The end of 2010 and the start of 2011

let us start something new.

humm, how about a year?

okay, good, what exactly can we do with another 365 days?

-------------

on another note all together, I hear birds singing right now. It's six-thirty. My wife is starting to cook some pizza sauce and my MIL is helping my son clean the living room. Two cats are crying for their seven O'clock feeding and I am blissful at the sound of typing being done on my slim keyboard.

Back to the bird; This morning I say a pill bug by the front door and late yesterday morning my attention was drawn to a really fuzzy caterpillar. I think what I am trying to say is it is damn warm for Dec. 31st and nearly all the snow has melted away. Condensation is covering everything and just when I thought I was going to take out my motorcycle for a winter run - it started to rain, heavily. This was God mocking me.

It was warm enough to strike the outdoor Christmas decorations, put the chains on my tractor tires because I am tired of being stuck in the snow while I eliminate the snow from the drive. We were able to see all the newspapers that got lost in the snow storms and get them into the recycle, unread, I am already aware of what has happened from those days and the only important paper, with my friend featured, had been gotten already.
while striking the outdoor declaration of secular celebrations it was discovered that there were some cut lights. This happened last night I am positive - we were out smoking and we heard a noise - I loudly said something about getting my side arm and investigating while I finished my smoke. We did nothing last night thinking it was probably an animal and come to find it was probably a neighbor who is the killjoy of all things neighborly.One day he will be in the yard and learn that I am indeed armed. But it's Christmas time - I prefer to shoot people when Santa isn't looking too closely. Not that I've shot anyone before - that you know of...

Tomorrow will have new poetry. I've a Magpie to finish and have been tinkering with some words and forms. Today has had it's own poetry, tonight will have more as we fuck away 2010 and welcome fuck in 2011.

 - J. Baker

Sunday

I was hoping to make it to at least three-hundred posts this year - I feel as though that this goal is unattainable at this point without posting around forty posts that would normally have been one.

Just having come in from snow throwing the drive and having my two stage 44" thrower break it's second stage, I am fit for a nap. I didn't wake up all that early today but also didn't sleep well at all last night. Such as it is and this is normal.

I ran out of cigarettes last night and this was nothing - Kara had some and dutifully went out after we finished the drive to procure some more for me.

My desk is piled with crap that I am not sure what to do with - except for the property tax bills. Those I have to pay. The other bills I wait for them to send about three notices with at least one stamped in red before I can be bothered to write the check. Then I pay using the stub from the first bill they sent. Especially if there is a late fee attached. There is, however, a new computer mouse which isn't a mouse at all but the Apple track pad. Considering the state of my desk - I think have a mouse that doesn't need to move around is going to enable my lack of desire for a cleaner and orderly desk.

elements

eating dinner by
two candle power
light
& glasses of water like

goblets of wine
between us,
we eat slowly,

laugh heartily
and are only drowning

in concern

               under
clean skin, made
beautiful by artificial
means.

 - Hoc Scripsi 

it has been recommended to me that I post a bit about why I sign my poetry with the "Hoc Scripsi" - I think I will do this soon. 

If you have any other posting suggestions I would love to hear them - I may ignore them until I don't or all together but you never know. 

now to...

drink some OJ right out of the bottle,

step outside to smoke and turn my lungs a shade darker,

lay down in bed and nap badly until I am rustled awake,

dream of once again dancing a jig...

By the way - I never changed any names... 

Christmas eve-eve, on Santa Claus -

I've never written a Christmas anything - Somehow I never feel it in a way that I care to express in poem or story. Believe me, I love the holiday now, haven't always but now it is very special to me. Thanks for this go to my wonderful wife, who indeed is a Saint.
I recall in the second grade where I was and what I was doing when someone, who shall remain nameless but not blameless, told me there was no Santa Claus. I'll call her Kate C. - She seemed to not be bothered by this seeming fact but was finding me silly for still believing in such a Spirit. Apparently her older brother, whom well call Dave C., had recently told her while her parents did nothing to try to keep up the so-called charade. It was after gym class, we were standing by our lockers a few feet down from the Art room, which was taught by Mrs. Painter (no kidding). She was wearing a pink shirt and had her sholder length blond hair pulled up, I was wearing a blue button down shirt and jeans (then I always wore some shade of blue which had increasingly grown darker until it became black and stayed there) I believe Kate was also in blue jeans. We had been friends but this new information made me distrust her for the remainder of my childhood. We didn't really ever speak in HS - so really the friendship ended there. I was heart broken.
Later that evening, still very upset and inconsolable,  I finally came out with what I had been told. My parents were seemingly let down that the magic was gone while my brother acted like it was no big deal ( I secretly believe that he still believed secretly then but he was too macho to let on), I was sitting in my Dad's chair at the kitchen table. My Mother sat down and did for me then what will always be the greatest gift she has ever given me - she told me this story...
"when I was a little girl, I left my bicycle out in the driveway. My father ran it over and told me that I would have to buy my own if I wanted another - (interjection - he was a complete bastard who did horrible things to all his daughters), I couldn't earn enough money and really wanted a new bike. I wrote to Santa when it came to Christmas time and prayed every night for a new bicycle, it was my only escape. On Christmas day there were a few presents under the tree, a new doll, some clothes but no bicycle, I was devastated. After we were done with the presents and went to the kitchen to make breakfast we saw a large gift there, wrapped in shiny red paper with the biggest bow I had ever seen. It was obvious that it was a bike. I ran to it and it said on the tag - to Sandy, from Santa Claus - I couldn't believe it. My Father asked my mother right then where it came from - my mother didn't make much money and my father would never have bought it for me - no-one knew, it could only have come from Santa Claus.
"I don't know if there is a guy that dresses in a red suit with a white beard, that may be a story, but I believe in the greater Spirit of Santa Claus, and that to some people, he exists, he visits and brings what will make children smile."

I asked for a retelling of the same story from my Grandma (Grandpa being long dead - another good gift to the family.) and she told it roughly the same - swearing by Jesus Christ (she was very religious) that she didn't know where it came from - to her dying day she upheld the same story with only variation that time gives everything - My Grandfather, I am told, also swore to his last that he never bought it for her and why would he have - a complete bastard - horror of a man really.
This story gave me hope and I have thought on it for many years - I still believe in Santa Claus and the inner goodness of regular people when the Spirit overtakes them. St. Nick can be found many places in this world whether or not you believe, within people, as a person or a magnanimous being of some sort - I don't know how he manifests but I know in my heart that he does.

