Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

 The fire pit hisses in the scattered rain. Dark drops crash against uprooted spruce, As I take respite in the fire away from the frantic talk. An Afghan Whigs album on the turntable struggles  To rise above the bustle and hiss. The river beckons. I must hover.

I'm trying to write longer, languorous lines, you know, as I have not been writing like I should. These lines might form a rib, a bit, an attempt at honest expression, or an artistic endeavor to keep me from my dotage. To shake off the brain fog, post-Covid before I fix my shaky, sore carpal tunnel hands and get back to work. I wake up numb in brain, fingertips straining and hurting, finding it hard to talk, momentary, mental lapses, and an inability to move, work, or think. The cabin helps as the bright sun shakes off the long upper Midwest winter, which felt like it lasted eight months this year. The mosquitoes materialize from seemingly nothing to work like tiny Draculas on all available creatures. A bald eagle screeches in its deceptively tiny bird voice, and the chipmunks chase each other with much commentary. A toad hops through the gray dirt of the campfire pit in search of a cool escape from the torturous sun's red rays. I defog as I watch every other creature move thro...

Snow on spruce boughs, The second coming of a rabbit Disrupts the morning silence I think of you asleep miles away In clouded memories of fog Here in the snowy north, The temperature dropped to negative 25 Even the birds are silent, But the spruces still contemplate our Tiny backyard, unaware of our plights.

Train Trestle, Train Trestle To the tune of an old Nick Cave song,              Some would say you block the view  of nature, of the sky, of the dirty, old  dumpster behind Lakeview Resort. I love your economy and utility. The nature lover in me dismisses  your role in bringing belching  smoke to the heartland.  Yet the romantic in me is  enamored with travel. Like most Americans, I  respect the promise of  coast to coast travel  that you exemplify. Dark metal and creosote wood bisecting nature. Green grass peeks from under  the wood of your tracks. The foliage will take back the land, but you will still peek from  beneath its lush carpet. Nature and commerce be damned. We all have a job to do. 

A dream discovered in fresh water waves Under the surface with billowing ochre weeds A deep, green curtain hiding the flutter of perch Perhaps, a tiny bluegill or larger pumpkinseed Safe under covers, hiding from the wolfish fish Predator and prey in endless dashes Never upsetting the murk I lay amidships over the side of the canoe staring for hours My father's strong arms casting and casting Nary a fish made it over its sheltering sides Glittering water on the belly in rivulets  The bright orange sun beating from behind cumulus clouds On the shimmering surface of the shrinking lake. I shielded my eyes and kept watching for fish Taking a break to read my Hardy Boys book The Mummy Case , I think it was, its lurid cover as natural as the fish below on my young imagination My father handed me a bottle of Coke, cold in styrofoam wrap I remember that first drink, cold and tickling Traveling home in his red 1984 Ford F-150  I turned the last pages of my mystery book  looking fo...

writing poetry is fun when you have free time; however, you might not take it seriously when  you have bills piling up in the corner, when  you have a pile of stacked midterms, when you have an article due with the editor breathing down your neck, when the editors are not responding to the lengthy e-mails you send them, or when you find that editors and readers want  a different style than you are selling, and students want a different grading system; you cannot pay the bills without the CVV number, the QR code, or  whatever that thing is; you cannot pay the bills without an exorbitant convience fee that ain't so convenient; editors don't care and students don't care that you have bills due, and creditors don't care that you are done  with their codes and numbers just like you are done  with the numbers on the midterms, or the unreturned phone calls to political campaigns; it is October  in an election year; however, you should take that seriously. wri...

Reading Palookaville. Arkansas past midyear. I'm waiting for fall to begin. Far away from winter snows, Metaphorically and literally. In the enduring humidity, I turn away. I'd give anything for a cold rain or a sad autumn day. I think I just wrote lyrics to an emo song, circa 1996. Don't hold that against me. 2020 needs to end.

It is time for another trip to the cabin to still my quaking nerves and temper the shift of my lofty or scattered ambitions. I am stressed by the upcoming move and the shifting of time that makes me older but not wiser as I battle my apprehension and dismiss the fact that I actually graduated with a Ph.D. no less, but I can never appreciate my good luck or all the hard work that went into finishing the dissertation, many of it at the cabin. I pack a small number of records; we changed the rules this year, only ten, but both Donny and I are bringing more surreptitiously, unbeknownst to all except each other. We knew we each would and discussed it more than usual, sifting our collections for the unknown, we grabbed albums to introduce to each other like new friends.   After last year's AC/DC debacle, where he tried to play the discography and was shut down, the decision was made (by who?), in passive voice resistance, to bring albums that were near and dear to us and ...

Do you ever fear a knock on the door? I often do. Insular, I slide back inside myself, closing the door and pulling the covers up tight. I hide from the world and myself, floundering, foundering, trying not to rock the boat or any boats.

The side streets are slick and worn as I walk daily to the college working on frustrations as old as time in holey shoes and slighted ambition My twisted ankle, my mucked up transmission tiny travesties leading to submission of mind, of thought, of body rot in flooded back alleys and musty university towns I walk past solemn green and dirty brick a facade thrown across the earth darkened windows hide secrets in the midst of wind-bent trees The fragile ecosystem of roadwork and wax shelters my way through the days past Sycamores and White Oaks unlit houses and the cries of feral cats

The trees lean in the hazardous downpour, soaking up life-giving water like a thirsty woman gulping the last breath of tainted air. The rain is heavy on my back; the air is electric with the dampening light of midmorning, misting until the dampened t-shirt is a boon companion. "Here we go," I mutter to myself, soaking in my surroundings. I'm going in, not coming out. The morning hike is medicinal, cleansing. This is a rehabilitation, a divining, a benediction. Here I go deeper into the forest. I won't return until night. 

Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed, That you should be mad in the darkness drifting, That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed. Though the doldrums that kept me wreathed In scholastic cages monthly shifting, Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed. I never got to write, but static noise leaked, From my pen like a random shifting , That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed. I slowly forgot your name, barely breathed. My glamorous past kept me listing, Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed. The dogs in the cages seethed, Their barks vulgar and resisting, That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed. Oh my lover and my cheap pen creased, A tragic benediction of misused time twisting, Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed, That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed.

Time once again emerges the winner in its perennial battle to change our hearts and minds, ravaging (perhaps, that's too harsh a word) along parameters that stretch from our youth to our deaths. What are these you ask? Only the old man himself knows and he's not telling. Winter fades to spring on the Elk River and the flood waters recede, streaming rivulets of mud and murk. I pack again for the cabin trip, like every summer since my summers began, excited, except for those few years in high school, when I fled from my parents, a high-minded but foolish youth, escaping into books and records, with friends. We surreptitiously visited the cabin on weekday nights, beers in hand, talk in mind. I pack and pack some more -- the right records, the right books, the right attitude -- looking forward to seeing the Elk overrun its bed or settle back into its groove, and anticipating the smell of the forest, the plants, the early summer.  I make my annual lists and call around...