04.12.05 - 4:47 p.m.

It's true: this town is so lovely in the springtime, when the forsythia and daffodils are still in bloom, and the trees are just brushed with the bright green of new growth, and the redbuds are, well, budding and the cherry trees and the bartlett pears are somewhere in the process of bud/bloom/litter the sidewalk with flower petals that is their usual cycle, and the azaleas are budding, and the bleeding hearts seem to fledge from nowhere, and the primroses. The new growth on the grape vines behind my parents' house is gorgeous, the vines are tender, this lovely red, with bulges of pink almost-flowers (almost-leaves, maybe. Do grape vines flower? I lived how many years with grapes in my backyard and never noticed.)

I'm too tired today to be coherent. I have this continuing urge to say something significant, but I'm perfectly aware that my mind is sloppy this afternoon, my thoughts are messy, sloshing around together in that weird and potent stew of reflection, self-reflection, whatever, born from altered states. The problem, of course, is that the altered state necessarily impairs the powers of reason that help one sift such sensations down into fine, pointed little sentences, to shave off the marks left by the mold and shape the finished product into something remotely interesting. Spring is on my mind, and so is Red's journey to London. Or, Red's Journey to London, as I suppose it should be termed. Tomorrow: some other day. Red's Journey to London deserves an entry of its own, celebrated with a toast of peanut butter and tuna fish.

MISS SNOOKS, POETESS
by Stevie Smith

Miss Snooks was really awfully nice
And never wrote a poem
That was not really awfully nice
And fitted to a woman,

She therefore made no enemies
And gave no sad surprises
But went on being awfully nice
And took a lot of prizes.

Slate has some anti-poetry poems up in its awesome but equally pretentious celebration of both poetry and anti-poetry, and that poem, by Stevie Smith, is from today's entry. If it were written in, say, 1821, it would be awesome, but as-is, written in 19fucking68, it's full of this hip and tasty smugness with which I identify, but which I also pretty much despise. How about a little mystery, Stevie Smith, you revolutionary you. Poetry! It's all about revolution when you're someone other than MISS SNOOKS, POETESS.

You know, it's everything at once, to celebrate National Poetry Month by writing about anti-poetry and publishing anti-poetry poems. I don't think you could stuff more counterintuitive meaning into a little mental box even if you were armed with a trash-compactor and a 500-pound gorilla. I honor just how awesome that is, and also how awful and a bit silly it is, with my response to Stevie Smith, essentially unedited, below:

Our Miss Snooks
(All apologies to Stevie Smith)
by me

Oh, Miss Snooks was more than you
think she was, darling. She had
fever dreams at midnight: starlings
against the moon, and, sometimes,
sometimes there was blood on the sheets,
threads of color like a broken
sunset, the pattern of a fading bruise.

You found none of her eccentricities
charming. The way she sang to
herself as she opened the door, the
muttered conversations with no one.
Sad, you said, when you thought
to say anything at all. And those
Hummels in the window. Tut tut tut.

They were awful: we all agreed. The
apple-cheeked little girl leading her
gaggle of geese, the improbable, wide-
eyed boy hanging from that stupid porcelain
pear tree, the patridge perched three
branches above. ("So meta.") And Miss Snooks, with
her paintbrush, illuminated in the front window,

dusting his small hands.

So, there it is. And, on re-reading, I think I kinda like it.