Poet: The Deaf Pit Bull Strangers Rescued

Last weekend Ray and I spent 10 minutes introducing a 12-month-old, 55lb, deaf bull terrier/dogo mix to a Muni-meter on First Avenue. We were the best show in town.

This is Poet, and the 100+ blessed supporters, Samaritans, and donors who sent letters, food, cleaning help, and money in the wake of Stella's sudden passing should formally make his acquaintance. You truly are the ones who took him from a cage to a home.

I doubt there will be a time when thinking of that list of names, nearly half strangers, won't put a lump in my throat. Think of that scene in The Lion King right after Mufasa has been trampled to death by wildebeest and his baby son is pushing himself under the lifeless king's paws, begging his father to hold him, to please wake up, but he can't, because he's dead. That lump you got going on now? It's that kinda lump, but on steroids.

Anyway, back to the boy:

Poet just turned one. He's interchangeably nicknamed "Chip Bull," in honor of his ink drop markings, and "T-Rex," because his head is ENORMOUS. (And full of teeth.) He, like Stella, was born deaf as a result of irresponsible breeding.

Poet was originally purchased at 8 weeks old from a breeder who clipped his ears for the "tough guy" look. His new owner took him home, named him Ares the God of War (...um...you already got the clipped pit bull, brother. You don't need to saddle it with verbal proof of those insecurities about your manbits), then sent him away for a two-week training program at a facility for police dogs. The trainer there discovered "Ares" was deaf, alerted the owner, and ultimately Ares stopped training. Three months later Ares' owner surrendered him to a New Jersey rescue, citing financial duress as a result of a messy divorce.

The rescue was happy to take Ares, but placing him was exceptionally hard. No one wants a disabled bully, so Ares' spent the next 7 months in a kennel. Most of his time was spent alone, depriving him of the vital socialization puppies need to learn to behave around dogs and people. The rescue, without experience raising deaf dogs, did their best, but the Ares we ultimately met was anxious, terrified, and frustrated out of his gourd trying to communicate. With more than half his life first year spent in a kennel, he was as institutionalized as a Shawshank parolee.

It was Ray's idea to name him Poet--a sweet, silly name for a sweet, silly dog born wearing emo eyeliner, and a nod to the friends and readers of this blog, without whom caring for Stella and rescuing Poet would have been impossible.

Which brings us to urban Muni-meters.

As a result of his isolation, the outside world can scare Poet into barking like a junkyard dog or hiding between my legs while fear-peeing. So far his list of fears include, but are not limited to:

- strangers
- strangers carrying bags
- strangers in puffy coats
- strangers with pouffy hair
- flocks of drunk NYU students
- people who gesture extravagantly on the sidewalk
- bikes in motion
- bikes in park
- bikes on the sidewalk
- bikes
- skateboards in motion
- skateboards
- strangers on skateboards
- hats- shopping carts
- flags
- banners
- flashing lights
- scrolling light signs (like the ones in every bodega window)
- shadows on the ceiling
- sunlight on the ceiling
- the fucking ceiling
- screen savers
- end credits on the TV
- Hulu on the iPad
- hands that raise or reach quickly (he cowers as if we'll hit him)
- the electrical cord on the flat-iron, but not the blowdryer
- the vacuum
- Mom and Dad practicing Krav Maga in the house
- yappy dogs
- blurs of motion
- some parked cars
- inanimate bags of garbage
- bags of garbage and rats
- ATMs

Having wiped that one Muni-meter with beef and successfully coerced Poet into eating a small pile of jerky hidden under it, thereby establishing the limited threat posed by a box of government money welded to a pole, we seem to be on the way to peace between deaf canines and local pay structures.

We had no idea that Poet would have so many fears. He was billed as a bright and beamish boy who loved tug-of-war, other dogs, and children, and needed "a little socialization." In reality, he is whip smart, beamish, wildly playful, and deeply insecure. He and Stella are polar opposites. She was gorgeous, feminine and fawnlike, with an addiction to garbage and a soulful, healing energy. She lived for laps and naps, got along with everything, only barked as a trick, and feared only basements. Poet, by comparison, is a bull. Handsome, muscled, drooly, and goonish, he skids and lumbers through the apartment, knocking over anything we are stupid enough to set down. When he yawns he "deaf whistles," which means we're basically living with a nazgul with anal glands. 

Poet deeply resents Apple, Steve Jobs, and all electronic devices which steal your attention, and has invented "The Pelican" as a defensive maneuver: go to water bowl, fill massive mouth, walk to Mom who is trying to write, and empty contents of mouth into feet or lap, receive attention. Ray thought I was making it up. Then in happened to him.

