Literary Exercise #16--A Lesson in Homelessness

Below is a poem I wrote for my poetry final. It's called the "Cardboard Stories of Bungalow Bill" and it follows the transitional arc of a homeless writer named Bill. He used to write in writer's circles, but became dissilusioned. Part of the inspiration for this poem is the Beatles's song, "The Continuing Stories of Bungalow Bill." I'm including a brief abstract below, as it will help in understanding the poem. There are also three Eliot references and one Yeats allusion. See if you can catch them.

==Richard A. Cooke III had gone on a tiger hunt in India when he was staying with John Lennon at a retreat. Cooke, who Lennon refers to as 'Bungalow Bill' in the song, was with a group of people watching a herd of elephants milling about. Suddenly, a tiger jumped out to attack the elephants, and 'Bill' shot it. Initially he was proud, but after he returned to the lodgings, Lennon questioned the ethicality of his act. Afterwards, 'Bill' felt remorse and gave up hunting altogether==

The Cardboard Stories of Bungalow Bill:

Bill is a story-maker, he crafts stories,
on the edifice of homeless life, his cardboard box.
He shrugs and he coughs; fidgetates his fingers –
like the neurons racing in the shade of his forehead’s shelter –
And he writes – on the underbelly.

To coax a black-tipped marker he found at rest,
he says:
“Forget the cold, unclot your arteries –
as I do mine. Last night you had no hand,
and I no bed, but today we have each other.”

And to appease himself he later mutters:

“I ain’t afraid to put name to my work,
and there’s no more a totem to be found.”

And to distract himself he tells a story:

“Marker, you had a store, I had a home.
I was young. I had a job. I had a wife.
I wrote the headlines for my state recorder.
I felt the vagrant pull of a writer’s life.
I was Prufrock pinned! Oh God!
Little marker! At a damn cocktail party!”

He paused, cradled his friend, and spoke again:

“I’m afraid I lack the skill to tell my story,
I can point to the light, but I can’t name you the star,
that shines it down, one night I heard the Beatles.
Do you like music? Forgive me for my candor,
but I’ve always been fond of music for its fervor,
in separating the grays from the black and the white.
It was the White Album – Side One – Sixth Track –
Lennon was crooning about a bungalow chap
that shared my name and shared my same disaster –
can you imagine? I was at a lack
for words, but Lennon kept his verses coming.
This ‘Bill’ shot past an elephant herd at a lonely tiger,
claiming he had an eye for the hunt and the knack,
but later gave up his guns and never went back.”

“And I, dear marker, was shocked I was a partner,
in shooting past my life at paper tigers.
And when Lennon asked poor Bill if he had sinned,
He asked of me what he had asked of him,
‘to take to the streets and be a brown-bag writer,’
where critics devoured less-than-edible authors,
picking their teeth with the bones of renegade hacks,
crumbling their remains to sprinkle as ash.”

“But marker, there’s more to be feared than Eliot’s dust.
Bad art,” he said, and vanished into the dusk.

So Bill has become a prophet without honor,
A rough beast that haunts the hovels of Bethlehem,
But if he’s slouching towards the Second Coming,
He said, “They should be glad of another death,
‘Cause materials change, but art it never did.”

Bill wouldn’t think twice of ripping it to pieces,
His box, his artifice, his lonely life,
‘Cause he says “What’s yours is yours and you freely own it.
And I’d rather give it away before they try.”

Literary Exercise #14--A Rebirth Constituted In the Lower Parts of Man

"With every passing second comes a second chance..."

When I'm Jekyl-n-Hydeing these streets, its hard to imagine the damage powerful fingers will imprint upon your neck. I leave my mark on you, and your death is the hangover I just can't seem to shake...it's the antidote that only makes sense in hindsight, it's the passions buried until society or something better stirs them to the surface. It's not enough that I have to travel these ghoul-infested subways, and walk down streets with more than a second thought to whirl around and face my deepest and darkest fears--I have to live with your lifelessness, your utter refusal to buy into my deadly game...and at what costs you'll keep me from winning.

