trying to forget

Here is another small stone for today:

(for Kim Addonizio)

Sisyphus goes into a bar and
orders a shot which he immediately pounds
the barman asks want another

questions

Here is the small stone for today (hopefully just the first):

lovers want to know if you feel it too
the hungry and the poor ask for what they lack
what is your question today

to write

Here is a pretty formal and rather large small stone for today:

if i ever try to write
a song to sing
like a wing in the sky
if my little words to write
touch somewhere
like reaching out at flying birds
i hope your day to write
just like lovers say

wind pushing air everywhere
pencils pushing thoughts to write
a job of catching moonlight
cascading across this chair
free to lightly tint my hair

if i ever try to write
the light of dawn
like a candle nearby
if my little rhymes to write
are on your hands
like sunlight coats morning chimes
i hope your day to write
just like lovers say

wind pushing air everywhere
pencils pushing thoughts to write
a job of catching moonlight
cascading across this chair
free to lightly touch wish-bound hair

dairy-free diet

Here is a larger small stone for today:

I’ve got ben gunn stuck in my mind
something he said tells me about
shiny shells on the ocean bottom
and the rippling sand of the shore
sifting through the hourglass of
too many robinson caruso days
running to meet an unlikely falstaff
in a crowded rain forest hallway
and so tentatively asking him if he
had a bit of cheese in his pocket

perspective

Here is another small stone for today (I have a lot of catch-up to do):

let us love summer for all the garden’s color
and let us love today for the
rainbow from a sunny ice sickle

comparisons

Here is today's small stone (sorry I have been away with an illness):

“I’m in hell” is intolerable
to say “I’m bedridden in hell”
is far worse

Video Rock and Rap

Here is yet another small stone for today:

tawdry and bawdy
a home cam stripper on a pole
needing fireworks

bottle

Here is another small stone for today:

I pull the cork
on shared memories
and we begin to talk

lonely

Here is today's small stone (probably the first of several):

predawn’s unlikely fireflies
texting or playing on a small blue screen
not broadcasting for love

wingless Pegasus

Here is todays's small stone:

winter’s child magic
grab a flake and poof it’s gone
adults pull the sled

choices

Here is todays small stone:

Camus’ dinner plate
fun time with friends or
history of a deadly struggle

stagehand

Here is the small stone for today:

we go to work and to home
shifting scenery for each scene of the mime
and hoping the audience is not blind

caress

Here is today's small stone:

winter air rushes me from
Paris dawn window until closed
then curtains hang like lost love

sleep

Here is the small stone for today

insomnia is a manikin
in a tuxedo struggling
to find last week’s party

see

Here is today's small stone:

tired red eyes and wrinkled fingers
once again proving by threading the needle
Shaw’s “Hope Over Reason”

army

Here is the small stone for today:

the army of twins
dressed alike charging together
stick swords raised

War

Here is the small stone for today:

my demons dance
before my pen
i brush them away to write

Hope

Here is my small stone for today:

Fireflies are great artists
drawing love in squiggles of light
when all else is dark

Small toes make big steps

Here is a small stone about something Ray Maxwell shared:

ode to a cute toe
is naming obsession and doing some big steps
in seeing ourselves in combinations

Anna Akhmatova's Poetry

Here is a small stone about reading Akhmatova on my tablet:

Anna's Russian crescendos
telling of guarded hope and secret sorrows -
she had never dreamed of the reader in my hand.

Last minute holiday wish!

There is only one other piece of modern literature that talks about the concept of how a person contains and integrates the multiple personalities we are all made of and that is the Frankenstein Series written by Koontz, Anderson and Gorman. It is a piece of fiction, of course, and it is bent by and devoted to the process by which fiction can help us understand who we are. It is narrative in nature and a page-turner in style and ends up with a composite character that is capable of integrating the consciousness of several other singular personalities we have met individually into one rather difficult to understand character.

Book of Aliases deals with that idea poetically. After all, we seem to often be made up of some pretty contradictory stuff from time to time. So much so that our spouses/lovers/friends often find themselves saying “oh, they’re just in one of those moods” to try and explain our strange behavior. In addition to that, our problems with plural/singular pronoun references to ourselves I believe stems, at least in part, to that multiplicity of personalities we are all capable of.

Just as in fiction, we better understand the motivations and peculiarities of a single character but Dostoyevsky, in earlier times lets us understand that, in some real sense, the criminal and the policeman are one person seeking to experience re-integration. Again in Ulysses we can start to understand through Joyce that maybe Homer was really talking about the components of an ideal soldier by describing the personalities involved in a successful army.

Fortunately poetry lets us look at this issue as if we were holding a gem up to the light. Of course Book of Aliases seems to contain lots of personality types but the simple fact that it is autobiographical in style suggests that we must take all these parts inside ourselves and let them be at home. It takes that “why did I do that?” kind of behavior and lets us put it to rest in the sprawling mansion of our lives.

It’s getting too close to the holidays now to have time to ship a gift so it’s time to consider sending an e-book as that special gift for that rare person that you love and respect. Please consider sending Book of Aliases or some other of the works of literature that make our lives so much better.

Happy Holidays!

A holiday wish!

I know what I like to read and some of that is poetry. I don't care what the theme but a good poem puts the moment right. I'm not talking about my childhood or when I first got married, I'm talking about this moment. I need to be healthy and okay in precisely this moment and poetry is the only way I know of to do that kind of thing to my consciousness. Sure it would be neat if you read one or more of my books but what I really wish is for you to find this moment enduringly acceptable and enjoyable. Have a happy holiday season and read some good poetry!

Book of Aliases
Dragon Scales and Fireflies

Happy Thanksgiving!

This will be the first time in several years I have had the great pleasure of being in Tucson for Thanksgiving. I will spend this lovely holiday surrounded by children and grandchildren. Being mindful of all we have to be thankful for is a great blessing to us all. I wish you and yours the very best during these special moments and I hope you will be able to continue to enjoy those wonderful sentiments throughout the brief remainder of this year and for all of next year! Thank you for reading my poems and be blessed with joy in all you do!

A review by Lowell Murphree for Dragon Scales and Fireflies

Lowell Murphree wrote:

If you have found yourself standing in the rain at the corner of undeniable passion and unbearable incompletion, the poems in “Dragon Scales and Fireflies” offer you sheltering companionship. All night cafés and darkened hallways locate poet Russell Ragsdale’s inner dialog. It’s intensity could wake the neighborhood. This latest book of poems, available in Kindle addition on Amazon, deceptively invites you to a day together during which you will share coffee on a snowy afternoon, dinner with conversation about cheap and costly love and the homeliness and beauty of Paris and finally over candles and drinks a harrowingly honest visit to the inner fires defiant of age. My recommendation: Buy it. You’ll read it more than once.

Dragon Scales and Fireflies

Book origins

Russell Ragsdale travels to Kazakhstan right after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Within months of his arrival in an unusual place in Central Asia, he finds friendship in a struggling, Russian speaking world. The poet in him reawakens and he learns things about himself, both good and not so good, that change his life forever. Read Book of Aliases, a collection combining published and early poems written while living abroad. He also completed a chap book of new and original poetry written while living in Kazakhstan (2013) called Dragon Scales and Fireflies in which he explores his thoughts about safety and protecting oneself while living abroad as he now has for the last 21 years.