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 