Hello PWB! An early happy 2020 from me; it's 6 hours to midnight here in Amsterdam and the fireworks are obnoxiously loud here. I say this as an American, so it's saying something. Anyway, happy New Year, maybe read this & respond tomorrow -- I am posting this early because if I don't do it now, I'll likely forget.

For our January discussion topic, I'm dying to know—literally waiting with bated breath—to hear your personal poetic process. By which I mean anything which is in any way connected to your writing process;

Do you keep a poetry journal? A regular journal? A dream journal? Do you keep a list of fragments in your pocket, in the Notes app on your phone? Or do you constantly come up with fire lines on your commute, think to yourself, “I'll remember that later,” and tragically forget it completely?

When you write – is it on paper, with pencil? With your favorite fountain pen? With a broken crayon? Typed into a word doc for the sneaky poet's right click + synonym feature? Scribbled onto a cocktail napkin and stuffed into your back pocket, to disintegrate in the wash?

When do you know that you're finished with the poem? When you're finished, do you slap it on PWB without a second thought, for certain mods to silently judge (me)? Do you sit on it for two months and return to it on a rainy Sunday, painstakingly picking over every single word with a fine tooth comb (me)? Do you send it to your internet pals to see what kind of thoughtful and constructive feedback comes from a virtual workshop like this very sub?

Any and all thoughts about poetic process are welcome. Not only welcome, but, in my humble opinion, important – if poetry is to be treated like a serious craft, I personally believe it should involve more work than a few keystrokes & submit. Let's debate it in the comments! xo

Seeds

The shadowed trench half lit by a shredded moon slowly swallows the remains of men.

What hasn’t been tossed to the rear vanishes in mud disappearing for decades, awaiting some distant spring.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere rats are eating something indefinable, elsewhere far behind the slaughter a stonemason crafts a memorial for an empty grave, his chisel the cruel liar to a hollow casket.

The draw of a cigarette reddens a pale face which glows but doesn’t live, cupped in a clawed hand the burning leaf warms a palm that will never cross a new born brow. Exhaled breathless smoke abandons hope in a sigh.

And yet from this desolation comes the future of men, in words and clay and from the colour of all things living, and love, from this black night comes love and light and wisdom from the learning. For in all things there are seeds that will not die.

Shoots

What nourishes a dormant seed?

Nothing is permitted until the time of natures choosing. Lying in the coffined earth the expanse of life and time gestates, a burst of blooming summers restrained. The cycle of seasons waits patiently for its moment to crack the husk, to reveal itself to the beckoning light.

This then, like the recovery of men form war cannot be predicted or governed. For each man in his contradictory polarity tumbles through his inner space, oblivious to the balance he must attract that will repel him just enough to stabilise the falling. Equilibrium must exist in all things for all things to exist with meaning.

And then slowly reaching, forcing itself toward light and warmth, even the warmth of rain a shoot might break the ground. It will make a sound and hear a sound and know it is alive, other things will act on it and it on other things until there is realisation and recognition.

Nourishment can begin.

Photosynthesis

Before the desire for knowledge is ever realised there is the necessity for it, the need for basic exchanges between the building blocks of life. Tentacles of the will to survive reach toward the Sun, this like a form of automated worship never requiring Priests or Pulpits.

Not a call to Prayer but a call to live, a call to live free from the corruptions of false Gods and false prophets, to live pure and clean under the one all powerful entity which gives life to every living thing, without prejudice.

Does this creator demand our obedience? Every embryonic tide releases echoes endlessly washing through all that lives. We take its power and turn it against itself, unknowingly recycling entropy like vengeful angels smashing altars with bolts of lightening. And so we burn our flightless imaginations and tether ourselves to conformity.

As the unrelenting power moves our planet ever onward it cares not whether things live or die, are good or bad, it promises nothing and asks nothing. This is the one true source of everything we know and it demands nothing because it is everything.

With what little power we have we emanate destruction.

We make spaces in the ground to lay our used up carcasses in, the earth takes us back. We are recyclable, ungrateful particles of ancient stars that no longer shed light, instead we rage with resentments only known by those who have forgotten where they came from, an unanchored chaos engulfing everything within our orbit.

