Weird

Never knew a time when I was not

weird

this is different
I am tonight surprised to find I care
in a way I didn’t think I did about it

weird

they wrote in my high school yearbook
they said weird, you are weird
(and many added, stay that way)

I don’t recall a time
this was said unpleasantly
however small, there was always care there

now I care in a way I never thought I would
that my niece in a childhood game
said You’re weird and got upset
when I said Thank you

I treated it as a compliment, and always had

she said But you’re weird! as if
to say a repetition of it would
impel me to remember
it was not to be treated as a compliment,
an identity, a friend

there was always something in me
that knew the value of my uniqueness

different

I care in a different way now
than I ever thought I would
because my weird makes me unique
there’s something different that’s the same
as unique and that’s

outsider

I have often thought myself a loner — this is how I’m free

different

to be free — yet I am an outsider
and each time someone has told me
as caringly as you told me tonight

You’re weird

there is something

different

I never saw before
I see now with my
high
di-
lated
eyes
that each time I’ve been told
even by friends who love me
as you do
it leaves a little hurt each time
because the meaning of

weird

is unique, individual, different, free

outsider

and sometimes in my freedom
I am so lonely, and want so bad

to belong

[17 Oct 1983]

About this poem

From my bad old days.

Days are better now (overall). But I’m still weird.

Related posts:

1. Alaska Love Poem
2. Literal (poem)
3. Vashti Speaks for Herself

Table 2, from the article "National Prison Population Growth: A BJS Report" in the Winter 1996 issue of the Alaska Justice Forum

Table 2

Between 1980 and 1994 the total number of people held in federal and state prisons and local jails almost tripled — increasing from 501,886 to 1,483,410.

— Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice

I am making a table.  My hammer
is the keyboard of the computer —
tap tap — my nails are the commas
and decimal points that keep these legs
of numbers standing true.
The grain is the roundness of zeros and eights,
leaning spines of nines and percentage signs,
sharp angles of fours and sevens.
I will call this table (slightly
modifying its original name) Table 2:
Number of Adults in Custody
of State or Federal Prisons or in
Local Jails; and though it’s only
a copy, when I’m done it will be
a clearer, cleaner version of
the Bureau of Justice Statistics table
from which I copied it to include
in the Alaska Justice Forum.

But it’s not the ideal table.

Though I’m of that kind, a maker of poems
whom Plato had Socrates exclude
from his rational, perfect Republic —
an imitator of imitations, my work
one step from the carpenter’s table or bed,
but two steps from the idea of table
in the ether around God’s head —
for my day job I’m also of that kind
essential to the Republic.  Sustained
by statisticians, I am a maker
of passionless tables that summarize
in numbers the reasoned philosophy
of this well-ordered State’s philosopher-kings.

But if this poem I make by night is a pale
faded imitation of the table I made by day,
the white spaces between my table’s columns
are paler copies yet of the concrete walls,
steel bars, control rooms, keys, and guns
of guards in towers.  And its numbers in their
hundred thousands, the total in its millions
(seven digits divided by commas)
imitate in mere paper and ink the bodies,
the sweat and sheen and stink of bodies,
the rage and fear and anguish of minds,
the sorrow and grief and violent hatreds
of prisoners one mere step away:

embodying the closest approximation
of the ideal that waxes ineffable
in the ether around God’s head.

[April 15, 1997]

About this poem

Before 1990, most of what I knew about the American justice system came from fiction — books, movies, TV.  Then I took a job as a publication specialist at the UAA Justice Center, which entailed amongst other thinks making lots of tables & charts on various aspect of the justice system.  That’s the lens through which I became aware of the extraordinary growth of correctional populations in the U.S., especially due to the so-called “war on drugs” that began during the Reagan administration.

Sometime in about 2001, the U.S. surpassed the Russian Federation to become the nation with the highest rate of incarceration in the world.  Here we are now (from an article  in our most recent issue of the Alaska Justice Forum):

Figure 3. Rate of Incareration in Selected Nations (most current data available as of February 2011). From "Prisoner Reentry and the Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act" by Deborah Periman, Alaska Justice Forum 27(4), Winter 2011.

Makes you feel all proud & patriotic, eh?

