Day 7 - Zuihitsu

I got home too late for this one. I thought about cheating and changing the time zone but whatever.

So this form I'm going to attempt over the next few days is a zuihitsu. Now it's not really broken into days but I have not the time nor attention this week to sit down for the hours needed to accomplish this.

This is the definition a la wikipedia.

Zuihitsu (随筆^?) is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. The name is derived from two Kanji meaning "to follow" and "brush", and thus works of the genre should be considered not as traditionally planned literary pieces but rather as casual or random jottings down of thought by their authors.

So it's an excuse to be a little random I suppose, but it's also a very exciting form that I learned from my teacher and friend Kimiko Hahn. The Narrow Road to the Interior is a breathtaking book.

No World But This – Zuihitsu Day 1

Dear Parallel You,
have we ever agreed again
when you split from me, or maybe I from you
did we leave like lovers cold
was there a moment when in your mirror
we perhaps, were both at a breakfast table
and a spoon held at the same time
felt like a tuning fork, felt strung to something
and if you looked over toward
a somewhere, a felt direction
because I was

~*~

I’m wearing a pair of jeans Valerie washed for me and in the left pocket is a mess of washed paper
that I’m trying to decipher, that seems to me like a memory I need. But the metaphor seems so easy, I chuck it all. Start over every day.

~*~
my boss told me he doesn’t feel himself
because he has no hat on today
and his hair is wild as a fire
he said his dog ate it
ripped all around the Yankee N and Y
had the bill in his teeth when he woke up
it started right when he came in
the dog just kept barking
he suspects it was the smell of his sickness
he has a cold, wasn’t feeling himself
he keeps saying that
as if you is a feeling
you can lose like sight

~*~
Sometimes I wake up sure I’ve drowned.
When I do, Valerie is there
to talk me into the air again.

Day 6 - Other Worlds

Many Worlds. Many Worlds. I'm obsessed with physics. I tell Valerie that I'm a freelance scientist. She tells me there's no such thing.

I'm going to write another blog post today about projects. My mind is in so many camps right now. I'm going to take a night off tomorrow night and just play some mindless videogames or watch a movie.

Fiction

I keep a book of fiction hid,
illustrated in almosts and coulds.
Sometimes I will open, read a lost story.
Here is my mother, still in Virginia,
never returned, her hair as long as her will.
She makes none of us. She lives a different happy.
This is my brother with his twin alive.
His twin has a name. It is not Craig
and now there is no Craig. We never know him.
Here is my Aunt Connie. She never teaches me the C word.
Here is the rabbit I lawnmowed. Whole.
Here we are rich. Here we never lived.
Here we are just altered a few different choices.
Here I am without a star to steer by.
Here I am never born and nothing changes that much.
My grandma is a socialite in one world, her husband stoic and handsome.
There’s our trees back with no tornado.
There’s our house carved through.
Here is Craig teaching me something.
Here is Craig without an easy smile.
There is a story of my grandpa keeping his bike shop,
he never finds religion, his rides get longer and longer.
One day he is found twisted around his bike.
He never married anyone to miss him.
There goes my uncle, a lawyer in this dream.
In this version, my sister has no mirrors.
In this one, my wife marries another man.
We are too happy with each other at parties.
I am jealous and she never knows.
In another, she has everything and I am not part.
In three of these, I suffer from ideas of eyes within eyes.
In sixteen realities, my mother has no doctors.
In seventy two, Allen and Craig never become my brothers
and I never read those.
In fact, there are four thousand eight hundred and ten stories
which I never open and never will.
And there is one tale, a bit like this,
which I keep a bookmark in. I never read ahead.
I never want to know the ending.

Day 5 - A World A World

This is my own experiment I started when I worked as a cashier at a Whole Foods. I would write small poems in my notepad. I would stand there and just jot down little poem experiments by starting a series all the same way.

This small series is "If I lacked...". It's fun. It's a gas. I recommend series. It helps you explore subjects you're still working on. Or it gives you license to use the lines you cut but love. Here's this. Also, I'm going to post our last Army Husbands today.


No Obligations

If I lacked obligation,
all funerals could be any funeral.
I would eat meals just me.
I’d have all time,
a numberless watch.
I could hold my own hands at movies.
I’d float along never saying
You look pretty or You are correct
because I wouldn’t have to,
because the social construct of compliments
would have no bearing.
No eyes would need contact,
all empty seats, all items in stores
are mine and never not mine.
Forget voting, forget presents,
I would keep no holidays
I wouldn’t believe in labor, in soldiers,
everyday I would celebrate my independence.
I would plow through birthdays,
no reason to celebrate me or the former womb.
Any call would merit equal import.
And all nights would be the same
nothing as all nothings in my life.
I would say life and not know it.
I would ponder words and stop speaking.
I would sift through thoughts and discover
no reason to keep at it.
Living would be sound,
zeroes, holes within holes.

Day 3 - Sleepy Time Tea

This project always drives me crazy. And if Valerie's too close to me while it's going on it's liable to drive her crazy. I have such limited hours in the day. I try to write something everyday but many times it turns into a race against sleep.

I find that many of these become sleep poems. I can't help it. So I'm reading Tony Hoaglund's Donkey Gospel, Theodore Roethke's On Poetry and Craft, and John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs. All of these are definitely influencing this.

Also, Galway Kinnell. He's in here. There's something Sharon Olds said about him not being afraid to show us all the rawness of the body. The disgustingness, the fluids we don't speak of. I can't go that far. Or maybe I can and I can't post it here.

Here's this. Also, I've been reading and pondering the Many Worlds theory. Quantum Suicide. Things like that. So that's in there, too.


Before I Wake

When I feel asleep at the wheel,
as you know there are theoried many worlds,
and between mile 94 and 93 two came to exist.
See when I sleep I drop left
onto my arm, into a dead man’s position.
This is a baby learned thing maybe
probably to guard a long gone pacifier.
It’s creased in my bones,
I fall into it like a tent collapsed.
How different would I be as a back sleeper?
I’d be readier,
I could sit up in the night,
not untangle like a spider.
My arms could spring from rest
free, prepped for any bedding woman.
I would study political science.
I would eat balanced meals.
Instead of all blood pooling
in my stomach and penis
causing all dreams to be of hungry sex
or at least interpretable of that,
blood would distribute through my back
giving me daytime posture and purpose
steered by my sleep strong neck.

But I don’t spend nights that way,
I sleep selfish, arms for me,
a pillow too thin to be shareable
nightly and this night especially
I am smashed into darkness.
In one world at least
I never wake up from my baby sleep.

In my world, somewhere between
Coldwater and Hell, Michigan
I sleep a whole mile.
Waking curled into the window,
I see the steering wheel,
steady, making corrections
for me, for some reason
I can’t even guess at now.