(Image provided by DWB)

“A poet is a time mechanic.” – Jack Spicer

The poem sat

in the corner

staring at

his eyes

and heart

with the eyes

of a cat

and the body

of a lone

wolf.

Then it changed,

the poem, into

a dolphin,

trout,

gorilla,

shark,

monkey,

wild boar.

A horse,

then a camel.

A hawk,

peacock,

osprey,

owl,

sparrow,

eagle,

crow,

dove,

pigeon,

thrush,

another nightingale,

and now

an elephant.

It is undoubtedly the

(invisible)

elephant within

the room.

I can neither leave it

there

alone

nor take it with me;

the door

isn’t big enough.

Yet, I’m

in charge

of this elephant.

However, nobody

is really in charge

of this unseen

animal,

who is, truly, a creature

never really seen.

Its intelligence

and will-power

are incredible,

like a real

elephant.

But it remains

invisible, like my blue

butterfly, the one that

travels with me

everywhere,

hovering over

my shoulder.

And so

I toil, struggle, wrestle,

labor, study, save, caress,

create, rest, and renew,

daily. Daily life is

a struggle with It,

capital I, but I

struggling with the power

and the breath

in this way

am truly

my own reward,

every day and

every way.

William Carlos Williams

and Jack Spicer, the great

Jack Spicer,

were right.

A poet

is a mechanic

of time.

Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar is a poet whose own poetry transformed his own life: suddenly, and then gradually. It’s good enough for him.

(Druid Girl Image, provided by DWB)

The Character Here

The main character in the following lyric cry goes barefoot most of the time, wears animal skins when he wears anything, carries a spear, wears an amulet around his neck that protects from evil spirits which he knows often, but not always, come from other people, and has never shaved, although he has cut off his beard and hair when they get too long so they don’t get in his way; he also takes magic mushrooms, walks for days on a regular basis, hangs around the fire a lot, also spends a lot of time alone, sees visions, makes cave paintings he never looks at again, or sometimes returns to as if to an old friend for days on end; and in this poem, is inventing, or elaborating, human language, while also simultaneously developing the gift of human mercy which Jesus himself, and his mother Mary, would bring to perfection many thousands of years into the future from where this character is perching in this poem – right now.

Alone at Blue Rocks on the Shoreline

Prehistoric Man/kind perches on the cusp of a decision, and speaks.

The rocks here at shoreline are blue.

Blue like the water and sky.

Blue like the blue bird and the big ice.

And they rise half as high as the ice, as the big ice.

The rocks here under this sunset tree are red.

Red like her hair, and the sacrificial hare in the sun, in the trap, twitching.

(LET IT GO.)

Your costume only becomes you

and your uniform once you

wholly own it somehow

after long tries

and once you wholly own it you’ll

uniformly know and your uniform

costume will simply become a way

of knowing and a way of knowing more

about what you already know you know

but aren’t always so sure about, in this land

of the wooly mammoth having you for breakfast

on his horns

and the saber-toothed tiger around

every

bushy

turn.

So the hare, let it go, LET IT GO.

The hare released.

Look at him go!

He flies because I

have chosen

not to sacrifice.

Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar is an impoverished poet-scholar from the Midwestern USA who learned much of what he knows about primordial humankind by reading and pondering the works of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, William Butler Yeats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and William Shakespeare, as well as lots of intuition, imagination, and experience thrown into the balance. Experience alone is never enough, and neither is reading; they have to be combined.

(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.

(Note–Moonfog wouldn’t appear today because he is moody. But, fortunately, Dale Williams Barrigar has rescued this Wednesday from emptiness and overall non-existence-Leila)

(Cool image provided by DWB)

The Encounters

      “What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted;

        what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.” 

         – Herman Melville

I turned around and an exceedingly large, unbelievably green, and massively intimidating Praying Mantis had landed on the outside door handle of my door.

S/he had appeared there so suddenly it was as if s/he literally, magically appeared there, just materialized there, out of thin air, out of thin, thin air, or out of nothing.

And it was strange, because that door handle was the place I had been about to put my hand on one second ago. I had been unconsciously reaching out, planning on grabbing the handle, opening the door and entering my apartment – until I saw the massive Praying Mantis sitting there, perched on the handle, and utterly staring at me with an animal intensity which was unnerving at best, at least until I got a handle on things. This kind of animal is hard to brush off with a flick of the wrist. I almost literally couldn’t believe how BIG it was. Big, large, huge, and also gigantic, even gargantuan, at least in terms of a bug. 

Then I got a handle on things. And I realized how cool this was! It was like the time I’d been walking on a trail in Denali National Park in Alaska and I looked up and there was a lynx standing on a log staring at me with its incredibly green, intense, and wild eyes. 

A few old-timers in Alaska, both Native Americans and white folks, had already told me how very rare and unusual it was to see a lynx in the wild when I’d asked around a little bit about this in the bars of Anchorage and Fairbanks. Then I looked up and there was an f-ing lynx staring at me. It was one of the wildest and coolest moments I’ve ever had in a life filled, you could even say blessed, with lots of wild and cool moments. 

And now here was this Praying Mantis. Somehow, here in urban Illinois outside Chicago, this wildlife and nature encounter was just as intense and jarring and cool as the experience with the lynx in Alaska had been, even though the animal involved this time was a whole lot smaller. 

But if you’ve ever seen the eyes of a gargantuan Praying Mantis up close you know this thing can give you the chills on many levels (both good and bad). 

