The Driftwood of Our Lives Washed Up on Some Foreign Shore
Cooper Dozier
Author Bio
Cooper Dozier was born near Los Angeles in 1984, but grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. He became very educated about psychotropics in high school and did well in high school. He was voted most likely to become a political prisoner by his high school class (and also elected SGA vice president). After a brief sojourn in Massachusetts in 2003-2004 (Hampshire College) in which he had a mystical and transpersonal experience, he returned to Huntsville, made some new friends and in January of 2005 started college at UAH. His life centered around a coffeehouse that functioned as a computer and a bar and arts center that worked similarly. After becoming depressed, he moved to Nashville and worked in IT for a couple years, but never put down roots. Moving to Louisville near his parents, he pursued art for a year before returning to the job market, and began school at Bellarmine University in August 2011 for Design, Arts and Technology but withdrew in October 2013. He began writing a lot of poetry in late 2012 and writing intensively in December 2014. He is now engaged in a project to send 1000 postcards for climate change and poetry among other things, such as generalized activism, and has returned to Bellarmine for one final semester to complete a degree in Liberal Studies. He has finally begun to put down roots in Louisville. He is very active on WordPress (lostinmist.wordpress.com) and Twitter (@tribalephemeral). He has a cat called Crowley and lives alone. His favorite book is “The Schroedingers Cat Trilogy.”
Description
“The Driftwood of Our Lives Washed Up on Some Foreign Shore” is Cooper Dozier’s first published ebook, the 2nd edition coming out October 15th 2015. It is a chapbook length collection that touches on a range of topics although sometimes obliquely. From the more direct approaches to politics to the indirectness of alluding to the disaappearance of children, from activism to mental health, it is a selective tour of the psychological landscape of modern America with some windows into the author’s life, although there may be glare or drawn blinds on some of those windows… Many of the short poems are untitled (although numbered) and the book contains a couple of multi-page poems (“People of the Moon, and, particularly, “Menagerie”). Some brushes with anarchist leanings will be noticed, some brushes only with activism, as the line blurs between them. Drugs are a topic that comes up also. People get lost in the world and their minds in this text, but they are also found, or find themselves, as in the postscript or
“The Energy Pours Through Your Spine,” or in “Victory (Non-Linear Poem).” Two Non-Linear Poems are included, where the lines were written all out of order on the page, then some light editing was done and some lines removed, but very few if any moved around on the pages. It is a method I have had some delightful results with, although certainly its share of failures too, but even then it is a useful exercise to get the juices flowing, and there’s always something delightful and useful to be gleaned from it even when the poem as a whole fails. The book is ambivalent about, or even in places hostile to the idea that life and the universe are friendly, but it also contains its share of successes and loves… War is touched on at least once (“Untitled 5”) as are the refugees in and near and from Syria (“Curfew,” although that could also be interpreted to refer to other things). As “Untitled 14” says, “It Rankles Suburbia to Know These Things,” particularly parents trying to mold their childrens’ minds into their
own dictated shapes, I imagine. This could apply to much of the book depending on the family. The author recommends the second edition and recommends against the first, but you can still find it if you look.
Book excerpt
[Note: excerpt is out of order and disjointed compared to the book]
~~~~~~~ 14
it rankles suburbia to know these things
no one drifts into the silence of dreams
some people go their whole lives without
a jumble of sensoria tumbles from the closet
~~~~~~~
STOLEN
A silent humanity for all
Easier to write it down, and put a stop to it
A hopeful sign arises in the East
Scrutiny is not done quite so precisely
In stolen moments
At the day’s interstices
These little things drop out
~~~~~~~ 8
The cleverness of imitation
Is a little like
The pixelation of your anime
It doesn’t talk into the silences
It doesn’t walk into the desert
It only works when you make it partly real
But doom is your reward
If you do not take it seriously
~~~~~~~
LOVE WAS BOUNDLESS
Your love is mine
And mine is yours
We grow together like twining vines
It is truth we seek
Our love was boundless
But missing it is true
Our love was boundless
But binding it is true
Our love is boundless
And singing it is true
And as I do this
Nothing else comes up
My mind is the picture of the one-track
My love is boundless
And enacting it is true
Your love is infinite
And my seeing it is true
The death of circumstances surrounding me
Endings and beginnings
We grow up together, you and I
An ending to my dependence
A beginning of our political careers
You treat with the opposition
I organize the community
Their love was boundless
We saw it and we knew it
Their love was boundless
We reached for it and permeated
Their love was infinite
We helped it become a force of power
The community reformed itself
Into a fierce force to be reckoned with
It grew its links stronger
Its love ever greater
Its conflicts ever resolving
Its acting as a union
In the West
We acted as the progenitors
And then watched the life we sparked
Come into it’s own
~~~~~~~ 2
Trickster spirits come dancing
The symbol of a sticky situation
Unmentionable
Categories of things sift into conspiracies
Everything is a symbol of something else
~~~~~~~
CURFEW
A broken door signifies
Yet all our entreaties do nothing
To our aid our neighbors are deaf
But to their enforcement of curfew they are not
A trial at rest slips into motion
A broken tool sits on the smith’s bench
In need of a handle and a mending forge
But the smith is forever departed
The elevated cleric gives no more solace
Dawn prayers for the faithful are called
INTERLUDE 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
but there wasn’t any error, all the lies
came together, no one questioned them
all alerting others to the weather
singularly absent of demagogues
a spectacle was joined ever nightly
inside, the notes were compiling upon a desk
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REMEMBER THESE THINGS
The tangled flow of lives
In your workings, remember three things:
One, never look down on mushrooms
Two, do not insult your customers
Three, bring your lives to fruition
In your direct actions, remember these four:
The situation is not normal
The collected dreams of the people are at a place of power
Refrain from rudeness
Chant loudly, raucously, and bawdily
In your home, three again
Bring ever peace unto it
Stand on the threshold a moment before going through
Cook with consciousness
Author Website
http://www.psychicfuguestudio.net