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

December 23, 2012

holidays

by jhon baker

Happy Birthday! or Merry Christmas!  – same day and less confusion if I just wish everyone a happy birthday.

 

November 20, 2012

once this happened – pt 1

by jhon baker

There is little I want to write. That is a lie. There is a lot I want to write with no ideas of where to start. Looking for the in and cross wire of the brain athwart the limbic inhibitors, the shorted fuse of creation.

 

once this happened:

 

while at work

in the backroom

I heard the opening air of Nina Simone

singing ‘Lilac Wine’ and fell in love.

I wept openly listening and made record of singer and song.

going out that night I bought her catalog

and weep still every time I hear her voice.

 

this is unrelated:

 

My throat blisters from the burned soy in four shots of espresso.

I write the best when I am clear minded and mood stable.

 

I am having an off day, if I were more able I would spend the day in bed and slumber it away but cannot.

but that was the other day and this is a different odd day where nothing of much import is happening.

But here is a poem.

 

tenuous best

 

three thirty comes on too fast

echoing distant

distant heard

the world the way it is

tenuous best

mark of a truth

scorned, proffered

alone in a room

 

and you think Allen Ginsberg had it tough

writing, holy beard hanging down

poems about cock, assholes

poems about plutonium bombs

 

at least Jeffers offered his Judas

who suffered, agon

meant to be played out, on stage

offering to the thousands.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

November 11, 2012

From ‘hands on the hips’

by jhon baker

Meditation on the death of a soldier

 

life ended abruptly by the

bullet of another’s weapon

paid for by a master neither

one of you has ever met

weapon that was cleaned

with as much care as yours

and placed firmly in hand by

another country such as yours

and without thought, fired to

bring ends to ideals and have

certain glory from gods or God

fired a bullet that ended it’s

own journey in your body

your body, which lies there

weapon in hand that surely would

have ended the bullets owner

if given the chance

 

this is the death that you have chosen

 

as if picked out from a catalogue

listed under ‘means of dispatch’

and you nation mourns forgetting

your choice

never blaming the decisions

that placed you there

yours and your masters

 

but I am colder and I cheer

not at your death but

at the end you were able to choose

for yourself

I am not so lucky and

I will die unknowing from where

the bullets came