Oh Jehovah! Save me! Make me turn and take my murderous thoughts away...cause this is the path that only despair travels, and salvation is in the opposite direction.

The second measure, and the rhythm begins to pick its beat and hammer it in my ears. I can't think rationally, and I can't think right--the night sounds are too dense for concentration, I start to writhe my fingers back and forth in my pockets--hysterically, wondering about the humanity and the dark-sided laughter that sees this as a pleasant sport. If only I could pull out my ears--stop my senses from their receptivity to such evil stimuli.

Oh, would it be that this is only an aberration of a pleasant bygone world that will return with the sun...instead of illuminating the carnage wreaked and havoced on the poor souls of the night.

Please, please let it be past. Let the present fold in against itself and cancel out my actions. Let the future come and rapture me from this horrid state--let it claim me with four poles and interlocking bars and protect me from myself.

Now, see, now see this wild and wretched life--moment by moment of insanity and then a prayer for something less strenuous on my nervous system.

Oh Jehovah! Come near! Come near in a book written with holy words or a presence undefiled by static spikes of abnormalities. Pyschopathic demons await those who follow the way away from your heart, and I fear that my own is beating to a different theme and mandate.

Oh Jehovah! Abba Father! If one who was crucified screamed your name in utter anguish, let me be another that echoes his cry and ask that my cup be taken from me. True, true, you did not from him, but I am weaker, my spirit darker, my hopes dimmer on my own. My flesh is tingling, crawling from the very idea of consequential retribution. I am not my own lamb, nor do I pretend to be un-spotted and un-smeared. I am hideous, I am disfigured, I recoil first from myself before others do the same--let me not be the sacrifice, let me not be the lesson learned by others as disparaged as myself--let me be redeemed.

See, see now, that in the morning I'll forget about the whole of this. See that I will straighten my collar and press the last wrinkle out of my pants, and while I work with the requirements of the day, press the last worry from my mind. See, see now that I won't even call to you to bring such a horror back, or even think such things exist or that I'm in peril of them. See how I will turn myself from you again--from the guilt, from the unnecessary inconvenience of your pragmatically-impractical demands. See how I will go with what works, what's tried, what's true, at least with enough truth to sliver myself through my obligations and skirt around the painful festering in my heart. See how I won't believe...anymore. See how I'll turn my back, only to look back as a face in the crowd...a face with evil and anger and malice and hate and dark things creeping along the taut lines and dark shadows under my eyes. See how I'll be utterly and totally lost. See how I'll have taken that path, the boar-run of despair, without even putting up a fight. And hear my prayers:

Oh. Jehovah. I want to. I wish to.

Change.

Literary Exercise #12--The Need for Constancy

I don't know why I'm writing this. In a journalistic headline, it's late and I should be asleep. I feel akin to the madness that many others have felt--Shelley in her first telling of Frankenstein and Poe is in his morbid dreams and tales. The irrationality, the experience that tells me better--I must ignore them. I have to or it will never happen. See, I have things to do, but I also have things to write. I don't want this to become a bemoanment of my inner tensions, but really, they get in the way. I know that I draw life from this, but every time I pick up a pencil, the sketch comes back to haunt me--not in show-and-tell and refrigerator magnets, nor pieces that merit a bronze or golden frame, but in horrific distortion, clown faces that become bandersnatches and forests that turn dark and brooding. But what am I to do? The reality is, I miss it, and not even hallucinations or scratches from gnarled branches can hold me back. This is, as I said, what I live for. So I can die for it as well.



