(Leopold Bloom at U., original drawing by DWB)
Transformed
Moments of transformation have been the stuff of literature ever since there was literature, and even before there was what we call literature, only the raw materials of literature (language, experience, and imagination) being shared around the campfire, and probably, at a deep, internal, and shared level, even before there were campfires.
This small offering with three titles (below) is my contribution to the language and literature of transformation, not that I haven’t tried it before and won’t try it again, too.
But here I think I managed to capture it pretty good.
I don’t know where the Muse comes from for any of us. But I do know that muses do exist, with both capital and small M’s; and I do know too that poetry itself is the original art, the biggest art, the most common art, the rarest art, the simplest art, the deepest art, the widest-ranging art, the hardest art, the easiest art, the most neglected art, the longest-lasting art, the poorest-paying art, the purest art (in its purest forms), and the most relatable art, for everyone, of all.
Everyone’s last words are poetry. So are their first ones. Harold Bloom rightly called Jesus the poetry of America. Miguel de Cervantes used to stalk through the streets of whatever city he lived in at the time, searching for words, looking for poetry.
In the last few decades of his life, Pablo Picasso started pumping out a LOT of poetry, and went so far as to go around telling everyone he knew that he wasn’t really a painter, he was a poet, and that thousands of years from now, no one would even remember his paintings and drawings – but they would remember his poetry.
I have absolutely no idea whether that is true or not.
All I know is that Pablo was a genius on the level of Einstein, or probably higher – and he said it.
Everyone else can turn into a machine if they want to.
I’m gonna remain human.
Signed,
The Drifter
Poetry The Teacher, Or:
New Knowledge, Or:
The Invisible Blue Butterfly Forever
I was walking
around in their house
trying to clean
my pipe
with a broken coat hanger
when it happened
and I literally
dropped my pipe and
the coat hanger and
stopped in my tracks, yes,
as if I’d seen
a ghost. Next, I felt
nailed to the spot, as if
my feet had been
nailed into the floor
and my hands
had been
nailed into the air
but almost without
physical pain, I was
looking, staring into
the distance with
wild and rapt
eyes. I was, as so
often lately, alone,
but I was also not
alone as the hosts, the
ghosts of all the poets
who’d ever come before
me were humming
through my blood
and before my eyes –
only for
an instant.
When I say
“all the poets,” I also
intend the oral poets
who’d written in air,
for our ears, hearts,
and souls,
for thousands
and thousands
or more
years before
“literacy” began –
the anonymous ones
who weren’t anonymous
at the time, not to
themselves
anyway
and what else
matters
in the end
or even the
beginning or
the middle,
really,
truly.
A life-changing
instant; a one-of-a-kind
moment. I had no
idea
in this spot of time
where that
had come from;
way too sudden.
One instant this,
the next instant
something else
entirely, forever, no matter
what; like a mermaid’s snap
of her magic fingers or a giant
monster of beauty
shaking a rag doll
in sadness and gladness.
Instantaneously
turning
from caterpillar into blue,
if invisible,
butterfly. Without even
knowing
you’d been
a caterpillar in
the first place!
The invisible blue
butterfly now, no matter how
impossible
it sounded.
I took up
the pen
which had as if
magically appeared there
for me
and the paper
and slowly wrote down
the first
Word.
The Drifter ((otherwise known as Dale Williams Barrigar)) drifts from here to there while always maintaining a center that is always centered upon The Arts, with the oldest of Arts at the center – usually.
Saragun Springs 