Having a son - I am proud to never lie to him and have told him that the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist - we buy his teeth from him - (he wants to keep them anyway and when he thought there was a tooth fairy he was not going to give her his teeth) - He has yet to ask about the Easter Bunny but I will be honest with that as well. As for Santa - I remind him that he does exist, I keep that alive in him and I hope to always keep that alive in him - If I could have it my way I would become Santa Claus for all the world and look forward to my hair going white so with my mighty beard I can play Santa at the malls and even throughout the year. Sometimes children from other countries here visiting or immigrating will point to me with my brown mighty beard and excitedly say that I am Santa now - I never correct them and have even been known to hug them. If only I could become That Man, my life would have more joy in it than I could handle - I have no wish to become immortal but to make this difference in the lives of all mankind and especially children whom my heart has enough room for all of.

Sunday from the fantastic world of - I haven't made the second pot of coffee yet and this may well be the result. I think I need a smoke...

I awoke from a dream to the scent of K making Lasagna for a Christmas party dinner. It is a departure from the Roast that she usually makes. I like both and understand that they both take a lot of effort, I don't cook anymore. I wasn't very good at it in comparison to K and I think that she enjoys it most days - on the days she doesn't I take her out. Simple, I think, but I may be fooled.
This year I think the three of us all wanted lasagna, bread and salad. Such a good meal.

I don't recall the dream - it was inconsequential which is odd for it to not have been either a nightmare or a night terror.

We made perfect love and I slept great.

Today is our first celebratory day of Christmas - is it wrong that I am looking forward to the end of it? I want to see everyone but I don't care for the stress of it - the whole house becomes a little more tense and preferably these walls are a sanctuary. Is it tacky if next year I rent out a small hall, make it a themed costume party and write up a bunch of trivia? Mind you this is a party for my parents, brother and his family, also my sister if she was in town but she isn't and it is more her loss than ours, not saying it wouldn't be nice to have her here, most certainly it would be but we've all grown used to our current customs and damn the earlier ones that involved me leaving on Christmas day.
I am looking forward to seeing my nephews - awkward teenagers always make me laugh.

I've made the coffee and now it is all about waiting.

I think I may start listing Coffee and Cigarettes under the medications heading in the form fill box on insurance applications. With the list filled with other meds they may not notice and they have medicinal value to me.
I don't think it'll be appreciated with the low cost/high value insurance I want.

I was going to put a poem up but I have to go clean something now. They are my parents coming after all. I'll throw one up later, probably something old, potentially already posted much earlier in my blogs life which most of you are probably unfamiliar with anyway, so we all win.
I think starting tomorrow I am going to start putting up excerpts from a long poem of mine that has yet to see any publishing or attempts at publishing. Still a long work in progress but we will have to wait and see.


don't forget my birthday is coming up and I expect a lot of really expensive gifts.

everytime I'm with you, I'm fucked up...

religious iconography isn't my thing.

When my impatience with people, cats, machinery et cetera come on - I know it is time to take myself out of the mixture for awhile, all in attempt to avoid the medications, the ward, having to make the excuses - I am lucky in that my wife is somehow able to calm me and distract until she can get me to a safer place. I live not only with bi-polar spectrum disorder with psychosis but chronic pain as well, and when the pain peaks it causes all the effort of control to spin wildly and quickly down - I need my pain meds, today crying a bit while trying to nap after snow blowing the drive I could only think that I wanted to vanish into Hawaii or the mountains to live as a crazy monk.



anyway

I’ve never met the man who isn’t torn between

clean, sober, right,
shame, bottle and heartbreak.

who isn’t sliding toward the selfish decision;
who isn’t the man he wanted to be.

prescription drugs, narcotics
bad poetry, tense moments

of quietude and longing.
leaning against rail fences

sun shining on his face.


 - Hoc Scripsi




image from Magpie #45

Vivaldi gives me a hard on

but as I sit here and feel a mysterious depression untie me, instantly disbanding my intentions.
searching for the door now as it may be reopened that medications have washed out of me, forgetting my need and granting these recent lines of creation.
I've resurrected a bridge but decided to put away the friendship regardless. In some relationships there is no room for differences and the past isn't always what some gratify it to be.

I am not alone and I wish to not leave this room, I wish to seclude and isolate, intolerate the world as it has done nothing specific or even so much as made note of any particular individual existence -
the world is not out to get me - nor anyone else for that matter. (Unless it is and, wow, that guy is fucked.)
a general distaste for the gathered throng is beginning to percolate again, bending my aspect toward something new or different, broken, old or discarded.
something borrowed, something blue
I am climbing at the walls and tilting at the ills that govern my outlook.

my brother, secret hero, our ancient people vilified one another
our ancient people spit blood on ancient corpses.

I already regret saying "thank you".



words

the notebooks,
IBM Selectric IIIs,
et cetera
these are my shields,
protecting me from the world
from you –

My words are the weapons
I utilize

bludgeoning the audience
until they bleed from ears,
mouth, fingertips,
and eyes.


 - Hoc Scripsi

nothing I like more than killing them brutally with my words.

 - J.

hanging christmas decorations or handling shotguns

another Jingle Poetry Potluck Monday. This week theme being - Hobbies & Passions, Pastimes & Entertainment...


Merry Christmas
 
I was the only one wearing a John Lennon t-shirt
and not camouflage or distressed leather
conspicuously eying shotguns, .357s and a few AR-15s.

it was a last minute decision
to go
a momentary hesitation
to leave

having breakfast at Baker Hill Pancake House
drinking Superior or something
enjoying the company

and the plangent chorus of diners
on a Sunday morning,
too cold for hanging outdoor decorations.


and I am unaware of looks or gazes
in other directions.




 - Hoc Scripsi




Not my best effort but it is all I have left today. I am not reaching for compliments as I am always straight forward about that but genuinely unsure about this one. 


Earlier I wrote a mess of lines and efforted those to a nose bleeding degree. I'll sleep on this theme and revisit tomorrow or maybe harvest something old to offer the masses.

good night, good night, good night - With Patrick out of the hospital and on the mend, I only need concern myself with fellow chronic pain sufferers. Rest well my fellows, morning is around  the bend.

Edit: several, too many - probably going to delete this entire post around 3 am or in the normal morning.  
EDIT: obviously I didn't delete it but I assure you that I did rewrite it several times before the first comment.

