Of Note: Self-Portrait In Ink

by Bruce Beasley

As the gone-
translucent

octopus
jet-blasts into evasion, vanishing

while its ink-sac spurts
a cloud of defensive

mucus & coagulant
azure-black pigment,

self-shaped
octopus imago in ink, so the shark

gnashes at that blobbed
sepia phantom,

pseudomorph
that disperses into black

nebulae & shreds
with each shark-strike

& the escaped
octopus throbs

beyond, see-through
in the see-through water, untouched--:

so, go
little poem, little

ink-smudge-on-fingertip
&-print, mimicker


& camouflage,
self-getaway, cloud-

scribble, write
out my dissipating

name on the water,
emptied sac of self-illusive ink...

____

This is a love story; and
bitter prayer, in disappointment to
be more than
I have been.

The Fall...again

As I sit in turmoil over my novel, scratching out the words like my fingernail's etching on a rock, quieting my madness in hopes of grace each morning in the sacred space over the what nexts...
As I labor away whole entire days in the back room of Ocean Pines cataloguing poetry and editing and envisioning this chapbook of mine...

Ha ha ha the Duende. Ah god the sacred devil, o here we go again anyway, in this epic eternal artistic creation and battle of self vs self...as always the descent brings, in the fall...

Last year around this time me and this guy were all jazzed up about the Duende.

Now Icarus, who's been in and out of my head as of late, shows up today on Mike's blog and the conversation starts again... It is this, the Duende, the descent-ion of Presence that so enraptures, no? That avowes us of the devotion towards the act of soaring. That in-moment bliss thing. But to get there yes we first must meet every flaming sword at the gate, every masked form of burden and challenge our egos devise and create as our selves in demon form. Fear is the Devil, as Erika has said...if only it were that simple? Which fixture do we operate from, is the golden medicine injested today, in front of screen, that which will make me yeild to the riches or poison me in my steps? Right now writing five fucking pages feels like pushing boulders through a peehole...so you tell me. What if the demon of self is pride? What if it's pride that says the answer is to not be fearful--conviction of knowing the answer... Then of course I fall before the sun. What if the demon is our angel, too? As me: self-awareness=Self-obsession.

It's all the same. I don't know the answer, I know only that I am born of this, to this, obsession. I want the grace that comes with yielding as much as it delivers the bliss of catching an upwell of wind: floating on the air because hard work suddenly made me hit that right curve with such divine precision that it all, every bloody cut step and bruise was worth it. But maybe not? Last winter was so intense, the introspection, that my dear friend Beth actually likened me to Campbell Scott's cracked-up character on Singles after they trash his supertrain plan and he loses Kyra Sedgwick and locks himself in his place for like three weeks and doesn't shower and only eats pizza off cold greasy flat cardboard boxends. Maybe it was all that snow? The lack of light? I dont know. My wings got singed. For suuuure.

Ahh, to soulspeak and the writing nuts. Ah to the crazy mad tribe. Ahh, to the circles, to a new ethics of fearlessness...? As it goes...and here we go...

Go Here

What's Rad: Courier Knew

She was mad on my mind yesterday at work: I was lusting over Vogue and my imagination was getting so epically inspired... She lives in me because of poetry, because of poet-heart, because of the heart we therefor live within...

She keeps her own blog, it is snapshot style and concise, which is how she is. Close-fitting and circled-in which is what you get if you dictionary.com the word succinct for other words that mean the same. She frames things the right way with a quick glance, she is accurate each step that she goes and then she puts things together, later, frame by frame. Not like me who is one long spondown wind of abstraction trying to get to the final "right".

This is her blog, READ IT! or experience her snapshots rather, at Courier Knew.

Today is her birthday it turns out, of course it is...

We met in 2007 at Ben's, I guess. There are vague memories of going to his place for spaghetti one night after teaching ESL, me in my work clothes anyway. She was there, she was a blond no make-up ponytail girl which at the time was a tough road to tow around our allnaturalbeyourself (butonlyaslongasyourcool!) kind-of-friends. You know to not have a practiced paticularity about you or whatever. Sam and I danced tossy-style jitterbug together like we always did and also I looked at alot of Banjo magazines that night, if there is such a thing. I remember reading an article about the Clash.

