ASPECTS THE POETIC PROCESS

I’ve been working on a long poem for years now,but there were stumbling blocks – because of my

poetic theory – which was to echo the waves of the

sea, rising & falling, ebb and flow tide…My theory

didn’t allow for any characters, any narrative.

A flux of rhythm and rhyme was my goal. And I

achieved that.

The problem was, no one wanted to read it.

It was necessary to work a story in as well as

poetic themes.

I needed an omniscient observer in my poem, but I couldn’t

figure out who it could be. The man of many ways

had been used. Treisias had been used…What to do?

I had to change my thinking… and line up my symbols

like ducks in a row in my understanding. It took a long

time. I must be stupid, I thought.

My psychiatrist informed me I was a long way from

being stupid. They had done several I.Q, tests on me because

they didin’t believe the results of the first test.

Dr Ben informed me that when Einstein lived in

row housing – he had to paint his door red so he could

find his way home.

I’m not sure how that helped me. But let me say,

an epic poem such as the one I’d been writing for decades,

a poem has to grow organically and it will reveal

itself when it is ready. The poet has to grow at the same

time and make himself ready to see, ready to receive

the divine message that he hopes to express.

The poet must empty out a space within himself,

so that when Grace touches him, he has a place

where Grace can come. He has a place, or no-place,

where inspiration may reside.

He must become an empty vessel in order

absorb the lines, in order to encompass the emerging

reality of the poem – to allow the symbols & characters to dance

with one another in his ‘dreaming while awake’.

I can’t explain the process. All I can do is

point a finger at the moon. All I can say is

it happens… how… is mysterious. But the poet

must be patient. He must be ready to wait,

and somehow dream while he waits.

Some of the poem the poet does himself.

Some of it is given to him. Even as Grace is given

to the pilgrim monk.

TEN THOUSAND PATHS TO DAWN AT THE PEAK OF

THE SILVER MOUNTAIN.

I made that one up myself. With a lot of other people

who have attempted to write on the same subject in

the past. We are all monks looking to see

the secret meaning, the meaning of the eternal.

But nobody sees the obvious. What is right before

our face is too difficult to absorb. An old Tibetan

saying goes like this:

“THE SECRET BOOK COULD BE LEFT OPEN ON THE

KING’S HIGHWAY, AND NO ONE WOULD READ IT.”

That fits right in with another one of my favourite sayings.

I didn’t make this one up:

“THE GREAT WAY IS EASY FOR HE WHO HAS NO

PREFERENCES.”

The Sixth Patriarch

I got off the subject again, but who cares!

Who makes the rules? We do!

How will I find a title for this?

(C)2016 by W.G. Milne

HOWLING WITH THE DOGS, LAUGHING WITH THE MOON https://wordpress.com/meS, LAUGHING WITH THE MOON

“I have immortal longings in me.”

“I will praise any man who will praise me.”                                    William Shakespeare

The doctor who lives next door was shouting over into my yard, when he saw me standing naked with coffee cup in hand, gazing off towards the vistas in the East.

                                                      *
He was shouting and he’s usually a quiet man, so this was significant.  He called: “WHO WAS THAT MANIAC DRIVING YOUR CAR OUT LAST NIGHT AT 3A.M? HE GOT SOME FOOL TO PLAY THE BAGPIPES ACROSS THE BAY!”

                                                       *
“THEN HE LIFTED A HUGE STONE OUT OF THE BACK OF YOUR CAR WITH ONE HAND!  HE KICKED OPEN YOUR DOOR AND THREW THE BOULDER IN! IT LOOKED
LIKE A HUGE INDIAN HEAD WITH FEATHERS!”

                                                         *
Then in a stage whisper  he says, “I was going to call – but some things shouldn’t be spoken of… So I’m maintaining silence, as we agreed.” Then he said something disturbing, he said, “He looked like some dark Caliban.”
                                                             *  

                                                               *
             People can get up to some pretty strange things up here in the dark, when there’s nothing to do except look at the ducks for entertainment.

                                                            *
The bad weather around here often comes suddenly from the east. Quickly lightning begins to strike along the shore, and if you’re in a tin boat floating perilously over this deep lagoon, you’d better get the hell out.

                                                              *
Actually, so far the lake is called bottomless. The crew hired by the government shows up every four or five years and they try to find the bottom with heavy measured chains – they  have never had enough chains to find the bottom.

                                                               *
I’m thinking, “In this ‘modern age’ surely there must be a way to measure depth more quickly.

                                                                *
But a family runs the business and I guess they are funded by the federal government, so they keep trying in the old way. I’m thinking, what about sonar? But the chains are too much fun. They provide a Gothic flavor to the whole operation… And who wants to find the bottom anyway?

*

*

*

*

           Sometimes sitting the local bar, 1,000 feet down a dirt road from my house, I sit quietly and listen. The people from along the peninsula keep whispering two tables over from me about, “the best place to hide a body.”

                                                       *
I already know, but I’m not about to interrupt the good clean fun of my neighbours.
This is the land of 100,000 lakes and a million miles of muskeg. Bodies are lost up here even when no one is trying to hide them.

                                                       *
I also hear them talk about the fresh water sharks that come and go across vast distances. After all, the caverns beneath our lake ( as everybody knows) are directly connected with caverns beneath rivers and lakes approaching the Gulf of Mexico.

                                                        *
I heard Suzie, a fine looking lusty lass with muscular thighs and knees that can crack walnuts, I heard her whisper to 3 girls from the northern volleyball team, she said: “In the winter, that’s where they go to feed. Those poor Cajuns! Should we warn them?”

MAGNIFICENCE TWO

MOMENTS, INSTANCES

and flies teem on me
in the deep bush
by a swamp
that’s wet and deep
and rude 

*
and climbing a rock
face and gasping
on my back and 
see a crescent
moon

 

*

waiting all night
in an old train station
boy toys and hookers
mill beneath the roof
of the greasy spoon
bar there
where all the noise
is

*

and this music from 
a lyre that’s mute
and silence on
a guitar that’s blue
and symphonies
of wind in trees
and a great bath
above the soot
*
liver-dark urine
in a sunlit kitchen
27 mice in the closet
and a cat that’s new
*
Van Gogh cycles
a paint so yellow
it kisses sunlight
like a nun the truth.





(C)2013 by W.G. Milne

PEERING THROUGH VENETIAN BLINDS

I live in an
old house
and as I peer
through the blinds
I see a red car,
the blue ass rolling
of a woman in jeans;
hear the roar of
yellow – a caterpillar
tractor

and here the walls are
midnight blue…

still I peer
through Venetian
blinds
hoping to see
someone alive

a dance, a sign
a poet’s midnight line
that lifts and echoes
true

hoping and
waiting,
all the time,

to

see

you.

ROCK AND ROLL AND SEX AND BLUES… no other thing

Now if you thought Rock and Roll and the Blues was EVER about anything but SEX…
well, you’ve already lost your mind!

Now Big Mama Thornton leaves no doubt in the matter.

Mick Jagger’d be the first to admit it. The little red rooster started pecking and cock a doodle doin’ somewhere else than in the Stones back yard. But the Stones did have a back yard, too.

Now really, the person who howls, “ROCK ME BABY!” Really otta be a woman. “ROCK ME ALL NIGHT LONG!”

“ROLL ME, HONEY BABY, ROLL ME ALL NIGHT LONG!”

“ROCK AND ROLL ME, SWEETHEART…
TIL I DON’T WANT NO MORE.”

I shouldn’t hafta splain this shit to ya… and I guess maybe I don’t have to do any such thing…

Here’s Big Mama Thornton. And she gonna make it all plain to ya.