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…

Izibongo Zamakhosi…

Throughout the poesphere this week there has been the unfortunate buzz regarding Amiri Baraka being hospitalized and, thankfully, recovering fully from an innominate illness.

When the news presented itself I braced for the worst; I have an unfortunate, and extensive, familiarity with the loss of those who were very close to me and consequentially anticipate dreadful plans of reality to unfurl. We all poem and pray for the best now Amiri; to your health and continued words I raise my glass to you.

—

When I’d read that he was in good health and released from the hospital my thoughts drifted apart and away from concerns related to Baraka. Instead I strayed to the concept of post-death homage, eulogies, funeral poems and memorializing of the deceased; a form of memorializing that is exceptionally relevant to the world of poetry and certainly profound in its respect of the dead – but it is as well also imperative to maintain our own well being. Nevertheless, I pressed further into this idea of homage and wondered what it is that drives us to create in this medium in the first place.

Robert Pirsig, I believe, in the afterword of Zen, addresses this question succinctly; when considering what it was about the death of his son, Chris, that impacted him so deeply…

“What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a pattern, [and while] the larger pattern remained, a huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern was looking for something to attach to and couldn’t find anything. That’s probably why grieving people feel such attachment to cemetery headstones and any material property or representation of the deceased. The pattern is trying to hang on to its own existence by finding some new material thing to center itself upon.“

The reverence of the deceased through poetry is a way of filling that human-shaped hole in the pattern as we understand it. We have an image of, an idea of, a concept of, a pattern representing someone whom we have lost and when that concept grows a distortion or has a boot-heal-shaped hole where the heart was – then for our sanity and for the memory of those lost – we must fill it.

I wondered to Donne‘s Holy Sonnets and mumbled through a cigarette butt, “death, be not proud, though some have called thee / mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so…”

I considered myself with Carl Solomon in Rockland.

I puzzled over who would, “bear the whips and scorns of time / [when] he himself might his quietus make / with a bare bodkin,” instead.

Although the answer is entirely dependent upon subjective taste and preference – what poetry, what word, what eulogistic writing is suited well for the praise of our dead?

I found myself, lastly, with the Ndebele praise poetry known as the, “Izibongo Zamakhosi.”

In brief, this poetry form is a historical preservationist’s narration regarding the successes and achievements of a clan or clan member; and accordingly, the words Izibongo Zamakhosi translate to, King’s Praises. In length, however, a page I’d found and now consider to be the sine qua non source of explanation and teaching of the Izibongo Zamakhosi can be found Matebeleland.com’s blog on the history of the culture and poetry of the Ndebele people.

At the age of 19 I plunged into the world of poetry via the French Quarter in New Orleans, meeting and learning from scores of brilliant writers. I learned, specifically, about the poetic form Izibongo from poet David Rowe who quickly shared with me his examples which were, astonishing, king’s praises of a more modernized caliber.

The first Izibongos he shared with me were his, “Walt Whitman Izibongo,” and his, “Jack Kerouac Izibongo,” and explained to me that the Izibongo was a “chanting form of praise poetry read when a warrior was going off to battle or has died.”

“Brilliant!” I’d thought, “to commemorate our favorite poets through chanting praises at them as if they were kings and warriors!”

It wasn’t until much later, roughly 6 or 7 years later, that I began to write Izibongo’s of my own and felt that they truly were the path upon which I could appropriately exalt not only my poetic idols passed but also my loved ones who deserved my praise in words.

—

Letterpress broadside “Walt Whitman Izibongo” by David Rowe on sale at Etsy.

Listen to David Rowe reading, “Walt Whitman Izibongo,” here.

David’s book, “Unsolicited Poems,” is one of the more inspirational books of poems I’ve read, I recommend purchasing it or borrowing it from me soon.

—

What I consider my best Izibongo to date…

Hermann Hesse Izibongo…
(for David Rowe who has to take it)

Hermann Hesse!
The man who dreams of a boxed leg, a bitten scorpion tipping the tip dribble of Goethe’s magic markered on moustache and never coming up for eternity’s heir!

