Poetry, Process, and an Old Coat

by Ruby Sara

Hey hey friends Pagani!  How’s you?  I’m right dandy, thank you – after all, I’m making pie.  And raspberry cream cheese braided bread.  Yowza!

Right…I said I’d present something coherent this time, didn’t I?  Well, that was silly of me.  It’s nigh misrule, darlings – what was I thinking?  The winter is a cumin’ in, and the poor wren sings – time for nonsense and non-time stories instead of treatises.  Stories get told in winter, and fire and laughter and friends is the ticket.  It’s as maybe that the mood will strike me to get ranty again sometime soon….but not today.  Today, I wanna talk a bit about a friend of mine.

This year, I made acquaintance with someone who comes to me when life is ridiculous.  As you can imagine, then, he’s here with me a lot.  He wears a tattered old overcoat.  He rolls smoke in his fingers.  He laughs and the world dances.  I will not speak his crazy name, because you know it already.  After all, you’ve already met.  Remember?

Down in the muddy bank, he played spoons while you slept and dreamed of spring.  He sat with you at a fire in May and sang rain songs.  He was there when you dreamed of hidden treasure in the dovecote.  He is writing limericks with your name in them.  Right now.  We’ll call him Old Coat.  It suits him.

Get it?  Suits him!

Old Coat arrived on my doorstep this morning after a couple months of being away.  My life had gotten too sane for him, I guess (I mean, I didn’t think it had….but he’s the connoisseur of barking mad, not moi).  That sort of thing bores him.  But I had spent the evening before with hands a-fire writing poetry, and like a rat to garbage, voila! he appears (colorful, don’t you think?  Well, my poetry may be garbage, and Old Coat may be a rat, but let’s just take all that on the metaphorical level for now, ‘kay?).  He’s not the Muse, mind, he just likes the madness in the process.

Process:  Catalyst.  Pentecost.  Write.  Despair.  Edit.  Despair.  Edit.  Read out loud.  Despair.  Edit.  Read out loud.  Laugh.  Make Tea.

Edit.

Edit again.

Stop and pray: “There but for the grace of God goes this poem…for it is finished!”

Wait three weeks.

Edit.

Point is – it’s not really a process with an end.

Hey…have you seen this?  Well, if you haven’t, you should.  And if you have, watch it again.  Anyone who creates or performs (and that’s…..everybody) should see this, repeatedly.  Olé to you, beloveds!  Set a trap for a wandering poem-monster thundering across the landscape.  Show up, nod to your genius, and get to work.  But see, the thing for me is, after the genius fills you with awe, sometimes you’re plain old all burned up, and that’s when Old Coat shows up to dance in your ashes.  Luckily, he has a knack for broken things….yep, he’s a fixer.  When you’re plum worn out from dreaming and sick with ecstasy, and the sack of your body is tired, Old Coat plays flute for you from the treetops.  It’s a trade – he gets to hoot and holler, doin’ the two-step in your crazy, and you get to let go of the fire for a minute and eat yer frozen blueberries.  Let him tell the story, and you listen.  He’s good at it, Old Coat is…he is The Storyteller, after all.

So for this new winter, friends, creeping close and kindling in you star-fire and all the gifts of prophecy in the dark, I wish you a visit from Old Coat, master and friend, tricky and wise, to eat your food and tell you stories that make your sides hurt with laughing…cuz all us serious human artist-animals, sometimes we need the break.

Grok Story, best beloveds.

Olé!

…..Oh, right.  Thanksgiving.  Well, y’all might know how I feel about that already, and this year is no different, excepting that I’ve decided to relegate it to this tiny, dismissive footnote.  So I’ll just say: food, friends, family?  Lovely and good.  Give thanks, eat food, love people.  But do it everyday, because Thanksgiving Day, friends, is a sham.  A shame and a sham.