Let’s Cultivate

Let’s cultivate life,
Let it grow into a garden,
Let dreams, love, passions,
Emotions and feelings
Continue to be cultivated.

July 5, 2020
 
            I had the strangest dream last night, and spent most of the day discussing it with my youngest son, because he was in it.  We were touring the country, and visiting various, large scale sculptures across the Rockies mountain range, the Smokey Mountains, the Adirondacks, all of them. In the dream, he asked me, “Why are there so many versions of Rushmore again, Dad?”  And I said, “Well, son, after Trump, the new administration parks officials determined that all of our former presidents were 'Rushmore worthy,' as it were, and so they commissioned large scale sculptures all across America to memorialize all of the presidents that were not Donald Trump.” 

            He asked me, in the dream, “Where are we going next?” and I said, “Up next is the one dedicated to Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding, John Tyler and Richard Nixon.”  “What did they do?” he asked me.  In the dream.  I said, “Not what Trump did.  That’s kind of the new litmus test for goodness, when it comes to the executive branch.”  He understood the lowering of the bar: “That’s like saying I should be an all star because I didn’t commit an error, when I was sitting in the dugout.” 

            “Yes,” I said.  “Who’s next after that?” he asked me, in the dream.  I said, “Well, after that, we go see the sculpture of Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, and Lyndon Johnson.” He asked about them.  I explained that Wilson was a racist, who sat on his hands while the Spanish flu raged, and that he could google that. I told him, “When you’re done googling coffin ships and want to learn about Hoover, google presidents who never held public office, and google the Great Depression, and when you’re done with that, you can ask your phone about the Vietnam War.”  

            He wanted to know what the deal was with Ford. I told him, “Oh, his inclusion is somewhat ironic, given Trump’s inspiration for the new sculptures.  You see, Ford was President even though he never won a popular vote.”

            We spent the whole day, in the dream, learning about presidents, and the next day, in person, at the kitchen table, between card games, learning about presidents.  We had books. We had his cell phone, my computer, his school lap-top computer for remote learning, google, and two sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica, since he and his brother are each inheriting one when I die, thanks to their great-grandparents.  

            It was like seventh-grade social studies class, only with dream interpretation.  So it was like psychoanalysis meets social studies.  It was like being in seventh grade again, myself. Call it home-schooling, because it was kind of like that, too. 
        
            It was like weirdness.

            But then again, no. It was not like weirdness. It was weirdness. And that was because it was like everything, now, after the great unmasking.

            That was my day, today. 

            The clouds were lined with the kind of silver they once used for coins bearing dead men’s profiles. 


 

Good Friday, 2021

             I turned on today and tuned in.  In the film it was sliding.  Or the word is slithering. It was long, muddy and strong.  One long muscle in jungle growth and hunger, operative,

was the motive I could discern.  No other reason for this.  Boa, they said.  “Hungry boa.” So focused.  A job to do.  The only job. Isn’t it?

            What is it to be without. Without thought.  Without thinking.

            Or without regret.

            I change channels.
 

            Winston Churchill sent his planes, the R.A.F., to bomb towns full of people.  Civilians, I mean.  Nazi voters.  Civilians. Not the top.  The base.  No military bases.  Just the “base.”

            He just knew this would stop the assault on what was material.  

            And then, British men & women & children who don’t fly and don’t fight and don’t build, manufacture, they call this, the tools of war, would be bombed.  Then airfields would be saved.  The strategy worked.  Brilliantly. Easily.  Hitler bombed locations without any . . .

military. . . significance.
 

            I left the English Channel.  

            I returned to the nature documentary.

            The snake, or muscle as I like to call it, had found its prey.

 
            I have heard that the German Philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach is the one responsible for the saying that we are what we eat.

            But I say – today, just another day, ever so differently – We become our enemy.

 

 August 1, 2022

             My country is insane by half and I actually considered running for office today.  I come from a long line of Republicans and I think I could “pass,” and pretend.  Maybe call for a 1,000.00 percent sales tax on firearms to address school shootings without taking anyone’s gun away, and with more revenue than cost.  Or maybe sell voters on the idea that a party that believes in small government doesn’t believe in one either big enough to police every pregnancy – at what cost, taxpayers? – or one small enough to fit into my lover’s uterus.  And then I picked up a National Geographic, looking for topics for this night’s poetry, and when I let it flop – as is my system – to an open page, it showed a skeleton.  And I remembered – “right.  That’s why I never ran for office in the first place, while serving as a public servant for all these years, these decades.  My skeletons.”  My skeletons are so many.  They are all very fun.  They party. There are enough of them to call it a party.