Magpie #44

a moment is so difficult...

a moment is so difficult to surrender
tied to it
panic stricken
and momentarily blinded by
it's seeming appetite
for notice

and though I cannot smell it
I think I can
and inhale deeply
and smile at what
no-one else here can.

a small thing really

one of the small things really
but I hold on all the same
out of fright and exhilaration
afraid to exhale and lose
unable to cope
or replace.


 - Hoc Scripsi






Image courtesy of Magpie tales #44

One can increase the amount of 'sleeps till Christmas' by taking naps. This is recommended behavior.

in their own voice also Sylvia Plath

I've come into contact with a lot of live poetry via "The Academy of American Poets" archive Compact Discs. John Berryman, David Ignatow (a personal favorite), George Oppen, Robert Lowell, and three more collections with too many poets to list. I truly enjoy hearing the poet's voice reading from their works and I've managed a large collection of them - some pretty available and some not so much. All Digital now after many hours trying to remaster off of old cassette tapes. My proudest is my Sylvia Plath Collection which has become exceedingly hard to find. In all I have about 2 gigs of recordings not including some of my own which I've just begun to do.

My Sylvia Plath Collection is as follows...

Daddy
Ariel
Lady Lazarus
The Ghost's Leavetaking
November Graveyard
On the Plethora of Dryads
The Thin People
Hardcastle Crags
Child's Park Stones
The Lady and the Earthenware Head
On the Difficulty of conjuring up a dryad
Green Rock, Winthrop Bay
On the Decline of Oracles
The Goring
Ouija
The Beggars
Sculptor
The Disquieting Muse
Spinster
Parliament Hill Fields
The Stones
Leaving Early
Candies
Mushrooms
Breck-plague
The Surgeon 2 AM
Nick and the Candlestick (not a good copy)
Poppies in October
Fever 103


short list of some reasons I prefer to listen to poetry:
1. In the Poet's Voice how can you go wrong?
2. Sometimes the pains intensity makes it hard to focus my eyes.
3. I can enjoy poetry in a darkened room.
4. a good read can make me weep, gladly
5. hearing a poem in the authors voice is like experiencing it again for the first time.

If anyone has any obscure or hard to locate recordings I would love to wrench them from your tight grip. Also trade or even purchase. I hunger for more.


Sylvia part 1

I listen to your voice,
late November,

reliving a moment long
worn away by times
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.
...

 - Hoc Scripsi


EDIT: poem submitted for the Jingle Poetry Theme of Dreams Visions and Reveries because I've visions of Sylvia at times when writing and feel that connection (especially this last one) and at times I dream of her. Is it cheating?

Magpie #43

this door is an affront to my senses

imagine Adam, seeing in vision, that which would befall man

brought by disobedience,

how his heart must have ached.

 - Hoc Scripsi

image from Magpie #43

December, snow, ice and the general good time with whiskey

Apparently the 44" snow thrower attached to the front of my John Deer is going to come in handy tonight and through the weekend. Also of use will be the seed spreader that pulls behind filled with ice melter.
December already and it's going to be a white my birthday.

This is for Troy

1. the bending of steel

poetry.
coffee.
a love of hard liquor.
rifles, shotguns, pistols
revolvers.

men were bound by
thinner threads then these.


2. hammering to form

poetry.
coffee.
a love of hard liquor.
rifles, shotguns, pistols
revolvers.

man’s bind was broken by
thinner threads than these.


3. the fine blade

beauty.
art.
love.
the eyes and body move
of a naked dancing muse.

man’s mind was broken by
thinner threads than these

 - Hoc Scripsi


I am looking at the Magpie image and thinking now; I am looking at my own door, painted red with window, and thinking casually.

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately and seeing some quality writing and some not so much. I comment on about 1/3rd of what I am reading as time does not allow for expression and reciprocation on everyone's thoughts. On need to get back to Rabbit on his poetry as I said I would and am still pounding through the fall of man.
This blog needs more energy - needs more poetry while it is looking like I will finish the year slightly ahead of where I was last year. A good thing but I can see where I didn't use all of my time wisely.

Almost nap time.

This above poem was written for Troy, because without him it would not have been written. Although it has been turned down by two publishers I believe it to be a solid poem and have high hope for it over the next few months.
Any publisher that reads me and wants it may use it with notification.

ad a good breakfast with a friend this morning with coffee that rivals the best of normal coffee houses - she only need a better coffee maker to bring it to the next level. Good range of topics covered and I left before I may have gotten boring immediately following saying some profound things. To include, on the subject of the impossibility of perfection or an impossible definition of perfection as to human achievement - If I am the sum of my life's experiences, then I am perfect as I am. Some may say that leaves no room for improvement, but I counter that with I am only talking about now, not what is possible with the possibility of tomorrow.

Putting Sparklehorse's last album to play I am now going to close my eyes and pull the night mask on. The safety word is "revenge"


 - J.

world AIDS/HIV day

See RED today. World AIDS day - you owe it to those you love (including yourself) to get tested, support the cause or the particular HIV/AIDS charity of your choice. I supported - will you?

I never wanted to be a poets poet.
I strive to write for people, caring far more for the connection to a garbage handler.
tonight I feel the sting from the absence.
I am going to bed now and hoping to sleep and awaken in a different light.

prize fighter

I am not a fighter;

never been.

writing poetry and

loving;

            an unknown

contradiction

carrying notebooks,

pencils in back pockets

while looking so aggressive,

massive.

 - hoc Scripsi

Magpie #42

she couldn't read what it said

or whom it was for

the memory only contained the sudden

image

from an antique shop

or estate sale

it was forgotten now

where or when

but the unexpected frailty,

the image,

weak knee'd her 

stalled staggering

at this moment held

helpless, sightless,

merely astonished at

the wetness of her cheek

falling into gardenias lain

on the bed,

her robe slipping open,

she turned her body

toward the open window.



 - Hoc Scripsi


Image from Magpie #42

not my best effort - but there it is.

