Still in place

Trying to maintain it all. Some days are easier than others. Hope you are all as well as you can be.

Writers Block has been holding online readings during the pandemic. I put a poem out there last night.

Here it is.

Temporary breakthrough

To say that I have written very little lately is an obvious understatement. I'm not even talking about updating this blog, but writing in general. The addictive time suck of social media, along with a lack of confidence has really caused me to essentially stop writing. It's been months since I've written a poem.

Months.

Since Meatgrinder last July, perhaps?

It's been a few years since I've written with any energy and grief stopped that in its tracks. Now, I have zero confidence in putting any thought to paper, let alone want to present it to people at a reading. I think I have successfully erased myself from the Columbus poetry scene. That's how low I feel.

Something was festering in my head for a few weeks though. The germ of a thought that came from an observation. Could I put it down and feel like i am not mining my son's life, which is (again) what the poem is about?



There was a moment in time before a webinar today when I set pen to paper and hoped. It took less than five minutes for most of it to be put down. I refrained from putting the paper in the shredder. During the webinar I edited it a bit and in typing at home it got edited a bit more.

Not the best, far from it. Not the worst, far from it. But it's something, and it's been a long time since I put something down that I did not immediately hide or erase.

The day of the day

It's been an active and at times exhausting summer. There's been travel to Buffalo and in my wife's case, Denver. Future travel to plan, along with another party.

We've seen a few concerts; Sloan and Radiohead, with a few to come - David Byrne, Nicole Atkins, John Prine, The Posies.

Been watching Taggart.

We put the teenager in underwear a couple of months ago and there have been few accidents although poop remains a mystery.

Still trying to write. Took part in a poetry slam and had a short reading that may or may not have stirred up some creativity. There's also at least one song I need to write by late September.

I strongly urge a visit to the Temple of Tolerance in Wapakoneta, Ohio if you ever have the chance.

From ten years ago

Samuel Beckett's New York City Cabdriver

he looked like someone from a black and white horror movie
but i needed the fare and stopped at that east village corner
he wore a black overcoat and had wild white hair
he did not say much
just the address he wanted to go
i tried to talk to him
about the yankees
the hot dog and yoo-hoo i had for lunch
that it was january and it's only snowed once
he may have grunted, or swore at me under his breath to shut up
but in my mirror i noticed all he did
was stare out the window
don't get me wrong
i can talk your ear off about the assholes
who sat back there
this guy was far from the worst
you say he was a writer?
did he write for the papers?
did he make a lot of money?
because he wasn't a horrible tipper

To those who give unsolicited advice on the internet

I am going to place A and will stay in place B with a view of place C
I am not going to take into account that I stay in place D with no view
Or that I go into the countryside, outside of the city limits of A to see a sheep farm
I can go to the Ohio State Sheep Center, anytime I want
And I do not want

A vineyard, sure. That’s the only farm I want to see
If I wanted to see riots from the fifth floor, I would find a room with a view of E
But I do not want to see riots, smell tear gas or witness Gendarmes beating people up
I will take into account bakeries, as food is in my wife’s wheelhouse and I will need food
to soak up all the drinking I plan on doing
Do I want to stand in a crowded room of people in the Louvre, cell phones out, taking pictures of the Mona Lisa?
Not really, but I would not mind skipping through the room Anna Karina did in Bande a Part
Catacombs, ancient skulls at night, Pere LaChaise even without Jim Morrison’s grave are right in if you knew me,
giver of unsolicited advice

I’m going to eat chocolate, croissants, baguettes, drink wine, drink coffee, be claustrophobic in crowds of tourist attractions that are being loved to death, people watch, speak awful French, be insulted and scorned by the residents
and make love to my wife
In a hotel
That has a view
Of the Eiffel Tower
And none of your projections are going to stop me

Angry so I wrote a poem

Revisionism, erasure, implied book burnings, not a fan. My Son hates ceiling fans, he has to be aware if they are on at all times. We have two in the house. There is one in our bedroom that he looks at every morning just to make sure it is not moving. The other is in the back room, where I'm typing this on a warm spring day in Columbus. When he was in the kitchen earlier he stared at the back room to make sure the ceiling fan was not moving closer to him. It's not.

There used to be one in his bedroom, but that was taken out shortly after he was born and replaced with a dimmer until that he broke as soon as he was able to move the switch.

None of this has much to do with the poem I wrote today, but it's still Autism Awareness and he's still singing at 6AM after not getting to sleep past midnight. Happy Easter.


