Day 18 - "We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust."

Happy Independence Day everyone!

As some of you might know, the fourth of July is my favorite holiday, bar none. I don't know exactly why, though I have some reason to believe it has to do with warm weather, charcoal-grilled picnic food, swimming, and, probably more than anything else, beautiful explosions of light to top it all off at the end of the day. These are what I associate with this holiday - a day off to enjoy the summer for what it truly is: family, friends, and a good time.

This year things have changed, and not so much for the better I'm afraid. It will not be the same fourth of July that it has been for years and years on end. Still, I have at least 22 or 23 happy memories of this day throughout my life and the one thing that still gets to me, more than anything else, are those fireworks. They never seem to fade or mean anything less to me - they are forever, and the feeling never changes. When I see them pop and glow in the summer night sky I am instantly four years old again. They are simply beautiful, and nothing can take that away for some reason - no pain, no sadness, no regret or loss that I am experiencing. That is why they are special to me, and in honor of that feeling I wrote this poem. The title is a direct quote from Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim poet - he is one of my favorites and I have always loved his views on the transformation of things and the experiences and vital processes of our lives. The quote itself actually seemed almost too appropriate for the subject matter - one wonders if Rumi was looking at a display of fireworks himself when he composed that line in his mind so many centuries ago?

I wish you all a wonderfully happy and colorful fourth of July this year. May it build upon your many other priceless memories of this most perfect of holidays. :)


“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”


Instinctively

the chest is clutched by the hand

and joyfully seized by memories of grinning childhood wonder.

The bursts of multicolored lights in the great divide

drive away all thoughts;
all words;
all of all that is, or was, or will be;

everything;
everything except the biding dark above.

We gaze up at the nothingness
in tender expectation,

and in those sudden, glorious, booming illuminations

the young one inside of us clutches at our chest with excitement.

And yet we cannot tear our eyes away
to consider what this means,

for our eyes have become the unyielding conductors of our soul.

And through the tiny keyholes in each of those doors

it crouches and stares intently, and smiles, instinctively,

in sweet, sublime puerility,

like nothing else ever was

or mattered

as much as this

skyful of enchanting fulminations.


Perhaps nothing does, or ever has, or ever will.


- Joshua Clarke

the fruits of the 6-27-11 poetry workshop led by Joe Limer

You likely don't know who Joe Limer is. He's an associate professor at Palomar College in Escondido, California. That's on the surface. Beyond that he is an extremely talented performance artist - his speciality: def poetry. I was fortunate enough to attend a quickly thrown together workshop he hosted before he returned to California this week and it produced a lot in me to think about and consider with my new and existing works - good fuel to push me over the finish line with this current book of poetry I'm finishing up in the near future.

Anyway, the first exercise was in speed writing haikus - just getting an emotion onto the paper as raw and unadulterated - and fast - as possible. I was able to grind out six in the 10 minutes we were given. I thought I'd go ahead and share them with you all - a little hors d'oeuvre for you all until my next post.

All in all, it was a great experience, and I can't wait to do something like it again. Thanks Joe - and keep up the amazing work!


'workshop haikus 6-27-11'


This is not a gift
Or perhaps there are no gifts
Until we learn to take

Hops twine up the lines
The season jogs so swiftly
I really must catch up

The morning car ride
Screams out to invite the song
I never turn one on

I pen the never
I dream the past that once was
I grasp what must be

Gain the upper hand
Shrug the weight of atlas now
Stomp upon the rest

Thou art in a glass
Color, texture, flavor, smell
Drunk on every part


- Joshua Clarke

Day 17 - "Losing the Cord"

Aye, here we all are again, say true. See us now - see us very well - restin' upon the precipice of a new poem for a new day dawning in an old world. 'Tis a feelin' that comes often, but not often enough for the likes of my own. But that's just me, I 'spose. For all the drawl of this lonely walk to the gallows, there are a few moments worth taking the time to truly enjoy, if ye find ye're well able to enjoy them, that is - do ya kennit?

