Archive for May, 2010

May 31, 2010

Memorial Day, how perfect.

by jhon baker

It’s getting ready to rain in Elgin, Illinois. Perfect Memorial Day Weather. I always try to avoid writing in the rain as I don’t want to write about the rain. So many so called poets and rightly called poets write prodigiously about the weather patterns that I want to avoid it. What am I going to say that has not already been said better and worse.
Every time it rains I write the same thing. How I don’t want to write about the rain.

the sky darkens and we
wait
wait
wait
wait
thunder, lightening, house shaking
and we can know that it is time.

Holy Peter, Holy Leslie, Holy Dennis, Holy Gary…. My head is still lowered in your honor.

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May 30, 2010

Peter Orlovsky 1933-2010, so long old friend.

by jhon baker

my heart breaks this weekend
let us sing a litany  for Peter Orlovsky who is now home with Allen.
let us sing a litany for Leslie who writes poetry in another place
we shall remember those who go before us and
strive to be what they were to those behind us.

life ends

life ends abruptly.

the shadow ceases.

loss is registered but
life goes on,

indelicately as it
must.

 – Hoc Scripsi

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May 30, 2010

Leslie Scalapino, going home, writing poetry in heaven

by jhon baker

And now our heads bow for Leslie Scalapino, poet.

What a weekend, Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper and now Leslie Scalapino – two actors and a poet.

I grieve

I grieve slowly,
quietly.

occupying the hours of
a day with meditations

of death and the dead.
often I consider my own death

and am not unnerved by it as
death is one end only.

it is ever the patient student
of the dead that practices life

so fully
as to die with ease.

 – Hoc Scripsi

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May 29, 2010

RIP Dennis Hopper

by jhon baker
and we shall now bow our heads and remember Dennis Hopper

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May 28, 2010

that’s the way the glue sticks

by jhon baker

I’ve been staring at the screen for over an hour thinking of something to say that isn’t this, well, it is now. I considered writing a letter to the reader, sort of a ‘dear reader’ thing but that idea faltered as it wrote itself and had it not been on the computer it would have been hung up at the range and shot. 
I would just put out a poem or the completed versions of one’s published earlier this week but it’s too late for that as I am already writing. 
one of the greatest moments of my life was the discovery that two of my favorite creative people bonded over an album – Tom Waits and Bill Burroughs, The Black Rider. I listen to that now and it is distracting as I am trying to think of what I am doing here without making it sound like a letter, I think I may be failing.
When you get a perfect sight picture and squeeze back the trigger you have a tendency to miss but it can be assured that the bullet went exactly where the gun was pointed when the hammer went down. Nerves, anticipation of recoil, squeezing the grip incorrectly, and other all lead to a fraction of an degree barrel displacement and that gets compounded over the distance to the target. 
I drink coffee and write myself into a sort of stupor where I wander around the rest of the day with a blank slate and a stupid grin on my face, it has been pointed out that I abuse the wrong tipple for stupefaction but I cannot stand what I write when in an inebriated stupor.
I think later today I ought to weld something, anything really as long as it’s metal and not one of my typewriters that works properly. 

open window
the cat sits
undisturbed

one of these days

One of these days, I am going to die.
and leave behind all of my sorrow,
joy, and anger.
All the love, I’ll take if allowed.
ascend into the kingdom of exile
as a poet, lover, and sometimes madman.

death shall never rear its distortions
to me, but, it’s beauty shall be mine.
Its touch to offer warmth in solitude.
death shall, inadvertently, immortalize
the memories of this self
and bring with that – comforts to you.
You,
who, in life, had always been my companion
and brought me all it’s renderings
you,
who in my death shall have no place
and in your own shall leave no place
for me. In death, we shall not remember
the names of our dead.

 – Hoc Scripsi

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