Permeable

I have to teach myself again to love
this: the fall of sound on sound, like gravel
trailing, streaming, steaming dust from where
the climber's foot just pressed and left behind
the shape of its own absence. There's some-
thing in me forgot, that thought the words
inside, unvoiced, divorced from sound, could live--
as if a root divorced from earth could


Wait, though. That's not it. 

                             I hear
the green sprout snap, while egg-
shaped leaves float, unsuspended, free of sense
above a ground all silently ascream.

Is that just what I meant?

When stolid, solid, soil-bound, brown and dank 
with rot and my own sense of gravity--where else?
The petals yellow-golden, pink as flesh
pulsate, vibrate to send the message down
to my subterran brain. Why not? Where else?

There must be holes. There must be tunnels in
from both sides of a boundary. Any one.
Nothing gets through without a broken gate.

Not sound, not sense. Not beauty. Even rain.

"Because It's Probably True": First non-sonnet post

Because It's Probably True


If suddenly the room burst into flames
orange ivy climbed the curtains
black clouds rolled up and out
and hair floating on waves of heat
crinkled, shrunk away


while everyone obliviously slunk
between table and chair
 bedroom and bath
   beer tub snack bowl
("Nice party, what's this dip?")
while at their backs
a cataclysm
only I could (in this problem)
see--


It takes an effort of
 imagination
to feel my arms go up
to see my jaw drop
to
 (hypothetically)
    taste soot
          ozone
          methane
          new sweat
on my dry tongue
taking the breath with
which I'll shout:


"Hey! Fire!"




I've always been the quiet one.


Of course once if I edging toward the door
 a dampened napkin pressed
   under my nose
saw that
no one
had noticed
(incredibly)
the
    blackening ceiling
    the cd player plastic bubbling
        like Yosemite mud
(I know, but just bear with me)
nothing except
       perhaps
some dizziness
and the fact that the softwhite sandwiches
suddenly
are toasted


then of course would I pop the lock
murmuring, as I stepped outside
to cool air
  wet grass
  green trees
that someone maybe ought to call somebody
and I've had a great time, thanks,
but by the way, some of you might think about


leaving


because it's getting late
and a work night
and the kitchen is on fire and
after all, no one wants to be an ash, hahaha--


But seriously.




I would do it.
If I had to.


But even in this dream it ends
like this:


everyone turning to stare
and smirk or frown or pucker their lips
and (even
         as their flesh
                        cooks off their bones


)


thinking


"Well. Someone
needs


attention."

Sonnet Boy Comes Out: Reflections on the End of the Sonnet Project

by Scott Standridge, aka "Sonnet Boy"


(photo by David W. Quinn)


Number 365 fucked me up.

I hadn't really expected it. In the days leading up to that sonnet, that goal I'd been working toward so tenaciously for almost exactly a year, of course I'd begun to feel nostalgic for the daily writing experience in which I was still involved but to which I would shortly say adieu. I wondered happily what it would be like finally to reach that goal; whether I would feel its absence when I stopped, like a hole in the fabric of my day that used to be patched by cloths of various colors--sometimes gray, sometimes black, often brown, but occasionally a surprising splash of color that made the whole swath seem more brilliant.

Yes, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.

And why not? I was close to completing a project that, though I'd started it more or less on a whim, had grown into a fairly monumental hunk of work. By challenging myself and being unforgiving about the rules I'd set at the beginning (a new sonnet a day, every day, no matter what; no piling up sonnets to give myself a day off; posting online required, no matter how bad the final product), I'd assembled, amalgamated, and otherwise conglomerated what amounted to a poetic journal of my internal life for one entire loop around the sun. By holding myself to it, there near the end I had already written more than twice as many sonnets as Shakespeare--Shakespeare! Allowing the obvious quality vs. quantity argument, I still couldn't help thinking that was something to be proud of.

(Side note: it's a complete coincidence that the last day of the Project fell on April 23, which is generally considered to be both Shakespeare's birthday and date of death. I'd love to be able to say I planned it that way, but I didn't. Sometimes you're just lucky.)

