Posts tagged ‘literature’

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February 12, 2013

Sylvia – parts 1 and 2

by jhon baker

Sylvia part 1

I listen to your voice,
late November,

reliving a moment long
worn away by time’s
passing
and memory.

did you mean to see it out,
taste of poison
fruits? or come
back.
all questions lingering
and a scar,
a very real scar,
traces round our heart,

I’ll show you if you come to see.
no charge,
no heart beats like ours

out of the ash, we sift
and sift, but find
no more

no phoenix burning
the midnight air.

 

Suicide – Sylvia part two

February, 11 2013
you are gone today
fifty years gone
left,
without a word
after
a lifetime of words
each neatly arranged
each carefully reviewed
a life meticulously considered
but
you no longer suffer
and
your pain ended

I wonder what your last words were
who they were to
a goodbye and kissing your children
perhaps
a goodbye and that is all

how are we to mourn
each passing hour
is a passing day
and this just another
poem
about your death
which you couldn’t write
anymore

you staggered
and saw it out
confessional until the last
asleep
on a pillow
the sun rising to meet its
worshiper.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

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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

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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

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April 19, 2012

post

by jhon baker

to post or not to post – that is the question. Or rather the question is energy and ideas – an abundance of those and I’d be posting like I use to.

My nephew is going through his own ennui with posting and it reminded me that I haven’t had an original post in some time. So I thought I would post nothing today just so the three of you know that I am breathing.

I’ve had a few conversations on the subject of Haiku poetry and its form lately. Those of us in the know and out of school tend toward avoiding the 5-7-5 American grade school requirement but adhere to the guide of what each line ought to represent.

first line – kigo – the seasonal reference – very important

second line – the moment as it is

third line – the satori or ah ha moment.

 

This is freeing and simultaneously restricting as one should always avoid the obvious…

mid spring

writing a haiku

and it is bad

 

– but rather –

 

cherry blossoms

decayed and floating

whose illusion?

 

it isn’t much better but you get the idea.

On poetry and Haiku – it isn’t well hidden that I regard the vast majority of poetry to be total crap that should have never graced the page it was written on but maybe less well known is that I hate 99% of Haiku. Yes, I am an opinionated bastard. I should add that I believe that everyone who wants to write poetry ought to but not share it with the world until they’ve been doing it long enough to know that most of it is crap – I call this taste. Haiku is different, a little. You should wait to share it with others until you have written 10,000 of them. I’ve written well over that but have only ever shared about 20 – and those I question.

Art is for the creator when done and kept private – art is done for the creator only in the act of creation, when we wear the laurel wreath. After it is no longer the creators and has been co-opted by the masses. If you know what you have done is good then you know it wasn’t done by you anyway. The mistakes are all ours, everything else belongs to someone else.

I am not religious but an atheist. So this may confuse the three of you reading this. I’m just not egotistical enough to think the good lines are mine alone.

 

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