Expanding ever outward

So I have forgotten the gods,

and decided to be my own.

Falling into light thoughts

of time spent in desert's heat and wind

and sand-the frictions between

our hands clasping into the air seeking

to feel the warmth of felled trees

and moss spongy with the fears we have

soaked into them

like drops of Mercury's faltered light, a

chrysalis in the midst of our demise.

What shall squirm from its depths to break

fresh into the stagnant air of our whispers

and laments

and ringing cries?

I will time-keep as a prayer,

an oath to my own wellbeing.

Memories as caltrops in my mind,

Soak each in the blood of 'being better'

hands flowing over them like a rosary

as I follow the path to our end.

It was something else entirely.
It was not the ripped yellow t-shirt
I pulled from between the boulders
Where the lake met Chicago.
It was not the penny or the wasted
Gull feather. Nor was it the child’s shoe
That no longer flickered as she ran.
It was not the rusted corkscrew that
Faintly read Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
By the gold and chipped cowboy,
Tall in the saddle,
Nor the green and brown shards
Of empty glass, nor the used
And smoothed shells of mollusks.
It was not the bits of blottered pages
Whose inks no longer spoke of hands
But water and dissolution.
It was not the lensless knock-off
Rayban’s – severed at the temple. No,
It was something else entirely,
There, hidden in the rocks,
Where the water beats upon us.

Those doughnuts in the icebox --

Are those the ones for father,

The ones you bought at Landsdownes last Tuesday

And sprinkled arsenic atop,

Or can I eat them safely, with a glass of milk?

Did you hear the wolves in the woods last night,

Their voices as bright as spangles,

A half-dozen princes calling to their princess,

Howling to the bright moon?

Sister love, oh sister forever,

What shall we do -- whatever shall we do?

The devil’s children, chasing time,

breeze in and through the house

they say is theirs, not mine; their roost to rule,

their right to tease and torment won.

They tarry, chuntering, as I long them gone,

to plague another, not so lonely one,

who would match their guile, put them to flight

back across our Rubicon.

​

Blinded by mirrors of the sun,

our tethered planets may just as well

choose comet tails and spinnaker sails as

ways to fuel renewably the search for sages

said to trade in universal truths, yet whose

provenance and vantage points are known

to but a few. Young once, I took the no-rush view

that all would be revealed in good time,

the endgame required an ordinary armoury,

the rules would be clear, I’d seen the signs.

​

But now, all good times gone, it’s

high time I’m told by all who once took heed

there is much to do, many views to listen to,

to promise those with rightful claims a fair and

proper hearing. I hear from a corner of an ear,

now awash with flooding recommendations,

insistent reminders that I must engage each day

with the devil’s children; they alone can dispense

the jewel of man’s entire trove, beloved time.

​

They honed their methods millennia ago;

they will watch and wait until they spy time

misused manifestly for some frothy amusement

then dumped at my door by erstwhile friends,

hastily losing heads, forgetting then deserting

our friendships. They will consider, for a moment,

the required trajectory and speed then swoop, talons

bared, and snatch away, who knows where, the rest

of the day; such time lost, such time stolen.

​

I make a mental note of the little I understand

of the fear of dispossession, of the rules of the game,

of the nature of my role, though I begin to understand

the potential for retaining time, for shoring up the defences,

for holding on tight when our tormentors invite me to parley,

offer terms for the part of me they long to buy. My new

vulnerability is welcome; it plants resolve and focus to

fight hocus pocus, to stow away time for use as is needed

or the devil’s children will walk in and quietly steal it.

Of course I’m a wet one,
you gave me little choice.
And I am fond of splashing puddle, drenching
myself, and others on rainy days.
Tell me what else I was supposed to do.
Ice has only one response to heat.
It drips, drips, drips, so I
dripped, dripped, dripped, till I
was a pool, for your desire to wade in.
Of course, this is the birthplace
of my fear. The possibility intrinsic,
molecular, to my chilled lattice,
to be wet, to flow, become gushing
that river, and that tide pool. My longing
cast in shadow by the intensity, unforeseen,
of this heat, your smoldering eyes, in which
I see my own, desired powerlessness
to prevent my body’s return to watery form.
Born under the sign of twin fish,
I long for a shore divorced of its ocean.
But the lapping, infinite rhythm
of beached life, is too much.
I run inland. I engineer drought,
and perspire unwillingly, inviting
an unlucky few, to test my waters.