            I saw them all, as if in a reverie, partying here, in my house.  There’s one over there in the corner chattering away at a computer, laying down insults on former loved ones that include F-bombs and a kind of “suffer no fools” rhetoric that would rival the most frustrated members of Trump’s Whitehouse Attorney staff.  “Fuck you, fuck you, and you’re a fucking asshole” he types, and each strike of the key hits like a mallet on the xylophone.  It’s rhythmic.  Until deleted before sending. In another corner a skeleton leans down in front of the crotch of another one standing, gnawing in clickety-clack time on his pelvis, and the one standing wears a baseball hat.  That must be the coach from my adolescence at baseball camp – my inspiration for being so good at busting child molesters in my professional life.  Oh look, there are three of them in the bedroom. One skeleton squats on the skull of the one lying down, while the other skeleton grinds on its crotch.  Clackety clack, and the beat goes on.  That’s me on the bottom.  The one on top of the pelvis must be my first ex-wife and the one on the mouth must be her bisexual lesbian friend.  Bloomington.  A fun town. But I would not be representing them, so running for office takes another hit, when it comes to plans for life. Off in the corner, near the Secretary that I inherited from a Sunday school teacher, my grandfather, via his son and my father, another skeleton gives all of us a contact buzz.  Every time he takes a hit from that bong, gripped in his bony knuckles, the smoke just wafts right out from inside of his otherwise empty rib cage.  Sticks and stoners.  Bones and weed.  That’s a graveyard, right?  Others stand around with drinks in their hands, and the vodka, beer and rum just pour right down their bones onto the floor, and the cigarettes burn all the way down, and leave charred stains on their knuckles.  One is in the adjunct to the office, watching porn.  Funny, but everyone in the porno is a skeleton too, and it adds to the percussion if not the repercussions.

            It’s a shame.  I’m finally mature enough that I could actually see myself representing the wishes of others, my constituents.  Not let lobbyists and donors get in the way of doing what’s right.  But if my skeletons cannot hide, or run, or run and hide, then I cannot run either.  And they can’t.  (Bad knees).  And so it was, on this day, that I respectfully declined, in my imagination, the nominations for Congressman, Senator, Governor, and President.  Did I say that I had so many skeletons that we could throw a party?  Let me rephrase.  I have so many skeletons in my closet that maybe we can form a third party.  As if that ever succeeds.

            And I also realized, seeing them, why I chose this house in the first place: the closet space.

 

      I remember some theatrical 
films of newspaper leadership
 calling out,
   "Stop the presses!"
       Why?
  Well, because a great new
          headline was surfacing. 

        I think the awestruck tribe 
     of Earth Humanity is having 
   such a moment. 

      I guess my interest is,
What is that New Headline 
     that the Presses are being
         Stopped for?  
    What's the Story 
in the Silent Room?

       When I Read in front
of a Group, I like the 
attention that Silence cultivates
in the tribal convergence of
individual Attentions. We as 
individuals each have freedom
to listen or not. Interest 
is a choice. 

      Right now I sense 
a quiet and await
 the integral voices. I don't mind 
Good News or Bad News that leads to 
Greater Successes in the future. 

      Amongst the General commotion
I await that Sort of Voice which
I feel integral to Better 
decisions & Better choices.   

      I like that.



by John Edward Culp 
January 24, 2023

The Thinker’s Last Thought

One day the world decided

they no longer are in need

of philosophers and poets,

those who defined the times

long after their demise

and gave birth to generations

of thinkers who are now

obsolete like stone scarecrows

chiseled in the form of forgotten

gods and fallen angels

despite their words and ideas

being occasionally referenced

by self-professed professors

to sound smarter than those

who they engage in conversation,

as the world indulges on dancing

sapiens recommended by their phones,

heads that once stared down

at the folded pages of books

with worn vertabrae and paper

used for fascist bonfires.

.

Did Nietzche ever lie awake

in bed and think the world

would have gotten so rotten

that they would decide that

his services were no longer

needed?

