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.

The sunny side of rejection

The past week has been a fever dream of writing. Three poems worked on, which is something that has not happened in some time. I'm not saying they're good poems, but the accomplishment is more important.

In addition, another poem I submitted for an online journal earlier this year was rejected. So yay, feeling like a writer for a moment.

Two things motivated me to write one yesterday. First, a story about some long forgotten about Buster Keaton photographs which have surfaced and will be available for viewing at this year's Damfino Convention in October.

Then this article about how the Library of Congress is trying to get silent film buffs to identify actors and other film details. Film restoration and preservation fascinates me. I know little about the process but that there are few, so few, dedicated people doing this gives me hope. The future of silent film interest, that worries me.

So I wrote this one.

Empty reels

Black and white flickers still,

more often than not in pixels

The eyes of the stars had power

Their medium delicate, flammable

thrown into dumpsters

stored in unforgiving dampness

or left to crumble by dust making furnaces

Most is lost

Seventy percent of what was silent

eight thousand nickelodeon

pleasure dome features

Even the magazines, posters, lobby cards

dedicated to them have long vanished

Three thousand survived

This history, this portrait of the entertainment

our grandparents

our great-grandparents

did to keep themselves whole

is a Murnau shadow on Netflix

A keystone cop of disorganization on youtube

Our first celluloid culture

is dying of thirst

through lack of quality streams

Through viewer indifference

Tight fisted studios greenlighting

another superhero reboot

while avoiding preservation of its investments

Maybe Marty will keep saving them

Maybe they’ll make a sequel to The Artist

But with no audience

the only interest will be the museum pieces

the eight reelers of major players

With no strength of a supporting cast

that is quickly irising out.

No mug on youtube

I do not announce every submission or rejection I receive. Both are rare to me. There are a lot of poets who are quite prolific, get published often, and deserve the acclaim. I do not have enough poems or confidence to achieve, let alone announce all that.

But I do have to say there's a poem of mine in the new issue of Uppagus. So click on the link, and check out some of the other work on the site, it's good stuff.