Where to start? Oh, how it is to feel free, to frequent the fields of elysium and wander down its many jaunts and paths. I long for it so much I'm tempted to fall on my own sword. I cherish it so much I'm willing to stay that emotion. To be free! Pragmatically, real life and I are mutually exclusive. We've never been on talking terms and it's unlikely to start now. I am Dracula who has left his coffin and returns to the office only on weekdays. I am the prodigal son who has to learn his lesson, for better of worse. I am Lewis and Clark, and I must have my America. And I am you. When you stub your toe, and sooth your blisters with loam and crisp leaves. When you give your presentation to the janitors, and finally find a caring audience. When you run a spare on the interstate and enjoy the slowing scene. When you burn your job, tie, and hair-cut in your mid-life crisis and finally have room to breathe. I am like one hanging on the cross, bleeding your frustrations so they can be expressed in flowing crimson warmth. I fear that you never will, so I will it upon myself. What is it like to save humanity at the expense of your own soul? Can salvation come from those who have spent your life, all because you wished their's to be lives worth spending? I do not know. Semper Fi, as they say, is not to question. It is a resolute resignation. And if I have to determine myself by closing my eyes, cradle my racking sobs till they rest like a sleeping giant, and summon my throat to hold down the bile, please do not mark me with disdain. For I am your newborn child, precariously perched, and if the winds don't have their way with me, I'm afraid that you will.

Literary Exercise #10--A Writer's Life: Isolation

Okay, so I just got done talking to a friend on the phone, and an idea struck me. Most writers are lonely people. Take the comic strip writers, they publish their amusements weekly if not daily, but no one wants to invite them to their parties. They are notoriously bitter, whether from life experience or rejections from the A-list, who knows. I suppose they could be one in the same. But take other writers, take their mantra: to write about society you have to be disengaged with it. I don't know if I agree with that statement. Maybe it's because although I'm a writer at a heart, I'm also a human. I have always thought it important to live life...as stupid or abtruse as that sounds. So maybe that makes me a half-breed, a bastard of the art. I can't quite seem to keep myself pure...I always have to dirty my fingers in every interesting little nook and cranny.

Although there is something to be said for observation...I've always felt that the best writers are the introverts...those that notice obscure things most people pass by. It's definitely that way for me. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the poetry (in the broad sense) of a writer came to life in daily activities. They'd probably be regarded as one of the most beautiful people alive. It's so weird that some people can write so majestically and yet they have the hardest time carrying on a conversation. I mean, it makes sense. Writing is a conversation, but it's a staged one. As a writer, you have the capital to buy any prop you want, make any set you can imagine, and stage you characters wherever your fancy strikes. And you can draft their conversations...and redraft them until their perfect. It's more of a conversation with yourself. In fact, I think the best way to describe writing is the way that the world would be if nothing had gone amiss. I suppose, it's the paradise of that particular person. Some might call it their heaven, their nirvana. And I think, the more people write, the more they write well, the closer we'll all get to that place. If only it was real.

And I think it is.

Literary Exercise # 9--Poetic Diction

I've been on an essay kick for quite a long time now (about a year and a half), but one thing I haven't written for a while is poetry. I find it hard, uncomfortable, like a pair of new shoes, and I haven't figured out how to break them in without blisters. For some reason, my essays just flow. But as soon as the fowl changes, as soon as the seasons shift, as soon as I place myself in my predetermined box, I lose it. What do I really want with poetry? I want to look around the lines, over them and next to them and spiraling between two lines in three-dimensional movements. I want to feel free just like I do with my essays...but really appreciate the unique art that it alone proffers. Thus, poetic diction? Besides being a title copy/righted by Owen Barfield, I think it will also have to be the approach I take. Some of the lines in my essays are already poetic, and if I could keep that free attitude while taking on a more compressed form, that would be awesome (IMO). Although, I think I'll have to revise it. A lot. This is one area that I have neglected. If you saw me muscled by my literary strength, it would be quite comical--strongs arms and legs but a beer belly whose intake could not be confused for any other beverage.

