Runboard.com
Слава Україні!
Community logo


runboard.com       Sign up (learn about it) | Sign in (lost password?)

 
Terreson Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info



Reply | Quote
Genesis of a third poem, Savory


This story cracks me up. It has become a staple in my bag of stories.

I was living on a 50 acre estate, Olympic Peninsula, WA. Winter months got kind of hard, being alone too much. My only human neighbor was the old woman who owned the property, someone I came to avoid as much as possible. A little crazy and exceedingly cheap. So cheap and possessive I was not allowed to take fire wood from the deep forest surrounding the clearing. The wood was hers, she maintained. So cheap I had to buy all of the equipment needed to maintain the grounds, which was a part of the arrangement. Mower, bush hog, weed whacker, leaf blower, chain saws. She was too old she said to get a decent return from an investment in such tools. Oh. So possessive I could not leave the estate for more than 4 days at any time.

I went a little crazy myself. Call it my Lancelot moment when he becomes a hermit, the man of the woods, which is how my friends in town, Port Angeles, thought of me. Too much alone time plays with the brain, I discovered, makes you a little crazy. Impairs your judgement.

I turned to playing on line, mostly keeping to poetry places. Met more than a few women poets. Behaved a bit injudiciously. There was this one woman poet who lived maybe 3 hours away on Vashon Island. I'll call her O. She struck me as a brilliant, if untutored poet. Little did I know that hers was a capacity for word salads only. That she was no Rimbaud. That in fact she was a psychopath. That would become quite clear by her obsessing on me. She would contact me at night on line in the guise of another person. An African American woman lawyer who lived in PA and who would support me financially if I paid proper attention to O. A longshoreman in Baltimore. A flight attendant in Port Townsend. They all had one thing in common. They regularly wanted my opinion on O's poetry. The lawyer even met O. at a writers retreat in Squaw Valley.

It was one of those times when I should have staid with my instincts. A lover of beautiful women I've never been able to bring myself to get involved with an ugly woman. I remember thinking, well, man, that is pretty shallow of you. So I made an exception to my rule. What to say? O. had rotten front teeth and she was horribly overweight.

One weekend she drove the distance and visited me on the estate. During the weekend she said we should play a poetry game. I said okay. Her prompt was this:

'What interests me are the particulars of evil.'

I tried for the better part of a winter's week to write to the theme. Got a couple of strophes down even. But always the leaden feeling. No. It felt more like the drag of an anchor pulling on me. Finally, the question came: What does interest you, man? Two realizations immediately emerged. Evil has never interested me. Not in any form, expression, degree, or coloration. In brief, there is nothing about the human capacity for evil or cruelty, or the pleasure many people derive from hurting others or shackling or caging others I find intrinsically interesting. Reason is simple. Enjoyment in evil itself shackles. Yes, but what does interest me? Answer was immediate, it is desire, and poem immediately came, damn near wrote itself.

It is one of my favorite poems. Its philosophy I continue to adhere to. But a poem I rarely show since it has garnered too much interest.

What singularly interest me
are the particulars in
the possibilities of desire.

May I sway you with
word, rhythm, even the
laying on of hands, or
the sculpting finger touch to
part the ripened, red, swollen petals
in moon drop and warm pool?

The warm pool when lively and
as rounded as
the perfect pearl secretion
instinctively seeded.

But the subject is
a certain variety of desire.
And the delivery is tender.
Just when the under urge is its
own cause for wanting
the lurid life sated, kept
unabated, what thrives in
the bottom belly distended by
all we conspire to ignore.

Did I already say I am drawn to
the wet slip, the easy slip consorting
in your company?

And just imagine
what might happen if
this decadence of emotion
aroused you to a life of your own.
In the spider's spool,
in sunlight's thread,
in September's noon,
in your lifted head,
what refinement of thought
seated might give
stark ascension in your eyes.

Or you who demand in long, dry grass,
and pulling Pandora's student down,
"I will take my pleasure now."




There it is. One poet's underlying theme. I submit it is a limitless theme.

Tere

Last edited by Terreson, Apr/30/2012, 5:17 pm
Apr/30/2012, 5:03 pm Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 
vkp Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info



Reply | Quote
Re: Genesis of a third poem, Savory


quote:

it has garnered too much interest



As well it should.
Apr/30/2012, 5:34 pm Link to this post Send Email to vkp   Send PM to vkp Blog
 
Katlin Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info



Reply | Quote
Re: Genesis of a third poem, Savory


But a poem I rarely show since it has garnered too much interest.

Methinks, he doth protest too much. emoticon emoticon

May/1/2012, 7:29 am Link to this post Send Email to Katlin   Send PM to Katlin
 
Terreson Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info



Reply | Quote
Re: Genesis of a third poem, Savory


It's true, Kat, what you say. Hard to make fiction up when the living is so rich.

Tere
Nov/28/2013, 7:11 pm Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 


Add a reply





You are not logged in (login)