the platitudes of willful resemblance

I’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.