The Left Column

from poem page 126

Politics for Poets

One thing necessary to write is to listen to how people talk, what they say, observe how they behave. And then, due to that and also learning lessons of life, we get older and we notice that some stories that can be told aren't ones that make any sense. The stories have inauthenticacies. For example a story about an upright man who makes a specific moral mistake and ends up spirling out of control and ruining his life. In the real world that doesn't happen like it does in fantasy on video screens.

Moral people don't just suddenly become immoral based upon one bad act or a mistake. A single moral person in a town, like in the moview It's a Wonderful Life doesn't so influence the whole town that, if he weren't there it would be come a godless cesspool of prostitution and gang-mob activities. The movie shows us that. We like the feeling that it gives us for a bit until we think about it. The level of depravity that is created because one guy isn't there? Far fetched. A movie making mistake? Should have been left on the cutting room floor. Maybe someone could make a parady of that movie and, perhaps, call it It's an even more Wonderful Life with movie byline being "What if Clarance the Angel had made yet another mistake and that the world was a much better place if George Baily had never been there in the first place?" That sounds like a poor idea. Who would want to waste the time to write and produce it? It would give a message that people don't want to hear on the permise of a lame literary joke. It's a joke that very few will get at first.

Politics in Airports is often just too much to bear with people spouting off about their holy causes and being loud mouthed about this or that party. "I won't marry him, he's a Republican." "Marry Him!" I say. "Don't ever let your delusions about government get in the way of loving other people." I say.

And what is it with all the hate that people spew for people that are political? Do they imagine that these are not real people too? Someone made a bad choice, they became a spokes-puppet. Now they are trapped in the life of a politician. There may, in fact, be no way out for them. Maybe their life is a hell and they have no way out? They can't find the exit from Washington DC because they have no real home to go back to. If the gov is antitrusted and made smaller then what happens to the sub-adjunct proto-czar-assistant and envoy to the other sub-czar envoy bottle fetcher and luggage carriers? It must be troubling when you are a buerocrat with no non-gov skills that there could be a turn at the polls and then they will be let go. Probably the wya that the money is being spent the money will run out and even if the same stuff goes on where it goes on there will be much blood letting (allegorical) and many lay-offs of gov folks. History shows that upon consoldation of power tyrannies typically go on a purging of those true believers (of the tainted cause) that still believe all the lies. Those who drank the cool-aid are shown the exit. How does this play out in America? I suppose a story such as "Bartlebee the Scripner" touches on these very themes. What will all the Bartlebees do once their influence means nothing?

But the idea that influence means nothing is itself a falacy. That supposition is actually never true in our society. The small, the infintesimal, the blade of grass, they make the field green. They are protected. They can not be mowed over with impunity. It is far more likely that the government will replace all of the politicians than it is that htey will replace the duitful servants of government who do get hurt when cuts occur.

If all of the various gov agencies were spun off as for-profit entities, which of these would survive? You go into a forest and you notice that every seedling can not, and will not, become a tree. Some will. Most will not. People are not seedlings in that way. We protect each one. Cut one blade of grass and all the others notice. It is not correct or fair for government to cut a path through thousands of lives and destroy lives in one place for their delusions of what should be somewhere else.

OK, enough rattling on about it. Politics is best kept out of Airports when there are flight delays and fidgity people. But you can't keep it away. It's there. You get the pulse. And everyone has a story to tell. The undercover novelist must tilt his ear and listen. That would be me. And the stuff people say!

You can almost guess what pills people are on by the things they say, their level of ignoring decorrum. You hear all kinds of various sputter. This about who and what and listen, tell me your story? I hear it. I remember it all. I don't know anything. I don't give you my current situation. What does it matter if I have a job or not? Am I on business? Why the hell not? I act like I am taking 20000 fotographs on my camera: weed blowing in the california wind. moss covered rotting pine tree at Dardenelles. Yosemite bicycle smashed in a gully. Rockslide on route whatever it is. Santa Cruz seal under the wharf. Country and Western Music Cassette in the dirt on the side of the highway.

Yes, California is an interesting place. I did witness and document the Bay to Breakers parade-route party. I did cliche things like go to Yosemite. I spent a night in a low-grade Santa Clara hotel. I took pictures of pine trees shillotted against the foothills in gold country in the early morning. all this stuff. And thought of some new story ideas. Thought of a great title for a storie and have, in fact, started writing it. But today and yesterday I've been doing home things.

And with Pictures to come!

Better to not even be in that crowd and wanting to say something to counter the idiocy that is being spouted by stage-talkers.

~ OK Now.

May 19, 2011

The Susquahanna River, Pennsylvania from
last fall.


  If she was bothered by the wind
  she didn't let on about it.
    I listen to her drone on for a long hour
      then another. Then another.

  When you sign up for these things
    you never know what you're getting yourself into.
  And I've never enjoyed the company
    of chatty female strangers
      without their men
      no matter how pretty they are.
      
  But if she were silent.
     She'd direct her silence against the
      bare soul cliff-face heart ache
    masking itself as bubbles and sun-bows
     
     did I see
      unicorns dancing in the bulevard?
    20,000 kids drinking for the day?
     who's that naked?
    I'm not printing that picture here.

  finally when she batted me on the arm
    I let into her, really let her know what I think.
   There's all of us here.
   We've all had to wait all day to get this far.
   And no one else
    wants to hear 
    anymore from her
 so why doesn't she just
     shut up.

  I don't like to 
    loose my cool
   in front of strangers
  and possible mystic
   fellow travelers
  out over the storm
  with rough weather
  and silent thoughts
   of the holy dead.


   

     from Poems 189