So as The Sonnet Project drew to a close, I was pretty comfortable with the idea that, whatever the quality of individual sonnets, I'd more or less managed to prove my professor's point: I hadn't written 365 bad sonnets in a row. Oh, I'd written bad sonnets, lots of them--they're not hard to find, a few clicks on the "Go to a Random Sonnet" link should be sufficient to prove that...or hell, even a scroll down the front page--but I'd written a lot that were not too bad at that, and even a few that I thought might actually be pretty good. And to be fair, not all of Shakespeare's efforts were masterpieces either.

They can't all be gems. Even when you're the Bard.

(A quick aside about that professor: I've always attributed the offhand comment about writing a sonnet a day as a good method for mastering the form to the University of Arkansas's Skip Hayes, a novelist and short story writer of well-deserved reputation who taught a couple of classes I was lucky enough to take. However, I've come to recognize the attribution as problematic, since a) I'm not sure now I was ever in a writing class he taught, and b) if I was, I'm pretty sure it wasn't for writing poetry. Still, somehow he's become the avatar of the idea for me, and it's still possible he said it. I'm blaming him, anyway, justified or not.)

(Another quick aside, this time about the project's genesis. Readers of the blog who are not in fact people I see regularly in real life--I think there might be one or two of you out there--might well ask the question a few of my RL friends have asked long since: why sonnets? Well, the fact is I've always loved formal poetry, for a couple of reasons. The first is, I like the idea of poetry as song--and while I admire people who do free verse well, I haven't read very many I can dance to. Sound good? Well, it's half a lie--the fact is, I do read and enjoy free verse, all the time--you pretty much have to, if you want to read much poetry these days--and I read plenty that's exuberant and musical--though it still seems to me the difference between a structured blues tune and free-form jazz. I admire creative improvisation, but I also like a good 1-4-5 chord progression; it's comfortable, and it still gives you room to bare your soul. And to paraphrase a great poet, Jack Butler, "you don't have to invent the guitar while you're playing it."

(But the real reason I chose sonnets is b) I can do them. I've tried free verse. I filled notebooks with it in high school, notebooks that still sit bundled in the attic of my parents' house, their duo-tangs rusting, dusty and accusatory as buried bodies. Maybe someday I'll pull them out and look at them, but most of the time I figure it's better some things are forgotten. The fact is, I suck at free verse. I know it. I can prove it. I can't solo over an instrumental break. But--BUT--I can hold down a rhythm. I can strum. I know the chords. And what's more, I like to. No six-string pyrotechnics for me--just comfortable blues.

(I have a lot more to say about form--how the openness of free verse so often leads to over-indulgence and bloat--many poets, bad ones mostly, use the lack of structure as an excuse to explode; and while this can be beautiful, more often it's just messy. I could talk, for instance, about how the restrictions of a metric line force you to be creative and critical, both of words and of the ideas under them, in ways that you wouldn't be otherwise. My favorite sonnets in the Project--and this happened A LOT--were ones where a metrical or rhyme requirement forced me to rethink what I was trying to say, and through that rethinking I discovered something deeper and more truthful that would have remained buried otherwise--something that fit. There's a reason formal poetry has survived so long, in my opinion, and this is it. But this quick aside is too long already, proving my point about the danger of overindulgence when there's no restriction.)

Over the course of the year I felt I'd done just about all I could. I'd written a lot of so-called "light verse," even though I think that term is a little denigrating, as if poetry that makes you smile is somehow less useful than that which makes you cry. (Jack Butler, with whom I've had the honor of corresponding, compared the poet to a singer, and pointed out that singers are entertainers--therefore, why shouldn't a poem entertain? Why is that not a sufficient goal for the poem? Life is funny--or can be, if you let it.) I'd written a great deal of love poetry, and more than my share about sex. I'd written narrative poems, short stories in 14 lines, that when they came together made me feel like a storyteller as well as a poet (and in a variety of genres too: horror, of course--here's my fave of those, the one I think was most successful--as well as noir [another fave], science-fiction, and Southern-fried mainstream/literary [its own genre, with conventions as rigid as Romance]). I'd written painfully revealing personal memoirs, celebrations of nature, a political protest poem, and even attempted to raise cubicle life to the level of poetry. Plus many other experiments--mostly failed--that I couldn't categorize. I even created my own goddamn sonnet form! My point is, I'd covered a lot of ground.

