People ask me if I ever get writer's block, and there are times when I feel the need to write but don't have a burning stream of words that want to leap onto the page. That spot, a “what do I want to say” knot, is the one I guess people refer to as writer's block. Unless Harrison’s Gods are lashing me to hurry, quickly scribble it down before it’s gone, every beginning is a waiting for “the block” to reveal the poem. It's just where everything begins, or at least that's what I think. Patience is key, as important as impatience, that force inside us hammering to get out, insisting we speak up, say something, something important, something worth spending (wasting?) all the time it takes you to read. One hopes something magic will arrive, something that entertains or illuminates, gets to the essence of this, this bombardment of shit we open our eyes to every day. Whatever the fuck this is. All I can do is try to chronicle it, what I take in with the full knowledge I don't know anything. Like the rest of you, I'm in the dark here. My biggest fear or disappointment, I guess, is that I'll do a shitty job of it. The good news is that I won't waste too much of your time by asking you to consider a poem like this:
Writer's Block
*
Nada nothing
Neither nor can
Define the mystery
Of what isn't here
*
The job
Your task today
Tomorrow's chore
Threatens to prepare you
*
A dread you abhor
Yet know by heart
This familiar panic
Those Monday blues
*
The anxiety you have
Carried all your life
The eve of failure
Not measuring up
*
What you think
Others think you should
Do to be anointed
Their scripted guru
*
Risk losing this
Whatever exists
The right now of it
What you will miss
*
Fretting and prepping
To impress appear
Worthy of some lord's
Attention all of it
*
Pack and deliver
more original new
reshuffle what you spew
the amplified noises
*
You make what persists
In your-this existence
Of just wanting to be
Loved here and now
*
Without fearing
What may come
The next assignment
What you plan to get done
*
Those old expectations
Obligations weigh less
On a lazy poet the closer
You get to your end
*
Finally tired of trying
To pretend you know
Things you just drift
Pay attention to this it
*
What your senses attend
And attune to now
The moment you're in
Let go of your nagging
*
To produce a score-win
Another fabricated tale
Spun to control an un-
Controllable situation
*
For the most part
You've hit the marks
Held up your end so
Now you will spend
*
These hours you have
Left like you did as a kid
Sampling the everyday
Wonders of consciousness
*
Maybe afternoon sun
Warming your face or
Light rays glittering on
Snow a dog barking for
*
Another stick or ball
To be thrown whiskey
Sipped Miles Davis' horn
Whatever composes you
How you choose to fill the time you have is not my business. If you are as mystified and insecure as me, you may be attracted to the words I arrange on a page. Sometimes they whistle through the graveyard cracking jokes, maybe they recall an occasion or invent a scene that invokes the emotional power of love, or maybe they they just flail around knocking things down and call into question every notion we've been fed by those who've come before us. I don't know, yet I feel the need to do what humans do: speak, rattle on about what I don't know or do know, knowing full well that what I think I know is my dream of this. It’s my hope that some of you will recognize something of your dreams in what I do and that will please you if for no other reason than to feel you are not alone in your dream. I believe that is the essence of art.
What Art Is
*
My son did one of those Pollack
dribble paintings on cardboard,
a masterpiece of texture, color, and
warp. I stuck it on the basement
wall. What is art? Some say
*
Throw shit and see what sticks . . .
throw hard enough and it will
stick for awhile. We never know
for sure about the sticking.
All we can do is keep tossing shit.
*
Art is what it is if something sticks
for you, if only for an instant.
Maybe that's all art is. Or maybe
art is just the act of throwing.
Do you wonder is art beauty if
*
Ugly? Disturbing the status quo?
No? Go for the surprise: Groucho
taking a vow of silence, Larry
in clown make-up meaner than Moe.
So, is What art? Who or Where?
*
There is no Why, and When
is always now and then. Of course,
How is key. Let the circus be
the stooges composing a siren
symphony. Is that what art is
*
To you, Laertes Fray-Tease?
I believe art is designed entirely
for me. A kiss on a dark porch, or
a slice of spice cake on a bone
china plate atop a putrid corpse.
*
You consume and create.
That is your fate. Chasing
the tail of the dog in front
of you before following
your nose into the weeds.
*
—for Larry Frates
I am an artist? Ooooh, and that is the difficult claim to make, to state one knows what art is, where it resides, and how to create it. Just because one says one knows what art is or isn’t, does that make one think they are an artist? It feels disingenuous to say it: I am an artist. Isn't that for others to decide? What we have to do is live our lives and die. If we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make something to describe this experience we can't describe, building things we hope show our pitiful attempts to somehow illustrate this trip, maybe others will brand our efforts as art, thereby labeling us “artists.” It's always felt like a pretentious claim to make, so I will continue to avoid calling myself an artist but will humbly acknowledge anyone who thrusts that “wreath” on my head. As my friend, lundy, says: Art isn’t complete until it has been experienced by someone else. That makes the consumer equally important as the producer. The work of art unites the speaker and listener. It unites listener to other listeners. Art binds us together. Maybe it can’t “save the world,” but where would humanity be without it? It’s always there whispering: be open, explore, allow, be free . . . ultimately, art asks us to love—don’t be afraid.
Mark Gibbons