July 17, 2011

one stop poetry photo challenge

by jhon baker

saw this image on a friends blog and it immediately struck me as something I should write about.

 

early childhood/ late summer life

modern Mona Lisafound you

standing backyard, hiding from

the boys teasing your name

around the corner.

 

the image of Plath or Sexton,

 

and sometime

dancer.

 

but here is what I want from you:

follow though

burn their eyes out,

kick their balls so hard they’ll think of you

fifty years later.

then go

go

go

be someones little girl again

and wait for branches to untie leaves

and wither in fall

before you stop dancing.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

 

 

July 16, 2011

Post 401 and the most artistic post of all 401

by jhon baker

(THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK)

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July 15, 2011

Post 400

by jhon baker

and my readership is at an all time low. I blame my choice of switching formats and web addresses.

I thought I would make an interesting post it being 400 and all but I am not feeling interesting today. This means plainly that you ought to read the previous posts, the ones that led to this moment in time, marked by a simple heading and celebrated by taking four kittens to the vet.

 

I have eleven years worth of poetry that has only ever been read by the recipient and never republished or even copied. This is a detour from my modis operandi which dictates that I keep a copy of everything unless it is crap and deserving only of trash heaps and recycling.

I think that after my death there may be a collection out there titled “love letters” – but it may be that they are always kept private. as it is they are not mine, I wrote them but K owns them, they are hers and only she can dictate their offering. It is my job to create the market for that particular collection before I die – as if I kicked it right now there wouldn’t be enough interest – save the few hundred that have purchased my initial offering.

Do all writers obsessively keep copies of everything? Once this would have been labor intensive but is now quite easily done with the technology that has erupted around us. Even in the age before the widespread use of computers many writers used carbon sheets as I am sure I would have done if in that age – now I use a copier that came attached to the printer which came attached to a fax and all together has the ability to scan things.

but all this is off subject – or I haven’t a subject. The kittens cost me nearly 500 today and we are giving up one of the seven cats that inhabit our household this evening. Over the next few weeks we will be two kittens short of our current count and can then start considering colleges as there are too many bodies occupying this house at the given moment.

 

I am gripped by my body’s sense of humor.

July 13, 2011

illusions, delusions, allusions

by jhon baker

illusions of clowns, teeth bared and wickedly grinned.
delusions, grandiose and thinking that my lawn matters to more than the pope.
allusions to escapism outside Chicago, allusions of beauty before the morning, allusions of ballet toes bleeding from the rain.

high colored reality , divisions of flashing white porcelain against tile decadently scarred by misinforming vandals. embassies from god or the prince of Valiumed ladies distressing the floorboards of old missions;
I hang up the phone and turn to go outside for smoking, drinking coffee and dancing in the rain.

though I can no longer dance, everyday I think of the two-step.

stuck, inescapable nighttimedreaming and forcing awake a moment of clarity and pleasant cool air drafting in from racked open doors, the sound of small animals fleeting, the sound of disquiet under moonlight, and I am in underwear with uneven legs bare, uneven mind shifting under weight of trailing thought.

water bottle is empty.
medicine bottle is empty.

there is enough light to shadow.

freight train carrying boxes of cartoon imagination
sounds from one mile east, moving south south east
and into Chicago
metro.

dawn and I hear the first passenger cars slow to a halt but cannot discern the passengers boarding.

– Hoc Scripsi