It's about four in the morning or so

well fuck it, I'm staying awake tonight to see if I can pull this insomnia at night thing into the more normal 'trouble falling asleep but doing so eventually anyway' and away from the 'I watch the sunrise and then get sleepy' category.
I am currently digesting Paradise Lost by Milton and am going to go through the epics before I return to normal reading. As I am not a Christian or Catholic I get to read this from a pure poetical standpoint and dig deep into his word and line - which are beyond measure beautiful and striking. Interesting is how words have changed meaning over the years, i.e. reeking - now it refers to something with foul and unappealing odor and when he wrote it it meant more of vaporizing or disintegrating.
While not as cool as Beethoven being deaf or Monet being nearly blind  - Milton was totally blind when he wrote all 12 books of Paradise Lost. being unable to see what needs to be worked and writing in iambic pentameter is astounding to me not to mention being able to keep the complicated narrative of Paradise Lost in mind while doing the aforementioned composition. oh, and he was also hated at that point in history by the powers that be so he did this in hiding and was jailed at some point around then as well, not for being a bad guy but for saying the wrong things about the powerful.
This is not to be taken for better perusal of his history and selected from my memory of a blurb I read somewhere - probably the preface to the tome I am reading.
I feel ashamed for waiting this long to read it and can only admit that I have skimmed the other epics (Odyssey, Iliad, Aeneid, Metamorphosis, Beowulf) some fairly heavy skimming but still. I am correcting this oversight presently.

11/24/2010 ramble

I'm getting drunk off coffee (which, for the initiate, means that I am all jittery and my heart is palpating without there being someone naked in the room), outside it is raining and I believe that it is going to freeze tonight. For once I've opted to have order out delivery pizza instead of something that we could have had much cheaper by just opening the fridge and doing a little heating and no it wasn't my turn to cook - just do the dishes which I'll bet my wife is wondering why they still aren't done at 6:30 pm.
Today I shelled out more than asked for to have someone do my fall cleanup (there are a lot of fucking trees in my yard as I've mentioned before) - this year I allowed them all to accumulate while I did nothing and was waiting for a stretch of really nice days to break out the tractor and mulch them all into oblivion. No nice days and I will still have to take out the tractor to remove the mowing deck and install the awesome two stage snow thrower so I can get through the winter without ever having to lift a shovel.
I did do something I've been trying to do for days though - spoke with my friend, Christopher, and was on the phone for about two hours. I'd feel like a girl if I saw him more often but as I don't - I'm fine with it.
I think I am avoiding trying to read Paradise lost during the normal waking hours and working on my own longer poems as well.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving where we celebrate the raping and pillaging of the culture of those people who happened to discover America before we did - those bastards, how dare they find something first and colonize it.
We'll be having chicken and pumpkin pie - without pumpkin pie I don't think I could get behind this so called celebration of attempted total genocide. Add pumpkin pie though, and I would lead my own brother to the gallows.

Rain poured this morning so I stayed in bed until after noon. Sitting now at a local shop (okay, it's a Starbucks) and it started raining hard again. How did I know this? it was not looking out the window or seeing the bright lightening flashes but the sudden increase in pain in my leg. The chunk of metal astc as some kind fucking antenna for weather changes and sudden ones are the most painful.
Waiting for someone to appear here and in the meantime looking like one of those writers with their MacBook open writing all alone, against the world.

I've nothing to write about right now other than right now. There is no-one interesting here and my new friend has yet to show up. It is raining so hard I hope he has a ride but I don't know as  I can't really say I know him all that well yet.

had rain outside the local coffee shop

bad art, pale blue walls
children left alone in
the vestibule, waiting
for their mother to bring
the car round

 - Hoc Scripsi

I often find my self weeping at television shows and charity commercials,
embarrassed and confused about it I tend not to watch much television

another magpie write from #41

in general, we don't speak.
passing fitfully, neatly drawn out.

the photograph
on the wall
strays the story to length
but I don't speak of it
directly.

indifferently.

aberrantly it hangs,
an hour off,
two hours.

witnesses the coffee
cigarettes, alcohol
women
dirty dishes

and we
gathering adjacent to
its unique
(all evidence against)

shared frailty, cannot
be brought
to words beyond
the manual.

 - Hoc Scripsi


image from Willow's Magpie #41

Magpie #41

it had been seven hours since the moment of clarity and now we questioned it entirely. a moment of obscurity - and still it had been seven hours since.
I loaded my gun and walked amiably toward the back bedroom where the typewriter was kept and once entered sat down to feel out a confession of sorts but only to be read by my god or therapist. some words crashed out effortlessly while others necessated manual extraction via a syringe into fingertips.
the last time we were here my ulnar nerve was nicked and the sensation fled out of one and a half fingers.
now we allowed it to escape though minute burning forced our eyes to watch and our brain to repudiate its association.
here, the faces of clocks tell no hour. hands strength to point forced into submission by gears and precise Japanese clockwork.
and faces painted adorn walls never lit.



image found at Magpie tales prompt #41.

it feels good to close eyes, putting my head into may arms on the desk. As where I know it is early and the coffee is filling the ache of addiction - a few hours of really good sleep beats none and fails to compare to a nights rest.

propping up my right elbow is an ornate oriental box containing two metal balls containing bells or something that chimes. Right arm cradles the head at a good height so there will be no strain in holding my self correct later.

I need a short nap - my cell phone is charging while I await important phone calls. This combination doesn't suit me at all.



Edit: HA! I just saw that I posted this after three and I reference the time as early - well, I wrote it this morning - fairly early and didn't hit "publish post" until after three - really tired.

After the trip and nearly healed...

I've been back from Florida since Sunday when I promptly went to bed and slept the better of twenty hours. See the abuses to my body of such long days on my feet and the amount of pain control medications (prescribed narcotics and opiates) along with no sleep and catching something from the Hollywood theme park did me in for that day and really the rest of this week so far. My beautiful wife has been dutifully preparing the house for our sons birthday party tomorrow while I basically wandered around in a listless manner reading Paradise Lost and sucking on several Halls mentholyptis. She is better to me than I deserve.
I managed to write four pages this week and a poem to send off to my Aunt Kate who I have come to the understanding is dying and not going to live much longer. This weighs heavy on my heart indeed as she and I are the best representation of what family really is. She also suffers chronic pain and has Cancer to boot - earlier this year she broke her hip and has truly failed to recover from that - there was never any hope of a recovery from the lung cancer which is now spreading like the terrible disease it is.

I don't mean to bring you down. I love this woman dearly and now only hope for her pain to vanish away no matter what that also means.

I realized that I've missed two Magpie photos and am currently looking at this weeks to suss out the right words.

it’s okay to die

I look forward to death

with relief, comfort

and sedated melancholy.
if I look up now

what will I see?

and if I look down?

man was not born for

pursuit of perfection

but to be free;

not tied to breathing,

entrapped by fear.

it’s okay to die.

this is what I tell myself

while it is not too late

for living.