Hermann Hesse!
Whose bleat is wisdom bellowed by the gruff in a Billy Goat’s Bah-ah-ah, and who holding high Narcissus flowers is himself a bouquet of finite clopping hooves upon the Steppe Mountains!

Hermann Hesse!
Who never knew the treeless, never lain claws nor teeth to the vastless, nor scowered the cliffsides of southeast Europe, or Asia, and yet – left them, all the same, absorbed into human forms, as this sheep in wolves clothing.

Hermann Hesse!
Hermann Hesse!
Who I say knew my dreams, knew my rivers, and knew my Phoenix more than I!

Who knew Berlioz by the backwash in a spittoon.

Who knew Mozart from the saints who could not dance, but danced the same in “victory’s forgotten underwear!”

Who knew Matthisson, Beethoven, and Jean-Paul Sartre by names only their Mommies could call them!

Who in ’46 was noble enough for a prize.
And who in ’62 was prized as a noble by “The Eternals” in some heaven for Madmen Only, some heaven that he never had a need to believe in!

Who could know folk by their lore and whose reliquary is full of bronzed tails he plucked from the back end of fairies!
Hermann Hesse!
Citizen of Switzerland!

Hermann Hesse!
Spoiled “Fuck-All” of Germany!

Hermann Hesse!
Whose very name speaks of love!
Of some vague her!
Of Thomas Mann
Of the very Hesse towns of your ex country!

Hermann Hesse!
Whose very spine IS the fulcrum of all of literature’s twirling world!

 

The Hypertextual Poem; a Teaching Tool or just Pleonasm?

We grew accustomed to sharing the story of each poem; we were not willing to kill the author too quickly. When we were teenagers in the 90s – few of us had ever attended an actual poetry reading.

Our intent was simple; share your poem and your feelings towards it and we’ll discuss it as long as you want to.

Ray had an amplifier that he lay on its back, speaker to the sky, we sat in a circle and passed the microphone between us.

One thing was certain with us – we wanted to know the story behind the poem we were hearing.

Now, it seems, this is neither easy nor cared for among the established poetry circles.

I had the thought this morning while combing through a series of old poems that I could experiment with a form I once thought had potential – I wanted to write poetry hypertextually.

The poem would stand as itself and would have an unobtrusive platform from which would explain the history, the intent, the story behind and within the poem.

I hypertextualized and footnoted a poem some time ago and never felt any need to share it with anyone but myself and figured this poem could be the Friday post.

The poem was a wonderful homage of sounds and great flavors in dedication to the gnostic god, Abraxas. I first learned about Abraxas when I read Hermann Hesse’s bildungsroman, “Demian.” That story still stands as one of the more influential texts of my life.

When my father read the poem he, as he always has, asked me what the poem meant. Where did I get the ideas from? What did this mean?

I’ve always had a soft spot for talking poetry with my electrical engineer father; he couldn’t understand it without me and yet – he really does show a great appreciation for the poet’s work. I don’t believe he’s ever missed a performance of mine.

It’s in those conversations where I have the opportunity to share, to teach, to explain poetry to another person that I feel that light from within shining with a suggestive radiance saying, “this is why you do this.”

I always encourage poets to share more of the background, the reasons, the history of their ideas – hopefully someone will hypertextualize and footnote another poem someday in the way that I am going to now… I advocate the use of hypertext and footnotes because it still provides the reader with the option of the author being dead or still alive from inside the poem. Furthermore, as I mentioned, being a teacher of creative outlets – this method has the potential for grand conveyance of information.

And so, I ask you, does this add to? Subtract from? Deter the reader? What does utilizing poetry as a teaching tool, a conduit of information, in this way do for you?

Abraxas…

 

Abraxas staves his mood he
plays his saxophone in a tame and scaly
Coltrane¹ refrain.

 

He parallaxes² this duality with a note –

 

“From, where I have been to –
where I may go.”

 

From here on!

