the platitudes of willful resemblance

So, I’ve been mostly talked into getting a band I was in back together for the purpose of recording some of the stuff we never got a chance to record. This means that I am writing new lyrics to old songs that I like the tunes of but having outgrown the lyrics. Writing lyrics at my age is harder than it was when I was a tenor. It must be because I am out of practice.

I’m a slow writer – always have been. I take no issue with this as Leonard Cohen takes no issue with it.

and now – a poem that has nothing to do with anything.

 

 

some poems

 

some poems take years to write

some only minutes

every other poem is in-between

and none so far has taken more.

 

like Bukowski, Williams, O’Hara

I am a writer of poems

short poems

long poems

most a few in-between

like all creatives I am

disgracefully unreliable in action

chasing down the inspirations

with a stick in one hand

a pen in the other

months of missing my prey

and weeks of eating well

and growing fat

 

but I write on this IBM Selectric III

and drink coffee like it was religion

no longer getting drunk or drugging

my days away

and slipping into the nightgown of poetry.

now they all come fully dressed

with ten fingers typing

furiously in fits and starts

mostly done during the day.

 

I am nostalgia interrupted

a willful resemblance of another time

before my iMac and laptop dominated

my final drafts and submissions

email rejections or acceptances

 

I haven’t stamped an SASE in years

or walked to the mailbox hopeful or dreadful

waiting to throw away another poem

such as this.

 

– Hoc Scripsi