The Trade-Off at Greeley Square:

I fold papers in four directions
directly pointing out the dimensions of this park
and you rise with a start
as if the homeless chairs hold stories to bring out your competition;
where the bark is less than clean and
cheap green laminate peels away to reveal afternoon jaunts
where joints and not jobs (but nut jobs) are the keynote address

You're freckled face tells me one of two things
one, that you are tired, two, that you are leaning down
the spirit of inspiration, so that he speaks, only,
when the mininum of words has the maximum effect.
the rest is intuition.

It's dangerous to fit your thoughts
Between slots of iron-shod bars
When felons take up residence
nightly, with keys that scrape the thin, veneer off luxury cars
and break the skin of lesser-willed pedestrians,
Just outside the public borders of Greeley Square, the fare far from anything you and I would like, but the closest thing to a fair trade

But, maybe, if, and, or when you decide
to care and continue in care
we can laugh this off as one of those buyer-impaired decisions (let the buyer beware)
and chalk it up to careless incisions, the surgeon on hand, trembling ('cause a good scare is all it takes for malpractice, and if your lot was Job and not Abraham, it'd be more than you could bear)
as our smoke remissions and fissions the foggy air
ash settles bare, a cold night passes, age on the rusting square

Literary Exercise #8--A Sunny Day.

I've decided that I don't have to a paragraph intro to every blurb I write. So I'm just gonna jump right in. Yeah. ;)



A sunny day. A summer day. I wonder if it's possible to translate warm breezes and clear sunlight onto blue-lined paper and bic-made pens. Maybe if I leave my notebook out in the sun for a while, let it soak up the rays. Maybe if I take my pen with me, out to the streets, to the beach, to the city, to the clattered multi-lingual communes. There's something about the perfect day that makes you feel better about yourself. I never thought of the weather as an apparatus to absolve my lesser qualities, but when I stepped outside, all my worries turned chaff-like and were whisked away.



And you know everybody's out. Back in Minnesota, on the chop and turf of the lake waves. Out in California, in the mite-free air streaming down onto crags and gulleys and brown and blue creeks. In Texas, but you know that there, in is out, and they don't emerge until the latter-day evenings and nights like shadows. In Maine, though I think the sunlight is their first experience with a liberal sense of joy, neither to the left nor the right. In London, although their perfect experience could easily be exchanged for heavy fog and drizzling rain. In fairy tales, where the princess delights as the first light peers through her blinds and paints patterns on her floor. In Australia, Jamacia, where Fosters and Red Stripe meet together for "Hooray Beer" festivals and the kangaroo long jump. In Paris, where the outdoor cafes are filled to their capacity and they're forced to bring some chairs inside. In blenders, as the strawberries, ice, and tequila lend their juices to the perfect concoction and serve their long line of thirsty patrons. On the internet forums, where laptops are brought outside and bloggers have to squint to see their carefully crafted lines. In the church, where stain-glass windows leave their crystalline bodies and join the twirling, dazzling dance across pews and dark wooden support beams. You see, no one wants to play the guardian on a day like this. Hug a musician, they never get to dance, but watch them throw their pianos and guitars down prematurely and free-verse it on the dance floor. The real encore happens when they lift their tangled mass of strings and splintered carvings to the sun and ask for one more song. In the heavens, where angels frolic with the agility of elves, leaping in softly rounded arcs and stopping mid-air without the awkward recoil home to thirteen-year-old boys armed with safe fire arms and their first hunting experience since the wild west. In a writer of sorts, where sorting through turns of phrases is akin the sun choosing which rays to send down. And the turning of the page breaths softly on the bare skin of the reader until his bones are warmed and soothed. In wedding parties, where the groomsmen arrange the patio furniture with smirking smiles and glistening necks. Like in chess, it's a matter of where you set the pieces, and if you want to take the queen, make sure your table is close to the bridesmaids and the open bar. In concerts, in eminem and dr. dre, filtering through the grid shield of metalic microphones and sounding through the elevated speakers. In everybody's perfect dream, where they don't want to close their eyes because they don't want to miss a thing, and sleeping is waking, until the sun sees that everyone is singing their favorite bar songs and retreats to his own reserved party. In the cosmos, where stars burn bright like young bucks, seeing who can get closest to supernova-ing the moon without turning into a black hole. In the eyes of everything deep and profound, seeing all that is good and and the mystery in the bad, and seeing that all is good. No one walks out without having a party to attend--and no one seeks to amend it--not until the night comes, not until the morning light, and not until the sun ends its sunny days and summertime plans. It's not the day who makes the sun, but the sun who makes the day.

