A Dog Goes Prancing

Sometimes, just before the sun goes down, a dog goes prancing by on his evening walk, his head held high, maybe chasing something.

_________

Some poetry seems to be 'throw away' poetry. You read it once and don't really want to read it again. Other poetry gets read over and over, across years as well. So what is the difference?

Virtual Read

The 'Virtual Read' is mostly done, about 15 pictures more to go. Test it out if you will, and any feed back is appreciated.
Visit www.thomasjardine.com and Click "Virtual Read" on the left.
Or here

A Virtual Reading

Coming soon to a computer near you, a virtual reading experience, read all the poems in Virtual White Orchids, my only in print book, on the web! No need to buy anything! Poetry should be free.

Each page will be photographed and visible, as if you are there reading it yourself! Ah, there is nothing like taking time to read a poetry book, through lunch and the evening!

Watch here for when it is available, and wait for the surprises! Next week!

An international on the internet first!

Moon

The missing element on the charts is the element of time. We live without much regard to the fact that not far above our heads is the edge of space, and small planets passing by. I look out there every day. Do you?

Never

You never know what is going to happen next. There is nothing more difficult than dealing with an individual who does not bring all their thoughts to the surface and express them, but is tied to subconscious traumas and psuedo means to resolve unconscious snags and patterns. It is so tiresome, energy draining and a waste of life.

Life is to be a form of art, not unconscious bibble-babble, like most poetry today.

Almost a Year

I have been working on one poem almost a year. Twelve lines. It has also been a very busy year, doing other things, the things that are fun but don't make any difference. Everyone wants to make a difference.

Dawn the other day as I opened the front door.

Not So Interesting

If the poem you are writing has you yourself as the end result, however interesting you think your opinion or view is to the world, put the poem back in the drawer. The reader doesn't want to know about you, the reader wants to know about how to get along in life better, how to see things more clearly, and so forth. And you, you are probably not so interesting, that is, if the subject is always you.

Every few months I get myself in a situation by which I am terribly confused and/or it is tangled up in some complicated manner, so much so that I need advice. But where can one get advice these days? Everyone knows the catch: if you need financial advice ask a financial planner--but if the financial advisor knew anything, he wouldn't be wasting his time being a financial planner except to his friends, and who takes financial advice from a friend? So where does one get advice about ones own artwork in progress? If a poet needs advice he will end up talking to practicing poets and practicing poets can't see anything objectively, so, there is no advice except some sort of background noise guidance. But I have advice for poets. If the poem you are working on about is about you, stop writing the poem.

Few subjects, many subjects

I once heard that there are few subjects for poems. Love and death. Well, everything we do we do for love. After doing what we do to survive. But then, there are an infinite number of little awareness items to joyfully ponder, that is, inbetween surviving and love, which often can be the same thing. Stingray at Sea World a couple of weeks ago.

blooogs

Poetry blogs everywhere, not one about poetry. I read poetry blogs whenever I can, but can't find any that talk about poetry. Just schedules, meetings, announcements, stuff, general stuff. Not much different than the poems I read.

WELL TOM, that's the way people are. Most people are concerned with their immediate world, since they have to be concerned with their immediate world.

If you don't have something to say, don't put it in a poem.

Main Street

Locals.

Musicians

True Light

Out in the midwest, an evening shindig as the last of the light fades. Half a dozen musicians sing songs and play tunes, and the locals come out and sit their chairs on the bricks of main street. True light, very close the marked geographic center of the US.

1-2

Now a-days, every time I listen to poets talk, I am shocked by how much they want to belong. They really want to belong to a group or class or something. Imagine Van Gogh or Picasso or Frost squabbling to belong to some group full of wanna-bees, old women and old men blithering on about stuff they know.

NOW TOM, everyone wants to belong and to be understood by their peers. Who else really understands them? In the poetry world, the audience is made of people who write poetry themselves, thus the group is formed whether or not anyone chooses to be a part or not. Relax, be friends with the people who even have the least inclination to appreciate similar values in any art field.

NGTV

There is an old rule: if you are negative, people won't like you. Therefore, it is better to be positive and praise everything, then you will be liked. Human nature simply thinks in this manner. It is a sort of mob effect. Everyone wants to be liked.

