Photography

I’m still working hard at attempting to understand the differences between photography and poetry. After years on the subject, the one, and one of the few things, I’m convinced of is that there aren’t as many as you think. One is supposedly a visual art, the other a literary art; at least that’s what most people would say. But they would be wrong! You see a poem and you read a photograph.

My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. I was taking photographs before I began writing poems, and not just to make money. I wandered through days and weeks with a camera to my eye through four years of the army, sometimes pretending that some of the photo I took were actually art. Back then I consciously thought of myself as a poet who didn’t write poems but instead photographed them. Eventually, I became a copywriter, and then a poet. Photography took up less and less time in my life*. There was a tipping point, after that I thought of myself as a photographer who didn’t take photographs, instead wrote out his photographs. Though my nostalgia for all things photographic infected my poetic life in an unexpected way. I wrote The Myth of Photography*, a book-length poem that re-examined – and at times, re-imagined – the history of photography; and let the result mingle with memoir.

Photography is a primitive form of time machine. Poetry is always in the present tense, though it is often written in the past tense. The emotional experience of reading a poem is immediate. Just because they are called still photographs doesn’t mean they can’t move.

People should pose for poems in the same way they pose for photographs. As of yet I haven’t hired a beautiful woman to sit naked in a large red chair in front of me so I could write a poem but I have every intention of doing so. A hand gun laying beside a folded newspaper, half-eaten apple and five bullets scattered about, morning light pouring in through the window – this will be the first in a series of still life poems I plan to write.

Imagine the entire world, each and every tree, person, building and cloud in one photograph. Now begin taking things out. Take out billions of things. Keep removing until you’re left with a woman standing under a streetlight at night. She’s smoking a cigarette. Her arms are folded just under her chest. Behind her is a 24 hour Laundromat. That’s a how a photography works, edit out everything except your subject. Outside of the view finder the rest of the world might exist but outside the photograph there’s nothing. Elliot Erwitt said “photography is simply about seeing.” See something interesting and press the shutter release button. Poetry works the same way. Imagine each and every word in the dictionary forming the uncountable amount of images and thoughts that make up the world** . Now start to remove things, remove words, and then remove more words. What you don’t say in poem is as vital as what you do, well, almost.

I find it comforting to discuss a poem as if I were discussing a photograph and vice versa.

*Today I again think of myself as a real photographer, shoot with a Canon 5D and print with an Epson 2880.
**Sections of the poem have been published in the Southern Review, Washington Square, Main Street Rag, Lake Effect and Agni (online).
*** The world available to poetry is much larger than that available to photography in that poets can write about the past in a way that photographers cannot photograph it.

Moon

While the sun makes no sound, at night I hear the moon scrape against my window. There was a time, long before we were here, that Moon was much closer to earth. Everything was better because of that. Since then, Moon has moved to a position some 250,000 miles away. Though don’t underestimate its importance. We need each other, Moon and earth; Moon and I. Anything written in Moonlight is off to a richer start than what might be written under other circumstances. It is a ridiculous oversight on behalf of Whoever that the sun is vital to life on earth in a way that the Moon never was. Strangely, as I wrote that line I was overwhelmed with an uncomfortable sensation. I am a poet of Moon10 and feel that I have just betrayed a lover.

Let me start over.

Man has been attracted to Moon in a way we never have to the sun. Yes, the sun is farther but that’s not the only reason there is little discussion about visiting. The sun possesses little poetry. Moon is rich, its topography a poetic table of contents. Earth has the Pacific Ocean, Moon has the Ocean of Storms11. Earth has the South China Sea. Moon has the Sea That Has Become Known. What I might write on a bamboo raft adrift in the Sea of Crisis! The Sea of the Edge is a place no man has returned from! Though men have returned from the Sea of Tranquility. Sea of Clouds. The Foaming Sea. Federico Garcia Lorca was a poet of the Moon*. The night he was murdered I’m convinced he fell into a puddle of Moonlight. I’ll probably never wade though the Marsh of Epidemics but I will write as if I have. Make Moon a planet, that’s what I say! One night in North Carolina I threw a rock at Moon. I apologize. I was drunk. And I was young. I’ve seen Moon in a bright morning sky. You’ve never seen the sun in a dark night sky. Ian Randall Wilson** has complained about my use of Moon. In fairness to his concerns Moon as metaphor, simile, pawn of figuration or whatnot does border on sentimentality. This is a border I have hopefully not crossed.

