Posts tagged ‘poetry’

April 18, 2014

poem

by jhon baker

the obvious end

death

and the mystery of it.

love is a chemical thing,

there is only mystery for the uninformed.

 

but

still I love

and soon will die;

the poetry of death is inexhaustible.

the poetry of flowers and birds is equally inexhaustible.

and when it rains everyone writes poetry about the rains.

 

but

we still think of a rising sun

a setting sun

in ignorance that it is the earth

that rotates on an invisible axis.

that we are always in motion,

balancing with the flat of out feet,

sometimes on our knees.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

March 31, 2014

have I ever posted this before?

by jhon baker

part 3

 

 

the good girls gave in

to enfant terribles of late night

sophistication, movie drive-ins;

Caligulas of teenaged heterosexual addiction

homosexual a priori instinct.

 

ultramarine blues playing on in back room wasteland

tones, color, emotions of form.

she sips brandy and smokes cigars

a Cognac dipped haze, muted consideration

sand paper verses of strange fruit in sequined dresses.

 

we are the drunkards of brass rail barfly joints;

we celebrate half broken neon signs.

we are the soulful moth occupying

the half-light of fading streetlamps.

we are the desperate, misconceived.

we’ve shirts off in a moment of frenzy

and misaligned allusions to greatness

we are the bop shambala meditations

of time-space inequity.

 

and I cannot free you this,

heal you this.

 

but I am with you,

in a body beautiful,

shattered, crying out

on back porches, smoking, singing,

dancing you with crazed two-step and Spanish tango.

protean tongues lapping at the innocence of milk,

slingshot flames and firecracker wisdom

twisting our bodies around images

and starry night scenes

on freshly made beds too small for comfort.

 

sheathing my pen in high fidelity smiles,

we weep like soft-skulled school children

– aesthetes of playground bike rack bloody noses.

July 20, 2013

Sitting

by jhon baker

Waiting at the music school my son attends for him to finish an hour and a half of lessons. There is nothing to do except scan Facebook, Twitter, and search around for news of the coming apocalypse (there is one isn’t there? There is always one coming down the pipe.). But, the coffee never lasts long enough and there isn’t entertainment going on in the waiting area of the school for any length of time – though this time I get to restring a guitar and make an unintentional dollar.

As noted above – I’m on twitter now – I am officially a twit or one who twits or whatever. Follow me or not  – @JhonZBaker  – I’ll not be offended if you do not or cannot or will not.

I refuse to be offended personally by anything – because no one fucking cares.

 

and outside it’s storming

 

temporary black out

and the keys on this machine hesitate

and stop momentarily.

 

my heart jumps as I am in the middle of a poem

and will be left sitting in the dark

with only drink and silence

 

and no poem

 

but the lights flutter and return

and the machine hums again

scenting the room with ozone

 

it’s January in Chicago

and raining, with intermittent thunder

and lightening keeping the cats awake

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.