Random Thoughts

As for resolutions and such nonsense…

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…they feel redundant, superfluous, and somewhat synthetic. Pretty much the same rigamarole every year, and some years I’m a bit more successful with orchestrating the charade than others. Resolutions are for losers, work is for winners.

Nonetheless, I’d like to blog more, read more books, take more pictures, keep up with my ambitious workout plan. Drink more water (in excess). Drink more good wine and beer (in moderation, of course). Write more, as always. Go on more walks. Streamline and organize my life.

I say let’s clear out 2014, and may 2015 be more of the good stuff and far less of the bad. Do you agree?

If I blogged more often, then I wouldn't need to do these long catch up posts...

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So long time no update and I’ve been a bad, bad blogger.

But much has been afoot in the sea beneath the blog, the current under the silence. For instance:

  • Several chapbooks are nearly ready for submission. One may have enough momentum to become a full-length manuscript, depending on my attention span.
  • Two prose poems from one of the aforementioned chapbooks (tentatively titled The Alter Ego Handbook) were published in 2014 at burntdistrict. burntdistrict is a journal of contemporary poetry published by the editors of Spark Wheel Press. This is the 3rd time I’ve had work published by the journal, and Volume 3, Issue 2 is awesome – and I’m not saying that because my two trivial poems are in there. It’s truly a great read.
  • Three poems were finalists for 2014 Atlantis Award at the poet’s billow. You can read them here. No money, but it was great to be in the running for the award and to have my writing published on the poet’s billow website. Thanks to all involved with this award.
  • My poem Only the Moon Knows You’re Signing the Blues won first place in the 2014 Lebanon Poets’ Society Free Verse Poetry Contest.
  • I have many short stories in various states of construction. I’ll be finishing and revising them soon to get them ready for submittal. I have caught the fiction bug again. Who knows, maybe a novel is rattling inside of me?
  • I haven’t given up on my poetry manuscript The Blues Almanac. But I’m no longer letting that book not being published (yet) subliminally cause me to be creatively constipated. I’m partway into writing what will be my next poetry book, although the concept hasn’t fully bloomed yet. I’m looking forward to seeing where 2015 takes this potential book and the rest of my writing.

Broken record, but I’m going to be better at blogging and updates in the new year. If anything, it is another extension of my writing…and I definitely need the practice.

Happy New Year!

Becoming a Nonbeliever

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I no longer believe in extremes, in boozing until vomiting or betting it all on a long-shot.   

I no longer believe in loitering on the sidelines while the world buzzes about.  After all, what good has ever happened to an innocent bystander? 

I no longer believe that I need to reinvent my cool to meet your preconceived notions.  Even if my jeans and/or shirt are tragically out of style, I am a bad enough motherfucker to wear them with swagger.  Believe that. 

I no longer believe the night in the pool hall really happened, when I was sucker punched for the first time in this life.  Therefore, I no longer believe in turning the other cheek, despite scripture or common sense.  Always swing first, lest you end up on the ground with a swollen lip and blood taunting your taste buds. 

I no longer believe in the corny parables people blindly apply to life.  A penny saved may be a penny earned, but not after taxes.  Is a false positive a true negative?  Depends on what you believe, I guess.

I no longer believe that history only winks and nudges at the truth; even when it’s hidden, reality ultimately tells its shitty story with the brashness of a raised middle finger.  Or a swift kick to the groin. You get the point. 

I no longer believe in a politician’s phony version of peace, since it always involves infinitely more warfare and death than any peace I would envision.  I no longer believe in weapons of mass destruction – oh wait, I never did believe in them, or their existence.  Does that mean I no longer believe in America, or that America has digressed beyond belief?  Do you believe I’m unpatriotic for asking?  Do I care? 

I no longer believe that life forces you to grow up eventually; there are too many immature deadbeats for that to be true.  

I no longer believe there’s an athlete who doesn’t cheat.  And who can blame them?  Look at their salaries. 

I no longer believe that all people are evil, yet I don’t open my front door for just anybody.  In fact, I double check the locks every night.  That’s because I pretty much no longer believe humans don’t know how to be human, or humane. 

I no longer believe that on the day I was born my father smiled, because he was a poker-faced individual who never showed joy, even when his son brought home straight A’s or sank a mid-range jump shot.  I no longer believe that I won’t eventually become him, if I haven’t already, jaded toward a world that expects us all to believe in the make-believe it passes off as gospel.

"Writer's Block" by Brother Ali.