* The Moon of the Difficult Work

The moon like a puddle of milk.
If you toss a cup of moon into the air
what will it come down as?
The moon like a pale breast.
The moon like a hole in the black sky.
The moon like paper discarded by a hole punch.
Like the back of my eye, the moon, held between dark fingers.
The moon like a stranger.
The moon like a friend.
The moon like something forgotten.
The moon, a welt in the sky.
The moon is swollen.
The moon sinks
The moon sings.
The moon is the sky’s graveyard.
If there were no moon, would the sky need a new name?
Would that name be moon?
The moon of seven days ago.
The moon in another man’s poem.
The moon where I hang my hat.
The moon, what I reach for after I spit
in my hands and begin the difficult work.

** Ocean of Storms

A shark’s tooth in a previous life,
I shivered in the mouth’s broad horizon.
Felt electric fear as I sliced flesh.
Warmth blossomed.
I could taste the depths.
If I could I’d dig a hole
in the water for a dry grave.

In the next life I want to be
a tooth in a shark’s mouth
hunting an ocean on the moon.
Wreckage like praise.
Sublime fable.
The difference between
immortality and grief is delicate.

Cars

We parked on the side of Mulholland Drive, above the San Fernando Valley. Two in the morning. Only a couple of minutes into our commotion, the point you’re committed to the conclusion but clothes remain wrapped around legs and arms, not yet completely shed; a tapping on the window, a California Highway Patrolman and a flashlight. This is not about lust. Cars are the topic. So far, I’ve owned nine in my life. At one time or another, slept in three of them; also had sex in three. To me, a car is utilitarian, never saw them as status symbols. Most other people do. Currently, I drive a hybrid, my commute is fifty miles each day.

I’ve never written a poem about a car, though in one poem* a car co-stars. My favorite line that I’ve written that involves a car, “The bank robber fell asleep at the wheel of his getaway car.” The rest of the poem** has nothing to do with cars.

The first car was invented in Germany, 1886, by Karl Friedrich Benz. A four cycle internal combustion gasoline-powered engine drove a small chassis with three wheels. Top speed, 8 miles per hour. It’s much more difficult to establish the first car poem. And the first poem?

Was it Harold or Patrick who told me that a car is a monastery? Was it the front or rear tire that I urinated on in reply? Context is everything. There is a misunderstanding. Poetry in motion has nothing to do with poetry; nothing to do with cars, either. Many of the world’s most accomplished car designers are trained at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, by coincidence, the college I graduated. Large, glass-walled rooms, boys in wrinkled shirts sculpting quarter-scale cars from damp clay. Isn’t everything made this way, sculpted? Yes. If a car begins as damp clay, how does a poem begin?

Driving to work just as the sun was making its way over the Santa Monica Mountains, two lanes over, a silver Jaguar was sliding down the freeway just a tad faster than I was. Relative speed made it seem like it was doing ten miles per hour. A swatch of reflected sunlight licked the Jaguar from the front of the hood to the top of the windshield. The windows were tinted, the silhouette of a man with sunglasses was the only the thing visible inside. The dark brown hill lining the freeway was a blur. I’ve never seen a more beautiful car.

A car is not a poem, but a poem could be a car. I’ve driven poems, perhaps more accurate to say, poems have driven me. I’ve tried to write in a car but it never works for me. As soon as I start to scribble poetry in a car a tiredness overwhelms me. My eyelids seem to grow thicker. The other day I arrived to a meeting early, decided to kill twenty minutes sitting in my car. Happened to False Prophets by Stan Rice with me, read two poems, began to write. Within minutes I was asleep.

According to a 2006 story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a man was found dead sitting behind the wheel of a 1994 Honda Civic on Laurel Drive in Rocky River, Ohio. There was an open notebook in his lap. The police officer on the scene told a reporter it appeared that “the guy was writing a poem, imagine that, dropping dead in a car on a snowy Monday night.” I could imagine that.

* The Invious

An automobile washed up on shore.
Was found laying on the passenger side,
could only imagine the side mirror was crushed;
could only imagine the difficulty
someone would have had climbing out,
if they hadn’t exited prior to the moment
the surf tumbled it into position.
It was found at low tide.
Drying salt water
gave the blue sheet metal
a patchy white sheen.
Seaweed clung to the bumpers
and was caught
under a windshield wiper blade.
The headlights, and this is the strange part,
though faded, still glowed.
A gift from Neptune
or the result of an accident
-- we’ll never know.
There were no witnesses when it arrived.