 - Hoc Scripsi

preface to the week

Leaving soon for Florida - Disney world to  be more specific. Celebrating my boy's seventh birthday. The last time I was there, when I was about 12ish, there was a sunscreen incident and my brother and I got second degree sunburn - this was the second day. That night we ate at the Mickey Mouse Buffet where M.M. gave me a great big hug - after I stopped screaming and crying my memory fades away. I am hoping that better memories are created this time.
I should be able to post while there depending on how tired I am and the amount of pain my leg decided to make me endure. I am hoping that a change of scenery will inspire a few poems out of me that aren't about six foot tall mice and Disney pretty princesses. Disney pretty is not my pretty - Disney beautiful is not my beautiful - is there such a thing  as Disney sexy? They do make or subsidize porn films don't they? Maybe my wife and I will happen across an adult bar wherein we get smashed and fuck in the bathroom, that will be Disney sexy.

I once wrote a poem called "sexy to me" - I don't like it now but I should find it and place here a few excerpts for you laughter and comedic enjoyment - not that it was meant to be funny but that it probably is in retrospect.


sexy to me is sunday morning
reading the funnies
hair messed in a bathrobe
drinking fresh coffee
before the children wake up.

sexy to me is dancing the tango
in the kitchen
while making dinner or
after doing the dishes
elbow deep in hot sudsy water.

sexy to me is skillfully touched
with fingers, a somewhat
gradual fragility
like lace or satin
or the efforts of a silk worm.


that isn't from the original bad poem and is just a sketch that still may be badly written - I'll let you judge and later, I will as well when I sit down to really write it up.
I reread the original and it sucks beyond comprehension. I would like to obliterate all my former writings while I was learning but then I wouldn't have learned anything. I would like to erase all of them from the WWW and publications so they could no longer be connected to me in anyway. Fortunately I wrote under a pen name.

last thought before I smoke my last cigarette for the night and go to bed awaiting the five am limo call - If I don't get to reading your blogs - I will play the apologist now and try to catch up in a week. If I die in the meantime know that I've loved life, my wife, child and the few words I've managed to scrawl out if any of them are worth a damn. Not that I think I am not going to make it back - but you never do know - unless you do and hey, bully for you.

boo.

I am not prepared for October to be over yet - and I won't be in two days either. Yesterday was October 1st and there was a month to go with a concert or two intertwined - once concert down and another tomorrow night, then rain on Halloween - all seven kids (including my own) will be sorely disappointed. In November and December I am told that there is something going on every weekend that I have to be a part of and most of it happens at my house. - it was appropriate to tell me this Halloween weekend as it scared me naked.

Magpie #37

it

was badly damaged

momentarily offered to 

the scrap heaps

I staggered

dropped the moment

(a

pokerfaced interlude)

recollected

I couldn't part with

my last memory 

of you

 - Hoc Scripsi




image from Magpie Tales #37

I spent the day sleeping, in bed.

well, no I didn't but while I was walking around, pumpkin shopping, having lunch, dinner, reading, smoking and all that rock n roll - I was asleep. Now, I am awake at one twenty-seven am.

I hold no grudge.

a comment of mine from another blog...

I once had to put a bullet from my .38 special snub nose revolver through my GPS navigator. It started with getting me lost in Chicago and finally drew it's last straw when it refused to update after I bought a new map set for fifty bucks. This properly served as a warning to all my other electrical devices which began to act properly afterward.

 said other blog can be read here.

but the story is true only it belonged to my wife and became rather unnecessary with her acquisition of an iPhone.


rest in peace Jack, I don't follow in your footsteps but thank you for inspiring me to make my own.



a poetry repost - but whose offended?

I want to see a bull gore a toreador

I want to see a bull gore a toreador.

I only ever pray when an
ambulance goes by
other wise,
I don't believe.

it's madness but
why can't it be cancer?
something nice and clean?

I hope this made you spill your tea.

- Hoc Scripsi 

walking a thin line of relation

I am waiting
calmly, cautiously

I won't take my life in 2012
it won't be taken from me

the GMT constant isn't

the world will not end then
as it has yet to do

I wish to arise unknowing

ignorant of the stars predilictions

 - Hoc Scripsi


I am posting this today though I think it may be crap. I may delete it or drastically alter it. Right now I am tired from not sleeping well and dealing with the continued pain of walking, lying down, sitting and breathing so my ability to flesh out the thought may be incomplete. I take the meds again and realize that it's been nearly four years since I've known a morning or afternoon or evening without being intimate with bone crushing pain. I need a new drug and I am addicted to not being in pain. Shifts of season and lack of proper sleep aggravate the situation.
The path my life has taken since the accident is one I wonder if given the chance would I relive and make a different decision that day - it was such a perfect day - tragedy gave me a gift and exacted a price. There is nothing that I can change about it so I try not to wonder if I would.

Magpie #36

I don't know how I came across this blog - maybe Rabbit? I don't remember but it is basically a writing prompt and today I feel creative so here is my answer to said prompt.



leave the top half
open
that the children
may see
on tiptoe
and
dream
in
color

 - Hoc Scripsi


prompt/Image from Magpie tales Mag #36

I could tell you many things from Aa to Gh but would then require a break

in
general

there are only
two ways
to see things

with the
eye
or
the brain

what could
be more
simple

succinct

Danse Macrabe, Op. 40

I just need a few words to start me off and I'll be running.
I made the mistake of getting out of bed today, I'm not looking for sympathy because fuck that. nearly every step today is as unbearable as the last one and as where I've medicated myself to the highest highs I still am clear thinking and in pain.
Lying down now and resting after a long day of doing nothing with nothing and not in a good Buddhist way or Taoist way either I wonder what I really need. I am convinced it is a few words - the right words and I'll be off running. the fingers long to fly at the typewriter no matter what my little thigh thinks about it.
I long to do the tango in the kitchen.
I long to drink coffee whilst laying down and not spilling thus burning my hairy chest.
why are Breast and Chest spelled differently at the est part? Maybe it''s that since breasts are universally nicer than just a chest they get an extra A -
the red walls bring me focus and I notice a small drip in the paint.
Checking with the TSA I've learned that I don't need any medical documentation for the medications, my ortho Frankenstein shoe or the metal in my leg. Interesting, I thought to myself, and said aloud - well, that's done.

questionnaire

Mr. Chadwick over at the journey laid out the famous questions and asked us all to play so I thought that I wasn't going to blog about anything else - I might as well be a sport, normally I suck at that.

• 1. What is your favorite word? 