Literary Exercise #6--Description

If you ever read Dickens, you'll notice straight off that description is a huge part of his writing style. He delights in bringing to light the most minute detail of existence. Description can be both exposition and imagery--and those two can intermarry and divorce at any point. The interesting thing is, while audiences have lost their taste for longer, descriptive sentences, they have become infatuated with imagery--images in film, media, modern art, and advertising. I can't speak authoritatively about the whole system, but I think that literary imagery was lost (along with poetry). Unfortunately. I don't know how we should reclaim it. I have suspicions that it will have to reflect the images--The Science of Sleep, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dizzying camera movements, rapid scene changes, a sense of beautiful disorientation. We'll see. But until then (or during then), I offer my sixth exercise. May you fall in love with the nouns, verbs, adjectives of imagery--again or for the first time.

Sitting outside on my porch--my writer's porch, my thinking porch, my peaceful porch, it's easy to get reminiscent. I use the same tactic every time...a cigarette, a glass of water, and an inspiron 700m. Water can be subverted by beer, my laptop by a lined notebook, and cigarettes by self-control, but the approach, and result, are always the same. I don't come out here because I want to--because I need to. It's when you don't breathe to survive but to take in the cold, pure draughts atop a 6,000 foot mountain. It's when finding water in a desert becomes second to riding a camel across sun-baked sand deep into the Arabian night. It's when religion stops being a homework assignment and becomes a mystical journey. It's when your parents stop raising you and start living alongside your life.

It's because it's in me. I can't get away from it. My fingers are conduits, my nerves switches, my heart electricity that pumps neurons out to the page. I can't stop. It's part of me. It's living instead of existing. It's talking instead of responding. It's feeling, idealing, revealing, and healing. And it's reeling--for anyone able to cast out the line. I wish you could see it, and pick it up--rub the fine material with your dominant hand, and wrap it around your finger a couple of times. It's in this lighted cigarette, when the heat is white and the lighter an orange bic. It pulls back like a dragon and releases like a cloud. It comes with all the anemities you could ask for--that crackling, popping sound like a boyscout's box-fire, that comfortable position between your fingers a smoothly worn couch, and that glowing embers that points to more than just long cancer--imagination. Give me a riddled body with dying organs and an unstable hand--but give me a heart, and give me a mind. And let me explore the disconnect between the two until they're algamated into my soul. And give me ideas that flow like rivers, or strong, choppy waves in a harbor. A lighthouse to peer into the unknown. A cave to follow down to its roots. A life to lay in suns and moons--a love to bring it close to others. Give me all these things, and watch me try--watch me try to deny my nature for anything else. It cannot be done. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be lost for long...it can only be my long-lost love.

Literary Exercise # 3: A London Morning

One of the better skills of a writer is being concise. It's damn hard to do, and not even fun. Writers seem to be stricken with the illness to write beautifully, but readers are wary of the contagion of boredom, and will often not read your work to avoid the risk. How do you engage the audience without resorting to hypnosis? How do you keep their attention when, as a culture, we have moved back to an oral tradition? Well, by being damn good. By being good. Being good. Cut, cut, cutting, and snip, snip, snipping your words to the essentials. How? Rewrite. William Zinsser, in his book On Writing Well, said that the key to writing is rewriting. I'm liable to agree with him. And if I'm ever contaminated with that debilitating disease, I will be liable. I hope to never be the cause of that infection.