Burn me out of your brain and see what replaces me

Erase me, revise me out of history
Ignore me, drop me, block me
Invite me nowhere, trip me in the aisle
You want to roast me
Tell me more about roasting
Avoid me, befoul me
You want to roast me
Put me in your oven
I step on pressure cookers daily
You want to roast me
You want to roast all the dudes my age
When we become shoveled ashes for you to dance upon
who will you find to roast next?
Tell me more
I will show you ovens demand fuel
Who will you roast when you reach my age
Fires are thirsty they need asses after
my old ass gets roasted
Prepare for your search, your hunt for purity
I have the means for you to forget me
It’s cheaper than you think

Akai Hana did not pop out at me

Been ill most of the week, a lingering malaise of various internal organs. Each day I last about a half hour further before a quick fade out that leads into not being able to fall asleep.

At least the taxes are done. After all the financial changes of the past year we had them done professionally and what a relief. Total piece of mind, even if we owed.

It's still autism awareness month, right? Am I still aware? I'll find out more tomorrow afternoon.

It seems Brew Dog have sold a chunk of themselves to a capital firm. Looks like that's how they're going to fund the hotel on the Canal Winchester property. Things are getting weird now that the punk founders are multi-millionaires.

All of this could be a moot point if this administration starts blowing up more than runways.

April is national poetry month too. The less said about my writing, the better.

Instead of continuing, it might be time to get into that strawberry parfait.

Shameful end of the year post

This is usually the post in which I copy and paste the list of what I read for the past year. This is going to be the first year I have not done that for awhile.

Let me explain with a picture.



I subscribe to the New Yorker. The magazine on top is the one I'm working on. The rest of the pile is unread and in chronological order. The date on that issue is January 11th......2016.

So I am about a year behind in that magazine, alone. And if I'm a year behind in one magazine, imagine how many books I've read.

It's embarrassing. I do not read, what I write suffers. This year, it really has. Sure I had a couple of poems published earlier in the year. After that, zip. A few deserved rejections and here we are.

What's keeping me from writing is often the objects that are right in front of me, or in my hand, or in my pocket.

I have to do better in 2017. Have to.

Did see plenty of movies in the last year. Averaged a bit more than one a week, which is acceptable to me. I did watch 100 movies a couple of years ago, just to see if I could, and I did. Know what? All I did was watch 100 movies in a year.

So here's that list.

Brooklyn
Sleeper
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
Autism In Love
The Little Fugitive
Galaxy Quest
Stagecoach
Design For Living
Peter Pan (1953)
Much Ado About Nothing (2003)
Room
The Wolfpack
A New Leaf
Cabaret
Hail Caesar!
Where to Invade Next
The Odd Couple
Dirigible
Sense and Sensibility (1995)
The Story of Temple Drake
Viva Las Vegas
Finding Vivian Maier
The Wrecking Crew
The Art of Love (1965)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Captain America: Civil War
Sounder
Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon
Purple Rain
All the Light in the Sky
After the Thin Man
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Min and Bill
Simply Irresistible
Blazing Saddles
Lost in America
Ghostbusters (2016)
A Hard Days Night
Sharknado 4
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me
Koch
A Fistful of Dollars
Ball of Fire
Golden Age of Comedy (1957)
Sons of the Desert
Under the Skin
Bananas
The Little Prince (2015)
Speedy (1928)
Rockabye (1932)
Blonde Crazy (1931)
Airplane!
Drunken Master 2
Moonlight
Where You’re Meant To Be
Meet Me in St. Louis
Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Rogue One
Krampus
After the Thin Man (yup, again)
Possession
Scrooge
The Omega Man
The World, the Flesh and the Devil

I do not go to the theater much these days. Most of what I watch is on Netflix or TCM. And I'm fine with that. So I will maintain my resolution to watch a movie a week, it's been doable. The reading though, oy.

Catching fire, or not

It was not quite the viral explosion of Ceiling Cat or The Colored Dress, but less that 24 hours after Friday's Joe Biden post it became the most viewed post in this blog's seven year history.

So thank you all for reading, sharing and clicking like. Please stick around.

When your new car gets a recall notice less than six months into ownership, it can be cause for concern. Took my Golf to the dealership on Saturday morning. Drove up to the service entrance and was directed into the garage. A batcave large, clean parking area. Gave them my keys and was directed to the lounge area, where I had average coffee, wifi and a muffin. Got to check out the sweet looking Alltrack. I was in and out in less than an hour. It was an impressive experience, no hassle service that I know is very rare in the business. So I'm going to take that and run with it for a few weeks until the first oil change.

The Golf makes a chiming noise and puts a snowflake next to the temperature when it's under 40 degrees. It also sounds a gentle alarm with a dashboard light when the car has less then 50 miles of range left. What it does not do, if inform the driver when there's no washer fluid left. Good to know.

Trying to catch some lightning with a poem a day challenge for the month. I've had mixed success with this stunt in the past, but this month is going ok so far. I am worried about keeping up when we go to Scotland next Monday.

