I have a temp job. It sucks. It sucks time from the day and night. It is located back in the asphalt Paranoid Archepelago, that necklace of failed malls which string across the land, bejeweled with rubies of empty vodka bottles on a chain of concrete. We look into the future with crystal balls, deceiving like false-bottom beer glasses. It's too cold to sweat, so we shiver. We walk with jerky legs. We have big butts. Our denims sometimes are too small, and we spit into our coffee cups when they're empty. Our fires are small. When we walk out into the parking lot, we stand like old corn stalks - some bent, some erect- just before the the fields are brush-hogged and flail mowed. We spend the winter in round bales. We smile because hope springs eternal for us, the corn gods: ground and eaten up.
I have to grab time to write.
So I'll just jot things down. Today is my first attempt at this week's poem. I was gonna write something else, but the Broadway Danny Rose in my head - my imaginary agent - said no, go with the other thing, the what's-is, you know, that singer thing.
Black Orpheus Motown sings Grand Boulevard songs.....
Yep! That's it. Got a long way to go... or ways to go... whatever
--
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
9 comments:
This is a great start, Montag. I already feel connected to the corn gods.
The gods of corn or maize are born, grow, cut, ground up, baked, and destroyed like the corn itself. Yet there is resurrection every year with re-birth.
It certainly reminds me of Jesus saying that people who would follow must break with their old lives, denying themselves, and leap into a new life.
And this is pretty much what all religious geniuses have said.
We interpret it as "denying ourselves certain pleasures and indulgences", which we then make worse by putting a time limit on such restrictions, like a Lenten fast, or Ramadan, or other such things.
It is an invitation to be re-born, and it is pretty radical.
Anyway, the poem is based on the Algiers Motel Incident of the 1967 riot in Detroit.
I have been stumped for a while, busy at work, and wonder when all the images will coalesce into something more substantial.
It never ceases to amaze me how many different ways the denial of self can be interpreted. The way my mom did was wondrous and opening for her, but it broke my back and spirit. It is rebirth. REBIRTH. If I had "heard" that in my life-shaping years, all would have been different. But then, would I want it different?
Good to know this is about that riot. Knowing you, when it comes (I'll check your poetry page next), you will offer us an epigraph or footnote to that effect.
And yeah, when I read about your corn gods I thought about my Zen corn. I don't always like mentioning something like that, as if it's a nudge to come over to my place ...
It's VERY HARD to grab time to write!
It is a cool start! :-D
My condolences on the temp job. So sorry to hear it, and so sorry it has to be done.
I'm going to make up some bumper stickers:
Capitalism! Shit Happens!
M S Taitt
It is hard. I am sitting becalmed in the middle of the ocean with no creative wind nor time (at least at 5:20 AM Saturday!)
Ruth,
I still find the coincidence of corn interesting. I recall I wrote a poem a couple of weeks ago about my brother that was gotten into gear by something you wrote about your brother.
I am stunned at some of the images; not how I wrote about them, but how they exist in my imagination. I mentioned a "necklace of curcurbits" which - if you know what a curcurbit is and what it looks like - seems filled with ancient sacrifice and horror.
So I need to work on that poem to convey the horror.
Post a Comment