Inspiration

Inspiration is for amateurs*. You make a decision to be a poet, writer, artist, what-not, and then you do the work.

I was in the checkout line at the supermarket**. The checkout girl told me she wrote a short story. I offered encouragement and suggested she write more. “No, no,” she was adamant, “I’m not like you and never feel inspired.” Inspiration has nothing to do with it.

Perhaps I’m the odd man out. Perhaps I’m the only poet who isn’t inspired. I love reading poems and scribbling them in notebooks. Love thinking long and hard about poetic possibilities. Love testing the limits of language. And I would love for an inspiring moment to move my pen. But it doesn’t. Do great basketball players only launch themselves at the net, spring above others to dunk a basket because they’re inspired? Poetry is work. Work you – hopefully – love. So you do it.

I have to back-peddle just a little.

When I first became a copywriter I read many books about writing, the best of them was The Writer’s Art by James J. Kilpatrick. Somewhere in the book he said that the best writers were poets; no one pays more attention to writing then a poet. To me, back then, poetry was rhyming thoughts about love and flowers. Nothing an ex-paratrooper sort of man would be interested in. Kilpatrick suggested that if you want to be a great writer you should take a poetry class, even if you never wrote a poem after the class, your prose would be better for it.

Then someone died. Someone always dies. A poet died and they read some of his poems on the radio. They didn’t rhyme. They said he was a poet! Something was wrong.

I was wrong. Instead of what I was expecting, the poems struck me as beautifully written***, powerful short stories. I immediately flashed back to the Kilpatrick book, the best writers were poets. Right then and there# I decided I would take, suffer, a poetry class to make me a better advertising writer##. The following day I drove to Westwood and enrolled in a poetry class at UCLA Extension.

Austin Strauss was the instructor. Every Thursday night we met in the basement of a church on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The first night Strauss read us The Death of Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell and Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane by Etheridge Knight. The world stopped. I swear it did.

I had found something to devote my life to. Or it might be more accurate to say something to devote my life to found me. Of course, it sounds corny. But it’s true.

Perhaps it’s fair to say that inspiration found me that night.

There are forces at work in the world that cannot be explained. Science and religion argue about some of them. Poetry tends to steer clear of this argument.

Though my original point was that I don’t believe in inspiration I suspect the previous does suggest that on that night in a church basement in Beverly Hills I was inspired.

An artist must live an inspired life.

Opening yours eyes in the morning, that’s inspiring.

Live fully engaged with the world. "A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. " Wallace Stevens said that.

*Not that I’m suggesting that there really is anything like a “professional” poet. Most poets make living as teachers. Yes, I know Billy Collins probably make a lot of money from his books. And while I’m on the subject, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, W.S. Merwin and a few others do so. Though all of them, with the exception of Merwin where college professors.** I lived just down the street for a dozen years, had been in there probably three times before and knew many of the employees. If I remember correctly, I went to dinner with this woman previous to this conversation.

*** Though back then I would probably have not used the word “beautiful” to describe writing.

# I remember exactly where I was when I made the decision, I was in my car driving north on Laurel Canyon Blvd in Studio City, California, on my way home from work. I was listening to NPR as I always did, and still do.

## By the way, I am a better, in fact, great ad writer for it.

Death Obscura, a new book.

I'm thrilled to announce that Sarabande Books is publishing, Death Obscura, my second full-length collection of poems in the fall of 2010.

In the Apartment Above the Butcher Shop

(First appeared Fine Madness, Issue 26, 2001, pg 34. And is also in The Soup of Something Missing.)

In the Apartment Above the Butcher Shop

My mother washed dishes in the bathtub

then bathed me and my brother,

set us on the sofa to watch television.

Black and white washed over us.

At the end of each show Mother sat with us

pointing out good people always win in the end.

By the time I was eight I could hear the difference

between a cleaver chopping a flank of beef, leg of lamb

or the thin ear of a pig. You have to be

a butcher’s son to know why this is important.

My father worked for the butcher,

hanging pigs in the window.

Steel hooks through their cut throats.

Mouths open as if they had one more thing to say.

The headless chickens in the cold

box were always gone by noon, an hour earlier

Father wrapped two chickens in wax paper and newspaper,

put them aside until Mother brought his coffee.

My mother shouted

don’t track blood through the kitchen,

when she heard us come up the stairs.

Outside, shadows quietly battled

for control of the streets

-- a sound often mistaken for wind

dragging newspaper along the sidewalk,

a sound we wouldn’t identify for years.

The Woman Not Wearing A Hat

(First appeared in American Poetry Review, Vol. 33/No. 1, Jan/Feb 2004 pg 31; and is also in The Soup of Something Missing.)

The Woman Not Wearing A Hat

For two dollars you could run

your hands through her hair.

That’s what the cardboard sign

between her hands said.

A hat at her feet collected the money.

Wind pushing against her hair forced it to sway.

I dropped my two dollars in and grabbed

the hair at the back of her neck.