What? Vacation is eight days away? Now that's something to look forward to!

As Mary Wells sang, You Beat Me to the Punch

When you do half assed work on a project for years, you cannot be upset when someone else beats you to the publishing press. Such is the case with Claire Prentice, who has recently wrote a book called Miracle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doctor Saved Thousands of Babies and Transformed American Medicine.

It's about Martin Couney, the man who saved many, many lives of premature babies by keeping them in infantoriums, an early form of a modern neo-natal unit disguised as a carnival sideshow.

Her research is sound, and it makes some fantastic discoveries about Couney, primarily about his early background (which is still very murky) but also reveals that he never earned any kind of medical degree. A rather amazing accomplishment considering the work he was doing. Prentice does say, correctly, that Couney never administered medication, his techniques and innovations in neo-natal science did not really use it. Plus, although there is no paper trail, he claims to have had a very high success rate at saving lives.

After my son was born premature, I came across Couney through the work of William Silverman a noted neonatalogist, who was one of the first American doctors to do any research into Couney's life. He died in 2004, but Prentice was able to interview one of Silverman's colleagues, but did not give Silverman any credit.

Prentice did find and interview several of Couney's patients (I found one) and gives us a good look at how the infantorium was run. She also mentioned the patients proudly displayed photographs of themselves at the infantorium but the book has no photographs. A missed opportunity to humanize them, and Couney.

Overall it is a slim volume, only available on Kindle, that cracks a few mysteries about the life of Martin Couney save one. I'm still trying to find out what happened to Couney's Daughter Hildegarde, who became one of his nurses. No trace of her seems to exist. I think the paperwork of the Couney estate and infantoriums went with her.

Not enough miles

Been working on gathering information and forms to renew my passport. Next year will be ten years that I’ve had one. An essential item to have if you travel internationally and easier (I think) to use if you have to endure flying domestically.

Like most, time and money have kept me from traveling as much as I want to. Except now that the pound has sunk to amazing lows, we can’t get over there to take advantage. When I first went to the UK in 2007, the pound was almost $2.00 to one. That was brutal. Now, thanks to the Brexit nonsense, it’s been at about $1.32, which is freaking unreal. Of course this is all going to change when the markets collapse next year, but that’s another story entirely.

Today my wife starts a new job. It’s a small miracle she got the interview but she worked really hard to get the position. Did it all by herself and I’m very proud of her.

Next week my son starts at a new school that specializes in special needs students. It’s scary and terrifying but we think it is going to be a better place for him in the long run. The change in routine will probably be an ordeal, but that should settle down in a few weeks.

Been trying to write. Got two rejections last week, and I accept them. If you’re not in the game you cannot complain about it. Which got me to thinking a bit about slam. Last weekend was the National Poetry Slam. I did not follow it. Have no idea who is on the team from Baltimore that won. Slam’s a game I have not been able to commit to for about three years. I also think I peaked out, have no added value to really offer and am just plain not good enough to really compete. That lack of commitment is on me. Some days I want to get back to it, others make me realize it’s good to let others have the playground.

Something from the LJ archive

There were fireflies glowing by the old chicken coop in my Grandparent's backyard. We used to have barbecues there when the other tenants of the house were not home. We'd cut through the breezeway, looking into the kitchen of their neighbors. One time, when i was five or so, i snuck in their home, walked into a hallway. heard a noise and bolted out of there fast. I remember a black and white portrait on a dresser.

Down the road from their house on Eagle Avenue was a riding stable. We used to go down there, not to ride, but to look at the horses. Some of them knew their names and would look up at you as you read their names from the plaques on the door.

One day, I was sitting alone in the front seat of my Stepfather's Barracuda. I was playing with the gear shift and put the car in reverse. Their driveway was on a slope that, slowly, sent me into traffic. Luckily i was not hit by any oncoming cars. A passerby saw me frozen in the front seat and went into the house for help. When my parents came out to get me, all they saw of me was my beanie cap with the propeller on it.

A bit of acceptance.

Very happy to announce that my poem "The Onramp from I-70 East to 315 North" has been published by Red Fez in their latest issue.

It's good to be playing the publishing game this year. I know one more may be coming out soon, but I err on the side of caution and let it be known when the work is actually out there. Plus, a few more are in the hopper.

There have been rejections with the acceptances, but that's how it all works.

Now, about these form poems I'm writing in a 30 poems in 30 days of April group this year.

An April Road Trip.

National Poetry Month is in full gear and I'm proceeding at my own pace. There is writing being done, in a group even! We're working on form poems, some of them very challenging and unfamiliar to me. Writing them helps, and I'm seeing some good work by others, which is inspiring.

Been sending out poems too, trying to find them homes. They will be news about them soon, but not until the thing happens.