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Tight track. Brother Ali describes it perfectly in this song:

Sometimes I don’t write a lot
I know some folks call that writer’s block
I just call it my process
It comes out when it’s ready to, I guess

I don’t wanna let nobody down, so
Here’s some new shit, you tell me how it sounds
I ain’t tryin’ to be difficult or no shit
It just hurts too bad to try and force it...

Blog-a-doon

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It's a blog that occasionally rises out of the silent mist then vanishes into the vapor again. Or maybe it's the blogger himself who's pops up, then disappears for an eternity. Perhaps I am secretly the subject of folklore. Sigh – there really is no really mythical reason to why I’ve been gone. My internet and router were ackinafool for awhile, but that all has been fixed. Therefore I’ll be back posting soon – I have some interesting news and notes, but I want to spread it out instead of committing an info dump. Be good, and I’ll be back soon to blab about my recent poetry contest win and some upcoming publications and other random thoughts.

Hello, old friend.

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You know how it is when you get to spend time with a friend who knows you really well, how you can just fall back into conversation when you see them, like nothing’s ever changed? That’s what it was like when I found time to do some writing this evening. Like I never even had a hiatus from it at all.

What I’ve Been Doing Lately Instead of Writing

I spent a large portion of the past two months reading and critiquing poetry instead of writing it.

Why? Because I had the honor of judging a contest for the first time, the 2009 Shine Journal Poetry Contest.

The talent of the entries was impressive and choosing winners was challenging. You can read the winning poems by clicking here.

I learned a lot serving as a judge and getting a chance to be on the “other side” of the whole contest rigmarole. Thanks to Pamela Tyree Griffin for this opportunity – I enjoyed the experience and believe in the long run it will also help me in my development as a poet.

The Fate of Orphaned Poems.

Okay, I’m running with the hybrid manuscript idea. It’s all put together and proofread – and it reads smoother than either book did separately. I’ve sent out The Blues Handbook (that’s the title I settled on) to a contest. I’ll send it to two or three more in April, depending on money. Book contest submission fees are getting pricey. But that’s another rant for another day.

Where does that leave the orphaned poems, the ones that up until awhile ago were strong enough to be in a book but are now are just floating in limbo (and not the good kind of limbo, with a pole and reggae music)? Some of these have been published or won awards, so I can’t ignore their existence.

I identified three categories of these leftovers, and I have a fair amount of each group: approximately twelve toxic love/relationship poems, ten or eleven “what the hell’s wrong with humanity”/social commentary poems, and eighteen or so surreal poems. I’ll take those groupings, try to pen a few more poems that mesh with the categories, and get three chapbook manuscripts ready to submit by mid-summer.

This will work well with my writing schedule. I planned on writing poetry through April and May, and then focus on short fiction for the remainder of the year. On non-creative days or days when I don’t feel like laboring over prose, I’ll edit and refine the chapbooks.

But any idiot can come up with a plan. Now I have to execute.

I just can’t leave things be.

I've been (obsessively) tinkering with my two poetry manuscripts.

I had an idea to combine them. At first this seemed impossible. I had 60+ pages of urban, soulful, narrative poems, and 50+ pages of surreal and disjointed abstract poems. But I've been playing around with the pieces and it might work. The themes wander along similar lines, as does the imagery. Also, I trimmed cellulite from some poems, and divorced myself from others - not sure what I ever saw in them, anyway.

My recent poems are cleaner, shorter, and less elaborate than my early work. I'm tempted to revise the older poems. But I can't bring myself to change them into something more like what I'm writing now. It feels like someone else created them, and they're perfectly fine in their own way, and I just can't make them anything more than what they are. And I'd be ecstatic to have them published in a book, but I'm growing farther and farther away from them.

When I looked at the recent poems in light of the others, they fit together reasonably well. They bounce against each other, causing an interesting amount of friction. The surreal ones seemingly tug the other ones in that direction more so than standing alone.

I need to come up with a title. Maybe a hybrid of the two manuscripts’ names...perhaps the The Blues Handbook or My Own Brand of Truth or something entirely different?

It would make me slightly less anxious to know there's only one manuscript out there and not two of them that may never get published. Of course on the slim chance either gets accepted on their own in the meantime, all this babbling is all null and void.

So lately I’ve been doing almost everything but writing.

But that's about to change.  Work (day job) has been hella busy, and so has daily life, but I am about to get back to manufacturing prose and poetry.  I'm four or five poems away from a first draft of the truth handbook, and have several short stories that are in various states of existence.  I have a little down time this weekend, so I'm about to get back into my creative zone.