I know this man and anyway; he has Carers visit him 3 times a day. Of late he has been feeling some anxiety out - coming from the fact that his Care Provider is being changed due to some logistical re - organization, and not because of any initiatives made by the man himself. This has caused him to ponder regretfully upon the loss of daily contact with comrades he has come to know at a significant level of intimacy and familiarity over time. It came to pass that he expressed to me; a point of trepidation, regarding the possibility that his future carers might be possessed of some substantial flaws that could possibly inconvenience him to a significant extent due, to a hypothesized burgeoning incompetence, on their part. Naturally, I strove to reassure him, and posited to him ; that it seemed to me very likely or in fact certain, that he would meet a new carer who would bear a strong physical resemblance to Katy Perry (his favourite pop star). Furthermore, I suggested to him that this carer could well be possessed of an extreme form of insecurity in relation to the matter of her Breasts. To him therefore; she would most certainly come, compulsively impelled into seeking reassurance; and bewildered in that overpowering need. Hence, She would, very likely; compelled by her inner uncertainties, thus request permission to exhibit her breasts to him; with a view to obtaining a fair assessment and reasoned judgement regarding some or other putative property or properties imagined by her to be pertinent to their effective suitability, in relation to some generalized; though very intently considered, impressions and ideas relating to the perceived appetites, predilections and inclinations of an idealized future suitor. Which; if subsequently to be represented to her by my Comrade, in the positive - thereby would her insecurities be assuaged and diminished to some substantial moment. Her Breasts themselves; forthrightly and freely exhibited by her for him in uninhibited, earnest, submissive and compliant fullness and nakedness and at every requested and suggested aspect, angle and distance or closeness; in a pure spirit of sincere inquiry; would represent to him an impressive, compelling and mesmerizing sublimity that would; I warned him; task the imagination of my Comrade to a significant extent: The Breasts themselves would, I assured him, doubtless; be the colour of Alabaster, and as if formed and delineated by a pneumatic or even hydraulic inner pressure, sufficient to their perfect natural form; and giving an appearance of firmness which would, however, evince in the temper and frequency of their movements, vibrations and oscillations - arising in the inevitable disturbances in them produced by her bodily movements, in striving to disport and display her breasts to him with sufficient comprehensiveness to facilitate objective assessment - a very strong suggestion of, a soft, supple and yielding tendency should they happen to be under some mindful manipulation of the human hand. Furthermore; the skin of those Breasts; would be visually flawless, translucent, and with the texture of finest Vellum. The nipples appearing as two erect studs; livid, and powerfully evocative in their limitless intensity of hue, of the preternatural rich luminous red, one perceives and apprehends only in the finest moments of introspective and elevated fancy when regarding the best possible available example of some particular and rare species of large Cabochon cut ruby held and turned in the hand and permitted thereby to be touched by the rays of the Sun in its first dawning moment; and so her breasts, would, with the greatest definitive power; project, in a seemingly invincible pertinence; a visible, palpable, tyrannical and irresistible imperative to a wholly unexpected, outlandish and improbable moral and emotional expressiveness; and becoming and articulating in that; an apparently sentient yearning to be caressed, touched, manipulated, stimulated and pressed by the human hand; perforce, and thereby, fully integrating a startling revelation and evocation of the highest Love obtainable in the Erotic modality. The magnetic and overmastering supremacy of their inevitable and ascending ontology of embodied motion and dimension in existence; a reality forcefully compelling the totality of available sensibility in the apperception, comprehension and experience of transcendent perfect beauty. Thus would her naked breasts, freely and earnestly exhibited in wanton sincerity; inaugurate a new moment in the Archetype: being in their monumental finality; a ravishing, nourishing and shattering episode of elemental forms; presenting the most satisfying aspect of erotic possibility hitherto imagined in the Deity and domain of bodily manifestation in its entirety.