And it hadn't always been easy. I remember one night, on vacation, sitting scrunched against the bathtub in a tiny hotel bathroom at 11:45 p.m., scribbling madly in my notebook to beat the midnight deadline (resulting poem here, for better or worse). One poem I wrote in a car between my best friend's house and the restaurant where we were having dinner--a friend I see maybe once a year, and who I'd rather have been visiting with--but by then I knew that when inspiration struck, I had to grab it (resulting poem here; whether worth it or not). And the hardest, when I was nearly delirious with a bacterial infection that made me so dizzy I could barely sit up, producing by any standards one of the worst sonnets of the year (here--but I wrote one, damn it!). And then the days the poems just wouldn't come--inspiration nowhere to be found, the muses buggered off to Greece, and me slamming words together like mismatched blocks. It was tough, sometimes.

But then, sometimes, everything just clicked and in less than half an hour I'd have something I thought was a little jewel, and that made me feel like a real honest-to-God poet. Like that swatch of fabric that ties the whole day together. There are a few. I'll let you find them, if you're interested enough to dig.

They can't all be gems; but then again, well--some of them can.

So as I approached #365, I did so with a mix of nostalgia and relief. It would be nice to be finished. It would be relaxing, not worrying all day long about where my material was coming from. It'd be cool, for a change, to be able to kick back after dinner and turn on the tube rather than breaking out the notebook. I'd no longer have to run from the kids to the silence of our bedroom, nor shush my wife until I was finished with the day's offering ("I just have the couplet to go, Hon, honest--just, please, just give me a few goddamn minutes here..."). The Project was practically done; I'd done it. I was looking forward to the end.

And then it came: the Last Day. I'd been turning over ideas for the farewell sonnet for a while (not writing it--that'd be against the rules, as I said--but still thinking about options for how I might attack it). I wanted it to be good, but I knew that if I tried to make it Super Special, I'd likely just end up ruining it. I hadn't written 364 sonnets in a row thinking I had to knock it out of the park every day, after all. Stick with the method, I told myself--do your best, get it down, and get it out.

In the end I settled on making it a little song--which those who know the man's work can clearly see owes more than a little to Tom Waits's "Take It With Me" from the monumental Mule Variations album--as a way of saying goodbye to my readers, goodbye to the Project, and goodbye to that part of myself that I'd invested in this curious endeavor.

It came to me rather quickly. I probably wrote and revised the whole thing in about twenty minutes. I logged in to my Blogger account, typed it in, spell-checked it, and hit "post."

And then I started to cry.

Seriously. Out of nowhere, the tears were running down my cheeks. I had posted during my lunch hour at work--yes, I did some of my writing at work; when inspiration struck, I had to get it down--and suddenly I was on the verge of becoming a sobbing mess. I left the building, mustering as much composure as I could, went out to my car and sat in the front seat, openly weeping. I felt kind of silly--even as I sobbed, I couldn't pin down what it was exactly I was crying about. Maybe part of it was the maudlin sentiment in that last quatrain, the farewell that could be for lost friends, or dead relatives, or your own squandered youth. But that wasn't all of it. I mean, I like #365, but even when I wrote it I knew it wasn't that good. And while I am a big sentimental softie, I think I'm immune enough to my own stuff not to blubber every time I think of a lost puppy in the rain.

But I couldn't stop. For maybe ten minutes I surrendered to the tears, the last lines of The Project running through my head. Eventually I regained my composure, straightened myself up, and came back inside to finish my day at work.