We tried to imagine
what else might have washed up
but returned to the ocean before dawn.
This was the same beach
where last month a woman walked
out of the water after being missing for seven years.
Her torn white dress clung to her thighs.
She carried her blouse and two broken shoes
that she put on at the road just beyond the sand.
She waved off the two men who rushed to her.
There’s so much we don’t know about the ocean.

** The Short Season of Sleep

A zookeeper carried a bucket of raw meat
into the lion’s cage, then yawned, sat down
and began to doze. The lion was snoring,
its tail sweeping the ground in a dream.

The bank robber fell asleep at the wheel of his getaway car.
The money in the paper bag next to him closed its eyes.
Not even the dentist could resist, eventually resting
his head against the face of a slumbering patient, the small
drill left to twist harmlessly in the cavern of the mouth.

The sleepiness was contagious, drifting from one heavy eyelid to another.
The last thing anyone remembered were the voices of people
singing lullabies as they strolled arm-in-arm through the town.
Not wanting to wake his passengers, the deaf bus driver waved
and didn’t sound his horn as he drove past the choristers.

No one knows what music the bats made that night
as they rose from their cave into the quiet sky
and chased a somnambulist walking along the river.

This was how the short season of sleep came and we discovered
the only difference between sleep and death was the waking up.
The next day this was discussed by everyone except the schoolteacher,
who remained at the desk in front of the classroom, her head tucked
into the fold of an arm, her blond hair moving with the breeze.

The Seaport Diner, Port Jefferson Station

(First appeared in Mudfish, a literary journal, though I don’t remember which issue; and is also in The Soup of Something Missing.)

The Seaport Diner, Port Jefferson Station

My mother and a cousin decide to go to The Seaport Diner,
my father’s favorite, for a cup of coffee on New Year’s Eve.
Though he’s been dead for six years, they take him along.
The black marble box that holds his ashes is placed
in a shopping bag, then on their table next to a window.
On another night the waitress might have asked about the box.
But tonight the diner is crowded, she doesn’t notice
that two women asked for three cups of coffee.
There are many ways to suck the marrow out of time’s bones.
This is my mother’s. No one’s seen the inside of the box.
Though at times I’ve thought all of heaven was within.
By refusing to bury it my mother is unwittingly hiding
my father from the devil. At a small table in the center of the box,
my father sits. Ashes piled to his knees, he remembers
flames and fears he’s in hell. If he walked forever
he would discover the wall and on the other side of the wall
my mother’s hand holding the spoon she stirred coffee with.

The Original Purpose of the Box

The Original Purpose of the Box

In The Museum of Antiquities,
a guard in a gray uniform stands against the wall.
Once, he heard a woman say “I don’t believe.”
Once, he saw a child grow frightened.
Once, the guard told a man with an old camera
on his shoulder that photographs weren’t allowed.
Invention is a series of tragedies.
The original purpose of the box
was to contain the emptiness.
Though scholars once thought
it was invented as a place to hide

a length of silk, dagger
or a crucifix from a borrowed god.
In the middle of the room
is where the first box sits.
Tragedy is a series of inventions.
Each wall, the nuance of a different disgrace.
The floor, camel tongues stitched together.
The ceiling changed with the weather.
At night the guard takes the box home.
As he rides the bus it sits on his lap
as if it held his lunch or a gift.

Ghosts

“My father's ghost watches TV in the living room.” This was the first time a ghost appeared in one of my poems, was with this opening line of The Jesus in the Garden.*

Ghosts have been a literary device for thousands of years.** Poets have successfully called upon them time and time again. Shakespeare more successfully leaned on ghosts in his plays than in his poems. The urge to compile an anthology of ghost poems is overwhelming but I’ll leave that to you.

The word ghost, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, didn’t really work its way into the language until about 1590. Back then it meant something else. To ghost was to breathe one’s last, expire, die. Today’s use of the word came later.

