How a Poem Is Written #2: Speed Channel Writing: “I Kicked Dogs Like Soccer Balls”

The writing of this poem is emblematic of how I write 99% of my poetry. “ways and means,” which I profiled in my post of 05 September 2020 was written far slower and deliberately that normal; I could turnaround editorial choices for minutes, not seconds or not at all. For this poem, “I Kicked Dogs Like Soccer Balls”, I woke up in the 2 o’clock hour with 3-5 dream sequences fresh on my mind that were lucid and memorable, poignant and movie-like. Out of the norm, I did not have a first line or verse present itself, but it was the dream sequences that impelled me to rise.

The first verses of this 14-verse poem, streamed in about 45 minutes, as fast as I could write it, document my feelings and resistance about channeling (or consciousness streaming) in the wee hours in the dark. At the outset, I spontaneously began with Roman numeral page numbering (each verse is all I manage on one 8.5x11 page), something I haven’t done in a long while. See full poem in side bar.

At the end of verse 3, I was having a different doubt than I’ve ever had, which I express more than once: Was I actually forming words as I wrote so quickly by hand—or was I just making illegible scratch marks?

At the start of verse 4 I write what I feared when I walked into the dark living room, would fear itself obscure my ability to hear and write from the “poetry channel”?

Ending verse 4, I record the first dream snippet. As often happens, I receive a message that concludes the image and creates a metaphor. I continue my frustration with being a channel and again luck into something deeper at the start of verse 6, “...Painful Mess/Called Life.” I recalled a conversation with a friend the previous night, that I couldn’t express what my normal channeling process was like, and luck into the stream metaphor, which also becomes a pun for consciousness streaming. Which then connects to “going down river.” I love how the two “downs” juxtapose, just luck with when my mind/hand “senses” a line break and moves. Somehow in the end, by always trusting “God’s Flow,” or “nature’s flowering,” perfection of sort occurs.

Verse 8 is a total “blind stream” that popped in just from my recent rediscovery of a long poem from 2001, “dry spell,” and I connect back to the armpit in the first verse when “wet” shows up. The verse ends with another dream scene that I awoke with, which continues in verse 9 with dating theme. I was actually hungry and although I reference not being in a dream, the bulk of the imagery is indeed from dreams.

At the end of verse 9, I am again saying obtusely that I am not feeling like I’m writing coherently or even legibly.

In verse 10, the poem takes a big dive deeper. I do not remember how I connected here, but once I get started with a theme like this, I just keep word playing and concept twisting, reversing, and circling back, always conscious of a higher wisdom being expressed. That’s how I ended up at a funeral, with the contrast of boredom and tears, then circling back to earlier themes of hunger, fame and the poetry channel aka the voices directing me for theme intertwining, word choices, phrasing, line and page breaks. Poems almost always have a definite and felt ending, resolving and concluding all the main threads. I’m aware and the very sensitive to the choices of when to capitalize or not. For example, in the poem’s concluding line all nouns are capped. For me, this combines into a single state the three themes of hunger, aliveness, and fame. With the last line, a stand alone phrase of a author’s state, there is an acceptance, finality, and almost contentment. So be it, this is what I am: “Hungry and Alive and Not Famous.”

I Kicked Dogs Like Soccer Balls
To Where They Belonged
In An Act of Kindness


I

Was I still the Poetry Channel or
Not?
I smelled my armpit to be sure
I wasn't dreaming.

I reached for my clipboard and
shockingly
There wasn't paper loaded
and the pen at the top was
missing
Sure felt like reality as
I
dug through my (back)pack.

II

Annoyed
I knew
I
wasn't
dream
ing
"That's not the blank paper stack
That's my to-do papers
The pen is not in
this cavity
or
that one.
Is this worth it?

III

Here I am naked
Tired
and drenched in reality
Is it too cold to be
writing poetry again
naked on the couch
As I write I wonder

"Am I forming legible words

in
the
Dark? Again. Here I am.

IV

Have I become too Afraid
to be The Poetry Channel?

To take the risk

To get these ideas
flowing
too fast to catch them all.


The all important one like:

I sat in the school yard

the kids I didn't like

the men I didn't like

V

Watching me from an uncomfortable
distance
a barely comfortable distance
as I clapped my shoes
free
of dog poo
or wait, is that melted chocolate?

What's the difference? They both

smell.
And I'm worried the Poetry Channel
will break someday

It doesn't seem like I'm writing

Coherent words, with my pen.

VI

All this furious scratching is
feeling the same. A bunch of
random letters. The all too familiar
sore hand.
I woke up, famous in my own
mind again?
who am I letting down
if I say,

No! I'm too tired to (be) The

Poetry Channel


Maybe I could slow down this

VII

Scratching scrawling
Painful Mess
Called Life.
I can't even explain this
Consciousness Screaming
Streaming too many rocks in
the river to name them all

let alone hold them

and write them

all

Down. Down River I am Going Now

For Sure.

VIII

And to borrow one of my own
or to build on it in order to
Destroy It:
This is a wet Spell not a
dry spell
This is a Wet Dream with
Smelly Armpits
as I pull a ball of wax gently from
my ear the size of a Starter Marble.

IX

You know you aren't in a Dream
when you're conscious of the
girl you are dating but
not dating next to you.
That's called a friend of course
And now I'm hungry so this
ain't a dream.
Too many of these words end in
i-n-g or 'y'.

X

I know that I live in
America
Because when "we" have a

good and decent idea

say, Democracy
we feel the need to share it

with the World.
Or Die Trying.
unfortunately it's the Others that Die

XI

Trying our Idea
Because it was never about
our idea
It was always about Dying.
And Trying.
It didn't matter whose side you
were on in the end.

Just so the idea didn't die

and it lived on forever

And when something lives

Forever. Well,

XII

You know it's Dead.

You don't know it consciously

Because
You keep on Fightin'

for this thing, The Thing
And it's actually the fight
where you feel the death
the pangs of pain

and emptiness

of a Dead Idea.

XIII

Maybe there is something
for me here
at the funeral
Besides Bore-dom and
Tears
And wishing it was me in
that damn casket
so I could quit fighting to
end the emptiness and death
in old, tired, useless ideas...

XIV

Like me
being a Poetry Channel

that's famous
in an alternate

Universe
except these damn

voices
won't end.

And that's how I know I'm
Hungry and Alive and Not Famous.


09 September 2020, 3:07am, began ~2:18am