We have worried, I think as all "second child parents" do, that we made a mistake. That a deaf dog with serious fear issues is too great a challenge, that we'll fail him, that we'll disappoint everyone and weaken the argument to adopt special needs animals. Or become those people everyone glares at, walking around with their dog alternately barking like a Resident Evil zombie-Doberman and pissing with fear near the Citibikes while the folks in Starbucks point and mouth "Ugh, why don't they TRAIN their dog...".

But we are bonded. For the first time in his life, Poet is connected to two people and has a lap to sit in at home for 6-12 hours each and every day, depending. Last week he crawled out of his crate at night, quietly joined his sleeping adoptive parents in their bed, curled up between them, and has been there every night since, grinning, alligator rolling in the sheets with delight, knocking over both lamps with his tail while trying to stalk, attack, and then eat a sleep mask.

I can't hear a word you're saying. 

Thanksgiving Day Turkey massacre.

Dad!

Dad? Dad  I--zzzzzzzz.....

Dogfather Michael!!

SAINTS.

Um...okay, also 9ers.

I know we have to try. The rescue, woefully unprepared to work with deafies, offered to take him back. His chances of being adopted a second time are low. We will continue to work with his trainer, and try--and then thank you all for giving us the chance to try and help a Poet. 

Bread Basket-case

Bread Basket-Case

A piece of cornbread
brought her down.

She had been doing well enough,
doing things like
combing her hair,
brushing her teeth,
making the oversized sleigh bed that rested
at the center of her room--
those things that are hardest to do
when nursing
another's leaving.

She had been doing even better
with the necessary rituals,
like taking down the 5x7s
of them laughing
at the wedding of another
matched set
of friends,
or learning to ride the subway
through the lump in her throat that boarded
the train at the stop they used to meet at
after their work days ended.

She took his name out of her mouth
and placed it in a drawer
close to the kitchen sink,
where she could come to fetch it
once it was less likely
to cut her gums and tongue.

But the cornbread was too much.
His favorite, presented in a tiny basket
at a dinner party
flanked by bricks of foil-wrapped butter,
sucking the air from the room,
forcing her to recall
his mouth
his fingers
his satisfied humming
his long-held preference
for baked goods
with actual kernels
folded into the batter.

A single cubic slice
of cornmeal and hot butter
brought him back into the room
like some dark ancient voodoo,
proving there could be
no escape
or going back to the world
that had been
before he came,
and went.

Black magic
in a bread basket.

And so she did the only thing
the cursed can do in such situations:
She ate her heart out.
Fingers grasping at every square,
seeking out and devouring
every crumb of memory
stuffing it down
and swallowing away
each and every piece
unprettily and unrepentant  
until butter glossed her lips,
and her breath was hot and audible,
and her dining partners shifted
uncomfortably
in their seats.

And just like that,
he was gone again.
She dabbed the corners of her mouth
daintily with a napkin.

Later a young waiter
well-meaning and well-trained
passed by their table
with another steaming basket
cradled in his curved palm.
More bits of past swathed
in warmed white linen.
The young man extend one long arm
leaning down to land it
in the empty space between her wine glass
and the table's glowing candles.

This time she did nothing
except smile at her friends
with something close to victory
perched on the top of her nose.
She calmly rested a palm across
her slightly distended stomach.
It is hard to be eaten up inside
when one is already stuffed full.

Short and Sweet: Sweet and Sour

Another bit of writing found scrawled on a napkin that made its way back from New Orleans to New York:

bright spot

I'll never forget the morning
we discovered the little lemon
A little piece of summer
fallen on the pavement
You found the sun
hiding under pruned branches
And gently broke the rind with a thumbnail
turning the air bright
Then wrapped five fingers and a thumb around it
and carried it home.

You brought the sun with us.

Even on cloudy days
it is a glowing spot
on the landscape of a year
You
Your little lemon
the sweetness of you both--
I taste it when the days break bright,
that little pinch of sugar
spooned over each sour note
that dared follow us home.

Monday Morning: Inside the Envelope

Found this today. Describing it as a wispy half-love poem by a sliver of sterotype girl burning incense in defense of insensitivity while wearing a hand-stitched dress.

(Yeah, say THAT five times fast.)

Uh, anyway:

Inside the Envelope

leaning on you too much

sometimes

you creak

but do not bend

                 or break

                     out loud

your foundation 

is stronger

When the lean reverses, 

for now

I fail

      or break

    

just let me be the sling

lean too hard and

yes, I will swing away

away, for now

but lay with me

                    or in me

and I will cradle you constantly

                                 out loud
                                 and above

above it all, away

away

from din and dirty.

Awkward Forward Momentum

I fell off my blog.

Lost my balance when something unseen hip-checked me and tossed me off the wheels, into some dark corner.