As for Plato’s Republic: Plato didn’t much like poets, because the poetic imagination weakened the power & authority of the Plato’s idealized philosopher-king. As James P. Carse writes in The Religious Case Against Belief,

Plato’s Republic is a completely rational and comprehensive system. It is threatened more by the poets than by its military enemies — in fact, it needs those enemies.

Explains a lot, that does.

For my part, most “philosopher-kings,” idealized or not, go off the rails almost from the moment they achieve power & authority. Give me a poet any day.

Related posts:

1. No Questions, Questions (poem)
2. True Diversity Dinner video, part 5: Diane Benson
3. God of Mosquitoes (poem)

Taylor Mali. Photo by Emil Brikha via Wikimedia Commons.

Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

But like, y’know, you gotta hear the whole poem, yeah? And watch the words, too, come to life in this typography animation of the poem by Ronnie Bruce:

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Mali writes on his website,

This video entitled “Typography” is an animated version of a poem of mine by student Ronnie Bruce. I have no idea who he is (and he didn’t ask for permission), but what would you do when the result is so good?

Here’s a live performance of the same poem by Taylor Mali.

About the poet

Taylor Mali is an American slam poet, humorist, teacher, and voiceover artist. And he’s one of the only people who actually makes a living at being a poet!

Tip o’ the nib to Barbara Armstrong, who showed this to me this morning.

Related posts:

1. “Emergency Haying” by Hayden Carruth
2. Bonnie Raitt: Thing Called Love
3. “Inversnaid” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Teakettle Mountain, Columbia Falls, Montana. The industrial area that the tracks lead to (at the mountain's foot) is Anaconda Aluminum Company (now Columbia Falls Aluminum Company), where I worked summers during my college years. I took this photo sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Vashti Speaks for Herself

But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command conveyed by the eunuchs. At this the king was enraged, and his anger burned within him. (Esther 1:12)

He said that?  you heard him?  The bastard!
I used to love him.  Some ways I still do . . .
but honey, don’t believe all you hear.
He can put it on Larry King Live,
he can write it up in the Bible
for every preacher to preach,
it’ll still be a goddamn lie. . . .

Did you know my name means beautiful?
He knew it, too, first time he saw me
parked on my bucket, graveyard tired
with the rest of D-shift, waiting for the whistle
to blow us off-clock for that wild headlong hurry
to the changehouse and showers and gate.
All I wanted was clean, and home, and bed.

He was a C-shift man, walking in,
and I felt his eyes, and I felt them the next
morning and morning till finally he spoke.
Didn’t matter then my jeans had holes
from hot cryolite spat like brimstone
from between the devil’s own teeth, or that
my hair was dull and gritty with ore
and my shirt stank of eight hours’ baked-in sweat
and my skin, rough and red from pitchburn,
stung at his whiskers’ kiss.
Grime and all, he saw I was beautiful,
and I saw in him the same.

But no sooner did he stick his ring
on my finger than he wanted to yank
me clean out of my steeltoes, drop me into a dress
at some jewelry counter at six bucks an hour.
He told me a man’s work wasn’t for me.
I guess he thought union wages weren’t, either.
I guess he thought he should be enough for me.

He was the type said his home was his castle.
His was a trailer, east side of town,
all trimmed up in antlered heads
that rode home down the North Fork road every fall
under tarps in his pick-up bed.
He never bought meat— his freezer
was full up with moose and venison steaks.
Stay home, I bring home all we need, he said.
He thought he could rule by the depth of his bellow.
My lungs got real tired proving him wrong.

When he came home that night after eight hours’ swing
and two or three more at the North Fork Saloon
and shook me awake at 3.00 AM
to play pretty hostess to his buncha friends —
goddamn, I was working day-shift that week!
did he think I could work without any sleep? —
yeah, you betcha, I yelled, I said, That’s what you want,
then just shoot me and stuff me and stick marbles in
my sockets and nail me to your goddamn wall.

So yeah, he can say all he wants to about it
and look for a nice quiet good-looking wife.
But it wasn’t him that put through the papers,
it wasn’t him that opened the door.
He didn’t push me, and he didn’t dump me.
I rid him of me — and I rid me of him.

[February 9, 1994]

About this poem

This poem is centered in an aluminum reduction plant in my hometown of Columbia Falls, Montana, where I worked summers during my college years. But the poem’s characters are fiction.

