I used to sit alone in a room writing poetry with a bottle of whiskey: hard to say if I found the trope or if the trope found me. I always wanted to get a published book of poems, but I did nothing to pursue it besides talk about how I wanted to get a book of poems published. That is… besides speaking the poems aloud on a poorly lit stage with waggly floorboards in the back of a bar in Milwaukee, WI while wrist-rolling a $5 pour of well whiskey. (OK FINE. I found the trope. I searched for the trope. I became the trope. I lived the trope. I paraded the trope for as many people to see as didn’t walk out when I walked up. Hell, I’m writing the trope now. But I have changed.)
Proof:
A MacBook Air with words “proving” how much I’ve changed, a vegan protein bar, a water bottle with nature stickers... Shit. Another trope. But if YOU were HERE and if you kept turning that water bottle, you’d find a ‘I Like Ike’ sticker, a sticker from Dive Bomb Industries (makers of the best waterfowl hunting gear around), and an eagle holding a banner reading E PLURIBUS UNUM.
E Pluribus Unum
Out of many, one.
I didn’t know the meaning of the Latin anymore even though I know I’d heard it before. I’d also forgotten that it’s an old motto of America. And I have no memory of being told that it was sketched out onto what would become the Seal of America in 1776. I’m just now learning in real-time with you that that eagle sticker I bought somewhere, (maybe Gettysburg?), is the Great Seal of America!
I intended to share a poem today, but sometimes my curiosity gets the best of me. Why was I drawn to that sticker without knowing fully what it represented? Why were the founders drawn to these symbols as they were sketching seals and declarations? Why do I put many stickers on my one water bottle? Why do I have days where I feel like there are many voices inside of me competing for control of my one mouth?
I want whiskey. I want water. I want protein. I want sugar. I want cherries. I want cherry syrup. I want synthetic cherry syrup. I want an evolved, plasticized cherry syrup that tastes nothing like cherries from a tree. I want many things; I want no One thing.
Today I’d like to announce to my three readers, (OK FINE, only two if you don’t count me), two ongoing series here at Patterned By Design:
The first is Psalms I Spat Up In Barrooms. This will be the title of my first book of poems. I have some poems that are finished, some that are written but not formatted, and some that are only a single line waiting to gather with many other fragments into one poem. This lets me share poems while talking about where poems come from and where they end up. This lets you skip absolutely anything and everything involving poetry (although I do have a bad habit of slipping into poetry mid-sentence
) . . . (I have tried to reform / I have tied my remains to a submarine
sandwiched between stacks of
Marine life and marinara sauce) . . .
The second is E PLURIBUS UNUM. I want to look at America—the trunk, the roots, the branches, the fruit, the soil, the animals that nest within. Why did I forget this Latin phrase? Why did we replace the one Seal with the heads of many men on our coins? Why am I still drawn to America even when our relational status is: ‘It’s complicated?’ So if politics is exhausting, even at the theoretical / historical level, then you can opt out of the series.
I have at least one more series idea, so we’ll see if I can balance the three or if I need to adjust.
Next up for Psalms I Spat Up In Barrooms: an actual poem.
Next up for E PLURIBUS UNUM: a sketch of a seal.
Evermore to come. (A good word is a good word, regardless of who dominates its use.)
Ta ta for now!