Picking Shots
Exclusive to Cook
Ding’s Kitchen
10/18/2014
It was June 2007 at the Erie
County Fairgrounds in Sandusky, Ohio. It was also Ohio Bike Week. A field of grass, revving
engines, a blazing white sun bursting through blue skies, beards and beer and
cheering and high heels and leather jackets and a steel cage in the middle of
it all. This was Ohio; this was ancient Greece. This was the most terrifying
moment of my life but, as was always the case, when the steel cage shut and the
referee said, “Let’s do this” and disappeared until the end it was... Zen. Life
or death. It was a sport but in no way felt like one. Absolute survival.
Absolutely serenity. Peace and violence swirled like the skies in Van Gogh’s
Starry Night. There were no thoughts; instinct guided action. I hurt and I
got hurt. I survived knowing that a bell, a mindfulness bell, would bring me
back to the beginning or the end. Whatever they are. I just wanted to be the
greatest fighter on the planet.
I lost that fight. Ate a knee that kissed my organs. Pulled
guard and felt the back of my head bounce off the mat. Found myself in a heel
hook I didn’t know how to escape. Tapped the mat three times to signal defeat. Other fights to fight, I told myself.
Whatever that means.
Two months later I’m walking through the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center
trying to find how in the hell poetry could be wielded. It had to be wielded.
All I knew was wielding. So it had to be wielded for good. What’s the point of imagination? I wondered as I looked at these
beautiful little books. Why is it often
linked to escaping reality? Shouldn’t it be linked to better understanding
reality so that we can beat the shit out of the world’s problems? I haven’t
fought since 2007 but it’s all I think about. Who knew poetry is just as much
about the scrap.
Poetry book one, Until
You Make the Shore, was based on the absurdities I saw in an Arizona
juvenile detention center and the US criminal justice system in general. Can
poetry solve that? Hell no. But Allen
Ginsberg said, “The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of
the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.” If there’s a tenet I live
by or if I have a faith it probably begins somewhere near that. I’m just a simple
dude trying to do some social good with whatever skills I have and whatever
time I have left to use them. I don’t see a better point in being here.
Book two, Malaria,
Poems. The disease ravages nearly a million human beings each year. Us and
them are illusions. There is only we. So why in the sweet holy hell is nobody
talking about malaria? And why is so much of our “global health” money going
toward causes like male pattern baldness? Enter a pissed off version of Ginsberg’s
voice.
Book three, Chittagong:
Poems & Essays, is primarily about the horrors of the shipbreaking
yards I saw in Bangladesh. Again it was all about what do I have and what can I
do about the madness before me? Boys are getting crippled and dying from
exposure to toxins all to break down the cruise ships we the wealthy love to
lounge on. And it’s only crickets? Stage left: Ginsberg’s ghost is now
screaming the quote while interspersing F bombs.
I’d like to think that if Ginsberg were my age he’d want to
grab a craft brew or two and talk about this shit. Who knows. But I know a lot
of others who do and will and want to. I feel the world’s torn—that muddled
place where it can swim but its toes don’t touch—between social consciousness
waxing and waning, at once breaking through the surface of the mud and
blossoming like the lotus and unable to break the surface of the mud and simply
suffocating. I just want bloom, sustainable and brilliant bloom.
I don’t know what’s next; but I’m covering up and backing up
towards the corner of desperation and my chin is tucked and I’m ready to swing
when there’s an opening.
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