Canis Lupus Peripheres – A General Overview

“Mother” redirects here. For other uses of “mother,” see Mother

Image, “Dark Breath,” a project by Linda Caracciolo Borra

The peripheral wolf (Canis lupus peripheres) is a canid native to the seat and remote suburbs of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, Florida, and New Orleans. It is the smallest member of its family, with males averaging 92–113 kg (205–250 lb), and females 36–38.5 kg (79–85 lb). It is similar in general appearance and proportions to Canis lupus campestris, or Steppe Wolf, but has a smaller head, narrower chest, shorter legs, straighter tail, and human hands in place of paws. Its winter fur is long and bushy, and predominantly a freckled brunette in color, although nearly pure white, red, or brown to black also occur.

Within the genus Canis–Homo, the peripheral wolf represents a more specialized and similarly non-progressive form as its smaller ancestors (the call-girl and the enabler), as demonstrated by its morphological adaptations to hunting itself, its more manic nature, and its episodic mixed-affective expressive behavior. It is a social animal, travelling in dysfunctional families consisting of an abusive pair, accompanied by the pair’s offspring. The peripheral wolf is typically an auto-predator throughout its range, with only itself^[1][2][3] posing a serious threat to it. It feeds primarily on well whiskeys, cocaine, lithium, caffeine and nicotine though it also eats halušky, prepackaged microwaveable meals, and garbage.

Image from The White Deers

The peripheral wolf is one of the world’s least known and poorly researched animals, with probably less compassion and empathy given to it than any other wildlife species. It has a selective history of association with humans, rarely having sensitive or serious attention paid to it and hunted in most self-reflective situations due to its bipolar and depression inducing deliberate self-harm behaviors, while paradoxically being respected by itself during moments of idiopathic lucidity. Although the fear of the peripheral wolf is prevalent in, primarily, her offspring during adolescence, the majority of recorded attacks on her young have been attributed to alcohol induced aggression, the intergenerational cycle of violence and/or borderline personality disorder induced externalized aggression.

Approximately 62% of peripheral wolves have attacked people, and this is not unusual due to the limited availability of Therapy Wolf International resources. Furthermore peripheral wolves are relatively few and, while they do live amongst a society, have learned to trust themselves and others utilizing the few available resources when they are accessible. Hunting and trapping has reduced the species’ range to only vestige memories of its region, though this relatively widespread range has left an increasingly positive legacy which means that the species is not threatened at a visceral or emotional level for those who maintain its existence. Due to the suicide of the peripheral wolf, however, its physical form is no longer verifiable and is therefore classified by the IUCN as Extinct.

The Gray Wolf Poems…

In the poem, “The Suzerain Speck,” I learned, and became obsessed with, how to write the poem through the perspective of some other thing and since then have been either blogging about some iteration of this idea or notebooking some variation of this poetry form.

I began to write several poems from the perspective of Hesse’s Siddhartha through the filter of my belief system. Many of the poems were, I felt, successful however when I found myself meditating on Siddhartha at the stream another creature began to sniff around at his crossed legs, illuminated brow and lily pads.

 

As if one Hesse novel bled itself into another – if I’d dream of Siddhartha I would be interrupted by the Steppenwolf as some pup searching for his pack, freed from his cage, taunting Siddhartha the way he’d taunt Herr Haller as a boy.

I set the Siddhartha poems aside and decided, instead, to pay mind to my Steppenwolf pup instead. While every word Hesse ever wrote impacted me in such a way that from the onset of the first page of each book I shall forever remain changed – the Steppenwolf has always found his way to permeate my soul and body without reserve.

I began to read about the Gray Wolf and wrote scribbled ideas in the side of notebooks and poetry books I was reading. In addition to this studying I’ve recently finished a class with Burgh Bees on honeybee keeping, with this in mind I began to read Nick Flynn‘s book, “Blind Huber,” which is a series of poems about the art and history of beekeeping. Many of Flynn’s poems were reflecting the same connection to the bees that I was experiencing towards the Gray Wolf; the first of the wolf poems came out in the margin of a poem about the queen bee wanting to die in a specific way… The wolf pup began to sniff around, searching for his mother.

The pup sniffs at cold where
a killing of, simply, too much
to eat alone had left a scent
redolent of pack.

His breath – a slow drift
steam, shifting, a quick
fog as, in the stream,
he out-tricks his reflection –

and to an image of ether his
breath (as everyone stands
wrapped in arms, pose, held
smile – steam, resembling

the face moved, by aperture)
moved by interest
in anything else but this…
“Mother,” he sniffs, “alpha.”

