Poet’s Angst

“Melancholia” by Albrecht Durer

Poet’s Slow Silent Serial Suicide

He grew tired of Atlas and that gravitas
bored of fraternitas and seven errant brothers
grew dull in orchard pastoral poems, Goose Mothers
and traditions meaningless as constellations
he failed to comprehend—and so his end
became one of commerce—as though some
coin—any coin—might prove his worth
to him. Passage fee for Charon . . .

He could comprehend—in the end
that was his Ubermensch heel—Achilles
on kryptonite—history transcends all
men, who are, in geologic time, but
motes seen in this rural house
once by a party uninterested, who
will not buy—and so we die. We die
and our drama no more to Earth or sky
than that buzzing fly which mates
the dim lamp’s incandescent bulb
as though impassioned poet wooing,
making mad love to the waxing moon,
mythic romance, Endymion waking.

He turns the light out, knowing the fly’s disillusion—
and kills a little piece of every poet.

 

David M Pitchford

6 November 2008

Father to Son

Letter to My Son

Something I want you to understand:
Words are merely words!
I’ve said a great many words to you
I hope a select few
            have sunk in,
            touched you to your core
            reinforced the bulwarks of your selfhood
I hope many more
            have watershed
            rain off a duck’s wings

However;
I know
you, no duck, are
            a thunderbird!
            nor no mere swan.

What I really want
            you to understand:
words are as important
            as you take them to be.

In awe I have ever been
            both of you
            and your brother
            your quicksilver wit
            your abilities to comprehend
            complex topics
            some intellectual
            others emotional and ambiguous

My point:
            I want you to trust
            yourself, son
            your reason
            your thoughts
            your knowledge
            your intuition.

Tumultuous turmoil will occur
            over coming months
            unforeseen years
            entire lives . . .

David M Pitchford
9 December 2008

Rokeby Venus: Ekphrastic Sonnet

"Rokeby Venus" by Diego Velasquez c. 1650

What Within the Looking Glass?

 

Is it truth you see within your looking
glass? Or merely that shallow reflection,
that skin-deep self, flesh manifestation
engineered of cells divided, cooking
DNA’s unique recipe—working
toward our next, our better(?), evolution,
and victim to fortune’s machination
toward Nature’s mysterious re-making?
 

Venus, do you see your truth? Burning flame
lit by unseen sun, burning bright within
eyes shadowed by doubt, self-immolation
to protest yesterday’s beauty—that same
beauty as marks you today, looks akin
to Ideal, yet perceived sans admiration?

David M Pitchford
6 December 2008

DNR

DNR

I am not here
in this life
by choice

and God forbid
I should
leave this life

by my own choice—
and yet, I shall
not by any means

go gentle,
and yet nor shall
I struggle beyond

my means
NO HEROIC EFFORT
Should I be called

to my early grave . . .
so let it be,
for brave as I am

I shall remain
of my own strength—
or go by will

of the One
whose choice it was
to bring me here

to live this life
to accept this gift
too precious, should I

value it a little
less, yet shall I
value it a little

less, yet shall I
never, willingly,
ungrateful . . . seem

David M Pitchford
6 November 2008

Gravity Conceit

Nature’s Gravity Would not Stop

More and more, and less and less
this world to me seems real unreal
unfathomable in its unreason, treason,
fantastic in its natural logic and rational
order—and yet it is this unreason, this
human element, that defines not merely
human, but life, reeling in what’s real,
and all the living universe, all that
herein holds significance—to us,
and to all like us—and unlike, yet
similar in these irrational needs
for reason, for order, for excuses
to deny surrender, to deny the most
natural gravity: Death—and his
permanent dominion for all we know . . . 

David M Pitchford
6 November 2008
Rev 6 December 2008

Agony: sonnet on a Ligozzi painting

"Agony" by Jacopo Ligozzi

 

Gardens of Our Own Agony

“The Kingdom is within you.” And Satan
shakes his little fist within my bruised black
soul: sinner! sinner! His guilt an attack
only I inflict upon myself. Can
God hate himself for being All? Satan
sits back in his shadowed corner to crack
gallows grins of gleeful pride—yes, he’ll stack
the evidence neck-deep—cannot withstand

shadow, for he is Morning. What wise men
know, is that the shadow fears the light less
than light fears that which covers it. But, see,
we are offspring of the Divine; our sin
is separation—dwelling in darks’ garden
when we are made and dwell in ecstasy.

 

David M Pitchford
18 November 2008

NaNoWriMo Winner!!!

Intrepid Winner

Okay, so another NaNoWriMo award merely qualifies me as a hack (which is, let’s face it, a higher honor than a pedestrian or closet scribbler – someone with aspirations to ‘one day’ write), but I earned this one BIGTIME.

The whole month of November was pretty much a blank for me as far as fiction. Truth to tell, it was a month of identity crises and poetic self-pity parties. It finally took the ticking clock to put a gun to my head – that and shooting off my mouth – to light fire enough under me to get this thing written.

Check out these stats, though:

• up to 11/27: 11,000 words
• 11/28: 16,605 total cumulative
• 11/29: 33,584 ttl cumulative
• finish: 51,306

Which means I wrote
16,979 words of narrative fiction on 29 November 2008 (mostly undisturbed except for an hour spent cleaning the kitchen)

17,722 words of narrative fiction on 30 November 2008 (watching football on TV and watching the scores on nfl.com intermittently over the 13-hour sprint to finish the marathon). To the best of my knowledge, the best day previously was between 11 and 13 thousand words last October to finish O Southern Queen on my way to writing my nano last year . . .

Not that I’m bragging. I really just wanted to let folks know what a schmuck hermit like me can do. And if a schmuck hermit like David M Pitchford can do it . . . anyone who wants to and applies the effort can do it (well, and a working vocabulary in a language in which they are literate).

As I take some of the color out and try to bring it down to a PG13 rating, I’ll post the novel in bits on my new blog http://out4cigarettes.wordpress.com