C.K. Williams

Big Frank has been reading from C.K. Williams: Collected Poems. Here are a couple of them that he likes:


The World's Greatest Tricycle-Rider

The world's greatest tricycle-rider
is in my heart, riding like a wildman,
no hands, almost upside down along
the walls and over the high curbs
and stoops, his bell rapid firing,
the sun spinning in his spokes like a flame.

But he is growing older. His feet
overshoot the pedals. His teeth set
too hard against the jolts, and I am afraid
that what I've kept from him is what
tightens his fingers on the rubber grips
and drives him again and again on the same block.

Wasp

Hammer, hammer, hammer, the wasp
has been banging his head on the window for hours;
you’d think by now he’d be brain-dead, but no,
he flings himself at the pane: hammer, hammer again.

I ease around him to open the sash, hoping
he doesn’t sting me because then I’d be sorry
I didn’t kill him, but he pays me no mind:
it’s still fling, hammer, fling, hammer again.

I’m sure his brain’s safe, his bones are outside,
but up there mine are, too, so why does it hurt
so much to keep thinking—hammer, hammer—
the same things again and, hammer, again?

That invisible barrier between you and the world,
between you and your truth… Stinger blunted,
wings frayed, only the battering, battered brain,
only the hammer, hammer, hammer again.

Konrad and Aneta climbing

Big Frank's son, Konrad, just recently returned from his vacation climbing the highest peaks in Austria and Slovenia. Big Frank is going to visit Konrad this September, but has already told him that his two watch-words on outdoor activites were - nothing painful, and nothing dangerous. That should keep the activities under control and the elevation to a manageable height. That's Konrad's girlfriend, Aneta, on top of Triglav in Slovenia.

Don Paterson aphorisms

Big Frank has been reading Don Paterson's book of aphorism's: Best Thought, Worst Thought. It is a wonderful collection and recommended to all of you who enjoy this short form, which Paterson sums up this way: "The aphorism is the rational articulation of a fleeing hysteria." Here are few more to enjoy:

In my adult life, the time I have actually lived inside the present moment would amount to no more than a single day. If only I could have lived it as a single day; it would have thrown its light into all the others, like a brazier in a dark arcade. Instead I find my way by sparks, and what they briefly made visible.

Always an error to make someone profess what they will not volunteer -- especially in love, where the spontaneity of its declaration is all the language ever holds of it.

The most erotic things that can be done to you are those that are driven by the purest selfishness on the part of your lover. Charity, on the other hand, is the great anaphrodisiac.

Desire is the inconvenience of its object. Lourdes isn't Lourdes if you live in Lourdes.

I was so practiced in disappointment, I absorbed the blow of her leaving me almost effortlessly. Allowing yourself to be constructed means you have been a different man from the start; I merely left his body behind like a husk, and let him take the punch. (I watched him double up as from above.) The loveless wraith of me was then free to wander, looking for my new instructions.

Consciousness can no more unmask its nature than the eye can see itself. It is contractually blind.

Two by J.V. Cunningham

Below are two poems by the late J.V. Cunningham. The first does a masterful job of laying what is perfect love. So much is written on the feelings of love and not of the care actually given to the other, as Cunningham puts it: "I care for you more/ Than my feeling for you." The second illustrates that love is a choice and that it carries a couple through their inevitable "ills" through loyalty, patience, respect, and manners. And, of course, it takes two.

(9)

Innocent to innocent,
One asked, What is perfect love?
Not knowing it is not love,
Which is imperfect–some kind
Of love or other, some kind
Of interchange with wanting,
There when all else is wanting,
Something by which we make do.

So impaired, uninnocent,
If I love you–as I do–
To the very perfection
Of perfect imperfection,
It’s that I care more for you
Than for my feeling for you.


Choice

Allegiance is assigned
Forever when the mind
Chooses and stamps the will.
Thus, I must love you still
Through good and ill.

But though we cannot part
We may retract the heart
And build such privacies
As self-regard agrees
Conduce to ease.

So manners will repair
The ravage of despair
Which generous love invites,
Preferring quiet nights
To vain delights.”

Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes

Last weekend Big Frank, Tammy, and some friends hit the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes for some splendid cycling. This is one of the premier biking trails in the U.S. It follows the Union Pacific Railroad right-of-way from Mullan, a mountain mining town near the Montana border, to Plummer, a town on the prairie near the Washington border. More than 71 miles of paved path with practically no hills whatsoever. We only did a section of it near Cataldo - where the moose was munching. Then afterwards it was beers and burgers at The Snake Pit.

Leagues and Love

Out of My League
~ Big Frank Dickinson

There is the way of grouping people
Where certain characteristics of the group
Are assigned as defining criteria for them;
Much like the baseball players who play well
Are in the minor leagues and the hotshots are major leaguers.
So in the world of dating, evidently,
There are also leagues; not organized, of course,
But recognized by the members of each.
So , for example, a pimply, unathletic, moron
Who had a crush on a cheerleader would say:
I like her, but she’s out of my league.
It’s funny that it is the other who is identified as
Being outside your league.
This might be some small consolation.
She’s an outsider, not you.
Of course that outside is always more desirable
Than the inside which you are in.
So she asks me if there is anyone
That I think is out of my league;
And I say, “no.”
She thinks this is hilarious – ridiculous.
She believes it is a kind of absolute:
People are grouped in leagues (objectively)
And there are, by definition, some
Who are not in mine – or more to the point:
I’m not in the league of certain women,
Explicitly: the gorgeous, the rich, the famous etc.
I try to explain, that I believe that matches
Occur for different reasons than league membership.
She irritates me by telling her family and friends;
“He thinks that there is nobody out of his league.”
Well, this way of putting it puts me off.
It’s putting me into a league that I never chose
And then, by implication, makes me into
First of all someone who believes in leagues,
And secondly someone who believes
They are in the major leagues as far
As looks, money, desirability etc. go.
It’s like the old saw: “Are you still beating your wife?”
If I say no – then I’m admitting that I do believe in leagues,
And if I say “yes” then not only do I believe
But I believe I’m hot shit, which is not the point I’m trying to make.
The point I am trying to make is that as soon
As you use the word ‘league’ you are distorting the whole
Concept of compatibility into a hierarchy of limited categories.
Then, at this point, the metaphor changes from league play
To a commercial transaction where each person has
A limited number of chips: some for looks, some for money,
Some for professions, some for personality, etc.
Then instead of meeting within a league and getting it on,
People trade in their chips for the person they want.
Hence the stereotypical, on the surface, match
Is really explained as a commercial tradeoff:
She puts in her beauty chips and he his money markers;
They are of equal worth and they march off to the cashier together.
Well this seems equally unacceptable, and more to the point – wrong.
Such a commercial match would have to be rationally made;
And we humans are notoriously irrational. We choose mates
As much for cute noses, and quirky senses of humor as for
Piles of chips, no matter what the label.
People fall in love they don’t negotiate love;
Nor do they deal exclusively with fellow leaguers.
I like to think that we are together because we love each other,
But, maybe I’m fooling myself, and unconsciously, I’ve
Rationally exchanged the chips and identified us as fellow leaguers.
Still, I’m a romantic and dislike both
Categories and commercial transactions – especially for love.
I believe it starts without reason; though the end is given one.
We love beyond league or chips
Only later does reason this eclipse.