 

Abrasax³ plays his saxophone
relaxes his throats to coax
notes out in a slow tone
melodious melodrama to make

 

synthesis⁴

 

Abraxas expounds

upon a brass saxophone with notes
hung stark. The air of negative

sky space of
white sky
black stars
slated moon.⁵

 

Abraxas plays a brass sax

and moans an abracadabra

abacas – he counts his toes

tally the tacks
across rods…

 

Abraxas smacks his
beak together and blows
deeper, Gillespien⁶ style,
while all the feathers
flutter from his head
to quill the dirt with

incantations…

 

The feathers dance like
hovering gnats
pirouetting like an autumn ballerina of leaves
twisting a child tornado on the sidewalk,

 

“IO IO IO IAO SABAO KURIE!⁷” Reads the dust!

 

And justly a brass saxophone blows deeper

than a reflection of facing mirrors.

 

Abracas abracadabracally constructs a melody
that human ears are not made to hear.

 

Like Goethe’s architectural music⁸ Abraxas
apexically dances a slithering moon walk and
moors the planets to earth.

 

Venus and mars tethered to the pantheon

 

Earth – no longer orbiting between love and war.

 

Abrasax plays his brass saxophone Orpheusly

and tames the conflict within me.

 

A cobra hisses
from behind his back
a rattle scatters (like the pills
scitter across a tiled floor from a last moments
peace – where you change your mind.)

 

Abraxas blows his saxophone and a beaked
last hiss without lips caws in the skylight.

 

The pillars fall to his ouroboros shoes and Abraxas
now with cigarette in beak –

 

moans a melismatic, perfectly poised, beautifully poetic –

 

cock-a-doodle-do

 

as the sun rises around us – in an unashamed world.

—

¹ I was schooled by Elizabeth Ross in my misuse of Coltrane’s name here; I am aware now that Coltrane was only a trumpet player and not a saxophone player. The name, however, fits with the sounds and alliteration remains for the effect of the poem.

² The idea behind Abraxas utilizing parallax as a verb makes perfect sense; what Abraxas stands for is his ability to collapse the columns of opposing forces. Abraxas was God and the Devil in one being. Thus seeing something from two different angles he was able to, double entendre-ically, play a note on his sax and leave the following note which just further states his purpose.

³ The multitudinous ways in which historians and very cultures have spelled the name, “Abraxas,” over the years is astounding. To the Egyptians he was a combination of the words, “Abrak,” and, “Sax,” which translated to, “the word is adorable,” or, “the honorable and hallowed word.” Some scholars speculate a Greek derivation from the words, “Habros,” and, “Sac,” translated as, “the eye-catching, the successful liberator.”

⁴ Why just synthesis? By itself? Consider what the, “Hegelian Dialectic,” teaches us; all positions become relative to the person in a trifold manner stating that only through the conflict of a thesis and corresponding anti-thesis can one find absolute truth in the synthesis of this conflict… Precise Abraxas nature exemplified.

⁵ This idea starting to come because of tossing the name Abraxas around to see what else would come out of it. Often times, with sound poetry, poets with place single words in their mouths repeating them and all of their noises and syllables, tossing it from cheek to tooth to tongue like a wine they’ve just sniffed – from this comes a multitude of noise. Naturally words like Abracadabra, which speculatively comes from his name, and Abacas were two that came out. With this we have the notes of Abraxas’ saxophone leaving the sax to create stars on the day sky. The slated moon is just the sheet music that it created. And furthermore the sheet music, with it’s notes, creates an abacas.

⁶ Dizzy Gillespie was known for cheeks puffed out like canyons, you could probably hear an echo in that mouth.

⁷ From Aleister Crowley‘s Gnostic Mass, “Liber XV Ecclesiæ Gnosticæ Catholicæ Canon Missæ.” A friend, Dylan, had painted a near 6 foot tall portrait of Abraxas; across the top of which was written this chant.