I closed my eyes; she closed hers.

(I don’t recall whose eyes closed first.)

It was the middle of the afternoon.

Perspiration dampened her hair.

I could feel people looking at me.

For years I told people I only did it

so she didn’t feel like she was taking charity.

That’s not exactly true,

for years I wouldn’t tell anyone.

I ran my hand to the top of her head,

turned and left before she opened her eyes.

There’s no telling what a man is willing to pay for.

Religion

The first time anyone asked me the difference between poetry and religion I was eighteen years old and one of four guys carrying a steel frame bed up to the third floor of a building in North Carolina. At that point in my life I had not yet written a poem, read poetry outside of a high school class nor thought much about the implications of a life devoted to writing. The top of my left hand was bruised, having been caught between one of the legs of the bed and a door jam. We set the bed down on a landing between two flights of stairs to take a rest. “Hey,” one of the guys called out “what’s the difference between poetry and religion?” At first I didn’t realize the question was directed at me. The next time I was asked this question was fifteen years later, the day of my father’s funeral. My eyes were closed for most of the day.

Unanswered questions are beautiful in a way answers could never be.

What would a bible be without language? Better yet, would a bible be without? Or, what would a bible be? And, what would?

Five scientists were burnt at the stake for giving unorthodox answers. Three were burnt for questions, they burnt brighter.

Religion is alchemy, of sorts, a blend of fear and hope. Don’t confuse anything I’m saying with faith. But talking about faith brings us back to poetry. Poetry is alchemy, of sorts, a blend of the pedestrian with the magical. No, that’s not accurate. Poetry coats the pedestrian in the magical by juxtaposition and figuration. I like the sound of that word, figuration. Metaphor is important, but it’s not one of my favorite words, so I’ll dismiss it as being too sophomoric for the conversation right now.

The bible was the first instructional manual. Think of yourself as an apostle. Isn’t that what you want to do, spread the word? No matter what our poems appear to be about, the subject of poetry is always poetry. This concept is easier to understand if we talk about painting. When you stand in front of a painting, let’s say Van Gogh’s watercolor painting of The Quarries of Montmartre, Paris 1887; you’re not admiring the loosely rendered ditch cut into the ground. You’re admiring the technique and the vision. The subject of each Van Gogh painting is the same, Van Gogh’s vision of the world. It really doesn’t matter what he paints, what matters is how he paints it. What you choose to write a poem about is not nearly as important as the way you choose to write. You can make poetry out of any subject. There is no language that can not be made into poetry. Poetry is a filter. Poetry is a point of view. Think of yourself as an apostle.

I was walking along Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles on a hot summer Tuesday afternoon*. An old woman stopped me. I’m positive she was in her eighties. A wide-brimmed hat keep the sun from her fragile face. A touch too much makeup. Though her gown was sleeveless she wore white gloves that stretched to the elbows. Her cane was as much accessory as necessity. “Excuse me, sir, do you know what time it is?” I looked at my watch, “one fifty.” “Three o’clock, thank you,” she replied and began to stroll away. She misunderstood. “Ma’am, no, it’s one fifty.” She walked right up to me and though she attempted to hide her annoyance it showed. “I heard you perfectly, three o’clock, thank you,” and walked away with a briskly indignant step. There is poetry everywhere. Think of yourself as an apostle.

*June 17th, 1995, it was 103 degrees.

Macrocephalus

(From The Soup of Something Missing.)

Macrocephalus

After my dog was killed by a car

my parents gave me a baby sperm whale.

In a small wooden boat,

father on one oar, mother on the other,

we rowed past the swells.

The only sound was the oars’ monotonous

work followed by the sigh

of the ocean pushed behind.

When it passed beneath

mother shouted “there, there”

and pointed at the large dark shape.

Father took photos with an old Instamatic.

On the way back to shore,

the only thing spoken

was by mother who asked

if I named it and I had.

Hell's Hell

(First appeared in Doubletake Magazine, Issue 8, Spring 1997, pg. 56; and is also in The Soup of Something Missing.)

Hell's Hell

A waitress clears away the midday plates.
The skinny cook sweats and scrapes grease off the grill,
stopping only for a drink of cold water.
The bottom corner of the restaurant’s window is broken.
The owner’s been meaning to replace the cardboard patch
with new glass since it broke last year.
The three remaining customers ask for more beer.
They’re talking about robbing the beauty supply store, or the bank

next to it, or the bridal salon, pharmacy or bakery.
Together they have enough money
to buy a gun and some bullets.
This isn’t the first afternoon they made such plans.
Back in December they had the same
conversation as they wiped their bowls
of potato soup with chunks of bread.
But today, again, nothing happens.

Wind pushes against the cardboard patch.
It swings as if on a hinge.
A passing woman leans against the window,
curves a hand at the side of her face to block the sun
and looks inside. She sees the waitress, three customers,
but not the cook who went out back to relieve himself.
The waitress briefly stares at the woman's black silhouette.
Only a moment in hell's hell could be like this.