 I've recently taken up smoking again while feeling like I would rather have taken up drinking. I would do both but - whoa, one vice at a time there big guy.

• 2. What is your least favorite word?

 Sleeping well has always been an issue, except when medicated by this drug that takes away my ability to link words and phrases together in a meaningful way.

• 3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

I've never liked being in a car for long periods unless there was a point to the getting somewhere, anywhere.

• 4. What turns you off?

static no longer fills nighttime after we've left the television on.

• 5. What is your favorite curse word?

dancing on bare carpet with bare feet while naked always makes the neighbors smile.

• 6. What sound or noise do you love?

generally speaking most people would rather not know another human being unless there were some particular advantage to the acquaintance.

• 7. What sound or noise do you hate?

using a typewriter has truly honed my typing skills and my love of fine paper.

• 8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Giorgio Armani makes the best black plastic glasses frames while diamondwood makes the best material for a cane.

• 9. What profession would you not like to do?

Albert Einstein once wrote that imagination is more important than knowledge and I disagree. I would call them out equally - imagination without the ability to express it would be a tragedy and knowledge without the ability to see where it is useful abstractly would be an equal tragedy - Like Garfunkel post Simon and Garfunkel.

• 10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

I walked once for two miles in the pouring rain through one way streets and the sidewalks of Chicago only to find myself in a diner where they served bad housewife coffee.

theme on a variation

now
I keep waiting for someone to come by and offer to amputate my leg for a few hundred bucks. Or isn't this why I keep that in cash on my person at all times?

I assume such a person wouldn't accept a check or a major credit card and I don't think I would want to pay with either of those anyway.

later
this month I am seeing Roger Waters play The Wall in Ohio and Bob Dylan in Chicago. I normally don't get out this much. A few days after Dylan we are boarding a plane and heading to Disney. I may burn from the abundance of exposure, or be inspired by a six foot tall rat and his cronies.

before
a ladybug landed on my thumb and hung out for a few minutes and later ten miles away another ladybug landed on my gas tank and stuck with me for a few miles or it all might have been an opiate induced hallucination (all prescribed and taken as directed).

when in the company of fools
in the throes of poetry I have composed the better of myself onto fine paper using an antiquated office machine.

again, now
Coffee always tastes good at 10:21 pm. I prefer Orange Juice and oral sex in the morning.

Reading., awarding, living, breathing, motorcycling, &%#*ing

It went well yesterday - the book release party - getting to read publicly is not something that I ever look forward to but this was a rare exception where I indeed had a connection. Questions were asked, answered - not nearly enough bullshit for my taste as it was all pretty straight forward. Getting to see an old friend was truly an inspiring breath.

Today, going around to my favorite blogs to do some catching up I find that one of my contemporaries has gifted me with a blog award - I bow low in grateful acceptance -
from the long journey to the middle to the platitudes of willful resemblance:

it simply doesn't get much cooler than this. Thank you.

Shameless promotion for another: If you go to Rabbits blog and click the right buttons you can have him design some truly cool graphics, buttons, or blog pages for you. A small and completely reasonable fee of course. I encourage you to hit him up for this service and see how he can do what you wish you could do as well.

Happy 70th John Lennon -

you did more for us than you could have ever known.

peace now, yes, we want it -

War is over, yes, we want it.

rest eternally in the lap of your laurals

you have earned them over and over.

hide the medicine bottle, less the neighbors find out

I struggle to not hear the voices and focus on the line, the word, the work, the breath, the moment, the standard passing of time and deliverance from this lifers bondage.

I hold the key, juggling it out from one hand to the other and the intermediate pocket but still cannot find the door from where I came in.

oblivion, yes oblivion and we hang. ticking ticking absent from our mortal clock  in which the hours pass by and days and days are numbered lest remembered filtered through our hopes, dreams of what was and what should have been.

but this is me and without the medication to narrow my path focused on the reality that is elsewhere or nowhere or invented by Eli Lilly and company in some board room and experimental lab where test tubes are filled with patients like me.

our subject may be queer in the head, our subject may be recognized to be not there, filling time time time always time in notes and sufferings small and individual expressed out in letters scatters around America or larger, the world.

if men are from Mars and the other from Venus - why is it I have a stamp on my ass that says "Made on Titan, a subsidiary of Saturn, inspector no. 5"?

I have nothing

I have something great to say, something that may be construed as important - I swear that I am trying to get it out and can promise you it is several pages right now and missing a potential several pages more.

I did write a new short poem recently and got partially caught up - one letter down and the truck is properly registered. Reality tells me that I've also gotten caught up on a third unmentioned letter but this was only prompted by the receiver making a preemptive e-mail and being quite kind. An old friend wrote me that I have been meaning to reach out to and was only failing with how - well, that's done now and onto the next thing.

wrestling with this several pages or ignoring it still and try writing something new.

I'm behind on everything - even sleep.

Jackson, my son is sick so the wife and I have not been sleeping and might as well be sick. O, to live in a sick house.

I've two major poems to finish and two letters to write - one to my lovely Aunt Kate who does not deserve to have me fall behind on my letters to her and another to a fellow writer who wants to get in on the mid twentieth century communication kick.

the book is out and selling well enough, (they make excellent Christmas presents  - or Hanukkah gifts as well) and I would like to thank the people that have helped to get it further out there - thank you. Send me a photo or picture and I will link to your blog on my page here. It's the least I could do.

napping now before I go to the DMV and register my truck - I have one more day until I am more behind on that then I can afford.


the tulips surrender
in the fall
the tulip surrender

 - hoc scripsi

Streetlamp desperation

we move back and forth, swaying - we move. we are not barnacles - darting out but concrete in place, the tides affect us and coffee awakens us. we move, together or solitarily our tides effect the ocean we wax and wane, grow and become substantial - shrink and become embittered, embattled. It is our narrative.

for me writing is a solitary art, I cannot go into cafes or restaurants and write, I cannot have company at all and produce at a rate any faster than the raccoons under my porch hunt in the daytime. The exception would be a bustling cafe where the noise reaches an apex that become a humm, analogous to the noise that my brain produces in silence -  there is anonymity then and in place you are alone without social contact unless you will it or welcome it. Restaurants always have the server to interrupt and they unequivocally hate it when someone sits there and writes no matter how good the tip is or how short the visit is. the perception is always of the wanna be beat emo clown who nurses coffee for hours believing that they alone are granted rights of intrusion into another persons livelihood. So I normally sit in a small room at the back of the house, where the walls are a dominating red, where there is a couch in case I get tired, where there are my books in case I want to pretend I have laurels to rest upon, I don't.
I've chosen to go back through my poets - from Sappho to J. Milton and maybe find the right right muse to alleviate me from this consistent creative drought - but maybe I ought to go into the mountains or get lost in the desert. I would bring along WCW or Ignato because bringing along either Huxley or Morrison would be less a learning experience and more an exercise in imitation.

