A Grim and Funny Whitmanian Experiment

I thought this article trying to suss out the cause of Walt Whitman's death was darkly funny, especially when the guys started mixing up the bacteria-orgy which Whitman considered a beverage to try it for themselves.

Sort of a new genre there and potential for a new show, poetry Jackass. 

Up next week: the guys try to out-drink Dylan Thomas and avoid acute hepatitis on an historically accurate reading tour.

And I would have guessed long-entrenched syphilis had something to do with Walt's death. Pneumonia and tuberculosis can be associated with syphilis.

Here's another interesting article about poets and suicide which should surprise absolutely no one. Poets who use the first person pronouns more in their poems (narcissistic poets?) are more likely to kill themselves. So too much self-absorption can lead to the ultimate self-absorption?

I'm Still Wondering about the Indiana Dunes Mystery

Well, it's not the only mystery centered in the Indiana Dunes, but the disappearance of three young women from the beach when thousands of people were present remains one of the most enduring and perplexing cases.

What happened to Patrica Blough, Renee Bruhl and Ann Miller on July 2, 1966?

Unless I'm mistaken, there's never been a book dedicated solely to this case (a few compendia have included brief rundowns of the case). I'm discounting one book predicated on what I consider a completely outlandish theory not based in any real evidence.

I'm still wondering what happened. Silas Jayne? Certainly evil enough to have been behind it. Richard Speck? Ditto and nearby that day. An innocent accident in a park known for dangerous waters and dangerous terrain as well? Something else?

This isn't the only disappearance of three women in one fell swoop. Those other cases of multiple disappearances are equally disturbing. For example, the Springfield Three or the Fort Worth Missing Trio.

I'm surprised no one has made a movie about the Indian Dunes mystery. It would require a director with subtlety, someone attuned to the unanswerable side of things. Probably someone like Sofia Coppola. 

Here is a Short Story

I wrote about phrogging.

8 Poems (Air Poems)

      BEHIND CVS

I wake and my little cat gives me my spirit.
No cat, no spirit.

The sun is tender
with looking at the earth.

It is hard to look at earth

Truly to see
the people's hope

Oh, look at
The things that end in a dirty creek



        CHILD

The child touches lightning bugs
on the summer air

So many lovers
she will have

So many doorways

None nailed shut




           CURSE IN A CVS

The pot you gave me is no good

I will float on lightning

and return later




                 TWO BOYS

Two punks
walking over a bridge
stone bridge
snickering
throw stones
into a world below
anger
zings and zips
through the Underworld
their faces
wood in the snow
crack like a rifle
shot
into a world below
their living





               NIGHT

What the roses dream at night
let me dream

The spiderwebs all through me

let me dream

The stars sending light
without postage

Yes

An old woman the color of night
breaking up

In the river now

More of my excuses die



      EXPLANATION

the cat
sits in
winter's window
slant rain
turns snow
means more
means less
than naming
to me

I am a cat



     SEDUCTION

I hear
this neighbor's
coyote voice
a woman
is a blue bird
rousing coyote
into the open
where he releases
his voice
in spring
the blue berries
release her
birds know
poison from food
fly away
into fire
of more sky





      LOVERS

the rain
comes down
bending their necks
the lovers
who run now
into shelter
of a garden
inside the mall
rain on the glass ceiling
of the shopping mall
continues
they look up
where birds flee
we are
seeming
to be many pieces
of one person

My Copy of the U.S. Constitution

Something calls oblivion

Where milk glass is heading

It won’t return

like icicles every year

White cherubs for stems

You notice people buy it

not because they want it

but to preserve it

Fruit that aspires to be alabaster

What words give

What words take away

Not beauty but what it’s cut out of

So jaggedy

as you out of me

You note more circles every year

Less rectangles

It must be a national diet of shapes

Men lose their beards and women find them

Food can be a sexual proxy adventure

The bears in the backyard

Seem more like your dead parents

every year

You lock the door earlier

You start to swoon into the curtains

And watch the bears that way

Dear

Raindrops on the window

please stop impersonating me

with your stillness and your going

you are too much like modern punctuation

trying to evaporate so quietly

nobody notices you have died

because of cell phones

and escaped into that reservoir

of nostalgia around which I pretend to jog

but mostly mosey,  the way

mushrooms do and other spongy

things that prefer spongy dreams

on moist lawns faking wine

each morning home

to the disconcerting rest

Thank You For Talking to Me

I say to the rain.
I say to the ingredients of a person
which just erupted in a random conversation
they insisted I taste.

I say to the past,
then lock the door behind it.
I say to the crows
in the cemetery

that act like cashiers,
pretending to make conversation,
but not really.
I say to sleep's

white noise pretending
to be a person pretending
to be me.
Then I nap

and dream of the world
before conversations existed.
How like a glass paperweight
everything was!