I spent a few months feeling shadowy. I found and goofed around with Gollum, sat beside him turning things over and over in my palms. I grew accustomed to him waking me with a hissy little "my precious." We played handball with a bouncing circle of obsession. We spent a lot of time doing many things with words that end with "ession" in general.

There's a tremendous amount of equally esoteric metaphoric hooey that I could wax poetic about until you slam that Macbook shut while eye-rolling---wait, YOU, no, don't go yet, don't click off to the next pa--

--lost that one.

Ah well.

In short I fell off of much and into more and also stopped writing altogether. Which is no great loss to readers, because there is always someone somewhere writing something worth reading; most of the time it excludes weird side-rants about playing handball with Lord of the Rings characters.

But today I tripped and fell back on and started rolling along, slowly. It's like stumbling over a curb face-down onto a skateboard and lurching forward, injured: breasts smushed weirdly against the body, scraped arms out, shocked legs taut, the toes dragging behind. But somehow, forward momentum. Awkward forward momentum.

Rolling on, as if nothing had ever happened.

On Creative Vampires (A Letter About The People Who'll Suck You Dry Through Two Holes if You Let Them)

I received a letter recently from a young poet. (No, I am not going all Rilke on ya'll). Upon the printing of her first commercial poems she discovered a backhanded compliment via Facebook (the Mecca of passive-aggressive bulldinky) from a writer accusing her of aspiring to be something she's not, for "forgetting her true friends" in the process. They claimed that anyone who wrote for money was "selling out."

Gut reaction: F@#!. THAT. NOISE.

Secondary more mature reaction: This happens more frequently to writers and creatives of all kinds than any teacher or book can ever prepare you for.

It knocked loose the memory of a successful writer-poet-journalist-friend who recently experienced something similar: After a milestone year she published a piece thanking the writers, mentors and patrons who supported and inspired her over the course of 365 days. Soon thereafter an old contact got in touch to let her know he was "one of the ones who knows" her "best," and therefore HAD to express his feeling that her essay was a grotesque combination of unchecked ego and name-dropping. He also alluded to something the other young poet's friend did: selling out.

She wrote to me fuming, wounded in that way that comes with realizing you and a creative cohort are parting ways, questioning which sides of the river you'll soon be staring at each other from.

Below is my (edited) response to her. It is a version of what I will also send to the young poet.

It is what I wish someone had said to me a long time ago:

[To my creative Lovie];

Once you've hit a certain point in your growth bursts of uninvited opinion are inevitable. Some will happen to your face. Most will happen behind your back.

Jealousy and ambition in combination form a strange, unpredictable cocktail. The jealousy shot is palpable...it masquerades as concern, insight, criticism or commentary. But its foundation is, "Why do these things happen for someone else and not happen for me?" A creative always wrestles with jealousy, because in order to focus on "the work" we must tune it out, stay the course, support others going through the same struggle...everything we've ever read in any verbose artist's journal. 

Your "friend" is jealous and understandably wrestling personally with it.

But his ambition has kicked in and stirred the struggle with jealousy and shame into a less-than-personable email. [Or conversation. Or note. Or Facebook post.]

By writing to you, alternately stroking and slapping you (and not in a fun, vaguely pleasurable way) with his uninvited opinions, he is subliminally saying "I know you better than these successful new contacts of yours. I am someone worth remembering." He writes to work through his own issues, and he writes so you will not forget him--so that you will remember his struggle with ambition and success, relate to it and deem him worthy...

...then tap him to be the next person pulled up the ladder by the chain of friends, mentors and patrons who have made your own success possible.

When someone writes something condescending from the position of stalwart advocate or ally, what they are really saying is this: "Please take me with you to that place I claim I do not want to go."

Tune. These people. Out.

If you are like many writers, you have never (not seriously anyway, or at least without the influence of several bottles of port or dusty pint of whiskey) pretended you want only to write in a garret somewhere, penning a great work on parchment to later hide in a cupboard where those who have not been enlightened would damage it by reading it before you die of consumption.

You see things, experience them, suss out meanings and work hard to put them into words. You want people to read those words and experience something as well. In order for people to read them you have to put them out there.

Writing (for now) about your experience as a starving artist doesn't mean you want to be defined by starvation. Mapplehthorpe, Warhol, Joplin, Cobain, Lennon, Patti Smith...they all believed in "art." They also wanted to, and struggled with, the desire (and occasional inability) to EAT.

Do not let anyone who covets your dinner make you defend your desire to eat. 

Now this part is important, and I add it with intense love: In almost every criticism there will be some tiny thread of reality you can choose to tug on, or not.

You  have thanked people you love and who love you, but also people you are proud to be associated with, correct? There's a little ego in that...and there bloody well should be. Why shouldn't there be? Look what you did so far. Look what you are doing. But it is true that that same sliver of ego, or inkblot of simple pride, will be interpreted by some as "name-dropping," and it will alienate them. Think about how you feel about that. If you don't care, own it and carry on. If you find you do care, recalibrate your delivery.

