Latest Addition

SO this is Wallace, a cheap-o six-string Johnson I grabbed from a pawn shop a few years back on the grounds that I wanted a guitar to keep at a buddy's place, something to noodle on during the various parties and gatherings he hosts over the course of a year. Yes, it is blue. And if you think I haven't been the first to make a joke about having a blue Johnson, you'd be wrong.

The Wifey suggested, then insisted, I bring it home after it turned out that not only was I not playing it, but my buddy's mom, who is a very strange person indeed, kept hiding it in closets behind clothes on her periodic visits to his house. So I brought it home last weekend, and today I zipped out to a local music store, tuned their Ibanez 12 string, bought a set of D'Addario J-15's, came home, cleaned him up, strung him up, and played a coupla numbers. I like him alot. Sometimes, there's nothing nicer than a nice, cheap-o six-string guitar.

The name Wallace, of course, is after Wallace Stevens, who, after viewing the Picasso work Man With Blue Guitar, wrote "The Man With The Blue Guitar," which starts out thusly:

"The man bent over his guitar
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said 'You have a blue guitar
You do not play things as they are.'"

before getting very, very weird. I do love Stevens. But the man was seriously weird, a stone whacko. I mean wwwhack-OOOOOOOOOOO. I mean, who writes a poem about a painting? In the first place, if the painting's any good, it doesn't need a poem. In the second place . . . Well, I mean, who writes a poem about a painting? Which this isn't, althought I always kind of thought it could have been.


DAY WINDS DOWN

Day winds down and bleeds the land
mounds of earth cling like leeches against the hills
clockhand shadows pointing out
the roll and pitch and yawn
in the brief desert before the trees take hold
and root in the soil like pigs
the sun bleeds gentle blood and geese
singing of Is rah elle mount
a frontal assault against the day's last peace
and turn and sweep and roll beneath
strange folds at the edge of the world
a lady in a riding cloak
battles wind and anachronism uphill
until the end is met



I wrote it in college, about a susnset I was watching while a friend of mine, who did wear a big, black wool riding cloak as outer wear-- she was that kind of college student-- try to walk up hill to where I was standing without the wind using the cloak as a sail and shoving her across the hill and into a pond. On a whim I turned it in to the professor I was taking a poetry writing class under, and his only comment was "I think the riding cloak is a bit anachronistic?" So the line "battles wind uphill" became "battles wind and anachronism uphill." Which doesn't really mean a goddamned thing, but I like it much better.

Earlier I was going to make some kind of a cockameme threat like "I intend to include a poem with every post until I've alienated everyone else in the blogosphere!" But it ain't the case. I am going to keep putting up poems with the blog, but just because I have decided it's fun. For me, not necessarily for you. I don't care what you think. (No, not you. That guy, over there.) (Yeah, he is a creep, isn't he?)