Cryolite is a compound used in the reduction of aluminum, often found in the plant in its molten state.  Ore is what we called alumina, or aluminum oxide, the product of the refining of raw bauxite.  The plant’s function is to reduce it — remove the oxygen—to produce aluminum.  It’s a white powder with much the same appearance and consistency as baking powder. Pitchburn is a chemical burn to the skin, looking and feeling similar to a bad sunburn, caused by exposure to hydrocarbons used in the reduction process. The
North Fork is the North Fork of the Flathead River, Flathead National Forest.

Related posts:

1. Does Anyone Beat Your Heart for You (poem)
2. Ballad of the Splash
3. Spiritus Mundi

April: National Poetry Month.  I’ll be (trying to) post a poem every day this month, some mine, some not mine.  Today, one of mine — fitting in well with my recent preoccupations with matters of spirit & writing.

Mielikki

When they told me who to put on the throne
I said, no, I will not be ruled.
The gods they showed me were tyrants
who displeased me with their judgments,
their injustice, yes, their cruelty.

Tough, I thought, and rugged.
Above the law am I —
an outlaw, a renegade
from the unhappy Kingdoms of Gods
who would cast me to hell and damnation —
there was no compassion, no love:
I was alone.

Running and running, cold and lonely,
hungry and tired — I kept my mouth shut
and my eyes hated everyone.

I was a hero, hungry and tough.
I was a hero, subsisting on crumbs.
Walking through cities, rubbing shoulders
with the people, the subjects, the soldiers,
all of them, of the enemy.

I scoffed at them,
and I knew I was dying.

But messengers sent from my own land, my homeland,
you sent them with messages in their hands
that I slowly trusted to touch me.

And homes where they brought me,
where I could not fall to harm –
where they expected nothing, only asked
if I might come home, to you.

Who are you?  the one who sits not on a throne
but runs hidden in the weather that surrounds me —
who follows but does not pursue me —
who knows always where I am when I
have shaken off everyone else —

who leaves secret love notes
in the heart of my deepest shame —
how do you find me when I, myself, am lost?

Today if I wake in wilderness,
in hot desolation, with cracked and dry lips,
I know you will give me comfort:
a cool stream from the dust,
the promise of peace
when I come home to you –
worn by travel, but wiser . . .
and always loved.

[June 11, 1984]

About this poem

This dates from the finding of my central “household god” — recounted in part in my 2006 post “A brief spiritual history” — the forest spirit Mielikki, who is metsolan emäntä: Mistress of Woodland. The name Mielikki combined the word mieli = heart, mind, consciousness, desire, etc., plus the suffix of endearment -kki.

Mielikki is also a central figure in my novel-in-progress Mistress of Woodland, which I’m finally back at work on.

[Good! We've been waiting! — M.]
[Yes.  Still waters run deep, but waters that are too still get stagnant. And grow algae. — V.]
[So says the Slackwater Man. — M.]
[When the helvetti you gonna write a poem about me? — L.]

Related posts:

1. Metsän henki
2. A brief spiritual history
3. Breaking through on Ophelia

Cirque, Summer Solstice 2010. Cover art by Janet Levin

On April 29 this year I headed downstairs to the Starbucks in the UAA Social Sciences Building to grab myself a cup of coffee, & there ran into my friend Marilyn Borell, with whom I went through UAA’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in the late ’90s. Marilyn told me about something that had somehow had escaped my attention until then: Cirque, a literary journal created and edited by our friend Anchorage poet Mike Burwell, which had already published its first issue on Winter Solstice 2009. Further, Marilyn told me, Cirque was taking submissions for its second issue — with a submission deadline of the very next day. And so I submitted.

The Summer Solstice 2010 issue was published — you guessed it — yesterday, Summer Solstice (June 21).

You can find my poem “Anchorage Oil Town Villanelle” on page 37. I wrote this poem in 1997, eight years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, & submitted it to Cirque a few days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. But no one knew on April 30 how vast the resulting oil spill would be — less of a spill, really, than a hemorrhage. But it’s not just oil spills that are the problem — it’s the whole schlemiel surrounding oil & the corrupting influence of oil money.  Which Anchorage, & Alaska, is square in the middle of.  Just take a look at Wikipedia’s article on the Alaska political corruption probe — which broke into the news a good nine years after my poem was written.