In the days since, I'm still a little mystified by my reaction there at the end. All I can figure is that the Project--which I really did start more on a whim than anything, a "let's see if I can do this" dare with myself--had achieved such a place of importance to me that coming to the end was really like saying goodbye. I'd experienced a similar crying jag only once, when on my last day of my junior year abroad in Cambridge, England, literally in the middle of a sentence about something meant to be funny, I was ambushed by sobs and broke down in my college friends' arms. And while the reason then was easy to understand--many of those people, dear friends and companions all, I knew I would never see again--the way it surprised and overwhelmed me was the same. Because I guess in that case I'd been concentrating on not thinking about leaving, because otherwise I'd have been unable to pack and go.

The happy ending is that I did go back to England, two years later. (Even wrote a poem about it.) And while it's true you can't really go back, I did see some of my old friends, which was sad in its way but also wonderful. And if The Sonnet Project has held a similar place for me emotionally--this effort into which I'd put more of myself than I'd realized until that last moment--then maybe I'll come back some day. Maybe even today. Or tomorrow.

Life since the end of the Project has been surprisingly unsurprising. It's rather amazing, really, how easy it was to fall out of the habit of writing every day; how quickly other things rush in to fill that space where the poetry used to be. And disheartening too--but then again, it just proves that if you want to be creative, it doesn't come easy. You have to struggle for it. At least when you're an adult, with kids and a day job and the sundry all-consuming responsibilities everyone somehow manages on a daily basis. When you're a kid, a student, it's easier.

So don't grow up, kids. It sucks.

Funny thing is, I still don't know if I'm a poet. I don't really feel like one; I just feel like a guy who wrote a bunch of poems. In my mind, that's a distinction.

But I am proud of what I've done. I think I've got something here. I think I might be able to do something with parts of it. But whether I do or not seems kind of extraneous right now--the creating of the stuff is one thing, the doing stuff with it is a separate thing. They're not the same process. Obviously--I mean, we don't live in a society where you can write to a waiting audience when you're a sonneteer. It's a solitary thing, something you have to do for yourself. And I did it. I did it. It's done.

But it's not, really. I'm still doing it.

And that's the best thing, really. Still to be doing it.

#365: April 23, 2007

Don't say goodbye--it sounds too much like death,
and I will not be called upon to grieve.
Let's sing together till we've lost our breath,
and take a little with us when we leave.

Please understand, I've tried to do my best
with every bit of hope I've come upon.
The time has come to stop a while, and rest--
so take a little with you once I've gone.

May all your paths be crooked, and the bends
reveal at each turn something grand and new;
may you die old, surrounded by your friends
who love you just as deeply as I do.

We'll meet again--though when, we cannot know;
so take a little with you, when you go.

#364: April 22, 2007

My feet propped up, a cold beer on my thigh,
lawn freshly mowed, my shirt still damp with sweat,
and dinner coming soon, but not here yet;
I sip and belch and watch the world go by.

I brush a fat mosquito from my jaw
and savor my mild alcoholic haze,
while in the west, the sun's departing rays
turn clouds purple and pink, like Mardis Gras.

There's something fraught with meaning on the breeze,
with daytime done, and darkness just a hint
of shadow underneath the spreading trees;
but search for Truth can wait--the Spring is here,
its flow'red gown on the bosom of the year,
and soon enough we'll wonder where it went.

#363: April 21, 2007

How does he do it? Just seven years old,
and already an expert at discord.
His blue-eyed glare makes parents' veins go cold;
he cuts down to the dark blood with a word.

With sadistic precision, lashing out,
he somehow hits exactly the right things
to murder my restraint--I twitch and shout
and twist, a puppet strangling on his strings.

I know one day maturity will come
as much to ripen him as rescue me;
so make haste, dotage, pull us safely from
this grim morass of young hostility.

And if I'm senile when the fighting ends,
at least my son and I might part as friends.

#362: April 20, 2007

A Roman candle, fuse smoldering low,
hot balls of colored fire all set to fly.
The strokes count down: five-four-three-two-one--go!
It sprays across the bosom of the sky.

