There’s a poem like a koan
that refuses to be known
at the edges of my dreaming
like a palimpsest revealing
shades of doubt erased and shown
between the traces finely combed
a certainty poetic that is home
& hearth to all I’m feeling, there’s a poem
in moments when I think that I’m alone
it overturns illusions I’ve outgrown
and pulls from them a reckoning
deliberately sublime, and chiming
harmony atoned, there’s a poem.
READER ALERT: The following poem contains adult content and urological references, and is only marginally intended for the easily offended.
Some poems are bridges
some poems are bombs, not
as in duds but incendiary
gauntlets thrown down
in melee, and often picked
up by well-meaning neophytes
who love to deplore that they’re
walking through valleys where
angels keep score.
High dudgeon, low dudgeon,
piques in between, the wars
of the poets have been waging
since Adam showed Eve
what he wears on his sleeve—
this was after the snake—but
she couldn’t see through
the veil of tears till she’d
cried herself out, and now
it is Adam who weeps and
she who is trying to peel off
the heart and tuck it back
in where it won’t get so
railed, so bludgeoned
and peed on.
The wars of the poets are
God’s mini-screen, a virtual
means during rounds of good
care to view the perplexities,
confounding vexities, soupçons
of friendship and rhymes
that put sex at ease.
Lord help the butcher,
the baker or thief who
wanders unknown into
realms of the poet
because all that he
thinks that he didn’t
believe will magnify,
tighten and give no
reprieve until he
accepts that every
arousal of anger
and spleen that he
felt so obliged to
avenge in extremis
has a physical
counterpart down
near the—
gals, if you think
you’re above all
that horseplay, that
poets exist for the
one, two, three, four
play, I’m sure you
will have an enjoyable
ride, but the poet
he writes for the
moon and the sky,
so prepare to be
trampled, or else
learn the craft; in
addition to joy, it will
make things much
easier when you think
you are seeing yourself
in the poems he wrote
all those times he
was pissed, and
now all he wants
is a satellite dish.
We met last week in a crowded Starbucks in the corporate soul of the city, the idealist and I. She doesn’t call herself an idealist unless you ask her directly, but I should have guessed from the two comfy chairs that are never unoccupied that were waiting empty for us. And by the way no one stayed longer than a few minutes at the table beside us, as if the heat, energy, and enthusiasm from our conversation was too intense, frying their gadgets and inner circuitry.
Our topic of conversation was corporate storytelling, the currentest hot phrase following on the heels of strategic planning, employee engagement, leadership, innovation; and if you want to push deeper into murky corporate mists: excellence, vision, transparency…
So in a place not too far from Starbucks, in a time not so long ago, there lived a manager who believed her workplace was a palace. She floated, skipped, and danced through her shifts basking in the smiles of happy staff and customers—until the day came when she noticed, probably because her feet hurt, that not everyone viewed their surroundings as palatial. And that when her back was turned, there lurked amidst the crevices disenchantment, boredom, and darker things we won’t bother to name.
For a while, the manager dealt with the nasty gnats one at a time, but the swatting grew tiresome; and the more she coached, scolded, performance-managed (could there possibly be a clunkier term?) the worse things became, until one Saturday long past midnight with the palace a shambles, her nerves frayed and jangling, she’d had enough! She spent twenty minutes alone at a keyboard, slapped the results into a communication binder, and drove home, not caring if she ever saw the stupid, ugly palace again.
Returning to work on Monday, the manager was greeted by broad, beaming, megawatt smiles. People she never spoke to came up and thanked her with tears in their eyes. They asked to be trained in the tasks she managed. They’d had no idea work could be so fun.
In the weeks that followed, store sales spiked. Managers on duty reported unprecedented enthusiasm from staff and glowing reports from customers. The climb in sales was noticed by Head Office who wanted to know what was going on. The GM shared the contents of the binder. Head Office had never seen anything like it. The manager was asked to expand on what she’d begun and to take her campaign company-wide. She said yes…
That was thirteen years ago, and the manager was me. If the phrase “corporate storytelling” existed in 2000, I hadn’t heard it, but I had read plenty of stories, and the pages I slapped into the binder that night began with, “Once upon a time…”
I hold that event, which seemed so tiny at the time, close to my heart. The adventures continued, stories built, and more and more, I am meeting people who float, skip, and dance through life.
