From the archives: Bramble Tamble Poetry Slamble

In our free time (ha), Wife and I have been doing a partial liquidation of all of the crap we had accrued in our single days, as well as since we've been married. To that end, I found a box in the garage that hadn't been touched since we moved in to our current quarters at the end of 2001. In the bug-riddled box was a notebook of mine from roughly the middle of 1998 that contained "poetry" "inspired by" the late Richard Brautigan. If you're not familiar with Brautigan, he was a rather unique poet and writer who came of age during the counterculture movement of the 1960s. (Not a hippie, though - he supposedly despised them.) Anyway, some of his poetry was short, one-line and two-line verses that drew their strength from his use of fairly inventive, imaginative metaphors. I dug him.

In between performing spider abortions and other bug detail, I looked through the notebook and thought, "Hell, with my recent writer's block, this would be a great thing to 'share' with my 'audience.'" It comes from a place that I had forgotten I'd been.

This is page one from the notebook, and I will post other pages later. These are selections from my life, c. 1998. My newest comments about these pieces (of s**t) are in itals, where necessary.

****

It's hard to conceive that anyone, let alone I, could
own a musical recording that features the song title
"Leechmaster."

(I don't remember what that album was. We're all probably better off not knowing.)

****

Saturday (1995?)

Saturday.
I'm sitting in Liz's living room. She's in her room, on the phone.
Her roommate Heather is vacuuming.

My heart rate increases. I break into a cold sweat and
begin shaking uncontrollably. Heather doesn't see me;
she'd think I was a freak.

I put my shoes on and go to Liz's room.
"I'm ready to go home."

I felt your presence. I had to call and come over and get my shit.

(Liz was as responsible as anyone for grabbing me by the hair and pulling me out of the awful, awful mess I was in emotionally at that point in my life. I met her in the waning days of the disastrous relationship I found myself in toward the end of '95, and it was the greatest thing that could have happened to me then. Though we had a bit of a falling out later on - mostly my fault - I still miss her.)

****

What it all boils down to is that it's about time
to get up off my ass and stop hovering in this state
of torpor and apathy and Indiana.

(And where would I have gone? You'll probably get a better feel for that answer in the ensuing pages of the notebook, to be posted randomly at various intervals in the future.)