ENOUGH OF THIS

A poem, some quotes and a murmuration from the hills | october27.2023

By Douglas John Imbrogno | october27.2023

THERE IS ENOUGH BADS NEWS in the world that we might be forgiven for either: 1) Obsessing over breaking headlines while caffeinating well beyond healthy levels; 2) Hitting the streets in constant, agitated protest; 3) Or curling up like an amoeba on the sofa while waiting for either: 1) The End of the World; 2) The Start of the Autocracy; 3) The Revolution.

Yet when has there not been bad news all across the town, nation and world? Our relatively new, in-your-face 24/7 news cycle ensures that along with our breakfast of veggie sausage, hot-pepper-sliced fried eggs in garlic-infused, extra-virgin olive oil and sourdough toast (your mileage may vary on the breakfast thing) we learn of the absolute worst behavior that the absolute worst humans committed within the last 48 hours. And in every possible nook, cranny, and crevice of a seemingly godforsaken world. This can definitely skew — and screw — one’s perspectives on whether life is worth living and the human race is salveagable, and maybe instead I’m just going to get really drunk on this really good bottle of Malbec right now.

---

Make stuff

---

OR WE COULD DO THAT THING that the estimable writer Maxine Hong Kingston advises for these current — or in all — times of destruction. Create something. Or as differently put by wildman artist Fred Babb: ‘Go to your studio and make stuff.”

I choose to define ‘studio’ to mean not just a conventional paint-splattered space or clay-speckled pottery wheel, but any place you make the stuff that reminds you why you may wish to go on into tomorrow. A writer’s garret. A toolshed. A garden. A laptop. A kitchen, even. Me, I’m going with the laptop-equipped garret, although mine takes the form of a computer-armed easy chair. Or sometimes a backroom desktop, one illuminated by angled morning sunlight the color of a bronze shield, fueled by well-roasted Italian coffee beans.

Luna the Cat invariably pops up soon after I sit down. She arrives in search of adoration, cheek scritches, and close attention to her existence. This is fine since often the words don’t come easy. My constantly stalled-and-restarted ‘sorta memoir’ (working title: ‘CRAZY DAYS: Confessions of a Former Altar Boy’) rudely refuses to write itself. So, ruffling the chin of an especially fuzzy, sweet-souled Tuxedo Cat is just the thing to take my mind off of my inadequacy in bringing this Boeing 747 behemoth in for a smooth landing, after which the passengers will clap and cheer before they de-board and move on to the rest of their lives.

---

‘WRITE NOW’ | ‘You go ahead and do that thing with your fingers on that machine. Ima take a nap, homie …’ | Thestoryisthething.com photo

---

IT’S ENOUGH TO JUST START. To return again and again to the attempt at creation. I have been taking part in a month-long morning ZOOM writers group, facilitated by Diane Zinna, whose teaching, mentoring, and encouragement I recommend to thee, as well as her novel “The All-Night Sun.” One recent prompt (‘You have 35 minutes to write and we’ll come back together at 10 a.m.!’) was to write a piece focusing on ‘What could be …’

And so I did. And it even took less than 35 minutes. In subsequent days, I’ve tweaked it. I also reshaped the original blocks of paragraph prose, using one of W.H. Auden's favorite line forms — the three-sentence poetry block — which I find lends itself to discursive poetry. I also reworked one too self-revealing paragraph in the original, so as to protect the innocent. It makes the reader work a bit harder at sussing my meaning, using an old Scots-British word signifying 'bed,' which I now adore: 'kip.' The alliteration with 'conjugal' in that line is the cherry on top, but maybe not to everyone's taste since it's a little obscure. Yet I love the occasional use of odd words in poems — not too many, please! — and which sends me clicking into the O.E.D.

So, to the question Diane’s prompt surfaced. When is enough, enough? And when are we enough?

---

SHADOW SELF(IE)’: | Huntington Mall parking lot, Barboursville, W.Va. | october2023 | Thestoryisthething.com Asphalt Bureau

---

‘Enough’

by Douglas John Imbrogno

I could be the man the boy
dreamed of being. I could be the
boy the man dreams of remembering.

I could be the man who saved his mother.
I could be the man who fought his father,
who finally and everlastingly

thrummed some sense into
that thick Latinate, hot-blooded,
black-haired head.

+ + +

I could conjure a long-dreamed swain,
the inamorato, swooning alone in this
otherwise gratified conjugal kip.

I could be the writer he dreamed of being
at 13, thumbing ‘Cien Anos de Soledad,‘
the original title he learned to say

after tumbling down
the deep rabbitholes of
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude‘.

I could be the father my father never was,
although he raised us well as may be —
or was able. Didn’t do a half-bad job,

in the end. And I’m that good father,
the decent man he was. Mostly.
With several hiccups

and catastrophes
sprinkled like pepper flakes
on a bowl of red tomato soup.

+ + +

I could learn finally to speak more
than kindergarten French: ‘Il est difficile
de parler français en Amérique,

mais c’est un une langue
si belle qu’elle fait
mal au cœur …’

I could be the Man, the One,
the Influencer of Influencers,
the Mentor, the Mentee, the

New York Times Profilee,
the Profiler, the Raconteur, the
Dissembler, the Griot, the Scribe.

Wait. I have been at least
half of those words. So,
good job, reach up

and pat yourself
on your shoulder.
Pat-pat.

+ + +

I could be done.
Done with all this striving.
But how?

How do we finally look
frenzied False Will in the eyes
— those red-rimmed eyes —

filled with such ferocious
ambition and the urge to
sway the world our way.

Doesn’t everyone want to rule the world?
Tin scepter of Ego held high
attracting lightning bolts of fame …

But I could be enough.
I don’t want to boss the world.
What a lot of work.

It could just be enough.
And that would be enough
of the enough.

---

---

Two dragons, one azure dog

THE KINGSTON QUOTE is from a years-long series I call ‘QUOTE|WORKS,’ in which I illustrate quotes that move me or that feel profound and deserve being further memorialized. Please steal it and any others since passing them on is what they’re for. A future newsletter will focus entirely on some favorites. Meanwhile, below is an evocative quote from a site I recommend called DailyZen.com (which serves as my online homepage since it is always surprisng and enlightening me). The just minted QUOTE|WORKS below comes from a misteriosos Zen guy named Shih-Shu, a name which appears to be a pseudonym, used one time only. Regardless, there is a lot that might be unpacked here:

---

---

After I posted this QUOTE|WORKS to my Facebook account this morning, my documentarian buddy Eric Neudel commented: ‘Quite beautiful. A glance at entropy. Almost physics.’ This got me to thinking about something that I have been thinking about for a long time (and will have much more to share about once this guy gets his master opus into the world next year via Wisdom Publications). I responded back to Eric:

‘Those ancients were always knocking on the door of modern physics, at their best. Dependent Origination, one of the subtlest and most significant of the Buddha's teaching, is no less than a quantum physics of spirituality. This becomes that; that influences this. Touch the web here and it vibrates there and the very fact of looking creates reaction and interaction.

Hold that thought. More about that later.

---

PS: Bird Brains

I have been experimenting on my occasionally visited TikTok page — tiktok.com/@douglaseye — with the challenging discipline of the one-minute or less video such as this one below. One day, recently up in the trees next door, a cacophony of birds executed a swirling murmuration — a lovely word and lovely sight. The murmuration briefly takes the shape of a heart.