I’m delighted to be accompanied by works by other poets & writers I know like Marilyn Borell, Anne Coray, Marybeth Holleman, Mark Muro, Jeff Oliver, and Tom Sexton — who taught the first poetry workshop I took at UAA in Spring 1994. I know my friend David Cheezem — another friend from UAA MFA program — primarily as a poet and coowner of Fireside Books in Palmer, but he’s also a fine photographer: see his contribution on page 42.

And then there’s all the great reading, illustrations, and photography from people all over the Pacific Rim who I don’t know.

To turn the pages, click on the arrow bars on either side. To zoom to fullscreen, just click on the page.

Cirque is a regional literary journal of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, artwork, and photography for emerging and established writers living in the North Pacific Rim — Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, Yukon Territory, Alberta, British Columbia, and Chukotka.  As such, it is in some ways a successor to Ice-Floe, an international journal of poetry of the circumpolar north co-edited (with Sarah Kirk) by another of my fellow UAA MFA graduates Shannon Gramse. (My poem “Field of Words” was published in Ice-Floe’s Winter Solstice 2002 issue.)  Except, of course, that Cirque includes other genres beside poetry.

It’s a beautiful publication too. It’s available for viewing & reading online, as above, or you can purchase copies through Magcloud.

Stories mentioned in my Cirque bio

My bio in Cirque mentions two stories I wrote.  Here’s where you can read them:

• “Cold” — published November 2009 in Crossed Genres #12, the LGBTQ issue, and in the anthology Crossed Genres Year One. From the novel-in-progress Cold.
• “Itch” — second-place winner in the 2010 Radical Arts for Women short story contest (Anchorage, Alaska). From the novel-in-progress Finer.

Related posts:

1. Crossed Genres anthology released — complete w/ my story "Cold"
2. “Emergency Haying” by Hayden Carruth
3. "Cold" is published!

At the beginning of this month, I’d intended to post a poem — mine or someone else’s — every day in honor of National Poetry Month. I fell down on the job. But today it’s still April. Besides, my friend Kathy asked me to post one.  So here’s one.

Metsän henki

She stands outside & in me,
a flicker beckoning
at the inmost limit of vision
where the blind spot is insufficiency
of self-knowing.

She leans to whisper in my breath:
“Heed my green flow in your blood;
drink the wind; inspire
the medicine of trees.”

Leaves flutter, inviting.
She is visible in the dappled breeze
among the white trunks.
At the back of my mind she is visible,
backgrounding all.

[written in 2000; published in Teresa McPherson, ed., Transformations, Anchorage, AK: Radical Arts for Women, 2002.]

About this poem

Metsän henki (Finnish) means forest spirit.  Hence, an alternative name for my central “household god,” the forest spirit Mielikki, who is metsolan emäntä: Mistress of Woodland. The name Mielikki combined the word mieli = heart, mind, consciousness, desire, etc., plus the suffix of endearment -kki.

Related posts:

1. Mielikki
2. A brief spiritual history
3. “Anchorage Oil Town Villanelle” published in Cirque

We need silliness after the Anchorage municipal election.

In poetry workshops in the Master of Fine Arts program at UAA (whence I received my MFA in December 1996), we were asked to keep reading journals of stuff we were reading that “fed our work.” I spent two or three of those weekly journals reading & responding to a lot of children’s poetry, mostly what I found in The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse (ed. by Iona & Peter Opie).

A lot of earlier children’s poetry is rather lame to modern ears, because –

For a poem to be considered suitable for a child it was thought necessary that it should be edifying.

Here’s an edifying poem, version 1 of Father William:

The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them

by Robert Southey (1774-1843)

“You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,
“The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.”

“In the days of my youth,” Father William replied,
“I remembered that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first,
That I never might need them at last.”

“You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,
“And pleasures with youth pass away;
And yet you lament not the days that are gone,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.”

“In the days of my youth,” Father William replied,
“I remembered that youth could not last;
I though of the future, whatever I did,
That I never might grieve for the past.”

“You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,
“And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.”

