Saturday. I spent the morning with Walt Whitman, learning to write. Walt! His poetry is the newspaper of the universe, the breaking news of the body and soul--the sex-temple of all that is mutually of the flesh and sacred. Happy Walt--so like Basho in his wanderings. And I spent the morning with the nasturtiums, learning to write. Nasturtiums! Just today I read in the news that their leaves and flowers add "peppery" flavor to salads. But their bright flowers add pepper to the light of day. They surrender so completely to their growth. They attack the light. They move in laughter when the wind blows. I can't fathom the various secrets they share with the columbines--silent chemical signals, rare root-brushings in the deep ocean of the black Illinois soil--where the pale worms swim past like narrow whales. Those columbines, filling my Rocky Mtn void with their Colorado blossoms. They blew up like fireworks all of a sudden. Stalks. Flowers. It's the 4th of July out there.

Darrell Bourque, the Cajun poet and my bubba from Lafayette, once told me that the swamps had the same exact spiritual energy as the Rockies--only it was upside-down. I was learning to write.

My dad once explained to me that the world was a closed circuit. That all the water there ever was is all the water there will ever be. That the water Jesus washed his feet in would one be the same water I drank from the tap. Cleopatra is in my garden right now. (As is Walt Whitman. He has some morning glories growing out of his beard.) I was there with my dad, learning to write.

What are we writing?

We are writing ourselves.

We are imprinting ourselves on this grand light.

We are singing our silences into the erotic night.

I like Walt. I like the writing. I like you very much. This morning, I even, almost, like myself.
L

# posted by Luis @ 10:24 AM