Soundtracked

A Buffalo Skull

What's up you guys! Welcome to, like, my annual "Pursue the Horizon - Open for Signups"  entry . I say this not because it's something I never feel like doing; it's just that blogging takes more energy for me now than I'd care to admit, and I still don't feel totally comfortable talking about poetry (even though I've read a couple really good books in the past few months that discuss just that). Like, ask me on a whim about poems from a favorite author and I'll struggle to remember a title, let alone what I thought about it. I just don't retain information that well anymore (if I ever did, to be honest). This same logic applies to me sitting here trying to figure out which poems from same favorite poets I'd wanna share, in part because most of the personal library I'd acquired through the years never survived my transition from Buffalo to Cortland...so it's not like I can wander over to a bookshelf and crack a worn spine into its preferred position, ya dig?

But I wanna feel like I'm participating somewhat. At any given time I've always got a couple books out from the library...usually a poetry collection, something non-fictiony of some sort of specific personal interest, maybe a fun-looking graphic novel, and randomly a biography or fiction work that catches my eye while I'm comin' through. I've been slowly making my way into Ted Kooser's Flying At Night  ...I'd remembered his name from another book I read last summer; a collection of essays written by a poetry critic for I think the New York Times, and it turns out Kooser was also once the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress. From that same blurb on the book's back cover: he's won a shitload of awards I've never heard of (unsurprisingly) named after people I'm not aware of (same unsurprisingness), and still more people I've no clue as to who they are have spoken glowingly about this collection and of Kooser in general (totally not surprised at all...what're they sposta say? "Don't read this dipshit's nonsense!" ).

So I'm probably about three-quarters through this, and so far it's pretty meh...unless you like poems about old people living out their last days in rough shape, or barns. Either I'm not reading this well enough, or I'm not that smart (very possible), or he's just not for me (very likely). He's not terrible; I'm just not relating to them very well. And sometimes he's just really simplistic...to the point that it falls flat against my dead ears screaming to see something vibrant and the dying space between them. I'm sure he had reasons for writing his poems, and how I'd react to them was the least of his concerns...until I read "A Buffalo Skull" this morning, and finally found my mind wandering inwardly because of the poem and not outwardly away from it.

         A Buffalo Skull

No fine white bone-sheen now;
a hundred hard years
have worn it away, this stump
washed up on a bar
in the river, its horns
like broken roots,
its muzzle filled with sand
and the thin gray breath
of spider webs. Once,
they covered the grasslands
like the shadows of clouds,
and now the river gives up
just one skull, a hive of bone
like a fallen wasp’s nest,
heavy, empty, and
full of the whine of the wind
and old thunder.

And I know what he's referring to really isn't what it evokes in my head upon reading it...I'm making it into something probably far too literal for my own good. But just as we often want to see what really isn't there when we read a poem or hear a song, the same can work in reverse or something. Which is probably a garbage way of me trying to analogize what I read, but you'll have that with me.

Every few months when I hop on the ol' Greyhound to visit my mom, the station closest to her is in the heart of downtown Buffalo. Fields eventually turned into a one-time mid-major metropolis, if you will, that has seen various stages of decline and reconstruction of many fashions over the subsequent years. The city's highlights- the shopping centers, theater districts, entertainment options- run through their useful life cycles, sit in abandonment afterward for well past their "Serve By:" dates, and then another generation comes along to reshape the landscapes back into fruition of a different flavor. I think because I'm not seeing them as often in person anymore, it's almost easier to picture what used to be in some of the dilapidated neighborhoods than if I'd been there to watch them wither on a daily or weekly basis. Your memory can plug back in the functional past after prolonged absences, because it's not rewriting a film in real time.

I'm well aware that this isn't some phenomenon that's exclusive to Buffalo or some crazy new concept. In the five-and-a-half years I've been in Cortland, their downtown district (albeit a paltry maybe five or six blocks in comparison) has undergone many changes...including the loss of several multi-generational businesses that made visiting Main St. worthwhile. And most of them are still vacant, months and years later, waiting for their rebirth. The animal is dead; long live the animal!

The surrounding neighborhoods- the whine of the wind that made the distinct sections of Buffalo what they were when they served as home bases to the families that worked in the steel mills, auditoriums, and malls- remain largely untouched by the hands that served to populate and/or give life to the industries that moved on. A few blocks off the NFTA bus schedule maps in any direction from your attraction of choice probably isn't somewhere you'd care to visit unless you've been there before...the way nighttime makes even the most idyllic surroundings appear sinister to the uninitiated, and their inhabitants just stumps washed up at favorite corner bars since the fancy newfangled places uptown have priced them out with wasps' nests of greed and spider webs of local wannabe hipsters.