Later, this probably would've been in the fall, we truly met the day I walked in to apply at the Blue Heron Cafe and go to work for Paul. Kirsten was vaccuming the floor.

I think of her every fall now, the way I think of diPrima and Libby, and what secrets are sitting in the trees. The way I think of trees.

That was the season I waited tables and wrote poems to Josh that were actually sign-markers to my self that I was trying to learn how to position, and hold. Poetry is like that, or can be, if you let it talk from your soul. Kir and I used to get over-caffeinated in the Blue Heron kitchen and talk and talk about art and poems and writing plays together and performing and mythic imagination and lying to your self and how this all happened and why did it happen and it did, anyhow, and it also helped the art and poetry to be internally conflicted and most of all, we talked about men. I was on the verge of myself in a new way that I had always wanted to be. In a way that scared me and instigated from me a flight-response that is classic Aries-Kelly of charging blindly ahead. Ramhearted as I am. She was getting her masters and on the verge of what next in career and all those weird creeks and spaces that that can cause. Her passion back then for fault lines and shifting ground. Most of all, also, there was nothing more in life that season than art and darkness and loving the art we were spiraling out of from that darkness within.

As said, I've always always had great love for her. This time last year I sent her an email at random after months of no contact to say hey why dont you come see Brandi Carlile play with me. We both needed Brandi, it turned out, I for coming to terms with moving on and she for the same: yes, always about the men. Brandi played at Rams Head Live and threw a pick in to the crowd and it bounced off Kir's broken heart and landed on the ground. All the lesbians battled for it but Kir just bent down put her hand in to the mass of feet and legs and retrieved the momento easily and handed it to me. A totem now, I keep it in my writing bag with all my USB's.

She is happy, in Canton now, with birds in her hair and our funny man hearts, wink wink Kir my dear friend. I check in on her energy when I quiet and pray or trance or meditate just like I do all my k-nnected friends. But she will always be above most the rest bc of the poetry in her, and memories of starting over in the fall. Starting over, how it comes from reflecting on the bounty of who and how and where and what you been as you root down to take hold and turn over fresh again.

She is friend, who makes me better at me. I am thinking of her today, today birthday today fall today collecting here collecting me collecting her today today today...Today, celebrating You! Gratitude gratefullness grace and space and place for this, poetry and hearts of the matter, Dear Friend...

MAGIC In The Air Today...

Happy first day of fall!

The sun enters Libra tonight at 11:09 pm, eastern. This is the autumn equinox, time of light and dark in balance.

It is also the full moon tonight, or early tomorrow, at 5:17am eastern.

The moon is in Aries, initiatory fire sign of impulse, action and change. The sun moves in to Libra, initiatory air sign. Air signs rule consciousness and creative energy.

Aries and Libra are both cardinal, meaning they bring energy of change. That is what the spring and fall are about...changing. Aries in the spring is fire which transforms, Libra in the fall is air which, like breath, creates from the depths of who we are.

The equinox is the time of balance at harvest--so to harness this energy we take time to reflect on the season that has just passed, and with reflection allow what we learned about ourselves to take hold. It is this new knowledge that will now initiate for us, and initiation will really permeate if we take the time to be grateful. The season of gratitude and blessing counting, of going within with knowledge of our light, begins now.

Happy Fall! Blessings to all, amen amen amen...

List: What's Rad. CarrotCore.

In my Book of Awesomeness in my imagination we are building a dream world of subversive ever-ongoing creative flourishment and this is the new reality, pre-dawn, ahead of always creating destiny, we are shapeshifters this our amusement and our only prayers... O imagination o imagination, o blessed holy sacred tribe of cool...
O only religion that I have...

Meet Carrot, from I'M NOT AFRAID OF WINTER. Look at this amazing poetmadness movie she done made!