One of them, the owner and chief executive of heartsmith, has launched a series of lockets featuring my poetry. “Live in the Momentum”, the Navarrosa Collection, sources from my novel-in-progress, Daughters of Babylon, which, in turn, is excerpted in Gavriel Navarro’s second volume of poetry, Fire and Earth: Poems and Reflections on the Nature of Desire. The best stories wind in and out, through and around, not caring a fig for distinctions like fiction and nonfiction, never been done, who do you think…?
Who do I think I am? Yes. There is no other answer to that shortest, most perfect story, should anyone ask it of you with a Snidely Whiplash curl of the lip.
So what does all of this have to do with whiskey? (Hafiz, lover of wine, frequenter of taverns, I’m sure you would have fun with this!) Perhaps it is because spirits, both liquid and disembodied, are disinhibitors by nature, their agility entwined with earth, rain, sun, love, tears, pride, joy. For reasons that are sure to unfold, as all things do, the idealist and I each brought as our best examples of corporate storytelling last week a whiskey tale. I share Johnny Walker and Writers Tears Irish Whiskey with you here. Sláinte!
We are strengthened by imagination
sufficient to release a narrative suspended
from great heights to shatter at feet
kicking stones madly across continents.
We are shattered by hopes too vast
to contain in vessels paltrified by ego
and bleak histories that splinter the seams
of the well-intended like cheaply built arks.
We are scattered by indifference
to mysteries whose clues refuse to stand
still long enough for us to fire pot shots
at what appears to be unrepenting will.
We are gathered by scope of tasks
imagined and individual into watertight
vessels large enough for one with
will sufficient to master the highest seas.
Attempt to be the cup of tea
for he and she and me and thee
& soon you’ll find your head will drag
you’ll be a soggy tasteless bag
before you’ve had a chance to brew
and that would be a waste of you.
The good news is, it’s ne’er too late
to plug the tendency to wait
on every Harry, Sam and Sue
and gravitate instead to you.
Your self knows better why you’re here,
the rest is just a donkey’s ear!
Friends in every corner,
in every dip and knoll,
the characters you’ve come
to love, the ones you’ve
yet to know…await you,
storyteller, in the vales of
Christmas time regardless
of the names you hang on
God the father, son,
for story does not circumscribe;
the crescent moon, the candles
lit, return of light belong to all of
us, and dialogue that’s truly spoke
the muses offer joyfully—agendas
and false claims, though, she will
nine times trample with more vigour
than those weary steeds of yesteryear
whose revelations cease with
every moment fully lived.
There is no greater danger here
nor will there ever be to storyteller’s
page than politics; it is the Herod
king, the tyrant of the writer’s
soul, desirous only of the murder
of your firstborn, tender words,
so banish all interpretation, friend,
your knee-jerk reflex, let the heralds
bring instead with angel voices
infinite the merciful blank page,
for given space, they’re fashioned
well to sing with you of fearless tales
whose twists and turns and frights
delectable will muster you to
boldly stand and say:
Get thee behind me, tragedy,
for I’ve a romance in the making
here—I’ll travel every word on
sleighs of ink and nib, discarding
with my happy wake the agitation
of your concretizing reigns of hell
while flow surfeits my veins and
carries me as lovers do to
snowy mystic realms;
and when the New Year greets
us with her precious infant smile,
we two shall look upon the wintry
hillsides where your audience, well
gathered, toasty warm with flasks
of chocolate and brandy, wait ready
to receive the story of the gladdest
tidings yet, sweet born and seated
on this noble Christmastide.
Claim and Disclaim live in a box
at the end of the tracks at the border
between Thislandia and Nolandistan.
One is tall, one is small, one is
light divisible, the other squints,
is heavier, can hardly see at all.