He snarls, “Judy. Never mention Judy.
We. Never. Talk. About. Judy.”
Shaken loose by a wet memory
he whimpers… “Judy.”

His paw to bare snow, and slick
as a flashback hallucinating
an instant decades passed;
the sound of that bartender

pint glass-plunge into the ice
bucket – crunch… “I am sitting
below her bar stool, I am heeling,
mouth closed waiting

for the reinforcer, she loves
me as I do her.” The whiskey
stench of his mother tongue
against his neck fur…

Tracking the eidolon of perfume
in the hallways of some dark
night club; sunlight, bathing
through tree branches,

dancing the komorebi; her scent
on pine bark, paw prints in snow,
her icy reflection in the stream,
dancing the ignis fatuus.

His nostrils yawn at the memory
of canines bared in a snarl,
eyes distend in tears at the howl,
the teeth and gum glare..

the pup sniffs at cold where
a killing of, simply, too much
to handle alone has left a scent
redolent of her grief…

My poems never treat me – sweet and gentle…

Talking with Blake Ragghianti the other day about the extemporaneous nature that is sine qua non to jazz music brought my mind back to a piece he and I put together a few years back. Coupled with the bass stylings of Dave Busch and the venerable nature of Jerry Gaudi‘s trumpet playing we four put together a piece of jazz poetry that held, as its last stanza, the nature of that extemporaneousness; it is always to be spoken, as if the entirety of the preceding poem were its epigraph, on the spot and not rehearsed. The piece was to end, with each iteration, with something different inspired by the feeling and spirt one elicited from the poem.

Blake later pieced together all the video from the event and some images with a recording…

 

The Backside of a New Orleans Bandstand’s Got Its Insides on the Outs.

When at first I had the chance
To take the ski-ba-de-bop-do-opportunity
To bless these restless
Ears with years
of tangible voice from pipes
in nights of tattered paramour

I did

And I found a fair enough pheromoaning
melody melismically tease out and spout
these tones so sound and so

beat [that I rose in tomes of sweet poems]

And Billie Holiday see, she lain bare
tongued across the bottom rungs of this ladder
I remember the first time that I heard that
(Sunday was gloomy and with shadows I spent them
all — my heart and I have decided to — )

I remember when Ma Rainey shined me her
big beautiful barraging black bottom her cow
hooves stuck in the muck and entrails of
the mud undoing the undone history
of the dance itself

And I remember the day that Nina Simone died.
I Standing flat and shirtless in a Southern heat to

[beat so hot that even my eyes were sweating]

On the decadent Decatur balcony
while old Johnny Boy violined a dirge
in the hallways all ways stringless.
He’d just horse hairedly hum a harmony
Orpheusly while clowns and umbrellas
umbraed the French Quarter
while Harlequin Hobos and hounds
howled and funeraled through the streets
to beats [I venerate the trumpet
and I deify the simplicity
of the blues] tone on one note wrote toes
tapping on Green Dolphin St.
Where I meet women who endlessly collapse into song.
In New Orleans where
(My baby never treats me, sweet and gentle,
the way she should)
I’ve still got it bad man, and that ain’t good.

But then again – my babies never treated me so gentle.
Now that wasn’t so bad now was it?

Alyssa – I remember her name and at 6 feet 2 inches tall
all brunette you could bet that you could find her
any night of the week blowing deep in a Jazz deep
tone in a one note club with its insides careening on it’s outs.

She’d spouts above the drums, the cymbals and all that guitar.
Above the drums, the cymbals and all that guitar.
She’d blow deep from that heart and that heart from that soul
and that soul blowing from that soul blowing from that
Suyam-bop-be-op-a-dum-bass that dropped my throat
to the chok-ing diaphragm and man –

I was in…
Something.
It probably wasn’t love, but from New Orleans on –
it was heels over head style while all the girls I fell for –
they were just Jazz songs in the singing.
And I fell for that brunette in the black dress with the whiskey grin.
The chain smoked Femme Fatale that riled my nerves
and dropped my heart to a single –

beat.

She was – every woman –
that Humphrey Bogart ever fell in love with.

[Make up the ending each time you do it..]

—

In the light of this conversation with Blake I was taken to one with Kitty regarding the irrelevance of the jazz when compared to the notes we choose and why we choose them.

Similar to the medium and forms within – the poem, the poetry, doesn’t matter. What matters is why – and this is why I continue to write this blog without just simply posting poems and, instead, post long rants regarding my connections to it and why I do it the ways in which I do.

Why, I wonder, are so few poets unwilling to share in this manner?