Yes, as some of you might have guessed I'm being drawn in, once again, by the tales of Roland and his ka-tet in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It's one of my absolute favorite series of novels I've ever read and continues to be - it's an extremely rich mythos with an almost insurmountable mystery behind it all to contend with. That's probably what I love about it the most - that and its overall message one reaches when they finish the seventh book, especially if they decide to follow Roland all the way to the top of the Tower itself, which Mr. King cleverly and importantly gives you the choice of and elaborates on before that final chapter. He asks the reader, considering all they have read, what would it mean to take that final step alongside him? What would it mean to finally acquire the goal that we've been hankering for for over six volumes? What was it that truly stood out as meaningful, after all - the end, or the journey to the end, and what we sacrificed to get there along the way?

It's interesting, beautiful, tragic, and poetic - all rolled into one. And I obviously can't get enough of it. :) I would advise anyone who's a fan of grand, enticing, suspenseful adventure that gives even the Lord of the Rings a huge run for its money to pick up the Gunslinger and see where it leads you. Then again, that's for ka to decide.

In any case, I started this post today with the intention of actually posting a poem, so I'm going to do just that. However, the preface above actually does play a part in the poem I chose to post today. I wrote this piece when I was outside of Nags Head, North Carolina on the shoreside in the early morning, about 4:30 AM, with my friend Nick, waiting for the sun to rise on the beach. I had been reading the series at the time and had just finished the second book, The Drawing of the Three, and was starting on the third. Strangely enough, the bulk of the second book takes place on a beach near the Great Sea in Mid-World and it inspired me, coupled with the events of the book, to compose a poem right there in the dim light of the newborn day while Nick sat beside me in his beach chair having a cigarette and sipping on a bottle of some recently-purchased liquor.

I thought about the paths we take in life, the places we go, and what binds it all together. It brought back symbols and ideas I had gleaned from high school AP English class while reading and examining Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. In our analysis the character of Lucie is said to weave the "golden thread" through the rest of the characters in the novel, binding them to a better destiny and community as a whole. This idea of a "golden thread" pervading different experiences and people in life has always piqued my interest and I have since thought about it often. It's something I pull into consideration in just about every narrative literary work I come across these days, and in a way it was the main inspiration for this work. In that moment I suppose I was attempting to grasp - however unattainably - for my own "golden thread" woven by God and the fates that has since chosen who and what I am to meet in this world and why - again, another echo of the Dark Tower series. :)

So take it for what it is - it was written in passion and shall remain so - probably never to be explained fully, though I would likely be displeased with it if I was ever able to fully embrace every thought I put into it. It's the mystery of the thing with me, I guess - that's what I love about it. So take of it what enjoyment and fascination you will, and share this bit of khef with me, will ya? Long days and pleasant nights, sai Reader. See you further along down the Path of the Beam.


"Losing the Cord"


The witness nears the ocean
The sights and sounds of grandeur creep inside
Extending the vital climate of the magician’s sleight of hand
This harness grants him motion
And evergreen breezes fade as his spirit glides
Out of reach and into the breach that lies beyond the sand

and in the flash of a fire-igniting blaze
in the first gasp ever taken by the dust-becomes-man
the horizon splits
and life-becomes-death
and death-becomes-life
an awakening hits

Where we wiped the dew from our new skin
To find the narrative stretched to the brink
Encased in the milky glass, still seized by the mechanical demon’s grin
Like clockwork, slowly seeping down the sink

Therein lies the traitor
In a red-ribbed, vitriolic, patriotic stride
Confusion given preference, delusion made as powerful as wrath
No questions of war, now or later
To begin to adore the creature and choose sides
Corrupts the convolution of the institution that controls who walks its path

and in the fiercest of the billowing nights
that harbor hordes borne ready as the man-becomes-dust
the curtain rips
and tragedy-becomes-realization
and realization-becomes-tragedy
a sickness grips

Where the instant stings the witness to the senses
Of a weary traveler nearing a mass too great to explore
Suddenly reaching for the strand, now caught between past and present tenses
And finally losing the cord – finally, losing the cord


- Joshua Clarke

Day 16 - "Matar as Saudades, Or How To Write With a Broken Heart"

Good morning everyone,

I do intend to be genial and genuinely happy today in my post, though I feel I cannot post very much personal explanation for the piece. So much has occurred in my life lately - so much that is painful and difficult to mention - that I don't wish to recount it all here once again (which is why I haven't posted in a while, if any of you have been wondering why). Instead, I will let the poem speak for itself, as it is the first poem I have been able to pen since the event that has forever changed my life recently. At the very least, before I set it upon you, I will offer insight into the poem's title as well as the epigraph.

