Archive for ‘mental illness’

May 10, 2014

Sunny day, Saturday, the day before Mother’s day

by jhon baker

And I don’t feel like posting but think I should.

Sitting on the back porch and enjoying coffee – or what of it we can (see previous post) – smoking and contemplating the universe at last. Too much brain activity for such a beautiful day.

What looks to be six week old kittens peek their heads out from under the porch so we feed them and wait for them to brave the unknown world that is our backyard. An admittedly scary place – the world, including the backyard.

I think of David Ignatow – “The world is so difficult to give up” – I have maybe a half dozen poems memorized and that is almost another – it’s the second line I have trouble with and sometimes in the middle I remember a different poem and start that one instead. I used to have Poe’s “The Raven” committed to memory but now all I hold onto is the first verse. Shame, really. No-one seems to memorize poetry anymore. I’ve committed none of my own to memory and I ought.

the world is so difficult to give up

tied to it by small things

my eyes noting movement

color and form

I am watching, unable to leave

for something is happening so I stand

in a shower of rain or under a hot sun

worn out

with looking

– David Ignatow

the line breaks are wrong, I know and I cannot remember where they go – but this is a close approximation.The world is difficult to give up, but we must. The party will indeed go on without us and in this we must find comfort.

I smoke again and contemplate something closer – more tangible than the universe – my mind isn’t great enough to realize the many stars and the shear insignificance of our own. Earth, the only planet in our Solar system not named after one God or another, our planet is named after it’s dirt. I contemplate its constant survivor, its hero – the tardigrade.

 

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