I am having trouble finding an end to this narrative so here's a photo.

I imagine Juan Grande Pecador singing...

"foi na cruz
foi na cruz
que um dia
Meus pecados castigados em Jesus
Foi na cruz,
que um dia
foi na cruz"
 (Brazilian hymn)




fuck it.

I'm going to bed.

unfinished

I think what I need to do is to come up with a long list of possible topics and/or post titles - this way I will not be sitting here trying to think of what great or insignificant piece of knowledge/experience would best be displayed on this page.
I wouldn't mind your suggestions, i.e. what would you like to read my current opinion on.
One post I have planned but not the will to write is what I am trying to do with poetry. More or less a short treatise on what I believe makes good, lasting work.

this poem holds no bearing on the former post.

unfinished

one hand moves swiftly against the other,

(a final act of

expression.

a final act of

rebellion.)

wisping eagerly

against the fiddling wind

life dropping,

weighted,

still

on tiled, unclean

bathroom floors.

 - Hoc Scripsi

unencumbered

this is for my friend Troy, heal fast my brother.

also an excerpt from my book...

unencumbered

I am unencumbered by two inches

            of my right leg

just as Jerry Garcia was unencumbered

            by a middle finger

and Indian Larry by his pinkie

I am unencumbered by thought or want

            from the single life of chasing

            the girls and boys around

not unlike how death rattles free

            our common concerns

 - Hoc Scripsi

Book Release

inviting a few hundred people to my home on Oct 9th... holy babies bathwater, If I forgot to invite anyone that is around the northern Illinois area let me know and I will amend asap.
It is going to be like an open house as I am not sure that I can cram them all into my house at once without risking smaller peoples being crushed, on the other hand I do not believe that the majority will come, they never do.


selection from the book.

this is a dislocation

this is a

dislocation

a skillful assemblage of

etceteras and

etceteras

a cycle of soul drummers

and southern chicken sacrifices at

the front gate of Graceland

a loose impersonation of self

overlooking and

never sighting self

Our culture is jazz, blues

and poor elocution

a fragility of coffee house

poets and the war

machine

all

together-colored and successfully

uncollected disaffected ice cream eaters

 - Hoc Scripsi

prescriptions

I struggle under the weight of my many magazine subscriptions.

Today we celebrate the death of Torquemada who ceased to be in 1498 - it may have been awhile ago but it is always good to remember the despots and tyrannical monsters.
we also mourn the death of opera star Maria Callus who, today, in 1977 went home.

Beard

Disney is all paid for now, unfortunately not from the awesome royalties from my book.

I trimmed about six inches off my beard and no longer feel... well, like myself.

I no longer look like one of the three wisemen, or is it now wise people?

this is not my good side.

The doctor tells me my knee is failing and since there is an awful lot of hardware keeping my femur together it is rather difficult to get a good look at the problem via traditional methods.

this is a ramble of minor proportions while my wife makes a turkey sandwich for my lunch.

most days I wake up and wonder if I am full of shit.

chapter 10

the year begins and ends in winter.

a bee lands on my middle finger, left hand,

I am allergic to bees

and winter is steadily approaching.

opinions are like ewoks - no one really knows what they're saying.

tempted to start drinking again tonight, nothing particularly derailing during a long day and mostly a good day but the drags at the end truly drag and ebb the soul. 
constrained right words to preserve the flow  of individual righteousness and allow people their opinion - this is not my nature as I believe that not everyone is entitled to an opinion, uninformed opinions are ill justified judgments and only serving to off track to pursuit but in public forum where I am at the table of civility and delegatory responsibility it is of utmost importance that the joke is well timed and a perfect segue.


words

the notebooks,
IBM Selectric IIIs,
et cetera
these are my shields,
protecting me from the world
from you –

My words are the weapons
I utilize

bludgeoning the audience
until they bleed from ears,
mouth, fingertips,
and eyes. 

 - Hoc Scripsi

comment I made in a another blog - now out of context it seems....

I have no problem passing judgment on others all in reference to what shade of blue they wear. Some shades are just simply hideous on certain people and they should be lit on fire.

labor day weekend

Past midnight and can't get to sleep for some reason. It seems that the insomnia is creeping back into my life. It's like an old friend that you never miss when your medicated enough to make them disappear. I've given up a med in favor of vividness. I once gave up women in favor of happiness but that never seemed to work out, that is until I met my wife - then I gave up being a tramp in favor of support, happiness, love, companionship and this list could really go on and on and I am not in that kind of mood. I don't remember why I gave up illicit drugs but I recall that I gave up drinking partially because I wanted to smell better.
I still write about that time of my existence as it seems to be a well of memories that I occasionally get a glimpse of.
I haven't written a new poem in two months. I've written parts of long poems and have been working on them here and there. I say long poems and really I should say longer poems. I've yet to write anything that spans more than 5 pages.  I keep telling myself that I need to chain my leg to the typewriter's desk and not leave it until I've come up with the solution to the worlds ills or another few poems I can proudly share. This is not the longest that I've been in a creative drought - I was in one that lasted about four years and I hope to never return to that unhappiness.
some days I think that if I cut off my pinkie finger that the words will resurface. but then I remember that it would be awfully hard to type the 'a', 'q' and 'shift' keys and I do enjoy having ten fingers when I play music, masturbate or make love.



falling leaves:
      magnificent!
whose illusion? 

  - Hoc Scripsi

it's strange to think of how fast the leaves are changing color now, even stranger to look out the back yard and see a tree felled by the wind. I have yet to decide what I am going to do with it and I might just leave it alone and watch over the next thirty years it slowly become dirt. Besides, the raccoons need another place to live other than under my porch. Maybe my lost cat will find a home in it's hollowed out core.
It was an oak, about fifty years old. It took out two or three other trees as far as I can tell. They were much younger - ten to twenty years.
I should clarify that this is not on the main part of the property but in the wooded area so it wont be an eye sore to allow it to be until nature takes it's course.
the yard isn't as large as that statement makes it sound. I do live in a palace but that is only seen through my eyes - as the beholder I am prone to this types of allusions. My neighbors see a house, yard and a fuck lot of trees, well, a few less now I guess.

shameless plug follows: Don't forget that the book is available from Amazon.com and other fine retailers!
I encourage all readers to write reviews, get their friends to buy a copy, get their library to buy a copy, buy copies...
okay, I'm done now.

