Skip to main content

First Post

A dozen blogs preceded this one, but this one will be different.  This blog will, hopefully, replace the hundreds of moleskines I have bought over the years, not to mention the backs of envelopes and other scraps of paper I have scribbled on.  It is time to get modern, and paperless!

That means this blog will be very different indeed, because now this is my scratchpad, for all to see.  I will edit as I go, deleting the rougher drafts and polishing up the better efforts, but there will be half efforts and false starts that I hold on to, some that I may set aside and forget, even a few I may regret.  But I will also try to structure the blog as I go, so the real keepers can be seen more prominently.

Simorgh Press is the name I chose about ten years ago for my first vanity published book, Thirty Birds, which is also a blog out there somewhere.  I may resurrect that book and other past work on these pages, eventually, but first - there is a poem I've got rattling around in my head, and it's time to post it.

(Confession: I may still start from scratch elsewhere, as I have done with this next/first poem, dictated into my phone's notepad while I drove to work the other day.  But I hope to get into a straight to blog habit eventually.)


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Something Different

Reflections of The Waste Land, lines 19-30 And still those voices are calling from far away... I have no answer in this place. I’m in the irony of space Reinventing Major Tom Every fifty years or so. I want to hide from the sun, Clutch the earth and feel it under me, The dirt from where I come To where I go. I want to run. I want to hide In the shadows of my mind Of a morning stretched before me And an evening closing in. I can’t understand the voice Calling me a child of choice, heir apparent, prince of mortals, Son of man. I want to understand But I don’t know what to say. The sun has been relentless And the garden’s far away. Planet Earth is gray And I haven’t got a clue. I don’t know what to say And I don’t know what to do Show me a hard rock world or a mote in the universe, a resting place or a tombstone to tip; Show me a shelter from the sun or a rock to roll away, well-weathered pavement or a cornerstone. I have no answer in this plac...

Identifying Stetson

Reading Eliot's Waste Land, Lines 69-76 With a preface translation from Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil To the Reader: Stupidity, error, sin and stinginess busy our minds and grind our bodies down, And we, like beggars nourishing their lice, keep our remorse in comfort and well-fed. Our sins are stubborn, our confessions weak; we take admissions, we demand a price; Then, with a smile, we’re on our muddy way believing that cheap tears will make us clean. We rest our heads upon an evil pillow with Trismegiste Satan at the cradle, And in the vapor of his chemistry we lose the heavy metal of our will, And with the Devil as our babysitter charming us with his repulsive toys, Each day we’re lured another step away from fear, into the dark and stench of hell. And like the poor bum who would kiss and nibble the battered nipple of an ancient whore We steal the secret pleasures of our passing and squeeze the last drop from each shriveled orange. Tightened, swarming, like a mi...

Madame Sosostris

Another reading of The Waste Land, Lines 43-59 Fame catches a cold.  Fortune clears her throat. She tells whatever can be told From stories Waite & Rider wrote. Wisdom deals the cards.  She plays a wicked game. The deck is short, the rules are hard, The names begin to sound the same. The wheel turns.  The world walks In circles.  Thank you everyone. A fisherman up on the docks Appears with extra gear at dawn. Lady Belladonna rocks. The one-eyed merchant carries on His back a blank, an empty box, And here, my dear, your card is drawn: A sailor lost at sea.  She tells me this is me. Drowned in the place I ought to be The most alive and free. Each card she flips for me is contradictory Or worse: they're random, cryptic and Impossible to see. The wheel turns.  The world walks In circles in a purple dawn. Lady Belladonna rocks. Right here, my dear.  Your card is drawn. Live, she says, in fear that one day you will die Wi...