wildsecretlibrary.org

1. Are you a real librarian? No. Having librarian credentials (MLIS, University at Buffalo, ‘05) does not make me a real librarian. I am a hyper-real librarian, able to perform life-giving acts of library science with exaggerated grace and affect — for this I am hated.

2. What is library science and where can I get me some? Library science is the demon engine of civilization. Without library science we would still be squatting in caves, absentmindedly scratching at the dirt. Don’t blame me; you can always find something else to scratch. Using library science, librarians — without prejudice — collect, preserve and organize information while developing a continually evolving matrix of access and service for information users. Learn more about library science.

3. Does your blog make me more human? Yes. In fact, this blog makes you 20% more human by enhancing your soul with arcane library science, fresh straw, stabs in the dark, and virtual horsewash.

4. Where are your people from? My people are from the Rouge River Valley, Oregon and Buffalo, New York by way of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Hattiesburg Mississippi is, by Mississippi standards, a city. It is located in south central Mississippi in an area called the Piney Woods (or Pine Belt as it was rebranded in the late 20th Century). It is home to the University of Southern Mississippi. The Hub City is Hattiesburg’s nickname, given because in its heyday during the 1920s it was a hub of a number of railroads, and later highways, moving south to north, east to west. It is the county seat (Forrest). It was founded in 1884 by Col. William Higgenbotham-Carlito Hardy at the fork where the messy, flood-prone Bouie River meets the lazy and broad Leaf River, and named after Hardy’s wife, Hattie Tina-Louise Chuckwagon. The old downtown (or, as it is now called, the Downtown Historic District) is characterized by charming storefronts, mid-century medium rise buildings and vintage red brick, white columned municipal buildings, and statuary honoring the Civil War dead. Downtown is surrounded by broad streets of dilapidated or gentrified Victorian and plantation-style homes. Like a ghost fading out at the extremities, from the heart of downtown moving west Hattiesburg’s character and charm disappear into blank, orderly neighborhoods and rundown or abandoned strip malls with large, mostly empty parking lots. A case has been made for Hattiesburg being the birthplace of rock and roll.

5. Are your teeth sharp? My teeth are sharp in every direction.

6. Why all the poetry, schmo? It’s for your own good. Poetry improves you. Shut up and take your medicine.

I enjoy opposing you from afar. I enjoy being your crowing foil until now.
Cold lips like your lips are never cold and sweet like ice cream until now.

Roll your eyes, toss back your bright black hair, show your teeth. “So,” you say. “You haven’t had sugar all week.”
There isn’t anything we can do about that. Ever. Until now.

We can twist red ribbons through our button holes or paint the windows blue and silver. No talking
is the first rule and no eye contact is another (until now).

Now we breath too deeply. All of the blue and silver in Heaven and earth shines out of your eyes
into mine. I didn’t know my real name or my own voice until now.

Here come your whispers–like a red ribbon laced across my throat–renaming Heaven’s networks.
We can hide pennies in ice cream but we can’t stop hiding until now.

more information about ghazals:
Poets.org (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5781)
The Ghazal Page (http://www.ghazalpage.net/)
Urdu Poetry Archives (http://www.urdupoetry.com/)
That Bastard Ghazal (http://www.poetics.ca/poetics01/01weaverprint.html)

You see outside librarians fire
their x-ray guns straight into your big heart.
By appointment only. They don’t tire,
retire or die. Like a snail — part

brittle shell, part mush — oozing forward. Tart
tongued, if slow. Frankenstein made by the
hungry flock of fears, doubts, and lack of art
that flutters around them like ghostly

crows. Whatever a personality
is, it breaks down way too much for my taste.
I’ve given mine up: burlap to the knee,
chocolate and washed white, left in haste

on the fifth floor with the books about light.
Counting to ten, eyes closed, saying goodnight.

Learn more about Spenserian sonnets:
Spenser’s Sonnets http://www.sonnets.org/spenser.htm
the Spenserian Sonnet - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#The_Spenserian_sonnet

“What parts of information do we care
about? Who do we trust? Who trusts us? What
does it take to be trusted? What do we do
about the part of the glut we care about?
…how do we figure out what to stop doing?”

