Five Star Riot - Better (Music Video)

Today would have been my son's 24th birthday, so in celebration of his beautiful life, here's "Better" by Fivestar Riot. He made this video his senior year of high school.

Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Singing Out: The Revel in Revelation

Having just read Alan Shapiro's elegies for his brother David 

who died from brain cancer (Song & Dance, Mariner Books, 2004), 

I feel compelled to let my son sing out as well. 

Alan's brother was an actor on Broadway, and had a great 

sense of humor, even in the midst of in his own tragedy. 

He "sang out in the revels" as Alan points out in 

"Last Impressions," the last poem in the collection, 

and by that singing, celebrated his life, our life, 

revealing, as all poems do, the essentials of existence.

Look for my upcoming review of Shapiro's book. 

From my son's journal, found soon after he died 

from Melanoma at age 18. While not comedic, 

these sing out their own revelations. 

October 1st, 2005 (The day he died)

What you are is a miracle that has graced my heart for what reason I don't know. The way you live is a lyrical work of art and I can't look away.

November 30, 2004

It’s like blowing in the wind,
the leaves in the fall.
Can’t stop me if I drift,
blending into it all.

2002

But let’s face it, we’re all dying a little bit everyday ‘till we end up back where we
belong. Let’s all dance into our graves.

2005

Certainty is the cage that keeps us safe
from curiosity. I’ve been released 
from the cage. I am the songbird
and I am flying for the window.
I know it’s closed, but I plan on
breaking through.

2004

It’s funny how we call survival a blessing when death would be so much greater.

2004

I’m still waiting for the answers to come falling at my feet. I’ll pick them up and look
them over but all I’m going to see is that no one knows the answers.

April 28, 2005 “Brown and Blue Eyes”

Brown eyes, if you’re listening in there,
I’m sure you’re aware 

that time Is on your side,
but not if you throw it away with regret. 

Blue eyes, if I choose to compare,
you’ll notice I stare. 

You’re everything I needed. Just pull me through.Just pull me through. I promise that I’ll beat it.

Here's Charlie singing Brown Eyes:

September 16, 2004 “Wings”

I want to be the passenger.
Let someone else drive
because I’ve got enough to do.
So girlfriend’s got her wings.
There are better things than
falling in love,
like being loved
and loving someone.
There are better things
than having control:
living out your soul.
Find that someone.

2004

It’s such a difficult burden to carry, but it is also a motivating one. While cancer usually associates with a looming of death, it also provokes a will to live. I am always encouraged by my parents and girlfriend, who have been my greatest supporters since my diagnosis, to fight even when I am exhausted from treatments because I am loved.

March 3, 2004 “Death Cab”

Relying on uncertainties, ignoring
statistics. Using just my fingertips
to measure all the distance
between now and when its over.

Revised April 2, 2004 “Look Up”

Look up, it just might surprise you
I think we’ve found your cure.
Don’t know where we’re going-
doesn’t matter,
Why do we need to be so sure?

Where we’re going- it’s a better place
But I can’t say for sure.
Either way, don’t we know it’s for the
better? And there’s no need to
feel so insecure.

The cure is the disease
that brings everyone around you

caring for what they don’t understand,
helping with the load that’s just too heavy
to carry alone.

It’s like a coffin.
We’re all on a handle.
The second it drops is the one
we all fall down.

Don’t cry now.
Don’t cry ever.
Dehydration is far too clever,
empties your eyes and leaves you tired...

JOURNAL ENTRY 6/13/2005

Whenever people level with me and say how hard it must be for me to endure these harsh treatments, and that they admire my spirit and strength, I usually want to reply that these treatments are hardly brutal and are all worthwhile if they mean
that I get to spend more time on earth with all the people I love and who have shown so much caring love throughout my life and this treatment. It is almost
impossible for me to refrain from tears every time I think about the incredible
amount of love people have shown me. And if this experience has shown me anything, I think it’s shown me that God encourages us all to love in so many ways, even in tragedy. It’s incredible how many people I don’t even know have
shown me love and kept me in their prayers. Also, as tacky as it sounds, I think that if people could give everyone the love that I have received so gracefully, then the world would be such a better place to live in.

JOURNAL ENTRY 9/12/2005

I think, normally, when someone knows that they’re going to die, that the typical thing for everyone else to do is prepare themfor death. I think, in my case, and hopefully any other faithful person’s, that it’s much more appropriate to prepare the others who must deal with the person’s death. I’ll try to leave you with everything
you need. I’ll be taken care of when I get where I’m going.

 JOURNAL ENTRY 9/24/2005

So I was thinking today, after hearing
about Julie Lynch’s sort of self-realization-
coming to terms with life experience, that
I’m not sure what conclusions I’ve come to
about life. I know I’ve learned a lot of
valuable lessons and such over the past year,
but I don’t feel so wise as the people you read
about or hear about that come to complete
terms with life and death and find profound
understanding. I think what I’ve ultimately
found is that there isn’t much that can be
understood-especially when it comes to what
I’m experiencing now. Maybe that means that
all those other guys were just making stuff up
to sound or feel profound, themselves. Cuz I
have to admit, I think I’d feel a little more
complete, myself, if I could bring myself and
those around me to a new level of
understanding- one that would ultimately allow
us to better cope with all this. Maybe I feel
obligated even...

