Feature: Marc Mannheimer Day 2

the no blues blues

no blues
is not good blues,

-- never taking
the reach
for that
cinnamon and sugar sweet
romance,
that one in twenty chance
to get your ass out on the dancefloor and dance,
to inject your mind with that sickly swoony
illness that fills your thoughts
with her adorable likeness

no, no blues
means and means no more
than --
you never stood to
lose
nor gain
a thing...

not to die or live
receive or give the sunlight of your love,
not to exercise your heart,
the muscle that's strongest
and strangest in your life-vessel,

and now that you lie
at the end of your lonely days
in a bed in a nursing facility,
ossified, fossilized, refusing to participate
in what little life you have available to you,
your heart could stand to run around the block a few times,
to be stepped on, cheated on, to soar with wings,
to open and close,
to be broken and healed and broken again whole --

to open
and close......

.......and there is a little old lady who sits in the back of the dining room
and she has her eye on you
and there is a little old lady who sits in the dining room

and you see her once
and something flutters,
but no, "No! No! NO!! NOOOO!!!"

and that is the no-nonsense news
you can use or abuse or project and accuse
-- that is my future should I choose,
that my friends is the no blues blues.

© Marc Mannheimer

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Q&A

Q: How does your spirituality influence your writing/poetry.

A: I often seek to uncover the magical in the ordinary in my poetry. Because of my interest in the world mystical traditions, I’ve come to feel that the “God-stuff” – call it Chi or Shakti or Shekinah, etc., has manifested this Universe out of itself. So the magic I seek, to me, is really there, not the product of an imaginative poet.

Q: Do you have any other artistic/creative interests/talents?

A: I am a musician -- have been since I was a teen. My first writing experiences, in fact, were writing songs. I also dabble in drawing -- from any old picture I can get my hands on.

Q: How do you define poetry in general?

A: Poetry is a creative impulse expressing things seen, felt, intuited and thought in words that are "ordered" according to ones aesthetic sense. One develops that sense from reading other poetry, but eventually falls into a sense of rhythm that is his or her own.

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Photo © Marc Mannheimer