What to do? Just try not to draw anyone's fire. What poet said that?

Arrowgants.

Poets do exhibit personality trait patterns. The first is arrogance. This remarkable trait has several major functions, such as to cover over insecurity and mediocrity. Arrogance hides behind politically correct signposts: the poet will not explain their art, they act unapproachable, and they 'network' which means they praise others to get praise back. Another form of hidden arrogance is exposed by listening to the substructure of their expressions; this is very subtle: they talk 'inclusively' rather than 'exclusively.' True creativity by nature is exclusive. But if one can't be creative, well, one might as well be included, so they put on their party hat and say, Look at me! I'm a poet!

I probably sound like an old sourpuss.

Some watch TV, some stay up all night,
their keyboard struck with lines of blue moonlight.

Classic, Contemporary

It seems only poets read poetry. However curious, the general public does not read poetry. At least not on a regular basis. There doesn't seem to be any classical thinking when I read contemporary poets, everything is, well, contemporary, and usually the poem seems to be art-therapy of some sort for the poet, not the reader.

Art to be art must be classical. One more poem about the dead uncle's hat found in the closet and...nothing.
Contemporary becomes classical? Oh, sure, but what level are we on? Let's stay on a high level. Class struggles, religious wars, and culture inequities are not of raised consciousness. Classical essence is to create how the future can be considered and seen, not how the past or present is considered or seen.

When you write, write for the future. If I said this before here, sorry.

Need

There is a need for good worthwhile poetry, and it seems the poetry world, if there is one, seems to be heading off in some downward, away from aesthetic principle (not creating new ones to the objections of the old schools) and toward nothingness.
I read all the major journals today and I don't even want to read another one when it comes in the mail.

I am always amazed that todays trend of poetry, and there are trends, tend to not have anything poetical within the subject of the poem. Once all the trappings of the form are taken away, what is left is some weird garbage-thought, or something packed full of snooty irony, or some dumb half-thought. Why would I want to read anything like the stuff packed into lit mags these days?

I wonder if the truth is that the writers can't actually think of anything worthwhile to say? If you can't draw, scribble.

However, possibly it is best not to say anything: if you do, people will object.

Ego

I've been away, sort of away from art, and to family. I gave no resistance.
What interests me in the process of coming back, reading what people write about poetry, is how much is pure ego. I can't believe how much of what people write is ego.
When you write, leave your ego behind.

No Matter What

No matter what you do, no matter how long you do it, you must get away from it awhile--that is, sooner or later. Only by getting away can anything be seen clearly.
Sleep is the food of genius, and rest is the friend to art.

The View

See the sunset view below? The house sold for $445,000 at auction. The state appraisal is $373,000. We were there with our miserable little bidder card and hopeless wish, and so were many others. The same house without the view would be $195,000-$210,000. So how much is the view worth? Sunsets over water are for sale. So many things that used to be free become expensive in a crowded world. Poetry is now crowding the world. What to do? Where is the value system? What is it all about? When is the last time you read a poem that had and still has an impact on your life? Has any poem changed direction in your life?

Flower Light

An old pen and ink drawing.

Poetry Equals Time

Nice view. Views like this are expensive. Is it worth working really hard to have a view like this? Writing a poem is really expensive, too. The time taken to write a poem is time not doing something else. If the hours to write a poem are added up, say, twenty hours, how much was spent in writing that poem? How much is twenty hours sitting around the house? Add up the mortgage, the bills, the phone, the electric, the internet, all of it, and if you want to write five more poems this month, it is a lot of time. Poetry equals time.

On the Wire

All the poetry world today seems to be little factions divided into groups, each group a network of people who work together to be a part of something bigger and better in the poetry world. Members tend to be belongers, and nestle themselves on telephone wires between telephone poles, rustling their feathers, being cozy, praising the weather.

Some see the door knob, some see the sun a million miles away.

Personal Peek at the Universe

Our own personal peek at evening and the universe. Our silly dribbling words, do they match nature--not that words are supposed to match or be nature, but is there ever a link between our words and this rare little sphere in space? A poet needs to be a nature poet. What else is there? Malls and international politics? There must ten thousand poems about war, and only a handful of poems as to why women are interesting unto themselves, apart from any man.

