

Brushing his teeth, a piece of bark falls out of his mouth.
It cannot be bark, he says, and from the other room, his wife says,
What?

But there the black thing rests beneath the sudsy toothpaste
And then washes down the drain.

His wife stands in the bathroom doorway, their daughter, five,
At her side. They smile at him.
What?

I might have lost a filling, he says. Oh, the little girl says.
Oh, the wife says.

Later, the man and the daughter walk to get the mail.
The flag is down, she says. And there you are, she says.
What?

He has been scratching a scab on his arm, which falls,
Twirling to the ground, where she points.

Ha, he says, that isn’t me anymore. He didn’t rake last year’s
Leaves, they crumble as they walk and she says, anymore?
What?

They have no mail. His daughter, in her white dress, dances
Up the walk, singing, Dust to dust, we must, we must.

His arm itches. His fingernails catch under his skin. He pulls
And a strip of skin unwinds. His wife and daughter, they watch.
What?

The daughter looks up at the mother, this one lasted longer.
The wife looks at the man. Her blue eyes, cobalt, Yes.

He stumbles, falls. I should have raked, he says. His wife
Cradles him. His hands fumble in the dirt and grasp a hard stone.
What?

The daughter pulls the tooth from his fingers. It’s OK,
The wife says. The women hold him and pick him apart.

Up until now, it has been letters in long cream envelopes, stolen from his office, his embossed return address crossed out, his name inked in its place, the letters I insisted on after He tried to email me, email, me, and though I have nothing against the Internet, He owed me letters, for the gaping years, even if written on the back of whatever scrap of paper He appears to have had at hand, coupons for gutter cleaning, unpaid electrical bills, my own letters sent back to me, words x’d over, blackened, smelling of His cigarettes, and handwritten letters, after He tried to type one, because if He owes me nothing, which He doesn’t, but WTF, He can put His hand on his fucking Mont-Blanc and use his muscles and then allow His sacred spittle to dampen the envelope, though most of the envelopes arrive taped shut and I rip them open thinking His Mouth beyond hoping for a paper cut to curse Him spinning along His red lips everyone says we share because while I have nothing against Him or against making things easy on the one hand on the other hand emptiness as deep as cistern as black as tendon so when He called His voice oiling the cordless air and asked if I would have lunch with Him that would have meant I would have had to breathe His air and I waited for Him to dissipate and on the other end He was asking Well, don’t you think it’s about time? and I looked at the floor where the battleship gray wood slats beckon because they’ve shrunk over the years but the darkness does not open to spill me under the house to rest in the dust so I said what I had to say and He said Look for my sports car, it’s a BMW which will be easy to spot dusted in the Traceway Restaurant parking lot the only not-pickup but it’s certainly not Ferrari though this is the first time He’s asked so I go and wait in the pink plastic booth behind the globe filled with gum globes of every color so many I can’t even name them and the tabletop clear as a spring the Webster County Daily Progress sealed under polyurethane with photographs of men hefting cat fish and the Progress surrounded by silvered wooden hooked bait fish and while looking at that bait and the waitress her hair brown enough to roll in the deep fryer and at the lack of BMW that I say Shit but it’s too late and sure enough enough by the time I get back to my house small and nothing as it is with its sagging porch with no pillars only the rough boards I stole from Debby Ponder’s wood pile holding my front up, my house with one shattered window covered in black garbage bags because of some kids with rocks who I’m going to shoot in the knees if I ever catch them, my house empty as His offer which was no offer but a feint so that He could get here and talk to the ghosts of my wife and the ghosts of my little girl and steal them them going with Him because He has always had that damn way with women and damn Him their absence damn crowding in on me even damn though the door’s not even open yet their hissing gone and damn I look at the phone not damn begging for Him asking for Him to at least call and explain damn Himself this time but He won’t He never damn does as if He even damn could.

August edit. I can’t believe I forgot to post a link to Mitch’s site: This opens Mitchell Wright Dot Org in its own window, it’s a wide site, by the way.

I was going through my old negatives from the Mississippi State Days of Glory, and found this photograph, which, I believe, shows the now famous artist Mitchell Wright in his early days of thought.

I have others. But this one seemed the most appropriate, all things considered. I’m a sappy guy, and I miss those good old days hanging out on the stair steps at some Mississippi State building.

Later, I hope to find the Polaroid which, I think, shows Mitchell in the good old days hanging out in front of a Mexican Restaurant.

But, one photo at a time, as my mom used to say.

I don’t normally draw out my poem structures beforehand, but I thought I’d give it a try, and this is the result.

I thought it might be interesting to anyone who wonders how such things burble in my poetry mind.

Each reader graduates this Spring, so I hope you got to hear them while they were here, or that you find them wherever they shall roam.

It’ll be well worth your time to seek them out.