So, I’ve been mostly talked into getting a band I was in back together for the purpose of recording some of the stuff we never got a chance to record. This means that I am writing new lyrics to old songs that I like the tunes of but having outgrown the lyrics. Writing lyrics at my age is harder than it was when I was a tenor. It must be because I am out of practice.
I’m a slow writer – always have been. I take no issue with this as Leonard Cohen takes no issue with it.
and now – a poem that has nothing to do with anything.
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
disgracefully 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
the platitudes of willful resemblance 
There is generally nothing interesting on Facebook
by jhon bakerI’ve spent the last several minutes or half hour scrolling on FB to no avail. The most interesting thing is my cup of coffee and this cigarette that I should not be smoking. I am over medicated but still crazy and dedicated. Several of my guitars need the attention of a luthier and I am out of ideas.
(What I initially wrote here is too personal for a personal public blog.)
I have no new poems to offer. Haven’t written one in about six months but I have not been idle. Or I have been idle, whiling my time away on trumpet and guitar. There is only one discipline I can concentrate on at a time. Fine Art, Music or poetry – I don’t know why I cannot intermingle them but, alas, I cannot. I feel as though I can no longer call myself “poet” as I no longer call myself a painter – these things require the action of the brush or pen (or IBM selectric III as it tends to be) and I am Hors de Combat.
I think that’s right.
In a general state of needing new shoes.
and another cigarette. I’ve quit it three times this year and am always drug back down by weakness of one moment and then the roller coaster of addiction. I can’t stand the way it smells or tastes and this time I find myself brushing my teeth several times a day just to get rid of the mouth feel. The next time may be it. I like myself better when I don’t smoke and I like that I don’t get headaches as often either.
A shout out for Leonard Cohen’s new album “Popular Problems” – he kills it.
I’ve started on the e cigarettes – I like them but for the weight that I am not used to holding in between my fingers. I don’t count this as quitting or staying quit. but yesterday I did the dishes and gathered the garbage making my son clean out the cat boxes and take the can to the curb with the help of my wife of many fine years. Last night I contemplated (while not being able to sleep, again) going down to my writing room and banging out a letter or a poem if one would present itself but I reclined on the couch with a cat that hates me and thought my way through the map of a fretboard. And right now I am waiting for a water company to come and tell me whats wrong with my renters house water system. I’ve a feeling that this is going to cost a lot.
My son tells me the best way to rid myself of writers block (which I don’t think I have) is to go to the coffee shop and people listen and watch. This is not something I would opt to do. Not that I am unwilling to look like a wanna be writer with his laptop open typing away – that part doesn’t bother me. It’s the sitting there, spending money on coffee when it is already paid for and cheaper at home. It is the people part really. I don’t like them much. Or it isn’t that I don’t like people but just like it better when they’re not around.
He says it is the noise that does it. To not sit in a quietude. But I don’t – I write to Jazz and the classical station. I go into my mental spaces and try out combinations of words until it hits. then I go.
that is my process.
And, normally, I don’t like capitals when I can avoid them.
six hundred and eleven words .
right then anyway.
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