The poem's first title, "matar as saudades" is a common Portuguese phrase and means, simply, "to kill the saudades." Saudades is a beautiful Portuguese word for which there is no English translation, nor in any other language, and I will not rob you of the opportunity to discover what the word means on your own.

The epigraph is one written by a famous Portuguese 'saudadismo' and, in essence, it states:

"In reality
A man only finds himself in what he looses,
Because he embraces the space and the eternity."

I couldn't have found more perfect words. Enjoy the poem.


"Matar as Saudades, Or How To Write With a Broken Heart"


"Na verdade
Um homem só se encontra no que perde,
Porque ele abrange o espaço e a eternidade."
- TEIXEIRA DE PASCOAES

There is no instruction

No sling to hold it
No cloth to bear tears
No drink to quick-dissolve the ache

Only this, for sure: that we will sit with our pens
And think of things like,
“What strange little markings on these pages we’ve made.
And what do they mean, after all?
Fragments of ourselves -
Pieces of our hearts -
etched into tombstones of dead, bleached wood;
Epitaphs of bygone feelings, cut into manageable strips.
Distributed.
Given away to others, to take of as they will.

And this, we think,
this is what we ultimately wanted.
To have part of ourselves forever given to others,
And, to an extent, forever taken from us.”

The essence of true love
is sacrifice.

Like Adam, forced out of Eden, knew:
‘From now on, we must strive for our happiness.
It will not be given freely - never again.’

To dress our shrapnelled wounds and
Stumble through the crowds outside the Garden
We call forth lithic words of wisdom;
Capture the voices of friends within our ears;
Stitch the gifts of suffering upon our hearts;


And sit.


Just sit.

For hours, in the land of Nod.


Praying to understand the lot we cast.

Listening to the birds crying out, speaking in tongues
Through the stillness of the bleak morning air.
They sow not, reap not, nor gather in barns,
yet are fed.

The world still exists,
and will carry the birds and broken hearts along with it
Through each and every revolution.

But again, there is no instruction
This earth will turn
And you shall walk upon it, exiled
A wanderer
Without shoulder to lean on
Nor hand to clasp
Silently uttering horrible truths to your soul
You hoped you never would,
To which it shall respond, harmlessly enough,
“This pain, dear friend, is the price to be paid.”

It is then that one learns,
If we faint not at this,
That our pens still have ink to sacrifice
If our hearts can bear our hands to write
And carve new words into the dead, bleached wood
Of the generous tree, ‘neath whose shade we would slumber
In times we would die to see once more,
With a rough, mended smile, proclaiming therein, in vain:

“Set me once more upon your mantle, love;
I should be glad to be broken by your hands again.”


For Joe

- Joshua Clarke

Day 15 - "Paintings"

'Allo, all.

Today, being the last day I will see my fiancee until one or two days before the wedding in July, is a somber one for me. What I have to look forward to for the next two weeks is basically a sort of solitary confinement to my job and my bank account as well as a walk to the gallows in a sense - it is the beginning of the last few weeks I will be living in this state near my family; probably for the rest of my life. It's a lot to prepare for, and I don't feel in the least bit prepared.

I sit here in the dim kitchen this morning, wondering what it will be like to think back on this time of my life - thinking back on this place that has meant so much to me in the past - a place that I will never be able to visit again. Sometimes... it almost seems better not to think of it. Life is change. Life is growth. Life is a cycle, and the wheel must turn. Nothing will remain forever.

That is, except pictures - pictures either in our minds or on our shelves. Already I've posted another poem, "If to see such again," about that same idea. However, there is another one I have written that is similar, but with a much different tone and interpretation. Much more like a cross-section of the thought - a studied examination and hypothesis. It's about the grip of the moment - the peculiarity of making something immutable in a mutable world. It goes back to a conversation I had a while ago with a family member about an old painting in our home, and I believe it presents something very interesting about art within its lines. It is also a concrete poem - something I don't take up very often, but as a poem written about an image I thought it an appropriate choice in this circumstance; it also presents some interesting enjambment that adds to the impact of the piece in my opinion which is something I had intended from the beginning, even before I decided to make it a concrete work (Eat your heart out, Heaney and Carson). However, the spacing of the concrete-ness of the poem doesn't show up in this page's formatting, unfortunately, so you won't have to worry about it until you buy my book when it's finally published, right? :) So here it is, the fifteenth poem - the halfway mark - of our thirty days of poetry marathon. We've made it this far; may as well shove on, eh? Enjoy.


