What I'm doing tonight

Well, in a bit of a departure, I'm just updating rather than posting anything substantial. Though, I do have a piece I'm currently working on and will probably post later in its current incarnation.

Currently, it's 11 something p.m. here in the Eastern Time Zone and I'm checking email, reading other peoples work, checking out opportunities on Helium.com and enjoying a frosty cold Pepsi (I prefer Coke, but I'll drink what's on sale) and some quiet time.

Tonight I read my good friend Dave Jarecki and listened to his music at Davejarecki.com. If you're a poet, writer, intellectual, talker, listener, enjoyer of all that is good in the writing world - check this guy out. He's out of Portland by way of my hometown in Vacuum Valley, and he is phenomenal. Dave has his work and the works of other talented writers on his site in addition to interviews and his music tracks. It's definitely worth the trip into cyberspace.

After you check out Dave's work, you should take a trip and visit Ryan & Matt Mayers, two more hugely talented friends of mine at Funnyordie.com. This installment is part one in a serial from a story first shot many years ago. They are bringing the Sheriff back and it's so great to see him.

Anybody looking for information on natural birth would be crazy to miss out on another site done by a friend of mine called Fullmoonsdaughter.com. Courtney has some amazing information out there on natural pregnancy and childbirth. She is hugely passionate about what she does and it shows in every post. Check her site out.

So right now that's about it. Perhaps later I'll write, but for now I'm off to explore a little more.

Life is good.

Haiku for you

I have always had an issue with time management, as anyone who knows me well will agree with. Because of that, I've enjoyed the conciseness and challenge of finding just the right words for Haiku. Granted, I subscribe to a purely American (and totally high school English) 5/7/5 syllabic cadence, which many who truly study Haiku would probably find trite, but this is how I roll. (tee hee hee!)

The first was an exercise I undertook to see whether or not I could write a stanza poem that also could be read as individual Haiku. Here it is.

Stanza poem using Haiku
(or Forgetting Winter)


Frozen falling tears
from the angels eyes above
coats the ground with snow.

Late night calls from home
Calling me out to battle.
We waged war with snow.

Insulating snow
Quiets the sound of laughter,
Conceals our joy.

Warm cherry sweet lips
Dispel the doubt in my soul.
This is ours alone.

With frozen fingers
I touch my eternity-
The shape of your face.

You are my best love
Though words have never spoken
I must let you go.

Battles have ended.
We are too old for this fight.
Our new lives await.

For the Love of God

This one is from the vault.

For the Love of God (2/12/97)

For the love of God
Man has
named animals
built arks
made pacts
honored covenants
thrown stones
braved lions
fought wars
written books.

For the love of God
A woman
Wept at the feet of her crucified child.

Rebuilding

This was from a moment in time when life was a lot more complicated.


Rebuilding

In him she found
the best in her.
Eyes like mirrors
reflecting perfection
she knew did not exist.
Hands sculpted
Venus from her flesh
Muses from her soul.
But cold November winds
cut to the bone,
exposing every imperfection
calling attention to every nerve.
And before sunrise
he will have found
the worst she has to offer.
Anger and resentment
contained in hot tears
restricted by her pride.
Turning her back,
resigned to loving without love,
she shuts the door
and begins
rebuilding her walls.

Without Fear

According to what little I can find on the net, the Nove Otto poetic form is a poetry form created by Scott J. Alcorn. It is a nine-lined poem with eight syllables per line (isosyllabic). The rhyme scheme is as follows: aacbbcddc.

Here's my attempt to use this style. Hope you enjoy.

Without Fear

Twisting twirling whirling feet
No music they'd decline to meet
My girls, they dance.
Around and round in frenzied rapture.
No word or picture can truly capture
The way that they entrance.
My babies, my joys, my one true thing
Your freedom, it begs my heart to sing
and believe in taking chances.

Hot today

This piece is in response to a "wordle" exercise from a great site called Read Write Poem. An old (He's not old. Our friendship is) and talented author/singer/composer/poet/wanderer friend of mine, Dave Jarecki turned me on to this site and you should definitely check Readwritepoem.org out.


Anywho (that's right, I said it. I said "Anywho".) try it on for size.

Hot Today

The closet door stands open
bathed in the light of the morning sun.
It's going to be hot today.

In your bed,
I am,
for a few moments,
bleary eyed
hung over
cotton mouthed.
Now that
the smell of beer and booze are nothing more than stale exhalations,
Now that
it's quiet and I can no longer taste your sweat on my tongue,
I wait for acuity to return.

I like to pretend
I am not one of the flaming lost.
That my disposition is not so sanguine
and my thoughts don't tend to loiter
in unsavory bars
and back alleys
where the real action seems to be.

I like to pretend
it's not so far from pretty
inside my pretty little head.
That it's not all simple mastication
verbal defecation
mental masturbation
a fucking Calligulan affair.
Stuck with words and ideas and
unrelenting
unrelentING
UNRELENTING
thoughts!

I like to pretend
that hearts are stout
and Faith doesn't slump
against the dank and moldy walls.
That my unions are
Communion
and it's not my God who's dead.
Perhaps I'll stage a seance
to find out how this all ends.

The closet door stands open
bathed in the light of the morning sun.
It's going to be hot today.

The Eclectic Cafe

There's this place I sometimes go at night, when my body is tired and my thoughts are messy. I can't tell you how, exactly, to get there.

It's dark inside and over achieving in its dinginess. The booths are covered in red, cracked pleather. Khaki synthetic stuffing pokes out here and there like the first buds of Spring on Mars. The tables are wide and spackled with ketchup or syrup from this morning and many mornings before. The smell of fried eggs, day old coffee and cigarettes coupled with the futile floral air freshener the manager picked up at The Dollar Store, "to class the place up", is overwhelming at first, but gradually blends together. At the counter, the old men sit drinking their coffee, pouring over their daily news and their memories.

Sometimes, I'm alone there. When that's the case, I get a big smile from the 60 something year old waitress as she meanders over with a full pot of 5 hour old, bitter, thick black coffee and says,

"Hiya there, Honey. Coffee."

It's more a statement of fact than a question, as she lifts my cup and fills it without getting any reply, anxious to return to the counter and her aging flirtations.

When it's busy, there's no smile, but there is an almost sweet, agreeable succession or arrangement of sounds that pulses through and makes me feel invisible. The clinking of glasses, the tinny vibration of forks hitting knives while cutting pancakes, the resonant bass sound of the male voices, and the twittering high altos and sopranos of the women and children, may sound like a cacophony to some, but in that moment, to me, it's Mozart.

My note book and pen always find their way to the table, as this is not the kind of place one brings a laptop, even if one has one. Gradually, as I sit drinking coffee and trying to write without thinking too hard, I become part of the background.

Others walk in off the street, looking for what I've found in the minutes since I, too, walked through the door. When I look up, briefly, at the couple walking in, it occurs to me they look like worms after a thunder storm; so full of emotional rain that they are unable to move out of the way of the inevitable sunlight. And we all know that too much sunlight burns.

I look away when I see people like that, because at night, in this eclectic cafe, it hurts too much to see reflections. I look back at my notebook. On the page, I've drawn a bird, eating a worm.