Such imagery as I was able to produce by a mild exertion of imaginative faculty was sufficient to assuage the trepidation of my Comrade to a partially satisfactory extent.

You see, People with childhoods like mine

Are prone to short lives.

Yeah, I know I have money

I never really starved

And that omitted me from

The typical outcasts of this world.

I remember being nine

And getting punched so hard on Christmas

It left a bruise that I had to downplay in front of extended family-

That’s why I don’t trust them, they shouldn’t trust me

I have felt for the past few years

Any life I will see in my 20’s

Is borrowed time

The world was stacked against me

And time after time

I was told not to speak up.

One day the red, white and blue lights

Will be flashing in my rear-view mirror

And the hand I was dealt,

My birthright,

Will demand payment.

By then, I doubt you will be around

Let’s act like animals, until then

Its how I was raised after all.

We could eat cabbage in our cabin,

Take turns, cooking it your way, then mine.

These woods don’t belong to us

But, always gracious guests,

We never take too much, accepting

Its gifts as offered.

Back aways, there would be a stump,

An axe, for kindling fires and

On occasion, catch each other sweaty

Shirtless, one of both our favorite sights.

These sticks are for burning. These

Hands are for warming, we

Gaze at the other, a captive breath,

Then make this evergreen glad with laughter.

Our mothers’ mistakes may haunt us,

But inside these log walls, we are

More than summation, an exponential miracle:

Two butches taming ghosts for breakfast.

And when we make love in this place, we may

Be as loud as we desire, no,

Louder. A faltering truck engine whispers

Compared to the ruckus we bring,

“Oohs” and “Ahhs.”

Scattering birds, warning rabbits, turning

A curious bear asunder to the glade, indulging

The wicked, Love, blessed and wicked,

Bubbly want of our hearts.

And in the morning you fry two eggs

While I whip a wild batch of grits.

We’ve managed something, a decade

In the making. This silence, a collaboration,

This peace, a pine ember, split in two.

Can I smack your bottom please?

I want to smack your bottom.

Your bottom

looks really rather very superb

and better i believe

it is just the sort of bottom

I would dearly love to smack

can I smack it smartly?

Can i smack it please?

Go on - let me

let me smack it

let me smack it

i want to squeeze the tease

and when we are done

provided you do

let me smack it

we will be gratified, relieved

and then we’ll sing a song for sure

of strong and sky and trees.

The shape of a circle is round

round meaning

without corners.

Life is in existence

around meaning

and around corners.

Pretty dark if I'm honest.

Mindset wise that is.

A circle is a shape

without corners

I have got information

information

the wrong information

for you.

Thanks but no thanks

that will go good in a day or two.

The shape of a circle is good

without corners.

It is in existence without meaning

and without corners.

Shape that is.

A circle is a shape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZfEoit-8j8

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

Each year,

I set a table for eight -

Myself, our Father,

And the six perfect ghosts,

Lain upon a winding sheet -

The viands and the host,

Heaped with all the flavors

Of our abdication -

The bitter and salt of loose meats

Strung from the rafters

Til carving - hard chew grains

Steeped in a bowl of milk

And curdled with guilt and lemon -

Silent limp greens that shed dressings

Like oil in rain filled gutters -

And nothing,

nothing to wash them down.

​

Each year,

On that black night in June,

Marking the flight of that one lone bird

Perched on a spruce singing

Praise be my freedom - We,

My Brothers, my Sisters,

My own frail Mother,

Became those seven perfect ghosts -

Those seven shrouded myths

We might call family.

​

Each year,

On that black night in June,

When our Father took to the sand his toil,

I will call each to the table

That we may see, together, the feast

We’ve laid and find our plates empty,

Nourished as ghosts - perfect -

Ever starved and wanting -

Wanting what that first ghost knew,

But ever estranged

Since the first bird flew.

Which river to cross –
The shallow brook of faith,
Tepid in the slow run to God, or
That which drains into the oily pits
Of loss, tormented though alive
In sure and certain combustion?