“I am cheerful, young man,” Father William replied,
“Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remembered my God,
And He hath not forgotten my age.”

That was a very popular children’s poem for a century or so, my book informs me. If it sounds familiar to anyone, that’s probably because of how it lost its popularity — it was superseded by the very famous poem that lampooned it:

You Are Old, Father William

by Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwidge Dodgson; 1832-1898)
(from Alice in Wonderland)

“You are old, Father William”, the young man said,
And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth”, Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old”, said the youth, “as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –
Pray, what is the reason for that?”

“In my youth”, said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box -
Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old”, said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak —
Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth”, said his father, “I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old”, said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -
What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough”,
Said his father, “don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!”

* * *

I feel far more edified now.

Related posts:

1. “Emergency Haying” by Hayden Carruth
2. Stone Poem
3. “Anchorage Oil Town Villanelle” published in Cirque

Stump massage for amputee by Reconstruction Aide during World War 1

Last night’s guest on “The Colbert Report” was Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, but more importantly — as shown last night — of the prosthetic “Luke” arm, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to give amputees a robotic arm with which they would be able to do for themselves many of the things that loss of arms to accidents or war had taken away from them. That’s a very good thing.

But it put me in mind of the two wars that the U.S. is still fighting — in Afghanistan since 2001 and Iraq since 2003 — and of all the losses of limbs, & of lives, in these & other wars.  And so, this poem, for National Poetry Month — in recognition of those losses, & a wish for the wars to end.

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, —
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.

There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now he is old; his back will never brace;
He’s lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,
He thought he’d better join. — He wonders why.
Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts,
That’s why; and may be, too, to please his Meg;
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts
He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,
And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

– Wilfred Owen

Amputees on porch with nurses or Reconstruction Aids.

About the poet

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was an English poet who saw only four poems published during his lifetime: his fame came with his war poems, after his death.  The war poems were written during a 13-month period from January 1917, when he was first sent to the Western Front attached to the Manchester Regiment, and November 4, 1918, when he was killed in action in France one week before the Armistice that brought World War I to an end.

About the photographs

The photographs are of American war vets under care at the Walter Reed Army Hospital during World War I.

Related posts:

1. Mass Extinctions
2. “Inversnaid” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
3. “Emergency Haying” by Hayden Carruth

About the poem & the poet

Earlier today I attended an all-college meeting for the College of Health and Social Welfare at UAA, of which my department, the Justice Center, is part.  After updates about the activities of the various CHSW departments, our dean, Dr. Cheryl Easley, gave a presentation on modern slavery and human trafficking — as common if not more so today than it was when Carruth wrote this poem.  His words till hold true: not the Christ of sacrifice, but the Christ of justice —

. . . My eyes
sting with sweat and loveliness. And who
is the Christ now, who

if not I? It must be so. My strength
is legion. And I stand up high
on the wagon tongue in my whole bones to say

woe to you, watch out
you sons of bitches who would drive men and women
to the fields where they can only die.

The typescript of the poem was put online by Virginia Quarterly Review, where the poem was first published in Spring 1967. An appreciation of Hayden Carruth’s life and work, “Hayden Carruth in VQR: The Earth Too Cried Out for Justice” by Honor Moore, was published on the VQR website in October 2008, shortly after his death. More of his poems can be read at the Poetry Foundation.

Hayden Carruth  is one of the great poets — as anyone who went through UAA’s Master of Fine Arts program at the same time I did can tell you — & they’re all right.  I remember especially the final meeting of one of MFA class, in December 2007, I think it was, as we were heading toward Winter Solstice: the entire class meeting was devoted to a shared reading of Carruth’s masterwork The Sleeping Beauty (also collected in his Collected Longer Poems) with class members taking turns reading each of the poem’s cantos.  I’ve participated in three additional such group readings of The Sleeping Beauty — two of them organized by me — & used lines from it as an epigraph to one of the sections of my MFA thesis —

. . . So this pure loveliness
Of the moving air, unseen equally,
Is truly the world’s breath, truly
The spirit, invisible and from nowhere. . .

That was actually a snowfall scene.  Carruth could write snow and winter like nobody’s business.

Related posts:

1. “Inversnaid” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
2. You are old, Father William: Two renditions
3. Mass Extinctions