I have learned that in order for me to write a new poem, there must be nothing more important in my life for half an hour, absolute minimum, than walking out to my front porch with pen, clip board and paper and tall glass of iced tea,.
So it was Sunday evening: nothing appealing on the #43 tube, nothing cataclysmic to be subdued by the aged grape (Carlo Rossi Bugundy, Vintage February, smack!) and a general desire to wax poetic. The poem I wanted to write was based on two words in my sub-teaching notebook, source of several good ideas in recent months:
canvas sky.
I wrote the poem, originally titled The Canvas Sky, and when finished with the first draft about 7:40. retitled it God Paints the Blues. I”m sharing this first draft with you so you can visit my poetry web site say, Friday, and see how things change after a week of going back and tweaking.
Above: the rolling mural canvas
of blues, whites, and grays on grays on grays on grays
in ever-changing shades and forms.
No less representational –
That one looks like a 2005 Volkswagen Beetle! –
than Picasso’s seated nudes,
nor more abstract than Gary Goves’z
cryptic riddles for enquiring eyes –
That one looks like a nude seated
in a 2005 Volkswagen Beetle!
How deliberate must a creator be?
A panoply of cloud on blue is
no less the will of its creator
than the slashes of crimson and ochre
hurled from drenched brushes
onto the 10 x 15 foot canvas lying flat
on the artist’s hue-besotted studio floor.
What would the grass and mountains mean
if no one had told us what they are?
Even the skies tell stories to those
who know how to read them:
the weather prophets
those who are led in love
and those who strive to sew in spring and reap in fall.
And when the sky is monotoned
in overcast and between the star flecked infinities
on moonless nights, we sleep,
perchance to dream
of 2005 Volkswagen Beetles, shaped like clouds
transporting hopes beyond the canvas sky
to reach our far-flung destinies.
- – - -
OKAY, I admit, the final stanza was revised as I rewrote it just now. By the time I had gone that far Monday evening, I was looking for an expedient, easy end, just so I could return inside with the thing completed. And I did. My rule of thumb when writing a first draft of a poem or article is to write down every thought I can coax out of my hard head, get them down in black and white and then start to sift the wheat from the chaff.
Esteemed editors I know often reveal how far I am from successful sifting when wearing my Journalist hat. I’m generally okay with the sifting I do when writing poems and songs, and since this blog is largely a stream of consciousness romp, even I can tell when to park it after a little or a lot of rambling around with it. But with this poem, last night my reservoir went dry fast. I just knew I needed a final stanza, and I wanted it to go beyond what Lee Gurga calls “the haiku moment” when he’s writing his superb haiku, and I cal “the ha-ha moment” which I sometimes produce in a final stanza. The ha-ha moment is not necessarily “the hook at the end,” and in poems intended to be humorous, I try to be humerous throughout the stanzas. Here, I simply saw an opportunity for a chuckle, it matched the syntax of the established language, and it was based on ironic precedent. I KNOW I’ll revise the draft three or four more times before I post it at PoemsofJob. BTW, at Writers’ Bloc last Saturday, my valued friend Tim Sheehan, came down (constructively and smilingly) hard on me for my frequent use of “like a ton o’ bricks.” as in, “So when the swelling went down, the cause of it hit me like a ton o’ bricks!” Tim wants me to find a better way to say the same thing. What do you say when you want to say “like a ton o’ bricks,” but don’t because you’re a hipper conversationalist?
Live long . . . . and proper.