⁸ While it is well known that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stated the he called, “architecture frozen music,” I found an expansion on this idea in the novel, “House of Leaves,” by Mark Z. Danielewski that I felt worth mentioning further, “The unfreezing of form [of architecture] releases that music. Unfortunately, since it contains all the harmonies of time and change, only the immortal may savor it. Mortals cannot help but fear those murmuring walls. After all do they not still sing the song of our end?” Once we can hear what the immortals deem, “music,” then we too must be immortal and, necessarily, dead among them.

 

Approaching the Villanelle… Cautiously…

Of late I’ve had encouragement to explore darker and more personal expression through poetry, sculpture and general corporeality; the results haven’t been the, so to speak, easiest for me to come across.

We are here to, as Brené Brown puts it in her talk on vulnerability, connect with each other. What else is there for us besides this, ultimately?

I’m reminded of the last stanza in the Herman Hesse poem, “Late in the Night…”

Grieving over a wasted life,

scraping the pits of memory,

taking my only comfort from the thought

that, forced to live, we’ll have the luck to die.

Of course it is not unusual for me or any other artist to have had, or presently hold, the insatiable ability and drive to relate to that sentiment and wish, consequentially, to “take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing: end them. To die…”

The openness I have been utilizing in my recent explorations of poetry has brought me to a very shadowy place; one year ago, this month, I had a medication error that drove me to psychiatrically dangerous places that did physical damage to me and emotional damage to my loved ones…

Briefly, an accident when I was a teenager caused a broken clavicle and whiplash to my spine; physically growing from then and into my twenties it was apparent that my spine was having difficulty remaining where it should. At the end of my twenties the constant spinal pain, numbness, tingling, loss of mobility etc. became unbearable, I took to seeing many neurosurgeons, physical therapists, yogis, chiropractors and pain specialists.

I found great relief in Vicodin and soon thereafter, physical therapy which indeed did save my life from what seemed to most likely be painful until I would, “have the luck to die.”

It was last year, September, October and November where my doctor had decided to try me on a steroid in hopes to reduce the inflammation in my thoracic spine; the damaged discs were too close to the spinal cord and they were unwilling to inject the steroid into the area as a result. I was given two courses of a steroid called, “methylprednisolone,” and, as it turns out, “roid-rage,” is a very real and terrifying thing.

Throughout these few months I channelled a lot of my disgust and anger into a set of poems written as suicide notes. Had I had any real intentions I’m not really certain, but I did, when my memory and thinking became clear again, find about 7 poems numbered as, “Suicide Poem 1-7.”

And now, having said encouragement regarding openness even if it is darkness, I have decided to tackle a poetic form I’ve long since loved with the content of one of those poems.

It was numbered as, “Suicide Poem #6: Remember Me as a Time of Day,” and was fairly lengthy; I cut it down to a decent size and, after a lifetime of failed attempts, feel I have written a successful villanelle. This is poetry in its most therapeutic sense…

The title, and one of the rhyming lines, comes from the song that played endlessly on repeat for  hours and days at a time. I’m certain it did contribute to my mood greatly. Play the song while you are reading the poem – it will easily set the mood right.

“Remember Me as a Time of Day.”

Remember me as a time of day
as heartless, vain and as appalling
while, prostrate, I to forgiveness pray,

“forget not that fire; whom I betray.”
At autumn’s frost, as leaves are falling,
remember me as a time of day.

Remember me through April and May
and through my haunting mother’s bawling
while, prostrate, I to forgiveness pray,

“forgive the dreams I’ve led astray.”
And when nostalgic grief is calling –
remember me as a time of day.

Remember the worst that I portray
through lust, through spite and senseless brawling –
while, prostrate, I to forgiveness pray,

“live not this life another day
and slay those ceaseless voices galling;
remember me as a time of day
while, prostrate, I to forgiveness pray.”

 

—

 

Post thought…

 

It occurred to me just now, while walking the pug, that the success of a villanelle rests in the repetitive lines being statements, requests (remember me as a time of day) or demands (do not go gentle into that good night). I am now forced to think how repeating questions would function in a villanelle.