It’s hard to say from where I write
perched here upon this wooden stool
which one of them emerges first
at crack of dawn like Mr. Sampson’s
rooster, proud and strong. I’d like
to think it’s Claim. You see his arms,
the way they swing? His shoulders
squared, a happy tune upon his lips?
It’s Claim, oh, yes, it’s Claim,
it’s definitely Claim!
Thislandia, it is a busy place
with avenues and shops galore
to satisfy the cravenest and
never-ending jobs—well, some they
end but something always starts
again—to fill the hours. Claim, if
it be he, today works as a plower:
see him there, both hands upon
the shaft, sure-trudging, turning up
and out those perfect rows of toil.
Now, over there, just to the left
of Claim and Disclaim’s box on rails
Nolandistan hums quiet, growing trees.
Nolandistan is mostly shade, though dappled
bits illuminate from time to time, and things
we leave there never stay, the seeds we plant
dissolve the instant that we lift our hands.
Thislandians despise Nolandistan, or no—
despise is far too strong a word, they do not
like, and even that I shouldn’t say, for isn’t
that Disclaim now creeping out, and aren’t
we here together, you and me, to learn
the natures of our brothers in the box?
The figure leaps from stone to rail, from
lily pad to teasel stem and lands upon
his haunches like a mottled frog within
the bounds, from all accounts in safety,
of the dark Nolandistan.
I’ve heard it said he is the lazy bro,
too full of his own eptitude to bother
with the issues and the worries of
our time, though I don’t know if this
is true, for more and more I see
disclaimers tacked to claims made full
and bright, in honesty, with shadows
falling cross the smiles and furrows
deep upon smooth brows of good
and true Thislandians;
and since we never see the brothers
in each other’s company, catch glimpses
of the two in moments only far too fleet
emerging or returning to their box at dusk—
or is it dawn?—I cannot help but claim
the labours of disclaiming as the greater,
finding ways from over there, not here,
to say, but wait, what if, hold on,
I need to stop and think—
while off he struts, his arms a-swing, the
bolder, never caring, indivisible, Claim
staking and advancing toward the light.
POISON ALERT: Monkshood, all parts of it, are deadly. This is only a poem. Do not eat or drink anything from the plant, and if you must touch monkshood, wash your hands thoroughly afterwards.
There once was a boy who collected rocks and shells and polished them and gave them to the people in his village. He was a gentle child, and villagers accepted his rocks and shells with thanks, although they lay around everywhere, free for the taking, and the kinder ones said, “You ought to do something with these.”
The boy grew older and began to recreate what he saw in his head with the rocks and shells. He gave them to pretty girls he fell in love with, and to older people who had been kind to him when he was young, and many said, “You ought to sell these. You’ll make good money.”
And so the boy grew to manhood and gathered his finest recreations of rock and shell and set up shop to sell them. He held a grand opening where people ate potted shrimp with chives and congratulated him, but no one bought his work. And with no more free food being offered, no one from the village ever entered the shop.
The boy felt confused, and he felt discouraged. When he could no longer tolerate people walking past his shop pretending not to see him, he placed his rock and shell work in a sack and trudged door to door, asking the villagers for donations in exchange for his art. In this way, he obtained a few pennies and became more miserable than he’d ever felt in his life.
One evening, having spent his final coins on day old bread and moldy sausage, theyoung man curled up in the back of his shop on a pile of sacks when he heard the door bell chime.
“Go away, I’m closed!”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
He sat up to find a woman standing in the middle of his shop wearing a blue-green gown that reached her toes and a diadem of rocks and shells in her hair. A golden light pulsed off her in waves so bright she lit up everything, even the rocks and shells he no longer had time for, he was so busy begging.
Now I could go on and tell you everything the woman said to the young man about people growing accustomed to living next to beauty, and how they value getting something for nothing almost more than anything else.
But this isn’t a fable about human nature, and it isn’t a story about a young man who finally goes out into the world, doing what he loves and never goes hungry another day in his life.
It may, however, be a tale of how many creates one, and one creates many, and leaves many behind in search of the one who helps him create, to enhance the One who creates the Many and so on, and so on, happily, ever after…