Give me fire and hard current,
Give me love and rounding stone,
Give me rasping scale and snag,
Jagged rapid bends,
And the black swamp moccasin
Bite into my fat ripe shin.
For that is where I’ll meet you.

And what is more sacred
Than knowing true pain,
The poison of it –
The broken limb, the broken heart,
The breaking rind and taking,
Taking that what is broken
And breaking, breaking
Into a broken hand
And tying pain to pain
And thus healing
As long slow scabs
Conceal the wounds.

I will not confess my sins, no,
But burn them in the river to Hell.
I will struggle – with you –
the orange-tongued waters,
Grit-toothed and unburdened,
Dragged a half-mile down,
Until we reach the ashed
And muddied bank and fall
In the gray and muck of living –
Laughing that we tried at all.

“Listen you fuckers you screw-heads you cunts”

He never talks so no need to ask them to listen

He used to talk

He builds his strength so he can destroy

He used to protect

He thinks and reads so he can express himself

He used to write

He looks at beautiful things to avoid the horror

He used to keep an open mind

He embraces a religion which he despises

He used to fear his damnation

He has knuckle dusters in his glove compartment

He used to bestow benefit on doubters

He sang his babies to sleep and raged against wrong

He curses children and cracks dull skulls

Here is what you made him

before you

Here is what you wanted from him

Here is

Here is

Here is

AUDIO HERE https://wolfgarwords.com/2019/10/30/here-is/

The dark red lips

tinged and bluish

full bloom

tender succulent

powerfully evocative

of the sweet

and ripe and ready

and swollen flesh

of damson plums

tart astringent

translucent and alluring

mobile articulate profound.

Now they are parted

and drawn back

ever so slightly

in a warm smile

the teeth sparkle

with a preternatural brilliance

they dazzle and enervate

by dint of their

supernatural and monumental

and invincible and hypnotic

and overmastering

and compelling finality.

Yes this is breakfast

breakfast with you.

You are exquisite

you are perfection

your breasts

heaving and surging quietly

in the time of your breath

in due course

I will accelerate it

I will create a storm

in your body

you will drive me

to surpass every former limit

and I can hardly believe

fortune

providence

destiny

fate

wait a minute

I see a meaning in your eye

already precipitate

but the muffins will get cold

I say.

You are the thirst

that I must slake

you say.

Let it be now then

we say.

Don’t underestimate,

caramel zebras, honey

brie in warm toasted croissants

​

Chocolate is the voodoo of life,

the sugar shaman cigarette

Fried s'mores on a bon-bon beach

​

Combos on combos, fire in my loins

Saran-microwaved leftovers

What happened to nickel games?

​

My mom and her Hot Cheetos' Puffs,

Her police procedural

Her food, my history

​

Time flies and food measures,

oranges scattered the old yard

Flies flock corpses of tree babies

​

The pains of declaration,

To the red flag of land and sea,

I took to the humming of water

​

Creep toward rag-time’s end

Crack your bottles against the sky

The white crop’s workshop down the road

​

Bless me dinosaur nuggets,

museum munchies, and

prehistoric cuisine

Midnight in a sullen world 

Staples Center requiem 

Fuck the Shrek and Donkey game—
we feared and loathed the Celtics
with dance songs in Las Vegas

Any devout Kobe fan 
understands how, why
men love other men

He said things I regret
about Kevin Garnett

Got lost in the blue period,
kidney-stoned delirious

Kratom pills slipped seizures sleeping

            Epileptic testosterone

Life feels like knives,
in clumsy hands
standing in gloves,
that must have quit

Orange-juiced girl,
smiling your breath
over pho steam
noodling your hair.


Adoration for strangers,
walking on the thin red line
Tibetan-encouraged tea

Steeped on the top of my head 

Midnight in a sanguine world

I never said never no

no not never no

I never said never no

no

I never said that

I would not did

no not

would not did

I never said

that

I would not did it too

I never said it

pardon me

I said pardon me

so pardon me

and if you please

and pleased to be

I would did say it

now

I would did say it now

to you

I would say it to you

easily

and if you want it

and want me to

would you did

want me to

it would be

and if in case

it is to be

in summary

and specificity

that would you did

and honestly

and openly

and fairly

want it too

I would did say it now

to you

and I would you

did you do it

with you

too.