JOURNAL ENTRY 9/27/2005   
* * * last entry

I don’t like feeling pain. I hate showing
my pain even more, though. I don’t like
having people worry about every ache, pain,
or cough I feel. Sure, I am grateful for their
concern, because every once in a while, I do
need help. I just feel like my state of health
affects others states of emotion or happiness.
I wish I could ignore the pain so they wouldn’t
have to see it and worry so much.

Okay, I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.

Cancer, by Brian Moore
(spray insulation and oil on panel, 2005, for Charlie)

The Responsibility of a Writer

Ginger Murchison interviewing Stephen Dobyns

Having had the opportunity, and distinct pleasure to study on two occasions with Stephen Dobyns, I've found this concept, quoted here from an interview he did with editor Ginger Murchison in the Spring 2004 issue of The Cortland Review (TCR), most helpful in my own writing (in bold italics below):

TCR: I remember reading an Edward Leuders poem to my high-school students that defined poetry as "blue taillights on Tyranosaurus Rex." They enjoyed thinking about poetry that way, and it was just as you said—an exaggerated reality of poetry. Given that Concurring Beasts might have its exaggerations, it clearly works from both sides of the page, from poet to reader, and I'm going to ask you, if you will, to read the last five lines of the final poem. I should ask you to read the whole poem, but it's especially the last five lines I want to focus on. Would you do that?
Stephen Dobyns: Sure. It's from a poem called "The Ways of Keys."

Let a dark lantern be placed in the circle
And let me lie down by it, becoming
both entrance and exit of light. Let me
be the door and the lock. Let me
learn the ways of keys.

TCR: There's a lyric moment for you, for the poem and for a young poet's first book. Already, at that point in your life, you had developed a clear position about the responsibility of a poet and a sense of control.
Stephen Dobyns: Exactly. The poem talks about trying to translate the world into language to make it understandable and so to make it endurable, to make it seem less random, and to make the speaker of the poem seem not so much a victim within the world, but to have some control simply by being able to turn the world into language and ideally then open to some greater understanding.
TCR: ...and you aren't just saying—as the poet—that you want the keys for yourself. You are actually handing them to the reader...a gift.
Stephen Dobyns: Right. The speaker here wants to become both the entrance and the exit of light, to have it pass through him.

Full TCR Interview

Gregory Orr

Gregory Orr says it lyrically in one of my favorite poems, available at poets.org:

Some Part of the Lyric
by Gregory Orr
Some part of the lyric wants to exclude the world with all its chaos and grief and so conceives shapes (a tear, a globe of dew) whose cool symmetries create a mood of security. Which is something all need and so, the lyric's urge to exclude what hurts us isn't simply a crude defense, but an embracing of a few essential shapes: a tear, a globe of dew. But to what end? Are there clues in these forms to deeper mysteries that no good poem should exclude? What can a stripped art reveal? Is a nude more naked than the eye can see? Can a tear freed of salt be a globe of dew? And most of all—is it something we can use? Yes, but only as long as its beauty, like that of a tear or a globe of dew, reflects the world it meant to exclude.

Orr says poems translate experience of disorder as patterned language, the most ordered form of language, or as Emily Dickenson wrote: “After great pain a formal feeling comes.”

Given my own experience with grief and loss, both personally, and in the course of my professional work, I've found poetry to be a great container for the chaos of life. Here's a poem from my chapbook, Flying for the Window (Finishing Line Press, 2008), that deals with the loss of my son to cancer, first published in The Boston Literary Magazine:

WHAT I WEAR

This world above worlds is a prairie
of clouds and sun glare.
Below, the smoldering hearths
shed smoke like irradiated hair.

Worth less than his breath
on earth, his song plays in my ear.
Still, I listen. I listen again
for clues, the gift of his verse.

I grow tired, await
the terrible fates.

You see me wear
this blue plaid shirt,
the one he gave me last year.
I play his red guitar.

My son also knew the power of words. We found this journal entry dated April 2004, written a year and a half before he died, while he was in the midst of treatment for his cancer:

Charlie Coté, Jr (1987 - 2005)

UNFAMILIAR SKY

Look up, it just might surprise you.
I think we've found your cure.
Don't know where we're going-
doesn't matter,
why do we need to be so sure?
Where we're going- it's a better place,
but I can't say for sure.
Either way, don't we know it's
for the better? And there's no need
to feel so insecure.
The cure is the disease
that brings everyone around you
caring for what they don't understand,
helping with the load that's just too heavy
to carry alone.
It's like a coffin,
we're all on a handle.
The second it drops is the one
we all fall down.

Here's a link to him singing the first five lines in a Fivestar Riot song by the same name:

Find more artists like Fivestar Riot at Myspace Music

Gregory Orr says that poetry saved his life. When he was a child, he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother in a hunting accident. He discovered poetry while in high school and it gave him a way to create some order out of that chaos. He's written a book called Poetry as Survival that explores this idea in great depth. He's also written a powerful memoir called The Blessing.

Dobyns has written what I consider to be one of the best collection of essays on writing poetry: Best Words, Best Order.