Archive for April, 2010

« Older Entries  |   Newer Entries »
April 28, 2010

brain cancer

by jhon baker

while noticing trends in older poetry that has started to correct in my writing, there is the thought to rewrite all of it to reflect the newer way and developed style of writing. I don’t think this is a smart habit to get into as you will never be done revising what has been written unless you rut your style. I’m not even sure I have a style beyond avoidance of certain things.
I’ve thrown away a lot of work as it was no longer a fit and I couldn’t justify keeping it around. It wasn’t genius and it wasn’t blowing anyone’s mind, not even then unless the listener was still a teenager, then everything dark and brooding is good. Maybe I’m only talking about my friends. Friends are terrible judges of art.
Friends don’t want to hurt your feelings, which is a problem as they should be the ones who know how to hurt your feelings in the most constructive way.

Americans cannot have a discussion on a topic where they disagree as a disagreement is seen as an assault.
Cell phones may cause brain cancer and you cannot prove a negative.
there are a lot of people who probably wouldn’t miss their brain if it were gone – if the brain stem were gone – that would be different. but only slightly.
I don’t mean to imply that people are stupid as much as people don’t use the squishy tool for anything other than twitter.
I don’t twitter as I am not a twit.
using twitter may not make you a twit.
I don’t know.
As my wife gets her iPhone I am considering bashing my own in order to not have one at all. As it is it is ‘lost’ currently and I am happy.
I love the phrasing – as it is it is.

On plane headed to Phoenix

Draw no maps on my body
From the air there are no
state lines or divisions
This is how it is
how I am
My self has no divisions
no maps
No way of existing
only being

Sand leads into water
water into rivers
rivers into dirt
no thought
just does
& the clouds are always
changing

 – Hoc Scripsi

This was written while I was on a plane heading into Phoenix. It was a layover so no-one there had a chance to ask for my papers. The layover lasted the length of time it took to get from one terminal to the other at a dead run. It may have been the last time I ran.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Tags: ,
April 27, 2010

suppose to be colder today, if you believe in such things.

by jhon baker
as the weather man/woman’s predictions – but they are false idols.

Barely awake, managing to sleep in later today (till 7:30am), while not regretting it, thinking I should be a lot more awake by now.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon shifting a pile of logs into a more orderly pile of logs, and looking at the plethora of felled oak left to split. What I need is a small group of strapping young men to effort my garden woes away for the year. I’ll mow and seed, whatever from the comfort and fun of my smallish tractor, but all that remains needs another bloke to care about it and money more than I do.
Tchaikovsky will sober you in the morning.
Just when I expect there to be fresh coffee, inevitably, it is old or empty.
This time it was brewing.
I’ve trained my ear to hear the beep of the coffee maker above all other static. beep beep – ready and I must move as ‘Rosie the Robot’ doesn’t work here – beep beep beep and I have to make more if I want to keep this caffeine high going until I fall to sleep.
I am still trying to train my ear to simply wipe out all the static to hear only the tintinnabulating in my ears from the years of playing in rock bands. If I can manage it then I will be able to write anywhere, as it is I need the quietness of my home or a quietness much like it. Coffee shops are right out but having run two of them I can tell you that no-one likes a guy on a laptop in a coffee shop. A typewriter now, that is tolerated slightly better but only if you are carrying a loaded weapon. Ive never tried the typewriter in a cafe thing as I live in Illinois and it may be illegal here to even admit you have a firearm.
I am babbling and listening to Tchaikovsky, waiting for the double beep of the coffee maker.
no-one minds the guy with a notebook neatly scribbling away anymore though. Interesting. Once the iPad is in the hands of every one then laptops will be okay I think. Or it might be now with the proliferation of texting, sexting and general bathroom graffiti.

but none of this is important. none of this gets me a cup of coffee any faster than my good leg will propel my body to get what it is that is desired.

I am tired of writing letters to people who never write back. I owe a letter to one guy who writes back but lives so close I think I ought to simply invite him over.
Maybe next time I send a letter I will include a sase and paper.

Letter #2104 (one I don’t want)

got your letter.

it reads like a broken heart
(miss our after moments

be mine again)
love letter.

it isn’t is it?
or what is it.

I wonder what it is you really miss.
is it me, or the attention I gave you.
is it our conversations or that you got to
feel important for the afternoon.
is it our supposed friendship or, now, 
you are bored.

I am not your midnight man.
I am not your backdoor lover.
only that which I have
always been for you,
a stranger on a distant
beach looking the other way;
or turned around
or something else entirely.

what’s the least awkward thing to
say here.

what is it?
                   you woke up this morning
and want me to care.

you see…
it fucks up my whole day.

 – Hoc Scripsi

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Tags: , ,
April 26, 2010

it seems to be Monday morning, and glad of it.

by jhon baker

When I worked, Mondays were always the easiest day, Full of paperwork and sitting at the desk to get everything in the mail on time, I would start early, around five AM usually and be gone between 1-2pm. Of course this necessitated waking up at 4am but this whole thing has been a digression.
or is it? as I am mostly unsure about the direction I want to be in this morning and thinking a little of this afternoon but mostly of sleep and dreaming, specifically last nights. I don’t mean to live in the past a little but you have to admit, it is right there for us to do so.
I wonder if I will ever stop wanting to drink, smoke, take drugs.
I wonder if I will ever want to stop drinking coffee, writing, masturbating, playing with legos, loving legal voyeurism, among various other bad or dangerous things.
I don’t wonder these things too much because if I allow myself to live in the future I can see that the day will pass when these are not options but memories that I will continue to scribble about.
I look forward to being a dirty old man.
I look backward at being a dirty young man.
Right now is the middle. between two dirty states of being.
my thoughts are often unwilled intrusions, and I don’t act on most of them.
which is good because when I obsess, I obsess with the best of them.
I have a feeling that I will be adding to this later as I don’t feel finished yet. But am for now.

crap

1.
how much that each
one of us writes
is the summation or
fruition of
last nights dinner
today?

2.
in Irish pubs
you are surrounded by
la  la and hi ho’s

in the American bar
only by tears and
lives regretted or
lost.

I prefer neither nor
drinking – pills and
pain are my fixations.

 – Hoc Scripsi

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Tags: ,
April 25, 2010

Where I write

by jhon baker

I was asked recently, Via facebook, where I write. meaning if there was a place as part of a ritual with my writing. As where it isn’t ritualized and I write anywhere, diners, the car, on my bed, in the yard – where ever, you see the inspira moves around a bit. But the majority of it is done in a little room, painted red at the back of my house in a secluded part of Elgin.

a painting of mine – the sides and top are cut off so it’s like watching a letterbox movie in pan and scan – I face this when I write or it is in front of me but I face the page.

My IBM Selectric III in it’s newest position with a stack of poetry and prose under a brass monkey reading a book. My return address on a stamp.

within reach. Normally there is a coffee cup there but I wasn’t writing at the time, a stack of nice paper that my wife keeps me in, a page a day, a XDm 9mm – loaded, an old hunting knife, the Bose remote, meditation beads under the page a day tear outs, a frog reading a book, white out and Maitreya Buddha holding my mechanical pencil. and scratch paper.

any questions?

sometimes it’s a colt .45 or a .38 special but all the rest is a constant.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Tags: ,
« Older Entries  |   Newer Entries »