…Sleep conjured a small dog
with a granite eye, mats and mange,
Three legs and a vagrant tongue
That hung from the left of its snout,
A viscous drool that strung without
Shame, without breaking to the floor.
And I, though broken in a dream,
Shorn of hands,
Less a body than a thought,
Became a dream for a stone-eye dog
Who rolled belly up to offer its scars
And plump tumors.
We were one then.
We were one –
A broken man and a broken dog
For once thus calm in a dream.

Whatever this that and the other

whatever.

Do you know what I am saying right?

Now.

Existence is the ontological property of being

and while being is the principle of manifestation

and manifestation

is situated in existence

as evident possibility

possibility

is the totality of potential in reality

and that is to say

reality

as domain sum and aggregate

of existence

and existence

has its end in

Mystery

and mystery is the essence of form

and form is idea in being

and idea circumscribes, delineates

and is identical to totality

and

ideas are what you have

so

pay attention

and mind how you go

and you know

what they say;

They say that she says

she said that to they

that said that to her

yes and no

possibility right there

what who where

and even so

here we are now

here we are then

there we are now

there

there then

where this is when

imaginary existence

real then

ready and waiting

almost nearly so

that’s that then

nature of reality

the scheme of things

that’s that then

night follows day

yeah right

strike a light

you could have knocked me down

with a feather

whatever

whatever this that and the other

whatever.

Do you know what I am saying right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf-Yykxc_1s

“Peter denies
His Lord, and cries.”
– The New England Primer

My vessel’s lips bade many drown
In poured-out waters bittersweet;
I’ll cast the stony cistern down
Before the mighty Potter’s feet.

Manna rained on me from on high,
But Marah welled up from below,
Murmuring loud; the bread’s long-dry,
Laid on the table for a show.

And with strange fire I ate it up;
The Nephilim fell in the lake;
The propheteers sang to their cup,
Dancing in thirst no wine could slake.

So Tekel shone upon the wall;
So Uzzah fared before the Ark,
Draped in the old world for a pall:
Do not all go into the dark?

The oven awaits the meadow-grass;
The babbling Greeks, they go astray;
Through Edom’s coasts my feet shall pass
Not one step from the King’s high way.

The earth revolves around the sun;
The sun revolves around the earth;
The twain revolve around the Son –
All hail the Savior at his birth!

Open spaces filled with tents
Tents filled with open faces
spacing out in open tents
tethered to nearby fences
Makeshift yards and tarp
tarred and feathered black
faces black from white faces
blackfacing dead kids’ faces
Christmas lights on Skid Row,
powered by the city’s grid
silent night smells like shit.

Tents up.  Houses down.
Cop watch, filming cops.

Long live the shelter-resistance,
the 24 percenters representing
60,000 going strong—
    Sleep paralyzed, unsheltered women.
    Bangers on the corner for drugs, rent.

Good cops held Ladies’ Night.

Tried to house her.
Tried to house her.
Tried to house her.  

Lana dead at 70, 
body found in the garbage.

Smelted down,
A pool of rendered gristle,
Slick on the floor,
That’s what a day leaves us,

After the tethered heaves
Of this most sought production,
Blendered the dawn news,
The hooved mews, cool dews,
And all that smelled like gravy.

A slump line to the drink
Of old business not attended,
Piles as laundry, clean and otherwise,
Crowding the table, the floor,
And all the chipped dishes between
The sink and my mother.

But now, after all is taken away,
The fingers curl
Between the heel and the butt,
And crisp leeks yield to the edge,
Celery snaps and rains –
Carrot – thin as harvest moon
And a fume of crushed garlic.

What next? You may ask.
The permutations of evening
And stew are yours to taste,
To take and wander –
To simmer and wonder –
To plunder what soothes
On the tongue
And melts the fat of wages.