A cannon packed with pearls and powdered milk,
its load primed for a target hard to see;
a rod of glass rubbed with a swatch of silk,
just tingling full of electricity.

The roar--the load delivered miles away!
The charge--discharged with sudden, crackling might!
One splatters on the mountains, streaks the clay;
the other shocks to shivers, heat and light!

Bazookas, silos, smokestacks, volcanoes--
it means something...but what? Nobody knows.

#361: April 19, 2007

Out in the field, a throng of wildflowers:
each lifts the tiny burden of its head
unsteadily, and spatters drops of red
upon green blades, as though some claw had scoured
the meadow's skin, rubbed raw; nothing beside
but sparse, elongated shadows of trees
that twitch and lock their branches in the breeze
to sieve the light, and show the fawn earth pied.

A minute's walk returns me to my chair,
computer screen, and three blank, not-quite walls;
fluorescent bulbs banish the shadows' play,
and black glass separates the here from there--
too thick to hear the flitting songbirds' call,
too dark to watch the sunlight fade away.

#360: April 18, 2007

Name anyone--now, when you take a breath,
one of his atoms flies into your lungs.
All history parades across our tongues,
and every exhalation conquers death.

For matter, not created nor destroyed,
but changed only in form, must then persist;
and all who existed must still exist,
though parts of them be differently employed.

Therefore, long after I take my last taste
of Einstein, Shakespeare, Lincoln and the rest,
and go to particles--don't be distressed,
my love, for nothing in us goes to waste:

In breasts unformed, in breaths untaken, we
will be together, elementally.

#359: April 17, 2007

Forgive me, love, for what is it infects
my sometime thoughts; for when I draw away
to force you come to me; for when I lay
apart, seething your sleep; where intersects
desire and almost-hate--what can it be
that drives me punish she who keeps me safe,
who shields me as from hot machinegun strafe
with just her naked flesh? Love, forgive me.

What's unlovely in me should not intrude,
but does--and nothing in me can explain
how, when you lie against me, warm and nude,
down in the very joining-place of you
and me, how any meanness could remain
so untransformed--I know not, what I do.

#358: April 16, 2007

Hid in the roots of that thunderstruck oak,
black with disease, pus boiling from his skin,
sits Sigur's toad--who for his namesake's sin
has crouched there since that dark day he awoke.

His fiery tongue, as fell as any dart
impregnated with venom, chokes his throat.
The earth grows rotten from his fetid bloat,
this cancer in the forest's living heart.

And there he'll squat, caked in poisonous mud
where weeds grow yellow and no creature dwells
(the stink of him keeps even flies at bay),
until a maiden born of Sigur's blood
can lift the curse (though how, no legend tells)--
and then, like ice, the beast will melt away.

#357: April 15, 2007

Somewhere down in the catacombs that lie
beneath this manor house like spiders' webs,
all labyrinthine--where the stale air ebbs
and flows, like breath of monsters soon to die,
you'll find the Viscount's tomb. Look for his mark:
a raven on a red field strewn with bones.
Remove his banner, lay aside the stones:
the secret you seek sleeps there in the dark.

But do not go if you've a dread of death--
live out your days in ordinary time!
For something conscious shifts there in the slime
that hasn't been the Viscount these ten year.
A dead man's wares are never bought but dear.
Listen--the tunnels echo with his breath...

#356: April 14, 2007

When I came back, the fields were just as green
as two years past. The buildings were the same.
The old faces peeked out among the new,
but slightly changed. And though your words were kind,
the spaces in between them stretched too long,
the friendly clasp of fingers broke to soon.
Already, then, you were forgetting me.

Later, alone, as I wandered between
college and house, a thing I couldn't name
turned my steps toward the back fields, where the blue
cold light and waist-high weeds bent and entwined.
I shed my clothes--for, naked, we belong
to just ourselves. Beneath that foreign moon
I walked back, silent, like a refugee.

#355: April 13, 2007

"Young counselors of Crystal Lake, beware!
Jason Voorhees is prowling on the bank.
He can't be stopped, he moves just like a tank;
He doesn't think, and therefore doesn't care.