The first instance of skin to skin contact in years

Sometimes we just need a touch,

most will run far from where you are

even when you approach with arms

in the air, attempting to hug them

as the candied man in a van or diseased

beast that they assume you are,

and will scream about stranger danger

or unwanted touches in a scene to

escape faster if they think you are only

in need of a moment of human contact,

a single handshake, knocking knuckles,

the highest of fives, an arm clenched hug,

so you disguise your need for feeling with

a single bump into them and an exchange

of apologies, or a swift brush that

the distracted stranger doesn’t notice.

SHUT UP AND WRITE

One thousand chimpanzees,

chain-smoking cartons

of extra tar cigarettes,

seated on a wooden stool

chained to rows of writing desks

each with a manual typewriter,

bundles of flammable paper

and bottles of inhalable white-out,

couldn’t write everything that

artificially intelligent machines

without arthritic fingers or

a wasting mind could generate

without a keyboard

and a few keywords.

When All the King’s Men Never Stand Again

The men who use the world

as a chess board,

the only move to not lose

at the game of life

is to flip the board over

rather than quit or submit.

The Closed Door

A man sits in an empty room.

There are no windows, and only one door.

Closed.

He doesn’t move.

He doesn’t search for an entrance.

He doesn’t search for an exit.  

He doesn’t know whether it is locked or not,

or if he is trapped behind walls of immuration,

just because he doesn’t know whether he should

push

or

pull.  

the eiger sanka

thinking tonight
I am not this brain

in the darling garden
eating cowboy bread

in this underlined winter
I am the burrowing owl

scrabble tile: alpha
a noise now nothing


---



plum (understood)

combo

shampoo your skull

I use the same salt as the funneling crow
I am that old gold senator from the moon

combo


--


the promise of a new marvel team-up

the absolute reality

we were
went worm

para
keet

the moss inside
I went through the wrong door


--


crabapple could-be

& yes
I know

bio/graf

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poems have appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of ten chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including *Cinderella City* (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s first full-length collection is *in ghostly onehead* (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at JDNelson.net. Nelson lives in Colorado, USA.

[surrea(list)]


 what if telepathic rain filled boiling cold cedar streams of dancing ash that rolled upward in incandescent tides to sweet fragrant sloughs of blood-black ammonia rimmed by deer sitting in beach chairs discussing ones-and-zeros in unpatterned rhythms with venomous violets in ancient Aramaic as ticks stalked great hawks mid pyroclastic flows while boldly grinning ferns with Marilyn Monroe hair hummed derisively in tangerine shade beneath turquoise gums dropping warm lavender snow during any season when snakes reproduced into laurel bushes bearing giant red acorns sprouting thorned orchids that softened the forest floor with pearls of conscience while being serenaded by schizophrenic gnats to the meter of pine bombs whispering in the silence of a chaos so loud that the sky deafens the leaves and betrayal was the norm until the belligerent sun separated into vapid sonnet-spewing starlets cheered on by the dumb and the thunderous applause of the handless as the world became a single-celled virus on the tip of a needle plunged into nothingness and infecting the void and what is real is surreal and surreal is so real that everything is relative and relational in an amalgam of disturbing perspective in perception subsumed in a line of poetry born on the wings of a great moment written between hell and whatever describing life and death and death becomes the purgatory of unfinished business and life reveals how stupid it all is and confirms that the poet is the prophet that will become one with the universe
****************************************************

[poetry]



singing in the silence of beats

while words

 

 spin

 

            on

 

                        trapezes

 

deliciously catching

                                    thoughtsinmidair

above uncertainties

                                     highwiring

without nets

 

miraculously

                                    afloat

 

until the roof

blows

off

 

and the fog

 

lifts


*****************************************************

[poetry]


finding lyricism in chaos

listening to the speech of color

seeing the shades of wind

feeling the tingle of time

kissing the memory of was

touching the excitement of is

sensing the truth of now

tasting the world of wow

THE CINNAMON-SKINNED GIRL

I said goodbye to her,
The cinnamon-skinned girl with eyes
As black as coal,
As brown as the earth beneath the earth.
She said goodbye and she was gone

While here I stand,
Drinking from an empty glass,
My tears falling into this endless fountain that spouts
Up into the nothing-at-all;
Looking into eyes as black as coal, as brown as the earth
Beneath the earth
That do not look back at me
And are not really here.
I rest beside the cinnamon-colored skin,
I feel the coolness and calmness for just a moment –
Knowing fully that what I feel is phantom.