"Paintings"


Paintings
Are so much better than stories,
...you know?

Everything left to the
Dark
of your imagination.

you never know
what’s happened just before
or what’s going to happen
you don’t know
anything of anyone in it
or what they’ve gone through
to be there.

In that pose.

The world in the frame is a
Mystery
To us.

We’ll never hear their thoughts
as they stare at us and at each other.
We’ll never see their welling tears fall
to the floor from their faces.

And they’ll always be there in that moment,
...you know?

Constantly living
in that glimpse of beauty
that either
Compels them
or
Kills them
...forever.

Captured in their light.

It’s a
Lovely medium,
...don’t you think?


- Joshua Clarke

Day 14 - "Memory of a Lucid dream"

Guten Morgen, mein friends. And what a morning it is.

I feel more tired today than if I'd been out drinking all night and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it's the weather - muggy and supremely foggy outside as the sun continues its late-spring work of slicing through it to proclaim its daily majesty. It's triumphant return. But enough garnishment... I'm too tired for excessive verbiage at the moment.

In any sense, given this over-grogginess I'm feeling I've decided to post a poem from another time in my life when I was stuck tight in the grip of sleepiness and had a strange and interesting experience that eventually became poem-worthy. I remember it occurring at one of my old workplaces - one of those things that happens out of nowhere, in the dim, mindless hours of the early morning. Something that occurs in the twilight of consciousness that cannot be explained, as we fully wake ourselves later, wondering again and again if that was actually real or merely a dream. Whatever the case, I let it be and eventually ended up chronicling it in this work and expanding upon the feelings and thoughts it produced in me. I hope you all enjoy it for what it's worth, for now I must bid you all a fond adieu until tomorrow... alas, I'm going back to bed for a while to visit those charming kingdoms once more. :)


Memory of a Lucid dream


I opened my heavy eyes from
Sleep, or so I believed.
And what therein I
Perceived
Was some bright incandescent, and a face
Mild, yet pleasant
That turned and stole a brief moment’s
Pure, desirous essence
That I have since
Longed for to keep.

Will we remember this
One dream of a life
When our eyes are
Glazed over
With eternity’s light?

One cannot tell, but
If it be so
May we sleepers forego the
Infernal beams of lunar glow;

For the fancies we seek
are but the heathenish lore
Of Morpheus, Phantasos, and Phobetor
Who tend those charming kingdoms
For evermore.


- Joshua Clarke

Day 13 - "Fables Ex Vivo"

A good Sunday morning to you all!

Today's a bit of a busy day for me, and in keeping with my schedule I decided to post a poem that's probably something more desirable in terms of today's social climate. Something fast - something easily digestible. Something you can take one or two glances at and still receive a nugget of golden understanding. I suppose they're fairly haiku-like in nature, really, but their format is of my own invention, I assure you (unless this is some sort of poetic style I am currently unaware of). The poem in itself is six little observations I've made over time and condensed into bits that, together, form a whole. The Latin term "ex vivo" literally translates as "out of the living" or 'that which takes place out of an organism'. This is what I sought to document and raise to a level of observation far above the ordinary - ideas attached to mere moments; things to be considered in a far more aesthetic sense. All in all, I suppose that's just poetry in general. So be it. I've created poetry. Ha, think of that!

Here it is. I hope you all enjoy and have a wonderful, restful Sunday.


"Fables Ex Vivo"


1
The child gazed at a brochure in the soaking rain
And wondered
How did they make the sky so blue?


2
When it turned straight ahead to watch them
The statue’s glare
Met the salt pillars’ and wouldn’t speak their names


3
Mumbled prophecies dropped from the hand
Into the paper cup
And the suit felt death was a great idea


4
There was no reason for the markings on the stone
But in time
Their silence would evolve and breed lonely horrors


5
Younglings stroll uncertainly about the streets and
Attempt to embrace
The worth of bottles and the rattle-songs of scavenging


6
Muscled steaming animas gutted the groaning age
Shuddering through fevers
They had contracted from the coughs of golden calves


- Joshua Clarke