Audience of One

I am asked sometimes, "do you still write poetry?" Sure, when there's a poem to be written. Most of the time, there's something to "be done" and if it's the laundry, then I do the laundry. If it's yard work, I pull some weeds. I am fortunate to have a husband that understands the artist in me and he encourages me to do whatever I see fit. We had a conversation not too long ago....we've been married now for 43 years give or take and he's never been under the illusion that I'd be some kind of straight up wife type (but if you hum a few bars I'll fake it). I said to him that sometimes I wish I was like real artists and poets and had dedicated more energy to publishing (photos, poems, etcetera) and I realized (total epiphany, the kind that you always said but didn't really believe but then you say, wow That! yes!) ...that being a mom, a wife, a cook and "chief bottle washer" was just as important and allowed just as much creativity to flow as anything else. Of course, like all art it can also be done poorly and without craft or enthusiasm.

I read this morning somewhere or someplace (on the interWEBS haha) that someone local said a poem doesn't exist until it is published or read out loud which could be said about anything that one wants to share....like a lovely cauliflower stew or a collection of lovely, well-tended pieces of pottery (made by someone else...and I finally purchased and constructed a console table to show off my collection, took me four effing hours to put that thing together). You do want someone to taste and feel the pleasure of the meal, to enjoy the cleanly swept front porch, pee in the shining porcelain receptacle of the Gods. I do not believe that another person is very much interested in how that toilet ended up so miraculous or how the poem was constructed line by line in order to insure that the reader stumbles over the words

"I am

-pretty too"

in order that they should be led, misled and then led back into the thought process with special trickery. And sure, I can give you a recipe for cauliflower stew but I cannot teach you to how to cook anymore than I can know if you like cauliflower. In other words: my standards and preferences as any kind of producer of any kind of work are what matters. It's all that should matter to anyone who is serious about any thing.

I take great issue with the type of self-absorbed mummery involved with a statement like, "oh until it is published it doesn't exist". I sense that the person who said it was trying to say "something important" because, well. People expect poets to have some sort of special power to issue decrees and such.

I decree: when I eat my cauliflower stew, I'm much more interested in how that stew makes ME feel inside, how important that hint of seven spice really is to ME ME ME. I'll sit there the next day with a bowl of leftovers and just languish in the glory of my creation..... albeit if someone else likes it, that's good too. Same for poetry. Any artist who truly understands their own production knows this and by knowing it, has conquered the biggest critic of all: themself. Mean Joe Green a former mentor that I used to interact with quite extensively taught me this, the idea of a poet's "audience of one". He also coined the phrase, "Look, a war all about her." (after the incursion in 2006). It was perhaps the best gift I ever received from him and sadly, continue to receive it now as Gaza is being leveled. The sad gift that keeps on giving.

This little ditty was written in 2006, on 16th Terrace/Center and won a little prize and honorable mention in a group that no longer exists called the Interboard Poetry Contest. Back when message boards and in particular, poetry critique circles performed surgical interventions on poems for other poets and probably destroyed some seriously pristine and honest work. It is one of the last times I ever bothered to submit a poem (save for.a stint of sending things off for $5-10 entry fees and receiving in return, rejection after rejection and saying to myself, if I want to give away five bucks, I'll send it to a Monrovian scammer instead...at least someone might eat 2 oz of macaroni instead of 1). That summer I read the poem "To Beirut" at Central School. I dressed in BHS school colors and had pom-poms (I dreamt of being a cheerleader way back in high school)...the poem features the Fight Song Onward Bisbee Onward Bisbee yadayadayada which, I actually sang to the audience.

Yeah, I still write a poem here and there but more importantly, I am happiest when I make something magic out of nothing. Like a kid with a magic wand, no one else has to believe in magic or for that matter, like cauliflower for me to know that as a human being, the Creator thought pretty highly of us humans, perhaps thought more of us than we even think of ourselves. We were created with free will and the ability to use our intellect in ways that dumbfound the rest of us and even, ourselves. We are given hearts and eyes and ears and taste buds if we only knew how astounding that when the Creator created us, the Creator said:

..even better than the angels.

Sure wish some folks would wake up to that human responsibility right now.

The Song of Bob

-MSwaid

(for Fred Tarr and the Radio Room)

The love affair with stangers began

with morning glories between us, Bob

went to work at the prison at 6:30

as the birds performed their last songs.

He quieted Sarge, Berry and Coco with biscuits

before he left with his radio

on, yet they started barking before

he reached the first stop sign.

I want to be his wife forever they thought,

I thought and we kept barking,

as we chased his car for all time in our minds.

Bob talks to his ex 1500 minutes a month,

he doesn't seem to mind the cost of his past tense.

Why didn't you just stay married? I am

pretty too behind this fence made of chain-mail.

Twenty-one years is all he says

from the screened-in back porch where he keeps

his old partners, ex-police dogs, his detritus.

It is as if 21 years is the official

Americana. There must be one

hundred morning glories from me

to Bob, outflanking the trees

choking them slowly. Bob wants me

to be his wife forever, waiting in my war

torn house next door so he can get home

from prison to say goodnight and wake up

again to say good morning all over.

I am the last sweetheart in town.