Staying on topic, some important facts about ghosts. These are things you must consider to successfully write about them. A man must be dead fifteen years before he is eligible to be a ghost, eighteen are required for a woman. No explanation as to the difference.*** The biology of the dead have yet to be studied with the necessary rigor. Ghosts cannot talk. Ghosts simply watch. If you want someone to return as a ghost bury them with an umbrella. This increases the chances by thirty-two percent. Researchers working independently of each in three different countries came to this same conclusion. “Haunting” is a construct of the living and something never practiced by a ghost. That noise you heard the other night was mostly likely a burglar or a cat knocking something over.

Identity thief is rampant among ghosts. Nothing to do with monetary gain. Somewhere in the transition from living to dead to ghost a giant confusion takes place. The ghost of a thirty-seven year old taxi driver from Buffalo, New York, who was murdered could take on the history and consciousness of a twenty-two year old Japanese from Tokyo who died of cancer. Imagine the dismay of a young Japanese man when the ghost of the taxi driver recounts their moments of intimacy. It would be impossible to convince the taxi driver he isn’t the Japanese girl. Ghosts don’t do this on purpose. I was attempting humor when I called this identity thief. Things like this happen all the time. Consider the imagistic nature of poetry and this could be a problem in a narrative poem that insists on an authentic confessional point of view.

A noise in the hall woke me. This was many years ago. I lived alone in an apartment in North Hollywood, California. The sound resembled that of a stick hitting a wall, was coming from the hallway leading to the bedroom. Just as I lifted my head from the pillow Rocky ran in. My father’s Great Dane. Rocky was large, even for a Great Dane. When his tail hit the wall it always sound like someone was banging on the wall with a stick. Rocky died of a heart attack years earlier, around the time my father was first diagnosed with cancer. I was so happy to see him I began to cry. He squirmed in my arms and climbed on the bed as I hugged him. His wildly wagging tail swept things from the table beside the bed. A minute later he turned, ran down the hall and disappeared.

The next night. I don’t remember what woke me, but I lay in the dark with my eyes close. Someone sat beside me on the bed. I could feel that persons weight push the side of the bed lower. I didn’t move. I didn’t look. I didn’t have to. Intuitively I knew. My father. My father’s ghost was sitting on the side of the bed looking at me.

When my father died of cancer six years earlier I lived in a different apartment, but in the same building. Four years after he died I moved into a two bedroom. The night before this he sent Rocky to find me.

The part of this that confuses me is that this was about six years after his death. Since than I have come to learn a man must be dead fifteen years before he could become a ghost. There is still so much we don’t know about ghosts.

Now, tell me a ghost story.


*The Jesus in the Garden
My father's ghost watches TV in the living room.
My mother's in the bathroom, busy cutting her throat.
Supper will be late. In the garden, my brother practices
the violin next to a statue of Jesus. Concrete robe, arms
outstretched for stain. I imagine Jesus standing
for the sculptor. Arms heavy without wood
to lift them. Boredom closes my eyes. There's a crucifix
above my bedroom door. At night, the tiny Jesus
struggles nails from his hands and falls. He reads the bible
and complains. By morning he's back on the cross.
There's hammering in the basement. My grandfather
builds oak tables for his daughters, makes them round
as a heavy moon, too large to fit through the door;
then smoothes the wood with his palms,
rubs blood into its pores. My brother plays
a few notes of hysteria, the garden's favorite music.

** The International Poetry Registry and Administration, Geneva, Switzerland, indicates that the first poem with a ghost in it was written in 1343 B.C. Only two fragments of the poem remain, “return to where / and prayer” followed by what seems to be nine lines later “the ghost of that daughter/ loved, yes and”

***Domesticated animals, dogs and cats, have been proven to become ghosts, and there is no waiting period for them. There are documented cases of wild animals becoming ghosts.

Then What

First published in the New Orleans Review, Loyola University, Vol. 33, Number 2, 2008, pg. 172

Then What
for M.

Four years after burying the cat she decided to dig its remians.
The gardening spade used to plant flowers along the porch,
she would dig with that. Surely the skeleton would tell her
something, but if it didn’t, then what? When she pushed
the spade into the ground the moon was low
over her shoulder, like her father. Below the roots
of grass the earth was soft. She dug with her hands.
Isn’t it enough to be curious? That would be the answer if questioned,
though she didn’t plan to share this with many.
And behind her on the clothesline, a blouse and the white underwear
she meant to retrieve earlier but was distracted by a phone call.
She remembered the grave deeper, but in minutes
touched something brittle and curved. The underwear billowed
in a breeze that grew into a gust and glowed over her and the grave.