back under the big sky
the dirt unfurls west, a tired old flag
that calloused hands are still
unable to surrender
To read the rest, click here and read my substack, The No Scape.
Category Archives: essay
on broken machines and the thermodynamics of the spirit
This time next week, I will be in Minneapolis remembering and celebrating the life of my friend Dave Jones, who died after battling cancer.
In trying to remember everything I might want to say so I can sift it out and distill it properly, I can’t help but think about the funeral of our friend Lonnie. He died in a car accident and was buried with odd ceremony in Hazard, Kentucky. Somewhere between the old Protestant hymns and the Tom Waits songs, Lonnie … who was an atheist, more or less … was preached into Hell. This is not an uncommon occurrence in Eastern Kentucky funerals when the dead wasn’t “saved.”
Both my 2nd ex-wife and Dave were a bit horrified by my reaction. I found myself laughing. Lonnie would have found the combination of things absurd, and because he was not there to laugh, I laughed for him.
It was both my gift to his memory and my manner of mourning him publicly. (I drank a 5th of Bulliet Bourbon and cried like a baby in private, to the horror of my 2nd exwife, then wife, who had never really seen me cry.)
I do not handle death in a socially appropriate manner. I suppose I could try and learn, but the fact is that since my father’s death when I was 17, I’ve been aware of the fact that most of what is socially acceptable mourning is mostly about not making other people uncomfortable.
When someone dies, the thing that made them them is gone. The body… now a corpse… is a machine with insufficient energy to remain in motion. Whatever we think or believe about what happens to the stuff that makes us us after we die, the fact remains that what remains is a switched off machine.
I wrote recently that one of the other things I’ve been pondering is the first law of thermodynamics: namely, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. A machine, by definition, is a contraption designed to allow energy to do useful work.
The energy that allowed Dave Jones to do useful work has changed form. It is the work he did, the people whose lives he touched and by his very existence improved, that I hope to help celebrate.
from Notes on Writing
I think if I had found any recognition when I was younger and believed it was inevitable it would have been the death of my work. At least, that’s what I tell myself now, at 50 years old, 40 of them writing and focusing on being a writer. But I like where I am. I’m not headlining readings and workshops. I’m not quoted in articles. But I am still writing.
https://rivercitymick.com/2023/03/01/on-writing-the-poetry-culture-engine/
It happened on train ride, eastbound from Los Angeles. I was reading Basho. It was raining. I’d spent 10 days being immersed in the creative writing program at Antioch. Like most programs they push both craft and commercialism. I went for the MFA, not because I needed it but because I wanted it. It was a Thing Left Undone from my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. It was a thing I didn’t do because I wasn’t ever really sure if I deserved a seat at the table.
My tendency to write and push it out onto the world immediately has always put me at odds with the commercial end of things. I’ve written about this before. When I first decided to go back for my MFA, I thought maybe I could find a way to help support my family with it. A last bit of naivete. I met some amazing people, pissed off at least one juggernaut of the poetry world, learned that I really love Venice Beach, and also that peacocks’ screeches sound like crying babies.
I am a phenomenon of nature, like birds, like wharf possums, like the river currents.
On that train ride home, I learned something else: I’d spent years writing about myself. Self as subject, world as background. I’d done it for years. All writing about myself had ever given me was the inability to move forward. Even as a journalist, I found ways to include myself, very Gonzo I told myself.
On the train ride home, I learned I was tired of my subject. I am a lens, not a target. I can’t shuffle off my perspective. But I can cast my eye at the world. My work is about the world, about me IN the world… not me with the world as a painted backdrop. I am a phenomenon of nature, like birds, like wharf possums, like the river currents.