Classic

The great wonder of living is how to tell someone what you think and not offend them. The photo above is a pretty sunset. But supppose who took the picture thought it was a great photo, a work of art? Then what? Make nice sounds and walk away slowly, but what if the photographer is your friend and they are deluded? Don't you want to help? There is no easy answer, each person being different. How many people do you know who are specifically interested to know the truth in all things?

A Chair, Pen and Notebook

If you are not writing, you are not doing anything. Of course, if you are not doing your art, your music, your driving of your racecar or sailing your sailboat, etc.

We live on very thin threads of chance.

One thing is for certain; follow one blog and it leads to more and so on and so on. There must be millions of blogs, all clamoring to supposedly be heard, like the poems. Right now, at this moment, there might be one million people in the USA typing on their blogs. Amazing. Is it fair to ask a question such as, of all the people, poets, in this case, blogging, writing poems, who will matter soon? I just read a few poems in a 1918 edition of the Literary Digest, and all of it would be considered laughable by all today. Quaint tripe. What popular poets will be tripe tomorrow? It is hard to tell.

Mystery

Mystery.

See

What we see takes a while to see. Off to the left, in the chrome rim, is a dot--not near the edge. It sits there, in the middle of high tech and metal and flashy steel and glass. It is the moon overhead.

...as my two eyes....

Everything you do you do for money. Sounds awful, but it isn't. It is all amusing.

Such a Blue-Collar Worker

Today I worked. I went all the way downtown and bought some 'wheel stops,' which are those things at the end of parking spaces so your car won't bump into things like a post or a building. So I brought five home, painted them bright yellow, and then took them out to a building, and started installing them. Each one is 200 lbs. I had to measure, drill, caulk, shim, and sledge hammer the rebar, two in each. Then I cut limbs off trees in back of the building. Then I got out the weed-trimmer.

Why all the detail? It's fun to do labor, every poet knows. To be humble puts the abstracted poet back on earth. Weight, materials, tools, tape measures.

On the way home I had three ideas in my notebook. Ideas, or themes, substance, interest.

Advertising?

Sure! Advertising. Never thought I'd do it, but I thought it would be fun. Four or five years from now, I might get a check for a $100.00. I told Suzie to make reservations at any fine dining restaurant.
Quick, somebody click that poetry contest one.

Integrity

In any art, the main basis from which the art goes forward is integrity, which could be a catch-all for many other words and ideas. If an artwork does not have clearly understandable continuity, it has no integrity. What is integrity? I have been most concerned with this since teenage years for some reason. Apparently, not the only one. Merriam Webster: http://www.m-w.com/info/05words.htm

It

So, the question is why don't the poets talk about poetry? Where is the deep analysis of the writing? Either the poets don't have any idea of what they are doing, or they don't want to spill their secrets, or they don't want to give away the tricks of the trade. Maybe there aren't any. Maybe it is like movie stars: either they have it or they don't.
So, poets, write down on one piece of paper all your golden lines, the lines that make you a poet. Are they any good? Is it poetry? Either you know or you don't.

I wonder

I've been reading as many blogs as I have been able to recently, and as usual, I focus on blogs by poets. I wonder of the process by which most of the blogging done by the poet bloggers is not about poetry. Just the usual stuff. If a poet is not focused on the writing, the art goes backward, and fast.

Sometimes, what can be said? I showed this once to someone who I didn't think knew me at all, and he said, rather quickly, "I know who that is. I know what this is about." I was very surprised. One of the workings of art is to help people discover how they feel about things, how they want to feel, or should have felt, or should not have felt, so many variations. This is not the same thing as telling someone how to feel. Dance for someone, dance for yourself, you are liked. Tell someone how to dance, and they don't like you. The art of art.

The only great encumbrance to creativity is the time factor. And the capacity to be driven beyond what many others might think is uncomfortable. Today I listened to a woman salesperson lie to two of her buyers for about 10 minutes. People seem to have no limit to how much they will lie to one another. How was this woman lying? She was, in essence, saying to them, I really don't want to waste my time with you today, so you go do all the research, and when you are ready to buy, call me, so it will be a more efficient way for me to make money, regardless of what you buy. I am always interested in how people, who basically consider themselves good people, become different when it comes to making money. This leads to the great question of all time: why aren't people honest with each other all the time, to all people?

