I suspect other creative types will understand the frustration - perhaps even the embarrassment -- that comes with looking at our earlier creations and finding them deeply wanting. My sense is that the written form of my poem "911- Hole in the World" fares pretty well, but my video version, recorded 10 years after 2001, now feels unduly contrived. I was trying to create an emotion, but it feels like acting. I wonder if singers sometimes feel like that when the emotions that fueled their original song are long gone.
What I can tell you is that the events surrounding September 11 triggered a creative avalanche in my soul. I think I penned over a dozen poems in the month following. I would like to find such an outpouring again, but not at the expense. Deep trauma seems, in my life, to be part of the creative process, at least as pertains to poems.
Has anyone else experienced a correlation between misery, dysfunction, or chaos -- and the creative process?
__
911 - Hole in the World
Hole / Sept. ii (created Sept 12/13-2001)
A totally inadequate poem
From the Journals of the Kirk-- "Why do I take pictures 1985" :
So, here we have it. I want to share with you a world. I want to tell you that the world is at once an unapproachable glory, the outlands of heaven in our midst. I want to tell you that the world is alive with ongoing miracle and that the trees are like hard seaweed on the bottom of the Numa Sea . (Where did that come from?) I want too, to tell you that the thing is broken, the world has veered, and the code has been rewritten. I want you to sell your car or house, Finally, I want them to tear down the World Trade Centers… or better yet, convert them into apartments for the poor, or if not that, build some huge barn between them and make them into the front spires of a very grand cathedral.
I’ll admit,
this thought isn’t safe
or a thing I say too loud (but hear me out.)
I have seen them with a foreign eye
like turrets on a godless-church,
silvereen, and soaring high
But missing the cathedral --
Testimonies to the arrogance of man
against every rule of nature,
TALL with vertigo and force,
streaming upward like
welded boxcars --
Two silver fists
in the face of God:
Like spikes in a rotted apple.
But today, I weep
and if you will, let me
with imagination
bleed.
Bleed for pagans
and believers,
the bearded business men, the
brokers and the broken,
the silent mimes and firemen,
sisters, daughters, mothers, fathers, and
these ever-feuding sons of Abraham --
Indeed,
Father Abraham
has many sons --
those who walk in faith and seek
a city
made by God;
But don't we weep to see
Faith twisted into obscene forms.
---
Today,
I see with different eyes,
and I repent .. for wearing monocles.
Could it be
that a THING might be
MORE
than any ONE thing
at once?
Today, I see what were
twin trumpets,
Blasting out a tune to
to the majesty of man.
I see
two trees
mightier than redwoods,
brushing stars
and brushed
in lemon light
like a sky-house hotel
for Leprechauns.
I see
mighty rivers decked
in vivid commerce;
Old-world villages
replete with jugglers and silk –
boats on ropes whizzing up the ditches
laden with exotic wares from foreign lands
like some grand-market
tipped upward.
I see twin
Towers, like thin lanes of light,
Bars of gold, beacons on the rim --
shining out a tale of
industry and might
and incomprehensible blessing --
leading a parade.
I see within,
and on each floor
(stacked above each other like coins)
a little town from Arkansas
complete
with hatted men
and football teams,
the smiling bells (now wearing jeans)
and the bee-hive ladies yakking
at the hair salon.
I see faith in the 24the century.
Indeed,
We saw a universe
with fifty-thousand centers
anchored in a common block.
We heard the twine of beating hearts
like a ten-thousand drums, and then
the lull,
and now, the tortured
patter of the few,
And we felt within ourselves
the stuff of horror.
Veins, and brains
and towers like slit arteries
collapsing into bloody dust
before our eyes.
..
They say, on the radio today
that this is a different country.
And we believe it.
We will never feel the same.
We are all new Yorkers, wearing black.
***
Once there were two towers
Tall as titans
Full of grace
She wore the moon within her hair,
He wore the sun upon his face,
and they walked in the garden
with I-AM
without shame.
Then some devil of a serpent
slashed the air,
One tower fell, and then…
>
#Rhapsody365 Day 11
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