thumbing Sagan's 'Cosmos'
- charts of whale song,
glissandi ranging octaves,
splotches of gutteral, ticks of whine,
cunific others...fuck going
to Mars, lets rosetta these instead

then, enter, say, the fat
and dreams of bears wombed for the winter,
stir among the chime embered with fish, honey,
berry, randoms of land-flesh,
work our way back from fang
to thorn, fete and feted
by the throated-rose of change,
and interchange

after these, crow -
unseamed from bone to featherblack,
eyes stop-bathed
until story wheel emerges, drum-major legs
be scanned for faculties of waltz,
tarred-voice annuled to that of 'cello

thumbing Sagan's 'Cosmos' - fagh!

- Mars.
paunch of dust, streeted of scar and potholes,
lights stuck on toxic red...
- why?
when such fathoms of sea
and land and sky are waiting,
waiting with come-hitheries for us
to walk all paths with such science and care
that breath and footfall better the here we are

This is wonderful! More "readable" than many of your offerings (noted with no intent of disparaging them), it contains the same brilliant word-matings that you so often use to create a whole from seemingly disparate parts.

"the fat / and dreams of bears wombed for the winter..."

"drum-major legs" (!!)

If only I could write like this. Thank you

I agree. An excellent effort.

When you are 'on' Bratsche, you are really 'on'. I suspect that this is the face of poetry as it will be in the years to come, and I am sure that I am the last to realize it, rants and raves and rages aside (whatever the screaming 'poets' call themselves): the strobe-light capturing of images that attracts or might attract the MTV crowd with its apparent limited attention span; the vividness of the images and, yes, again, Bratsche, what I sense as an element of, if not violence, at least latent anger; the most definite hit on affairs of concern, the cosmos and the carrots, the sky and the skunk, rather than laments about what is becoming perhaps regrettably mundane, love and death and living.

This is a strong and vibrant piece of work, Bratsche! I see in it the same sort of thing I see in Ted Burke's work from time to time, albeit he seems to be experimenting, with all due respect, while you, when you DO get it, have it nailed.

I truly believe, Bratsche, that the best of what you do, what you've done, will outlive you. I really do. (That was not a threat but the highest possible praise :))

Take care,

Joe

Hail to thee, stranger -

Thank you for the time you have spent to read/respond to 'on the road', glad that you found some joy or pause in poem.

"If only I could write like this.".... , let me address the 'like this' part of your expression.

It matters not that I do not know what you are doing with your own poetry, or other writing. Trust in this, you have your very own 'like this', everyone does. Your 'like this' is just around any corner of yourself - it seeks you as much as you are seeking it. It is there. Just keep on keeping on, it will reveil itself to you when least expected.

Think about this for a bit: a breeze, or wind, or hurricane using its energy along a meandering path; it will touch both rose and thorn, poison ivy and the ivies clinging on stones of church or wall or thought. Now think on this: instead of breeze or levels of storm, substitute the human breath, your breath in fact, the breath that has brought you to where you are now as a whole being. Work these sorts of things out, and your 'like this' is sure to come along.

Again, thank you for your interest.

Take care.

Carpe Verve

At the risk of extreme redundancy, thank you (again) for your kind encouragement...beautifully expressed.

Funny thing is, I teach writing (OK, business writing - very different), and my primary approach to my students is very much what you have expressed - to encourage them to find their own "voices" (their breaths, I suppose), their personal means of expression, which I truly believe is possible even within the proscribed formats required in "formal" writing.

But it's a long leap from injecting personality into a business memo to writing poetry...I'm workin' on it.