There is no wrong choice so long as you recognize and own it.

My own humble personal rule has been this: Promote your friends and contemporaries, but keep your mentors secret.

Or, in more sound-bitey terms: "Shine your light as bright as it can burn, baby, but keep your fuel source well-protected." 

This response is a little long. I am not sorry about that. I mean all of it and hope it helps now and in the future, because you will have many unsolicited opinions forced upon you over a lifetime.

Stay strong and be sure to stake any vampires that threaten to suck you dry.

Love Always,

KK Van Helsing

Delicate F-ing Flower #2: Chrysanthemum, and More Accidental Poetry Found Lurking in Gmails

Chrysanthemum.

Of course she had to pick the name that is the hardest to spell, one of those blossoms that need to be Googled before you can put it in print.

Where does the "y" go again? 


A few weeks ago I introduced and explained a metaphorical poetic garden filled with Delicate Fucking Flowers. (There will be an explaination for why we're plucking them at all...eventually.) Today, Chrysanthemum joins Tobacco Blossom, Dearie in the DFF bouquet, though her debut is unintentional.

Chrysanthemum is our youngest flower at the tender age of 16. She started writing me when this blog first debuted and has since made me spit-take coffee, cock my head sideways at her advanced insight and reminded me why I wouldn't go back to being 16 and in high school if you offered me $10 million dollars. She did it all via a daisy chain of both wry and aching emails.

When the following snippet appeared in one of the most recent Gmail messages, I couldn't help but think it fit the bill of accidental poetry, one of my favorite genres ever:

Our house is small,

and Cape Cod,

and every newly-weds’ dream.

The blue shutters

just scream “come live in me,”

as if shutters could scream.

Our landscaping is pristine,

and everything done by hand.

Our hands.

The hands of my

dyfunctionally perfect,

still married,

single child

family.

There are flowers in the lawn.

IN THE LAWN.

I think the house belongs

somewhere in

a coastal Massachusetts town,

with landing seagulls

and fireworks over the bay

on The Fourth of July.

When my parents got married they had a painting made of it.

A painting.

Of our house.

Hanging in the front entryway.

Just in case you missed it

before you came inside.

This girl is 16. I freaking love her. And her real, intentional poetry debut will sprout up on the blog shortly.

Accidental Poetry, Found: The Rejection Letter

More accidental poetry, found. (Though this is intentional accidental poetry.)

Courtesy of tracymueller.com: Prose poetry posing as a rejection letter. Click it. 

If all rejection letters looked like that I'd submit daily.

The Trouble With (National) Poet(ry Month), Plus the Slurred Genius of Accidental Poet "Dominque"

April is National Poetry Month. This guarantees that:

A) Today you will see a peppering of blog posts and pseudonews items about National Poetry Month.
     a1. By tomorrow you will have forgotten it is National Poetry Month.

B) Lovers of poetry will spend the next 30 days re-reminding you that it is National Poetry Month.
     b1. You will slowly grow to resent them. 

C) People with internet platforms will publicly "celebrate" National Poetry Month.
     c1. Mostly by posting cringe-verse torn from their high school journals, greatest hits from undergrad History of Lit books (largely Yeats, Whitman, Blake, Frost and Angelou) and/or lines from the most notable poetry figure from their home town/state/country.

D) On April 30 most poets will still feel isolated and under-appreciated.
     d1. Additional April 30th projection statistics: 98% of all poetry-haters will still hate poetry. 1% will have defected to the pro-poetry side. The remaining 1% will have died of old age or unrelated catastrophes. 

Also, Barnes and Noble will feature discounted boxes of magnetic poetry sets:

Only people with metal surfaces in their home are allowed to write poetry.

As the author of a blog with the word "poet" in the title, I will contribute to this arbitrary public exercise by continuing business as usual, and by posting any examples I can find of Accidental Poetry.

Business as usual:
a snippet from "On Creative Loneliness," an old cringe-piece responding to "The Importance of Solitude:"

"but who will write the writer
in return
curl words back in reciprocal arcs
greet her in the morning
with three even lines in ink
on a napkin

silence, golden 
but after the hushes
the observer bears the weight

to see so much
to be seen so little"

And my first NaPoMo contribution, a must watch (with sound turned up high):

Accidental Poetry by Dominique: "U is for Eunice"
(Bio: Dominique is an upbeat girl-about-town who recently relocated from Desperation, MA, to Self-Loathing, PA, where she currently lives under her pillow. When not recording poetry on Ryan's message machine, she enjoys binge-drinking Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, playing with yo-yos, entering spelling bees and giggling. By day, Dominique works for either eBay or Jamba Juice, we're not quite sure.)