I'll be reading in Portsmouth, Ohio on Saturday April 9th with some of my fellow poets as part of a National Poetry Month Series that Zach Hannah has assembled with the generosity of Haskins House. If you're in the area it starts at 6:30.

Ten year old free write

Inhale/excrete

I mean. Geez. Sometimes you have to merely listen to your colon to know to show that what's happening externally just isn't cutting it - so to speak. Your body knows. It flees stress, even though you take it to that wall of anxiety and try to ram it. Failing at that, the food beckons. All those cashews, cherries, fruit rolls and cognac are masticated and guzzled like a cheeseball. Have you ever looked in your gut? If you could see the intestinal laws that are made - if there was a window in our belly we'd all be very very thin.

Seeing and Waiting

In case you missed it, I had a poem published in last Sunday's edition of The New Verse News.

It's brought on what is, for me, a flurry of submissions.

Now I wait and see what happens. Could be weeks before I hear back, could be months. Could be not at all. This is what you accept when you play the publishing game.

2015, the year in poetry

2015 was not the most public year for me and poetry. I'd like to blow this year up socially as being constantly worn out made it difficult to attend open mics in the community.

Had to cancel a feature in Pittsburgh due to weather difficulties but I did have a good reading in Dayton in May for the Gem City crew.

It was an honor to be a part of the Sign Your Art project that put poetry on the street signs all over Columbus.

Had a great co-feature with Nancy Kangas at the Kitamu Coffee for the Second Friday Fete in November.

Had some strong thoughts about how the Columbus Arts Festival gave poetry the shaft.

Still writing, albeit slowly. It's there, quiet.

Most important though, we lost Gina Blaurock and so many of us are still reeling from her death.

Inspired by Nancy Kangas

Last week I attended a poetry reading in which Nancy Kangas, one of my favorite poets, read. She also did her slide interpretations.

There was also a poem about an on ramp. She suggested other poets write about their most memorable on or off ramps in the city so it can be a series.

After one incident last week, I was moved to write this:


The On Ramp From I-70 East to 315 North

This quarter cloverleaf tips over more trucks in a weekend
than any Hot Wheels cars I flipped on plastic track
Crime tape wrapped stalled cars on shoulder at sunrise
tells the lack of mercy this on ramp possesses
Cut off by an SUV that could not decide on
going east, or wherever
My Volvo rear ended by a Susan Komen painted Mustang
as a result of cell phone indecision
The merge north would be easier if allocated by lottery
than a correct turn signal
Jacked up Fury Road ‘58 Chevy spews blue smoke
Ain’t gonna drag that road rage Mitsubishi
Post accident parts spread out like a yard sale
All colors are welcomed to the ditch
Four cylinder non-turbo acceleration ignored by a lane hog
who will not pull over or slow down to let you in
True hypocrisy revealed by the ‘Coexist’ bumper sticker
on the back of the Honda hybrid as it flees the scene
Its every driver for themselves
as another commute is endured, survived
never experienced.

Charles and Diana did not make it to 34, either

The dirt from my forearm
has stained this desktop into a work patina
Determined years of rest and sweat with
the advancement of scroll finger arthritis
An occasional twinge of notice
there has been nothing from you
on my screen for half of the hours
our battery wires touched before corrosion set in
The acid in the gorge between us damaged any
traditional thirty year pearl past hope of recovery

Your release of a guillotine curtain was the final act
that slammed down any remaining impressions
of whatever joy I kept in a picture frame
Aftershock fragments bounce over the skyline of the city you left
There’s only absence seen through the side mirror
It’s hard to steer away when my hands hurt
Cannot tell if it’s age or road rage
Sympathies never exchanged
after the deaths of relatives, friends
Now we are separated by light years

You constructed the wall you thought I played hide and seek behind
Blocked me out with the skills of the best defensemen
Of course there will not be a gift to celebrate how naive we were
Did we expect anything less from each other
after all this neglect and decay?
When the officiant’s seeing eye dog barked
in the office we all crammed into
I was not listening, always short sighted
Never smelt the fragrance of lilies
on that day we joked about blind justice

Look at the signposts.

A few months back I was asked to take part in a local art project called Sign Your Art. This project spans over a good part of Columbus on sign posts with tiles done by 64 local artists from all mediums along with members of the community. A lot of people made their own tiles at the Columbus Arts Festival.

My idea took shape quickly, forming the art took a bit of printing/shaping ability that my skilled Wife completed. The words are all mine.

The tile my work is on can be see at a signpost in front of 601 Chase Ave., on the north side of the city.

Here's a link to where all of the work is located. Columbus Makes Art, and the 64 artists who participated. Sign Your Art.

Congratulations to Stephanie Rond and Catherine Bell Smith, who did the hard work with this incredible installation.