I remember the kiss that sealed us.
The kiss that told me that we were us forever:
Just us.
The kiss was a lie but I can still close my eyes
And feel the shape of her lips surrounding my mouth,
So passionate, exquisite:

I still see the eyes as brown and black as brown and black can be.

I can taste her tongue and feel the shape of her lips;
Soft, dangerous, incongruous.

I still feel the skin that bound me to her and, now,
A lifetime of not her.

The skin that bound me to nothing.


CROSS

The memories of us
cling to my back
like the old rugged cross.
The splinter of your lonely figure at the bus stop,
the heaviness of the words I left lying
on the bedroom floor,
the downcast doom of that day
dragging us up to Golgotha,
to the inevitability of our death,
the uncertainty of our resurrection.
 
The memories of us
nailed up above my bed
like that little wooden cross I had
when I was five years old.
I pray to it at night and nothing happens
except a small drunken warmth in my belly
as my eyes leaden
and time keeps going forward anyway,
the bastard.
 
Driving past the church
I spent so many hours in as a boy,
in the choir, as an acolyte,
holding that chalice that the pastor
bent to the lips of the liars and the skullduggers
and the gossips and the philanderers,
Philistines all.
The cross at the top of the church so fascinating,
not ornate but so beautiful, regal, like a still bird,
snow falling whiter than white around it
like a feather crown.
I think of the time
before I knew you
and how happy I was because I didn’t know then
what little I had
like I know what little I have now.

THE LAUGHTER IN THE RAIN

I could hear the laughter in the rain
As it fell to my houseless head

The rivulets as tears falling down my face
The pools of water ever forming at shivering feet

Clothed in rags, dragging bags
Pitiless, eyes cold, manic, gleamy twin coins

Listening for a single gasp of sympathy
But hearing not a sound in the wind

Except the rain, the laughter in the rain,
The run on complaints of the street

The crackling of the moon
And the silence of the stones:

Wet, shining, waiting for my stumble
and my blood

Their faces as impassive as dead hands
And stilled hearts

Their hardness, their uncaring
To be my final bed

PERSON OF INTEREST

Tonight I am of interest to you.
Tomorrow I might die alone.
It’s been like this for me for a long time –
Long before the night not long ago
That I met you.
It’s funny how important someone seems
On a Monday afternoon:
How you can’t wait to get home and call them,
Find out about their day –
And that same person is not even a thought
Just 10 or 20 Monday afternoons later.
I think of all the people I’ve mostly forgotten
And I know that even more have forgotten me.
I remember eating cheesburgers together,
Tucked into that corner of the restaurant;
I remember it now and wonder if she remembers it
Or even remembers my name.
We were together off and on for a year or maybe more –
As time ticks on the measurements get hazier.
She’s living with some guy the last I heard,
Her divorce finally final for a while.
I was just trying to remember what it was like to have sex with her,
How many of my proclivities I exhibited,
How much nonsense I admitted,
What we talked about in the honesty of the dark.
I remember a little but not much.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this.
It sounds like a portent of doom
But it’s on my mind.
There have been so many Monday afternoons already
With different people waiting for my call
Or perhaps at the point where they were dreading it,
Ready to avoid it.
The Monday afternoons to come are less and less.
Hell, it could happen to us in just a few months –
I haven’t heard from you in a while
And I’ve forgotten you
Or, maybe,
You’ve forgotten me and
I’m still waiting for your call.


THE POEMS ARE LIES

Life is nothing like
An early frost upon the grapes
Or
Even
The life cycle of
The honeybee drone.

No.
It’s eating pretzels alone
At midnight
While listening to Enrico Caruso
And knowing that soon,
Too soon,
You will die.
Poetry lies.
You’ll be dead
Someday
And it will always be
Too soon.

The poems are lies.

Life is just like death –
Essentially one on one.
You contemplate and love
And hate and battle with
Yourself.

What you’ll regret most
Is all the lies you told
And the lies
Told
To you
That you
Believed
Were true.
Nothing about honeybees
Or grapes.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.