Posts tagged ‘beard’

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.

July 3, 2013

When the coffee maker starts on fire

by jhon baker

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

by jhon baker

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

March 11, 2012

a poem

by jhon baker

This is intended to be read aloud – read quietly to your self and you may miss the point.

 

 

I am Lazarus

 

walking from the car

to the doctors office,

I am Lazarus.

sick, shaking, agitated,

waking up everyday,

I am Lazarus.

 

call for me at the window!

I’ll let down my holy beard,

read you a turn, a strophe,

carefully with open eyes.

 

look at my walk!

how I limp, sadly moving,

my feet crash to the ground!

 

Look at my chest, how it breathes

how my heart beats!

look at my eyes, they see,

emote, tell!

 

see you listening,

see you reading, see you

who have not died,

who are not blessed to live long.

 

pain! strife! peace! war!

goddess Aphroditie!

god Ares!

I am Lazarus! I know you!

 

death,

I’m addressing you.

I have died already,

you have already taken my spirit, soul;

I will not fear you any longer.

life,

I have already gone past you,

crossed to the other shore,

I shall not fear you any longer.

 

I am Lazarus!

call for me at my door!
there we’ll meet,

lock gaze and I’ll sing! dance!

Laugh! with butterflies in my beard.

hummingbirds at my ears.

 

– Hoc Scripsi