Spider-Man Says Our Choices Make Us Who We Are

When you let your mind wander, where does it go? Where are you, or what are you doing when you open the door for it, like a dog or cat that needs out, noses around tree trunks or tires, nudges corners with its cheek, and pisses the boundary of its wide, private territory?

National Jazz and National Poetry Month, Gardening, Stanley Kunitz hidden inside

Outside under a gun metal sky and a looming threat of rain, Henry's helping me work in the flower beds. By help I mean he's loading dirt into his John Deere construction toys and hauling it from the pile I made to a pile he's made opposite mine. It's fine, I haven't planted anything yet, we're just weeding, re-cutting the border and digging out ornamental rocks and resetting them in a ring around the bed.

It's National Poetry Month but I'm not writing much poetry. It's also National Jazz History Month, and I listened to Kind of Blue five or 6 times to celebrate. I reach a lovely bliss state when I listen to that album. If I had to imagine what a milk drunk baby must feel like, I'd compare it to the feeling I get listening to "Flamenco Sketches", wholly satisfied, even my soul at ease, joints disconnected in a feeling of weightlessness, almost heavenly.

It's National Poetry Month, as I've said. I submitted a few mid-grade, uninspired lines to a few contests this month and they were duly unrecognized and rightly so. I'm a slow writer, filling up eighteen to twenty pages with notes and false starts for one short poem. I'm trying to accept that about my creative nature but I wish I was prolific, and I wish I could land every poem I start writing with a just a few scratches of a ballpoint pen and the most minor revisions.

Sometimes I listen to Red Garland's solo on "Bye Bye Blackbird", from the 'Round Midnight' recording, and I think, if only I could make something so sublime, so beautiful, so perfect. I mean, I'd like to make a poem so expressive and concise. And I'll tell you what, for the longest time I was convinced I was listening to Wynton Kelly on that track. And I'd like to thank all the jazz-heads who I've ever talked to about that track for not correcting me and embarrassing me, although maybe they should have corrected me. I don't know.

The garden needs more attention. I have to move hostas from a bed on the East side of the house to a bed on the North side which is protected from full sun by two enormous maple trees. I have a lot of work to do in the yard. When we moved into this house it had been empty for seven years, and though the landlord maintained the property adequately, no one cleaned or replanted beds and there's a mess of overgrown foliage to trim, pull out, prune, transplant, and tend back to life with some tenderness and patience. Plus I'm getting married in the front yard in three weeks and I want it to look beautiful for the wedding, the wedding I haven't selected poems for yet, the wedding I don't have a suit for yet, etc. Hopefully it'll rain, and I can stay in after I'm done writing this and maybe read for awhile, or watch Spider-Man with Henry again. Work's always waiting for you, after all, so patient, so persistent.

Children, My Favorite Wilderness Area, A Poem

So I'm in the midst of planning my wedding, and even though I'm writing a lot about it, and other things, I'm just not getting to the computer for the solid blocks of time I need to get it all down. Tonight I'm going to post a few older pieces, one about my step-daughter's cat (not really), and one about taking my son to the Irwin Prairie when he was a mere babe. Finally, I'm going to give you a poem I wrote for both of them more recently.

My Reading Year

I set myself a goal to read 52 books this year. Ideally I'd read a book a week, knowing full well I'd encounter some books that demanded to be read in one sitting and other books that I'd put down for whatever reason: to play with my son, to do laundry, because there's a cedar waxwing in the tree outside the kitchen window, and I might not get back to it for a few hours, or even several days.

I established a few rules for myself, too. Here's why: there are hundreds of books in my personal collection I've still never read. I want to read those books, but sometimes I go to the Library, and don't you know, I get a little...well, crazy, and I walk out with a stack of books I have no hope of reading through, and meanwhile the books I actually own and make room for in this dwindling living space languish on the shelves.

Spring Peepers

Last night there was a modest, almost peaceful, thunderstorm somewhere South of Ida. I saw the lightning brighten the sky in the distance but I heard no thunderous report. Lord knows what it was like in the city or town or wooded lot right below, but from my vantage point it was a delight and I rolled down my window to allow the fresh ozone fragrance and cool spring air to fill my car.

An Introduction, Radio Lab, On Book

Hi. 
Hi, everyone. 
Anyone?

Anyone out there, maybe? 

Well. I'm Michael. I've been keeping a blog called The Toledo Poetry Museum for a little while now, but I'm mostly not writing about poetry over there, instead I'm writing things mostly not about poetry. But I wanted to do a blog that was a catalog of interviews with regional poets, so I thought I'd start a new blog that could be miscellaneous, and wild, and free, right here, and I could keep doing exclusively poetry stuff over there. So I'll post more interviews there soon, and some new poetry maybe, and a little book talk when the mood strikes, and right here is where I'll put the nature writing, the political rants, the life experience stuff. Because you know, I love comic books and poetry, and bugs, and cooking, and I care about Equal Rights and Reproductive Rights, by which I mean I'm Pro-Choice and pro-Woman in general, and let's just get the show on the road and be decent and equal all the way around. I care about that. 

And I want to know why we're still going to war, I mean, why are we still doing war when it clearly hasn't worked in the slightest, not for us or our opponents. I mean take a look at the place, we live in a shit house now. And I'm not religious but I love Jesus, I think about Jesus a lot for a non-Christian I'd guess. I like talking about what he meant when he said all that stuff many Bibles print with red letters. In fact I do a lot of mental gymnastics with that stuff at work, where I'm alone often, with only myself to talk to. 

I'm a prep-cook in a pizza kitchen and I stand at a stainless steel prep table about 40 hours a week and I think about Jesus, and Conservation, and Metaphors, and I re-stage panels of my favorite comic books. I write notes in small yellow legal pads and a lot of those notes are going to turn into blogs. I listen to Radio Lab and I take notes. I listen to On Being and I take notes. I listen to the Talking Comics podcast and I take notes about that, too. Few months ago I heard a Radio Lab rebroadcast of its "Space" episode and I almost lost my mind, it made me so happy to hear what the host was saying about space exploration and the likelihood of visitors to Earth from other planets. See, I don't believe we're being visited by aliens but I do not discount the possiblity of life of some kind or other elsewhere in this gigantic and ever enlarging Universe. Is Universe capitalized or not? I'll do it anyway, but I'll find out for later. Anyway, the host was saying the chances that we've been visited are so slim that it's unlikely but it's not also unlikely that there's life on other worlds. And I agree, but I'm not so eloquent, so I'll ln you to the show so you can hear it yourself. Plus, there's an interview with Carl Sagan's widow that will make you weep. 

Here it is: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blogland/2012/aug/20/rebroadcast-space/ Go Listen, you won't be sorry. 

I don't know how long blogs are supposed to be. I mean, what's your attention span? I don't know. I don't read a lot of stuff on the internet, so I'm afraid I don't know what a polite or customary blog length is. 

So I'll stop here because I want to. I have a few things to do, poetry to write, for example. It's National Poetry Month so I'm challenging myself to work on poems new or old everyday, regardless of my ambition or the duration of my work day. I haven't done that yet today except to think about it, so I should before it gets too late and I fall asleep while On Book. 'On Book', that's what my friend Don calls it when he's writing. I recently adopted the phrase. So I'll be On Book for a little while tonight. Let's hope something lovely comes out of it.