Archive for ‘mental illness’

July 3, 2013

When the coffee maker starts on fire

by jhon baker

I don’t post much but there isn’t really all that much I want to say. I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately but the concentration has been one pointed and into a realm that I don’t want to harp away at on my blog – see the previous post – but I need a new roof as this one has failed me (still thankful to have one), a new washer because the old one had failed me (so did the new one which I am receiving a replacement for today), the basement flooded and we are drying it out ever so slowly before relaying the carpet, and the coffee maker lit itself on fire of which we are using a back-up until we get around to replacing the old one.

It is important to always have a back-up coffee maker that gets occasional use to keep it working properly.

I haven’t been putting much out for publication either, though I spent the first few months of this year writing and a lot got written. I am wondering how it all turned out mostly. I am never a good judge of my own poetry – I either think it is all crap or all beyond compare – depending on my mental state and state of medications. At the moment I cannot recall the last submission which is still waiting in the wind for acceptance or denial and it is bad form to have simultaneous submissions which I have done and there is a handful of poems with multiple publishing credits. I’ve been hoping no one noticed and I don’t think anyone has. So, I wait for this last batch to be rejected or accepted before I start to send out more.

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

notoriously 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

 

My beard is long and the shampoo that we are using makes it wiry. it is too wet to ride my motorcycle today. I am waiting for the new washer and I hate to wait. Not that I am impatient, but that I am interested in doing other things while my son is at camp and I can do other things. Tomorrow is the annual holiday of our independence (in the USA) and I don’t do much to celebrate it – even when invited to a party there are other things I’d rather be doing. I’d rather be writing even though I’ve no ideas and, for the moment, the inspira has found other avenues for its own expressions.

April 11, 2013

Ramble

by jhon baker

I am willful and my mind is scattered. I have nothing to write about at present though my moleskine is filling with ideas and treatments. short thoughts. Once, when I was young I thought to be a cartoonist was the ideal for me – but I made a better comedian and only made the family laugh once at the kitchen table – I am not depressed but hauntingly even. Not going insane is a new thing for me and I haven’t been enjoying the anxiety that comes with waiting for the other side of this enjoyment. The drugs work but I don’t like how they work – this is normal. Call me Mr. Jones.

But my main ambition as a child was to be a writer and catalog what made my aspect seem to feel as though I had been ill my whole life. I still feel that way and now am broken by this and an SUV that blew off a stop sign. Such is life.

Listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with my family while my son works on a research report on Beethoven and this is a wonderful moment. I can never write to Beethoven – as if he had said everything that there is to say and the power with which he says it cannot be matched.

I recently finished a longer poem – long for me stretching to three pages and am now mostly concerned about where to place it.

March 26, 2013

so what!

by jhon baker

So, I haven’t posted in a while… So What?

I have no skin, but a basketful of protections from the sun and I am waiting for the coffee to brew at 4:43 pm. What I have in my cup is cold and coffee isn’t meant to be enjoyed cold – no matter what you or your fancy coffee iced lattes think. For coffee to be anygood cold it has to be brewed with a double batch of grounds and served over ice – even then I cannot stand it but normal coffee ice cold is no good, damn you and your alternate opinions. This is where the advantage goes to tea – I pour a hot cup of tea and drink some, forgetting about it for awhile and when I return to it it has become cold as forgotten things do – but I can drink it regardless of this as tea can be served hot or cold at the same strength.

advantage: Tea – but I enjoy coffee more and it is why I smoke now – to further enhance the coffee experience out in my garage where there is no organization but an ashtray and my motorcycle. Also a BB Gun to shoot raccoons in the ass when they get too friendly.

I just finished a Novel where one of the secondary characters suffers the same mental aberration as I and as where I can normally identify with my characters like this I found this character to be a reflection of popular symptoms and not reality – or his mental depravity was too close to home and I divorced my mental aspect from his. In the end the book wasn’t very good and failed to live up to the promise that the authors previous work had made. Now I am rereading “Dream Songs” by the one and only, John Berryman. This is never a let down no matter how many times I read them.

 

coffee, cigarettes and waiting

 

I am staring at this black piece of paper

with four poems waiting to be written;

drinking coffee but

wonting for something else entirely.

my ears are dirty with grime

and later I’ll shower.

right now I am not adjacent to godliness

but God doesn’t drink coffee

or smoke endless cigarettes turning on the next line.

 

my poetry isn’t in vogue at present

and I cannot support what is.

Bukowski imitators.

and I am going gray;

easily depressed by these rejections,

waiting for more coffee to brew

so I can kill myself

with these several cigarettes

or maybe a gun.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

December 26, 2012

post holiday lego building

by jhon baker

Listening to The Black Keys and sitting with my son while he builds his Lego Teenage Mutant Turtle sets, earlier I built one of my own Lego sets. Big Ben. As an adult there is still the ever burning love for Lego.

The main concern after holidays is where to put all the new stuff – in my case it isn’t hard as I got clothes I needed, a few seasons of my favorite television show and a lot of books – but for the boy, more toys means a need to clear out space and think about donating things he has aged out of.

There is really nothing I have to say here. I am mostly out of the depression that lasted beyond my ability to handle – four months of complete darkness preceded by decent creative impulses and followed by a stiff climb out and a slight return to forms of creativity. I have started several poems and am thinking my way though the basic outline of a novel/memoir with embellishments and the ability to deny anything – This story is based on realish events and the people have altered names and are realish representations of the folks that they are modeled after – liberties will be taken where I do not want to relive certain things and where the truth is too strange to be believed. Nothing will be cranked up beyond reality because reality itself is often itself unbelievable. If I write it as fiction I can always deny that the hero of the tome is myself and as I’ve often said of poetry…

– never confuse the narrator of the poem with its author –

sound advice.

I think John Berryman said it first or best – I know it wasn’t my brain to come up with it and once I had heard the valuable teaching I was free then to really create. Some constraints are good and some work against you like good friends who never want us to become successful.

I was going to put a poem here but I think I’ll post twice instead.  – Jhon