July 20, 2014
Wait… wasn’t this a poetry blog?
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.
July 3, 2013
When the coffee maker starts on fire
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.
February 11, 2013
mundane details of a life – part two
I have to mail out a few letters
in the morning –
one to a banker that
I forgot to mail this morning,
one to a friend who doesn’t write back often
and some submissions with SASE all ready for
rejection.
all this makes me think
of how I miss adjusting the carburetor
in the driveway nearly everyday
so the car would run well enough
to get me to and from work waiting tables
at some chain restaurant on the verge of going bankrupt
where they didn’t care if you shaved that day or not
and most days I didn’t shave and smelled like gasoline
and used oil.
I eventually grew a beard so I wouldn’t have to shave at all
and quit the restaurant for less demeaning work
elsewhere but never found any
just more jobs and surviving
just over broke
renting rooms or couches
or spending late nights at doughnut shops
so I wouldn’t have to go anywhere
and those places never close
even though they had locks on all the doors.
but today I have to make sure that I mail
out these letters and that one to the banker
about bond funds and such
these are things I don’t really pay attention to
– at least not yet
and my car is fuel injected and almost new
and my son asks me
if I regret anything in life – he’s nine –
and I don’t know what to tell him.
– Hoc Scripsi
the platitudes of willful resemblance 