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10.10.10
A prayer in basic terms is a communication with a divine presence. Prayers at night put the day’s events into perspective of a spectrum of a full life— or building a bridge between the Material World and the Divine World through the subconscious. If, as the Transcendentalists believed, we carry an aspect of God within each and every one of us, talking inwardly to the Hidden Soul, we communicate outwardly to the Universe itself.
So, in turn I can shift the notion a step further with creation of poetry: creation of haiku channels inner meditative reflection to help contemplate how the Natural World fits into the scope of the Universe, how humanity fits into a Divine Plan.

No matter how mundane the subject, we celebrate ourselves.
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Fresh tarred timber poles,
aligned on the road, glisten
darkly with black sweat.

10.11.10
Sooner or later I will have to acknowledge Ruth’s death. She would prefer something rich in surreal details, almost baroque really, abstract symbols walking into the text with indecipherable analogies: the flute player wearing his shirt of bells; the Peruvian bird catcher with empty cages calling out his daughter’s name; Gabriel Garcia Lorca combing back his hair, whispering a lullaby from his childhood—they could be presented as a masque of characters of course, all secondary to a little boy in his chair, newspapers spread under his clean white pants, his red crayon spelling out his name, over and over, practicing his awkward letters, handwriting shaky—
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A point of review:
sleep avoided me last night,
a callous lover.

10.12.10
Soon I need to return to previous ideas set up in August—Juan Bobo for instance. His mother will need to grow tired of his misadventures—the dressing up of pigs in dresses, carrying water in a basket, so she props him in a nearby woods to attract bees—they move in during winter. Aim for the fairytale logic, tones of Grimm Brothers or Anne Sexton’s Transformations.

Read up as well on beekeeping terminology—check the medieval poems as well. One of my old text books from St. Louis has the complete dream sequence of Piers Plowman, although I believe a different character meets the Beekeeper.
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“This is not a story my people tell.” —Laurie Anderson
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Apiary —a place to keep bees
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Pressure in my ears
throbs, pulses, a steady hum
rippling through my head.

10.13.10
Scene today in the neighborhood: boys playing with toy guns, plastic water shooters, but their actions mimicked a raw video game, jerking motions, play acting death scenes, wounding each other in their shoulders, chest, face. The realism of their recoil, their heads pulling back, snapping neck muscles, it all proved too graphic for ten year old boys. Where did they gain such knowledge?
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“The blackbirds settled / their clannish squabbles in the reeds.” —Robert Haas
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Juan Bobo gets a nest of blackbirds in his head, his empty head—bees in his chest.
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A rough tribe of boys
shoot metaphoric pistols
in their friend’s faces.

10.14.10
Torn between multiple projects—so of course none of them get worked on during my free time. Yet, due to a unique process of procrastination—the language shifts in my mind. The poems morph into something other.
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Keep circling back to images of Ruth; Robert Haas seems to steer me into a frank and complimentary discussion about her: alcoholism, apples rotting in her desk, breasts falling out of night shirt, her intellect, her need for attention. Fractured image: poet, banshee, drunk, idealist. Needs a central metaphor.
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Numerous grackles
scattered in October grass—
but not one haiku.