…more persistence than I’ve had
lately. when entering this space,
yet another manufactured ideal writing
environment until the glitter falls off
and the voice which echoes within the
walls is lossy like some incredibly popular
audio format which to the ears of the average
visitor sounds good but to the ears of the poet
is missing important highs
and lows and now this space is filled with
so many more lows, glimpses at the culture
of blogs, podcasts, youtubes and linkorama
which swarm up and gather pollen from
the tips of pens, fingers and stamen only to
cart the inspiration, intention, invention off
somewhere else, who knows whose work is
cross-pollinated by my intentions to return here to
make peace with myself, this culture, this swarm
and do as those greats, the one’s who persist despite
the pressures of everything else and keep it simple,
best said by Wendell Berry, “make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came”. this is poem
did not come from silence but from the attempt
to find some amidst so much noise
it takes less reading and more writing, less
dreaming and more doing and certainly less going to
bed early in place of late night dream work transcribed
as blurriness and ink and red eyes and
ranting poet possessing the body of wanna-be-Zen
simpleton
it takes some devotion to breathing techniques which foster
slower, more articulate movement toward a point
or a great end line at least
something to be salvaged
like the clean steel of Snyder’s
shiny ball bearing
amidst so much black grease
a breath that becomes a series of breaths
which becomes an ocean washing over all
the white noise until breathing is an
act of silencing and centering
and persisting until
a breath is a poem
___
Jonas Lamb 