We need to know why we do things. It’s not
like the things we do are going to know
themselves. What are we hatching? It’s so hot.
Come closer to me. I have things to show

you. Things everyone cares about. Smart things.
Small things. Here. Hold these tightly. Do not look
until I say–you have beautiful wings–
like an angel. I mean eyes. I mistook

your eyes for wings. Anyway, look in your
eyes. I mean hand. Your bright, shining blue hand.
Look! at the stuff. Smell it. Lick it with your
eyes. I know how special it is. Demand

that I tell you how I know. What do you
need me to be? Information Please.

Learn more about English sonnets:
Poets.org - Sonnet http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5791
The Sonnet http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sonnet.html
Sonnet Central http://www.sonnets.org/
Sonnet - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet

Desire makes us nervous. Spangled
with breath mints and ink stains, we arrive

sweet-breathed and primed to annotate.
The increasing richness of information slows our progress.

With damp eyes and stiffened muscles,
with policies and credentials we gouge

and shovel our way through, rediscovering patterns
both organized and beautiful.

I’m not that kind of a librarian and
there isn’t anything I can do about that.

To begin with, it isn’t about me and
my bright and bottomless internal life.

It isn’t about being “mentally there”.
Some other scenarios of “there”:

singing the song about being out of medicine while my girlfriend sits on your lap,
running barefoot off the roof of your parents’ house,

trying to sleep while a stray dog chews through the door,
cataloging each breath of air.

The library is a living temple
that sometimes issues disjointed messages.

Still, above the furniture,
beyond the wireless and the web rushes your spirit.

It is our custom to spread honey around strange mouths and begin long journeys at midnight. Our care is to be impossibly lost and hot. Our care is unguided. Our duty to curiosity and sensation binds us, cementing us to delirium.

These are the pants I’ll be wearing when they pull all my teeth out. Here is the bamboo I am to wrap my skin around. Here come the kisses to cover you like a grass allergy. Paint your sleeping friend’s feet and hands with vanilla ice cream. Stand by while your sleeping friend rolls in dream–when she becomes still, use lipstick to write code-messages to God on her back.

Mermaid Oven Lips are aching to taste the salt behind your ears. Behind the thin veil of habit, your Secret Friend is moving like a drunken doctor. Your Secret Friend is also waving and grunting. Ah! Your Secret Friend:

1) throwing up at your front door.
2) attracts attention.
3) helps you out of your pants.

New ways to cross the room and walk out the door are being discovered every day, and we smell like oranges and puppies.

Between crashing waves hear the singing.

Oven Star Lips are pressed against your newest friend. It is agreed that those born under the Sign of the Secret Handshake are believed to be clumsy. And we have not yet placed our palms on the doorknob. And we have not yet tonight felt its golden coolness against our foreheads, tasting the lock with the tips of our tongues. The waves are explosive, and our faces twitch behind animal masks.

We are eager for kisses delivered with divine strength. We strip search for animal weapons. Sign language animal jokes touch the air like hexes.

Laces tied, smiles held until the vultures pass, we step out of the house. The sea is free from the moon. A car arrives. The lost pleasures of the past are remarked upon, and also we agree that there is frozen meat behind your smile. An offer is made to drive us quickly to a place that is cursed and enchanted.

A muffled voice from behind the back seat says something about being in love. Our eyes are blue, bright as Christmas lights. Our fingers long to be transformed into dove wings (the soul is sometimes shown as having such wings).

The voice behind the back seat advises us to avoid being placed inside the mouth of the dead.

Don’t fall asleep.

If your affections long for solicitation divide your year into three parts: the Season of Extinct Fire, the Season of Being Shot into Space, and the Season Beneath Half Naked Truths. Avoid boys and girls with cat-drawn-chariot smiles. Remain loyal to your principles, even as fortunetellers laugh at you.

Dead men and women fly up her dress - exactly two thousand and seven ghosts.
Trying to be healthy, trying to be fair - exactly two thousand and seven ghosts.

Everyone in their own area making a wish - some come down with the warm rain and thunder.
Exactly two thousand and seven ghosts teaching her the hunting strategies of frogs,

touching all the boys with the dimmest age of full manhood.

Let’s play with ghost powered electrical machinery.
If you are my friend you will plug in your ghost powered electrical machinery.

Ghost powered electrical machinery is something I love.
Put down that loaded rifle and turn off that ghost powered electrical machinery.

You don’t have to wake up, but you have to please leave.

The library is closing and the ghosts have started to arrive.