Rain

Rain most of the day - I managed to escape on the motorcycle for a short bit and ride about 30 miles or so.

did I mention I have a book published? Available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble?

Anyway, my city is being cleansed and the new trees and lawn are drinking deep the nutrients from the heavens and my cat wants to be let on the porch to storm watch.
My son is dutifully sleeping away now while I drink coffee at nine thirty-seven at night.

thought about this poem this morning as  I struggled to knowingly get out of bed with my whole day in a twist with this rain.

it’s Thursday

woke up this morning and it was pouring rain, welcoming spring I slept in
late late. I had dreams that although I was married with a boy and my age,
I was naked in High School, but in dream I really didn't care.

My older brother hit me in the head with a golf club,
while I was six, according to my mother,
broke open my skull,
according to the golf club.

Now I blame him for everything. like the instability.


-        J. 03.11.10

September 1st

September first finally dawns upon our planet and all that was August is behind us now. It was a bad month for my wife and a bad month for my writing. I wonder if those two things are related? However two great things have occurred that both happened in the waning half of August.
1. I decided that I have been off of a motorcycle long enough and that if my leg was ever going to be able to deal with riding another it was going to be now. I rode and the joy was still bright enough in me that I bought it and am now the proud owner of my second Harley and probably my seventh motorbike.

It is slowly morphing into a different looking and sounding machine but this is the first photo I saw of it and the one that drove me back to the dealer looking for my angry fix.
Sometime there are cliches that help us to define our manner of seeing things - here is mine...
Live to ride, ride to live.
also,
if you don't limp - you ain't shit. (lovely euphemism I know, as most of us wouldn't want to be shit anyway but you know what it means.)
so - I live to ride and I ride to live all while limping to and fro.
it gets convoluted soon after this so I'll stop.

2. I strongly encourage you to follow this link: hands on the hips or go to Amazon dot com and type in the title or my name or go to Barnes and Noble dot com and put in the book title (issue with the name search there that is being handled) - then for all that is good and holy - order it.
it looks like this:

there will be a release party in October and if you would like to come and will be in the northern Illinois area then, consider yourself invited. E-mail for directions.
If you are a psychopath and want to crash my comfortable way - warning - I have several guns and enjoy using them.

 There are several important things that have happened on September the First in history such as - in 1914 the last known living passenger pigeon became no longer among the living locked up in a zoo and was probably thinking of a great statue in New York that it would love to get it's talons on and in 1939 - Hitler (being an asshole) invaded Poland thus launching what we affectionately recall as the Second Great War and later renamed WWII after we came to realize that wars aren't so great.
and in 2010 - I became a published author - obviously this last one is the most important by far.

Thank you for reading and I love you for not being too hard on me for my bad sense of humor.


Stepping over fallen leaves
and dismantled watches
making sure not to stumble 

 - Hoc Scripsi

So August isn't my month for reaching beyond myself to post here or keep up with the posting of others.

stuck

I've been stuck and I feel like I am beginning to be unstuck. I wake now feeling that there is something I have to do I just don't know what it is and I don't know how to discover what it is.
These are not questions but merely statements or self observations.

I want lightening and thunder.

I've gone visibly more gray in the past week.

my coffee cup is 9/10 low on the magic elixir and what is left has grown cold and uninviting.

i realize that someday I may regret my tattoos. who knows how difficult it is going to be to charm and cajole other octogenarians with sagging tattooed flesh. Maybe the secret will be to continue to gain weight once the skin is no longer elastic until the body is ravaged by diabetes and heart disease only to then regret these errors as I die a painful and premature death before I've even reached the eighth decade.

" I always thought that life would get easier as I aged, and it doesn't."  - a cousin of my deceased father in law.



I feel so much better now.

post #212

and I hate elevator music.


    Fragrant cyclamen
line the walk, pointing
        toward the sun.

 - Hoc Scripsi


I drink from a coffee cup that I bought while vacationing in the Outer Banks, North Carolina - fittingly, imprinted on the mug is - "North Carolina".
life changes so quickly and every morning I think that if I don't get out of bed it will cease to change at all. Of course I am incorrect, of course I eventually get up, get dressed and enter a day already begun, of course I've missed breakfast.
I love breakfast as I usually eat it with my son who lately has been unable to rouse me from my morning delusion. If only I could get to the mind correcting coffee before I flail about in fantasy land where things only make sense the more schizophrenic it is.


'Frank and Earnest' and "The Other Coast" comic strips have spider punchlines today.

post theft

Lily Hoang posted these quotes on HTML Giant. I've been aware of them and in some form everyone has heard them or at least will have soon enough to make the statement as close to truth as need be.
I am stealing her post now and only hoping that she doesn't mind too much.

Alexandre Dumas said: The man of genius does not steal, he conquers.
And Robert Schumann said: Talent works, genius creates.
And Oscar Wilde said: Talent borrows; genius steals
And Pablo Picasso said: Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
Or maybe Pablo Picasso said: The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.
And Igor Stravinsky said: Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
And T.S. Eliot said: One of the surest tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

 My response is as follows and I am stealing it from the comments section of same said blog -

I can’t find a way to agree with the statements without saying that I believe I am a thief.

Am I great or merely good? I don't truly know and think I may possibly be fooling myself and my readers into thinking I am greater than a dead fly - but I do know that I steal like a master thief. It is one of my few vices.

Vices:
coffee
theft
sport fucking
mental illness

I did not steal her found image though and for that you will have to follow this link.

some people say to leave them (readers) wanting more... bull shit - leave readers feeling like they are totally used up and can no longer function because of what you have done to them.

death in the morning

I should really get back to the business of blogging now.
My father-in-law and friend, Bob, died this morning. We have long known this day would come and the suddenness was unexpected all the same. Tomorrow would be his 63rd birthday. Happy birthday Bob. a short and simple obit.


for Bob, death in the morning

you are beyond the grave and soon will be ashes
how short this life!
how this pain has ended!
I am not sorry for us, for
we had known you,
I am not sorry for death
as it is mercy;
I am not sorry for you
as you were magnanimous
and not even death can
remove this magnanimity.


 - Hoc Scripsi