Their eyes are so similar to ours, and at the very same time so vastly different from ours, that anyone who’s even half awake will be freaked out by this – in both bad, and good, ways. 

I turned around again to take a picture and The Mantis was gone.

Notation: The following poem contains the scientific and cultural facts about The Praying Mantis researched after the fact of the above encounter, and all boiled down into an “awkward” and lyrical free verse style which intends to mirror The Mantis him- or herself in their incredibly uncanny, bug-like, alive, here-I-am-now selfness.

The Mantis Prays:

Written for Classical Guitar

The Mantis lays 

her eggs in fall.

Then she quietly dies.

The Mantis dives out of the air

to escape 

the haunting huntress bat.

And she sighs 

prior to dining

on the cricket’s hat.

In China they will tell you 

she is fearless.

And nothing can contain 

her spirit fair.

The eyeballs of The Mantis are 

black, and very there.

She lives 

through the air,

she hides in her own 

kind of cave.

The Mantis is a creature 

of myth

who we share this planet 

with.

She is as real as the day 

in your hair.

Her arms, legs, wings 

so greenly

and transparently 

going 

and glowing.

She lives for one year before

her race is run.

Maybe one year before

her day is done.

Only one year, before

she folds her wings, 

and tells

her eggs 

the way 

to find the sun.

Dale Barrigar, Doctor of Philosophy, is a Melville scholar from Chicago who also admires the lone wolf writer style which Melville perfected many, many decades ago in America, bestowing a future gift on all of us amidst his myriad worldly failures, which he knew he would.

(“Dog pack in a line”–image provided by DWB)

(Note from Leila–I want to thank Dale for classing up the place this week and assure everyone that you will see plenty more of him in the future; his next appearance is scheduled for 4 June, next Wednesday. Please check out his work, especially in his field of “Fictional Essay” which is not a contradiction, on Literally Stories UK.)

“All those flowers that you never grew – / that you

wanted to grow / The ones that were plowed under – /

ground in the mud – / Today I bring them back / And

let you grow them / Forever.” – Bob Kaufman

“I drifted down deep / In sleep on my open book. /

At once a marvelous vision took / My dreaming mind away…”

– Geoffrey Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess

“Hark how the Mower Damon sung, / With love of Juliana

stung!” – Andrew Marvell, “Damon the Mower”

“Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when

he is old?” – The Gospel According to Saint John

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge met William Wordsworth, he realized very

quickly that there was only one William Wordsworth, and there would only ever

be one William Wordsworth – forever.

***

Ted Berrigan’s tombstone says, “Nice to See You.” Ted also said in a poem,

“I don’t feel / a necessity for being a mature person in this world. I mean / all the

grown-ups in this world, they’re just playing house, all / poets know that.”

In another poem Ted said: “I’m only pronouns, & I am all of them, & I

didn’t ask for this / You did / I came into your life to change it & it did so & now

nothing / will ever change / That…”

***

Two American writers 2,100 miles apart in different towns at different

places and different locations both rescue the volumes Sandburg wrote about

Lincoln from dusty obscurity in the places they rescue them from, never knowing,

of course, that the other was doing this too, 2,100 miles away, until they find out

about it later. Carl Jung called such a happening synchronicity, and I call it literary

synchronicity, of the highest kind.

***

The following poem is written for the children still among us, or rather the

young inside at whatever age we are, like Bob Dylan’s album Christmas in the

Heart, all year long.

***

Hunter S. Thompson’s friend and occasional writing partner Warren Zevon

died two weeks after releasing an album called The Wind which opens with a song

called “Dirty Life and Times.”

In that song, Zevon says, “Now they’ll hunt me down and hang me for my

crimes / If I tell about my dirty life and times.”

***

This is a world

where things of lesser value,

made with lesser efforts,

all get equal time; and that

crushes the precious gems

down into the dust.

Two Siberian Huskies, the Foggy Haunted Deer,

and the Pitbull Sidekick in Foggy Illinois, 12/28/’24

Or: Dogs and Deer Poem

For Leila Allison

All three dogs in their harnesses strain and pull

against their leashes, they pull and strain toward

the deer herd as we walk together at Christmas

season, three black and white dogs, and I.

Boo, friendly pack leader, who almost

looks like a wolf, and he looks like a wolf,

and he looks like a wolf to most, now he

leaps high into the air at the end of his leash.

Colonel, friendly hunter, lean Sancho Panza, is

serious about this, it’s maybe he who’s pulling the

hardest, it’s maybe him who would go for the kill,

hardest, if he had to, and he may have to, but not now.

Bandit, civilized lady, the queen, or the princess

some days, depending on her mood, sticks close

by my side, not here to kill deer and none of us

are, in her own soul, she’s here to protect me.

Wreathed in the unseasonal fog that drifts two

antlered deer toward us, three who appear to be

mothers holding back the three or four fawns

disappearing, or blending into the heavy thorny

branches of Christmas season thick hedge row

desolation as I strain and pull the dogs along.

In Miller Meadow along far Roosevelt Road

in urban Illinois. In the parking lot, four old

black men huddled together smoking their bud

around a trash can fire, someone’s echoing laughter

is a small boon across the gloomy, grassy field.

On his death bed, James Joyce

finally asked the first and last question

that ever occurred to him in this world

out loud, why does no one understand.

Dale W. B. lives in the Land of Lincoln.