Yet it's home, even if I don't live there anymore and it's not the same home to the people who still do...and that's where this particular Kooser poem took me more than any of his others I've read up to that point. That perhaps it's us who are the skulls, living with memories of places time has moved on from.

It was early in the day for me- maybe 10am-ish- when I'd read "A Buffalo Skull" and thought to myself "Well, maybe I can pull something out of that for "Pursue the Horizon - Open for Signups"  today. And then of course I went on to do other little things here and there and cast the notion aside...then I throw on some tunes to relax and take care of other online stuffery and this comes on and I'm like "Yeah, ok, this all was supposed to happen then..." .

"I Cut Like A Buffalo"   -The Dead Weather

"You should try to take it easy on me
'cause I don't know how to take it."

A few personal notes while I ponder why I don't do this so much anymore and why I should...

I need to buy some GPs to fund some personal endeavors I may have spoken of around the last time we got together like this. I won my SSI appeal (the hearing was in January) and got my first payment the other day...a hell of a lot sooner than I was led to believe I would. When the struggle is real, the struggle is worth it, or something...that's how close I'll allow myself to becoming a motivational speaker as I'll get. Today . It's not an Earth-shattering amount and it won't make me rich, nor will it allow me the same level of comfort I had when I was actually employed/employable, but it's certainly a level of comfort now that I haven't had since I moved out here. Like, "buy a slice of pizza" or "buy a stick of deodorant" is not a choice one should ever have to make. But all (or most of) y'all have no idea the weight that's been lifted off these shoulders. I mean, my shoulders are still physically shitty and can't handle more weight now that there's less of it on them, but at least I was able to purchase a new hoodie for them to cover up in rather than relying on the same ol' battered-ass ones I've got (or dealing with thrift stores, and the trouble of saving up for "such a special purchase" like used fucking clothes).

Since this is an entry about a poem for submission into a poetry-sharing forum, I'm gonna suggest you guys check out Jill Bialosky's Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir  ...looked interesting in the library, read a few reviews on it since I was unfamiliar with her work, finally got my hands on it, and enjoyed it. She relays her life story up to now through poems she's read over the course of her life, and I'm gonna admit that I'm jealous...if only because I don't remember much more than a few percentage points' worth of pieces I've read that I could say were relative to me becoming, uhhhh, me. Let alone feel like I could publish a fucking book about it that people would read . It's good though...like poems that got you through dating in college (I never lasted in college long enough for that), or how your first two pregnancies resulted in, ummmm, not ending with kids (I am not a parent and at this point will probably never be one), or 9/11 (wrote one thing about that shortly after it happened but I was karaoke-bar hungover and it never survived early-WDC membership lapses and port-trimmings), or sibling suicide (yep, got that in spades now, thanks). Glad I checked it out, because it's definitely helped me learn a little about talking about poetry and how you feel about it can work in conversation (like I said at the top of this entry, it's not my strong suit). Not that I'm any bit more one to talk now than prior to reading her book...I'm still not the intellectual's intellectual. But ask me about early 90's Emo and I'll hold my own .

And finally...I'm tired. Wasn't prepared to write a blog entry before I started writing it, so I've got nothing more to add here other than support your fellow writers here whether it's through on-site fundraisers or emotional struggles or just droppin' in unannounced on whatever WDC stuff they're doin' once in awhile. And I get it... yeah, it's all things I'm not good myself at doin' consistently anymore, but I do what I can when I can. I talk a lotta shit I struggle with backin' up...I'm behind on some commitments, and I don't pump tires in the newsfeed like I used to because even that takes work. But yo...some of your friends need you in the "Invalid Item" . "The Daily Poem"  can always use more of your words, along with one of my personal faves, "Shadows and Light Poetry Contest" , for you poets without boundaries. Plug and support...that's how communities work, thrive, and sometimes even function without having one person foot the bill for everyone else's enjoyment. I need to get better at doing this, and if I'm saying this then there's a chance you need to be too.

Alright well, now that I'm about over food making my body feel terrible I suppose it's time to jam more food into it and see what happens. It was nice visiting you all again but unless you're gonna take your shoes off first let's not make this a habit (especially if you're gonna get all pissy about me not taking my shoes off ). Peace, can't tell when I'm jokin', and GOODNIGHT NOW!!

I hope none of these people survived the Blizzard Of '85.