Tag Archives: essay

2023, essay, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

Can’t Hoola Hoop, Terrible at Reunions: on self-erasure

Drawing by Zenga

…the true task of enlightenment is not to disappear into it. The true task is to return to the world, bringing back what you know. It’s the same for poets.

I’m terrible at reunions; it’s not that I don’t love my friends. I do. But I find sometimes that seeing old friends means running into a former me. Most recently, during the celebration for the life of my friend Dave Jones, I found myself meeting one of those old selves… the drunken rake, the arrogant grad student who would get drunk and declare, “All men are dogs.”

I know I did other things. Better things. Editorial Manager of the student literary journal. A leader of sorts at the open mic. Tutor in the writing center. Graduate Assistant teaching ENG 101.  I also wrote a lot, edited a manuscript of poems and stories, and managed to graduate more or less on time. To quote from The Man from La Mancha, “I hope to add some measure of grace to the world.” But looking back, I end up being my own eraser. Whatever good I might do is overshadowed by what infamy I manage.

Weren’t we going to change the world?

I don’t know that it’s any different for anyone else. I suspect most people are the erasers of their own attempts at goodness. Maybe it’s just one of those built in mechanisms to keep us humble.

But I really like this drawing of me. The 5 Minutes of Fame Open Mic at Brick Street Coffee in Mount Carroll, Illinois is one of those things I was really proud of; and even though I did manage to work against myself and my own good intentions at times, and even though the open mic didn’t survive more than a few years after I left, I still believe it had a good influence that reverberates to this day.

Once upon a time, I had large notions of what it means to “add a measure of grace to the world.”  I recently corresponded with a friend I worked with in Cincinnati almost 20 years back. We both published books of poetry and had a sort of rock star insistence. We were convinced we would change the world, or so he reminded me. Weren’t we going to change the world?

For 20 years, I lashed around looking for ways to change the world. I kept writing. I made myself a freelance Gonzo-inspired journalist. I deep-dove into radical politics. I spent 15 years teaching college Freshman how to express themselves… or at least, that’s what I wanted to do.

Erased. All of it. Except the writing, maybe. But everything else? Erased.

“I hope to add some measure of grace to the world.”

This obsession with erasure started in grad school with one of my professors, Layne Neeper. It was in a post-modern lit class. We were reading Kathy Acker, I think. Neeper talked about erasure as a concept. Erasure of history. Erasure of culture. Erasure of memory. It struck me then how much of my own life, even up to the increasingly young-sounding age of 30, was erased. How many jobs had I worked up to that point? More than I can still remember. I’d had an entire married life that, except for my daughter, was erased off the face of the earth. Even the places I lived with my daughter’s mother had been bulldozed to the ground, erased. How many more lives would I live?

My notions of adding grace to the world have simplified over time. Some might say they’ve gotten smaller. But anyone who works on the river will tell you that the breadth of the river is not the same as its depth.

I’ve sharpened and honed my gaze. But I dive deep and stay there more than anyone probably realizes.

I’m settling in down here on the river. I’m still writing. It may never make me rich. I spent 30 years and 2 marriages trying to make a living as a semi-starving artist. What I’ve learned is that there is a sort of poet-sickness, akin to zensickness. Some people find something that feels like poetic rapture and are so drawn to it they stay there. But the true task of enlightenment is not to disappear into it. The true task is to return to the world, bringing back what you know. It’s the same for poets.

I sometimes feel badly that I am probably not a good and constant friend. I do try to be, and I hope they forgive me when I fail.  I hope what I’ve learned is of some use. I hope that I can live long enough to erase the ill I’ve done in the world. I hope I can add some measure of grace.

In the end, all anyone can do is move forward and hope. It’s the closest I get to understanding faith.

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2023, essay, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, the no-scape, travel, Working Class Literature

from Minneapolis and Back, Part 2

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.

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2023, essay, in memoriam, Ohio River Valley Literature, prose

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.

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