Unfiltered

A Poem for The Crypto Bros and John Blase (who are mutually exclusive categories of humans.)

Today’s exercise in poetry is brought to you by La Huerta Mexican restaurant and Heineken 0.0 n/a beer. But also, this is a reader-supported newsletter, so if you like what you’re reading,

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Rusch and Ogle, 2024.

I was breaking down a chicken, sautéing onions, listening to Isbell’s new record, and working on a poem when

John Blase

texted. I was probably trading crypto or stocks or vintage muscle cars too, because Bros gotta grind the grind, bro.¹ In any event, it was a nothing of a poem, really—one decent line tucked between a shite sandwich of cliche (pardon my Irish). The truth is, I wasn’t writing in earnest, just clearing the cobweb of words from the upper corners of the old noggin. It’s spring, after all, and despite modern popular (populist?) opinion from a certain subset of twitter-peckered men, cleaning is men’s work, too.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the Knicks were on the television. According to Wikipedia, the Knicks are an American professional basketball team from New York City. Wealthy and beautiful Manhattanites—like Timothée Chalamet—are obsessed with the Knicks. According to Wikipedia, Timothée Chalamet is an American and French actor. He was born in New York City, so he’s more American than French, but both French and American girls have crushes on him, which I chalk up as an ahistorical anomaly of media conditioning. Mr. Chalamet doesn’t look like he’d survive a day on a cattle ranch in Nebraska—c'est la vie.

In any event, the Knicks were flopping around like a school of un-watered fish while Tyrese Haliburton taunted the scores of very decent—if not moderately self-absorbed—people in Madison Square Garden. (Tyrese Haliburton, Wikipedia says, is an American professional basketball player for the Indiana Pacers.) The chicken steamed. The onions hissed. Isbell sang his song to young men:

Don't say love unless you mean it
But don't say sorry 'less you're wrong
Tell a story like you've seen it
Tell yourself that you belong.

I tapped out lines of the poem as they came to me. Oh yeah, I ate chips and salsa from a greasy paper bag, too. I sipped a Heineken 0.00, that great tragedy of the Dutch. I forgot to mention this piece is sponsored by both La Huerta and Heineken, bro. (Like and smash that subscribe button, or whatever the kids say these days.) It’s also sponsored by some crypto exchange whose founder will be indicted for fraud or tax evasion or running a prostitution ring six months from now. If there were any justice, he’d be sentenced to hard labor on a Nebraska cattle ranch—c'est la vie.

At some point after dinner—maybe the third quarter of the game?—something like an actual poem came together. I won’t say whether it’s good or not because calling your own stuff good is gauche—another French word I suspect the good and gentle Timothée Chalamet uses with some frequency.

Who can say when a poem is finished? I’m not sure one ever is. Carl Sandburg once wrote the bones of a poem, then he kept writing and kept writing and kept writing until the poem had reached the length of an entire book, which he entitled The People, Yes. If Carl Sandburg were alive today, he’d be better friends with Isbell than Chalamet, I’d wager.

In poetry, there is the beginning, a void. Then there are shapeless elements. Then there is a whisper, then another and another and another until there’s something like form. Bones. A greasy bag full of salted chips. A Dutch tragedy. Whatever. Somewhere in the third quarter, a poem. And that poem lives the rest of its life in the third quarter, always feeling the pressure of the pen, the revision. And then one day, the author’s heart kaputs and the poem becomes a sort of last will and testament. A final word. An elegy.

Today, I’d like to share the bones of my poem with you, but mostly understand this: This bit of unfiltered writing is for my friend

John Blase

, who would fit in better with Isbell and Sandburg than he would Chalamet. In the Ozarks, we call that a high compliment.

I Once Believed

Men knew the lines
up every mountain, 
the westerly routes to
snow caps and angels.
Their hulking chests 
heaving at altitude
before planting
red flags as a sign. 

I now know
mountains are made
from bone fragments.

Since the days of Seth,
fathers have meandered
their way to death and dying,
setting markers for the children:
here is the running water; 
here is the elk heard; 
here is the den of wolves 
and the one of thieves;
here is my best guess. 

John turns west 
when the first snow falls.
This is why:
Echos of halcyon ghosts
and children 
running through. 

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1. I understand this is nonsense. So much of the modern man’s effort goes to using coded language to say absolutely nothing. Welcome to modernity, when language has come to die, bro.