I named this exercise "A London Morning" to avoid copyright issues over "London Fog" but to get at the same idea. In it, I will be writing a paragraph(s) without paining myself to be concise, and then go back with my scissors and trim all the excess verbiage. Sounds good? Hedge trimmers are for more than just haircuts:

The weird thing about listening to an AC unit at 2:30 in the AM is that pretty soon it doesn't seem like you're listening to it anymore...it's more like it was always there...and people and noises blend in and out. It's like speaking with a fan-voice...that warbly, vibrato voice that sounds like it was sampled by regina spektor. It reminds me of when I was growing up in Minnesota. We lived on the river, and the trains ran on the other side. Every time their horn would blare I would swear that they were a part of me. The trains are you. A part of your experience, a part of your identity. Maybe that's why I like backgroud noise...low murmurs, street traffic, refrigerator hums...they all can be identified with...or maybe they identify with you.

Literary Exercise # 2

This exercise is geared towards providing as many alternatives as possible to a simple phrase. An example my professor gave me was, "She broke my heart." "She crushed my aorta like a can of Dr. Pepper." "She pole-axed my left ventricle." and so on. This exercise is helpful for stretching the writer, making him think outside of his literary toolbox, while at the same time, staying true to the subject matter. So here goes:



"He looked out the window into the garden."



"The window was his camera and the garden was his snapshot."



"He looked through a portal to the origin of evil."



"He looked through a trick mirror to the other side."



"He looked over the edge of the ledge into a row of hedges."



"In hindsight, he wished he would have gone for the bigger room."

Pen-ups

Well, the real purpose of this blog is to turn this writer of sorts into a great writer...which means there will be plenty of literary excercises. The sad things is, writers accrue as much flab as the ordinary person, and not just in the winter. It happens anytime they think amazing thoughts and decide not to write them down. As the would-be gym bum starts out at a slow languid pace, most of these exercises will be rough drafts. And just as the weight room jock slims down to the muscular frame hiding underneath, I will come back later on and edit them. Let's just say I'm in good need of some pen-ups. Fifteen. Maybe forty. Maybe I should just try for one.

Not the First Time

Everyone that starts a blog has a certain ceremony they use to christen their website. To get it started right. To get a blank piece of paper and press the led point down for the first time. To burn all those other crumpled heaps that were supposed to be the first time. To do things right.

Well, this is not my first. This is not even the best of my first. This is a haphazard project somewhere along the way--a middle-aged life (as a metaphor) too late to start over and too early to give up. This is what organized people hate--not quite systematized, not quite random, but somewhere in between. And this is where most of life is lived--at least mine anyway. See, the ironic thing is that as we have chased after the ideals of perfection, we've shirked and distanced ourselves from every good thing that we have at the present. It's ironic because I don't think anyone gets it. In a good college on your way to a good job? It's not good enough because you're not there yet. Married with a lovely wife and children? Well, you're not making enough money...and someone else is always more lovely. Working at a ministry that is reaching out to the hurting? You could do it better, so you start your own. The problem with a perfect world, though, is that there is no one to share it with. No one will ever understand you completely. No one will ever be able to tap into your dreams and emotions quite like you can. The only way to get that is by yourself, and to be by yourself.

I've thought about this a lot because I want that perfection. I want everything to fall with the exact subtle grace I envision in my mind. I want the freedom to stretch my mind to the limits, to be exactly where I want to be. But I don't want to be alone. Maybe the ideal is still possible--money can buy a stone castle in Ireland, rolling hills and meadows, a quiet study, sophisticated people. But I've come to the realization that it'll never be quite right--whether you're okay with that depends on your religious persuasion. I am.

I use to think that it was the most vain and meaningless thing to do something that wouldn't get any recognition. To read a poem that only the air hears. To sing a song that will never be remembered. It was in the legacy that the art reveled--it was in the legacy that the art was celebrated. We want to be remembered. We want to be understood. We have a lot to understand and remember about both those things. Now about that bottle of champagne.