Archive for ‘Othe blogs and other interesting things.’

August 25, 2014

the books you carry with you…

by jhon baker

I was recently tagged in a challenge to list out ten books that changed me or that I carry with me or some such nonsense. I thought of the following 21 – I present them in numerical order but in reality they could be in any order as they are all books that at one time or another I’ve read more than once, they changed my life, turned me on – made me want to be a better, more well rounded round person.

1. god is not Great – Christopher Hitchens
2. Middlesex – Jeffery Eugenides
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Persig
4. Tao te Ching – Lao Tsu
5. Moby Dick – Melville
6. The Picture of Dorain Grey – Oscar Wilde
7. Desolation Angels – Kerouac
8. Howl – Allen Ginsberg
9. Any book by Federico Garcia Lorca
10. Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame – Bukowski
11. Malcolm X – Malcolm X
12. the Singing Mouse Stories – Emerson Hough
13. Miles – Miles Davis
14. The Complete Poems – John Berryman
15. Ariel and other poems – Sylvia Plath
16. Hell’s Angel – Sonny Barger
17. the Complete Calvin and Hobbes – Bill Waterson
18. Symposium – Plato
19. Animal Farm and 1984 – Orwell
20. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – D Adams
21. The Razors Edge – Somerset Maugham

 

I should also add:

22. Paradise Lost 23. Ovid’s Metamorphosis 24. the Trial 25. nearly anything by Shakespeare but specifically his sonnets I guess and the list could really go on and on and on and on.

August 21, 2014

writing lyrics is harder than I remember.

by jhon baker

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

July 24, 2014

quote of the day

by jhon baker

“if voting made  a difference – they wouldn’t let us do it.”

– Mark Twain

July 20, 2014

Wait… wasn’t this a poetry blog?

by jhon baker

Why, yes it was and is- when I write poetry but lately the focus has been elsewhere and I’m okay with that. I have not been focusing on my disbelief in any god or gods but have been playing music again and seriously studying to become a better musician. Mostly Jazz Trumpet and reading music – Trumpet is a new thing for me as of last October and I am coming along with it as well as can be expected I think – maybe even better than can be expected as this is where all my creative energies lie. You may think it a shame that I am not posting more poetry regardless of what I am writing – there is surely more poetry written than I’ve ever placed on this blog and if you had that thought then you thought correctly and it isn’t as if I haven’t written since I started with the trumpet but I haven’t written much and am waiting to see what of it gets published elsewhere before it lands here.

This is a meditation on the blog in recent light of the most popular post I’ve ever written – far and away the most popular post and I need to consider what this blog is really about as I’ve never really wanted a random blog but one that held out meaning and a constant theme – more or less.

So, I will put a poem here for the followers that are with me for the poetry –

 

speaking of hell

 

this is one poem that will not get written

not everyday can contain a poem

or the written word

or the vague ramblings and ideas

of abstracted madness.

 

my beard grows long

and I am in good company,

months of tender care

with shampoo and conditioner

with little gray.

 

I am younger than I look

and more experienced than the color of my hair.

it’s resilience, perseverance

it’s sitting down and getting to it –

keeping hell in a back pocket.

 

most people live truly blessed lives

their nightmares kept safely at night,

others don’t sleep and howl at the moon

raving like sharp toothed dogs

gnawing at their own fingers and bones.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

 

And put this here for the randomness of it. I don’t think the article needs comment from me but you should know that it is sorta about vaginas – or one particular vagina and it isn’t mine.