Some people like to argue and some don't. I've been arguing now for years, and still no one listens to me. Arguing doesn't do any good. People come around or they don't or they keep their ideas and don't want or need to change. You know all this. But there's nothing wrong with a little humor.

Was there ever such a world for you? How sad it is I am at an age to look back and see what I have missed. At least I learn what I have missed, and know the difference now.

Everything you can hear.

Here you go. Internet radio stations, a list.

This is in Luling, Texas, a small town about an hour out of San Antonio. This is part of the old town center, where the railway still goes through the center of the town. Many of the storefronts are empty, although a few establishments prosper and some try with little coffee shops and hair salons.

The light here, with the sun low and near the horizon, as any photographer knows, has minutes to go before it is gone, and I am jumping as fast as I can to get twenty or more shots of the street as I can, before the light is gone.

I'll post a few more, dear imaginary viewer.

Learning to see is learning to unsee.

Small single events change life in drastic ways. Sometimes I feel I am barrelling down the road, trying to steer by balancing the barrel through traffic and away from cliffs, and, quite often, between dishonest men on one side and inept men on the other.

Sometimes, there is hardly time to slow down and notice the workings of earth, the little blue globe floating in space.

I used to draw like this. Hundreds and hundreds of pen and inks. I have no idea where I found the time to do it.

Yes, I do. No family, no car, no job, no money, no friends, no TV, no radio, no computer. I didn't have anything else to do.

Maybe I should rethink things.

Sometimes it is hard to find beauty anywhere in the bustle of the suburban world I live in. So, I try to stop and smell the shopping carts.

People

Early in the morning, ah, the New York Times before me and a thermos of coffee. I live in a kind of heaven. Don't you?

Sure you do.

If you don't, why not?

If you can't see the poem before you, put the pen away.

TJ

Artwork

The kind of artwork in a house
expresses coded values on the walls.
If garish paintings show a hasty prowess,
and every slap-dash scribble begs applause,
a guest intuits trendy fashion laws.
If coffee table magazines sell treasure-
official replicas complete with tacky flaws-
the clods will never note a crucial measure
and rather pay for sport and dumb-downed pleasure.

So, who will skip the small-talk trough,
avoid the icky raves of passing leisure
and pull the abject, jerky abstracts off
presumptive walls, art not worth a dime,
and speak an honest face to worthwhile time?

Always a vision on the dashboard of life. Full tank, ready to go. Look where others are not. Watch where you are going. Zero miles an hour. Get ready. Set. Go!

What else is there to do while in traffic?

I've been thinking about something, old and new, which I could hardly bring up beforehand to people I know, peers in the poetry fields. I guess it is better just to do something than talk about it, whether or not it works or not.

A Poem

The Digital Clock

The digital clock is in the fireplace.
Electronic works keep steady time;
the overlapped numbers drain the hours,
count down minutes, blip the seconds.

To put the clock in a proper place,
an empty wall or a clear shelf,
between dire projects and burning goals,
is too much trouble to trouble time.

The back wall of a Starbucks

So many things look great in the early morning light.

I think this is a scene from a movie. Everyone knows who this is, and my point is that there are thousands of faces I have looked at and somehow this face is memorable. I don't know the politics of Che, and I haven't read anything about him. Your face, your art? The Greeks say you make your face by forty.

Think I'll let my hair grow long.

Until next year.

Christmas is over.

Two fatties working off the lard.

Everything is where you look, what direction. I heard this once: sit next to a friend; speak out loud what you see for a minute or two, then the other person does the same.

Today is an odd sad day. I had asked someone to be a partner in an experimental business model and today they said, "oh, I'll be able to get around to something next week." That is the end of that.

At the Office

Well, sometimes I don't read it. I take a picture of it and read the paper later. When you read the newspaper a week or so later, you already know what is going to happen with current events, so it is a form of time travel. It also saves time.

This is the scene of people driving to work. I don't actually have a job, but I often drive down to Starbucks and read the New York Times. On rare occasions, there is something interesting in the paper.