words of a people aligned in their perfect order
– in part for Richard Dawkins
I don’t enjoy needed tears of rejuvenation
or the venerability of emotional transendance
the heart pumps
from ventricle to ventricle
through fifty miles of capillaries
blood that offers life
and one day must stop cold
and we are the lucky ones
so said
for we are here when so many
never were
– Hoc Scripsi
Waiting at the music school my son attends for him to finish an hour and a half of lessons. There is nothing to do except scan Facebook, Twitter, and search around for news of the coming apocalypse (there is one isn’t there? There is always one coming down the pipe.). But, the coffee never lasts long enough and there isn’t entertainment going on in the waiting area of the school for any length of time – though this time I get to restring a guitar and make an unintentional dollar.
As noted above – I’m on twitter now – I am officially a twit or one who twits or whatever. Follow me or not – @JhonZBaker – I’ll not be offended if you do not or cannot or will not.
I refuse to be offended personally by anything – because no one fucking cares.
and outside it’s storming
temporary black out
and the keys on this machine hesitate
and stop momentarily.
my heart jumps as I am in the middle of a poem
and will be left sitting in the dark
with only drink and silence
and no poem
but the lights flutter and return
and the machine hums again
scenting the room with ozone
it’s January in Chicago
and raining, with intermittent thunder
and lightening keeping the cats awake
I’ve posted this before but thought I would post it again. May all your fingers stay attached and no one go blind today – but if you have an unfortunate accident – please forward your photos to me as I need entertainment. I should have posted this yesterday but it’ll have to do.
premature ejaculation
firecrackers, bottle rockets and gunfire.
July 3rd premature ejaculation punctuating
already poor sleeping summer night.
roman candles blue center light sizzling
like so many horribly dangerous sparklers
blinding and burning.
mortars shake the house and
dozens of fingers and hands sacrificed
at the alter of popular patriotism.
– Hoc Scripsi
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.
the platitudes of willful resemblance 