February 11, 2013
mundane details of a life – part two
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
June 3, 2010
Josephine, Allen and the death of G.F. Dutton
Josephine Baker and Allen Ginsberg share a birthday (born twenty years apart) today. It is easier for me to have two people I admire have the same birthday and I could only wish that all my friends shared a birthday on Christmas and that I was not born on Christmas, not to be difficult but I would like my own day once in a while.
the Scottish poet, scientist and much more, G.F. Dutton died on Monday 31 May.
He wrote austerely passionate poems which search and illuminate the world about us. They are as much explorations as his notable scientific work: both draw on one continuous spectrum of experience.
The above is an excerpt from wonderfully written obituary which can be found at bloodaxe books.
when we know that there were no more deaths during Memorial Weekend (US Holiday) I will complete the work that is my reaction which is not the poem that follows.
LIT MAGS
being rejected by the highbrow
lit mags is good for me.
helps remind me who I am.
where I am from.
which most certainly is not in the
posh offices of the new yorker or a
public space.
I submit to them now just to
be an ass, I imagine that some
poor schmuck sits there and has
the job of reading the unsolicited submissions
only to send out the kindest regards of the
editors. So, I send what I think is good
but I know will never make the mag.
my exercise in futility, I do
this instead of going to church.
the beer I drink tonight is for that
poor schmuck that I am going to
submit the ingredients of cracker jack to
tomorrow.
this is the part of life that gets
me hard in the morning.
– Hoc Scripsi
the platitudes of willful resemblance 