"His meaty paws have snapped uncounted necks,
His machete cuts campers down to size;
He'll shove those pruning shears into your eyes
while you lie naked, waiting on hot sex.

"His mom might shove an arrow through your throat,
but he'll just bend you backward like a hinge.
If half-drowned, rotting retards make you cringe
you'd best not go anywhere near that boat!

"Impaled or gutted, smashed against a tree--
you're doomed, kids, DOOMED!" Old Ralph said. "Wait and see!"

#354: April 12, 2007

"Look, I'll make you a deal: just shut yer trap,
or else I'll shut it for you. How's that sound?
One way, you keep that dame across your lap;
the harder way's a hot date with the ground.

"What now, a heater? Second time today
some gunsel's thought the gat in his right hand's
the whole world by the tail. What can I say?
This type, a beatdown's all he understands.

"Here, gimme that! You're gonna hurt someone.
Now what to do, since Plan A just got scrapped?
Somebody's always giving me his gun.
Punk, you'll take it and like it when you're slapped!

"C'mon, let's see if Gutman comes across.
This'll put you in solid with your boss."

#353: April 11, 2007

The trick is looking busy every moment;
the actual business barely enters in.
Hard work and deadlines met pass without comment;
Appearing to be idle? Mortal sin!

So cultivate a deep, thoughtful expression:
set eyes asquint and knit those heavy brows.
Better go blind than make the wrong impression--
less seen, the less suspicion you'll arouse.

Hold paragraphs of jargon at the ready:
a baffled boss keeps projects off your plate.
Drop lines of code, delib'rate, slow and steady,
and never finish early or leave late.

'Cause what you do just doesn't count for beans,
so long as what you're doing can be seen.

#352: April 10, 2007

Look, no one here's your friend. The enemy
is all around, just waiting to attack.
They finger bloody knives behind your back--
the only difference is one of degree.

There's some who wouldn't stretch to cause you pain,
but likewise would not help except for pay;
and others who, depending on their day,
would crush you even absent promised gain.

And then there's that sadistic, scheming class
who make it their life's work to crush young dreams;
through great expense and convoluted schemes
they plot your ruin--they're after your ass.

So best cast off that idealistic blindness--
for Time has soured the milk of human kindness.

#351: April 9, 2007

I've got to pluck the gray hairs from my beard;
it's not a case of vanity at all.
To be so shallow surely would appall,
and aged wisdom's hardly to be feared.

Rather, the case is one for seeming neat.
A lone white curl 'mongst whiskers brown and black
appears a remnant of my morning snack,
a souvenir of what I've had to eat.

Therefore with tweezers and these close-chewed nails
I seek out the offenders on my face.
I rip and tear 'til there remains no trace;
small scissors serve where such extraction fails.

If it makes me look younger, that's a plus
unsought--so let's just keep this between us.

#350: April 8, 2007

Go on and pour me two glasses of wine;
I'll tell you when I need some more to drink.
'Cause lately it's been hurting me to think--
a few more snorts of this and I'll be fine.

There's brisker pipes than poetry for dance,
Old Terence said before he had to die.
He was my friend--I can't think he would lie;
so quaff quintessence while you've got the chance.

Our life's enjoyment lasts but for a season,
and Death's duration is eternity.
Why not enjoy a cocktail, maybe three?
They call the thing a "liver" for a reason!

I've heard the grave's a private place, and nice;
but just try getting tonic there, or ice.

#349: April 7, 2007

Where that old bait shop was by Potter's Creek
is now the First Communion Church of Christ.
The Pastor gives his sermon every week
over by where they kept the livers iced.

The smell of minnows still hangs in the air
along with words of redemption and sin;
the odor's just a cross they have to bear
who want to learn to be fishers of men.

The Pastor uses God's love as a lure
to draw them in, and often that works well;
but he can also howl at those impure
whose souls flop toward the frying pan of Hell.

For most folks, worms and spinners get the bite;
but now and then you need some dynamite.