Mad Swirl

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for this weekends poem!

In the hospital with my Father in Law

another stroke and I wish for him that his pain would end. I love this man that gave his daughter to me and her pain is my pain - his pain is our pain.

this is all I have to say for now.

Sunflowers

Van Gogh, 120 years dead by his own quarrel with life lost.
Recently I was at the Chicago Art Institute and stood in front of The Bedroom - breaking tears as he is the only painter that can make me weep with a stroke from his brush. His genius and madness is evident on every square centimeter of canvass.
 I have never seen his final painting, Wheat Field with Crows, and wish to stand long in sight of it, I am convinced that I will understand when it the presence of this masterwork. A good reason to visit Amsterdam.


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.

 - Hoc Scripsi

meant to do something today, but I forgot.

I woke up this morning and put jeans on, this is not normal as I usually wear slacks with a nice t-shirt but this morning I intended to do something like tend to the lawns growth. I started in on drinking coffee and thinking, plotting out my day and noting that instead of getting out of bed at a reasonable hour I chose to spoon with K for an extra few hours.
the coffee had expired while I was dressing so what I drink is fresher and more palatable. but unfortunately delayed.
Charles Mingus' jazz symphony 'epitaph' plays over the afternoon. the afternoon which is supposed to be filled with thunderstorms and rain for the grass and other various plants. overcast but without notice from the heavens.
I want for the rain, I want for the phone to ring (though I despise talking on it), I want for something to happen that doesn't involve what had already happened.
I'll never get to the lawn today and will feel woefully under dressed for everything, not that I will be but that truth does not invalidate the former truth.
more coffee will have to be made and the day will progress regardless of my wants, desires and frustration at sleeping so long everyday these past several days. not sleeping well at night followed by sleeping all too well during the day - one aggravates the other I know and both are caused by the withdrawal from the medication.
no-one told me how long the withdrawal is going to last because the psychiatrist was upset that I cold turkey'd it  and was concerned that I would not acquiesce to her, or rather defer my opinion to her professional opinion. Simply put it robbed me of the pure essence of life, rounding the edges and blunting the sword does not give me the highest opinion of life without the viewpoint of abnormal psychosis.

shit, I think I lost control of the post and am no longer aware of the plot.
have a poem...


my child

and you/ my child,/ who lay there sleeping,/ easily resting with lights still on/ who I dare not wake by moving// my beautiful child/  who soundly breathes/ heavy/ lying there next to me for comfort,/ I do not have the courage to move to out the light/ and hope your mother will chance by to snuff it that you may sleep still,/ dreaming what it is you dream and never remember.// always my playful, adored child/ somnolent in the house that surrounds/ and the father who fears to wake you/ accidentally.  

 - Hoc Scripsi

Thankfully, it's fatal

I've not been present for the past two days.  I would ask, beg, plead for forgiveness but I do not believe anyone has been offended or should be if they were.

 there's a painting. Acrylic and ink on four canvasses. 54.5"x43"

The inability to have been present was entirely within my scope of control and I simply chose to not be or rather I spun into a depression that I am still in the grips of but am now choosing to at least be productive to see if that lifts me from the mire I find myself in. This isn't a good time for depression as I typically hate my poetry and prose when I am this down and this depression has chose to not set any new precedents in that vein. Posting may be a doorway out or into an abstract depression which would also be fine.

abstract depression being far more preferable to standard depression

So, here I am in mid post with two photographs that have little to do with anything, but what is this post about anyway? 

I long to write poetry about the beauty of flowers but I either pick them or they wither while the words lie in wait for the impressionistic moment when they will be most needed. So the flower dies and I write vignettes about soup, carpeting and the clean feeling teeth have after eating a fresh apple. 

who wants poetry about flowers? who wants photographs about flowers?

just in case you wanted a photograph of flowers

the sun hides

-    for Jackson


The sun hides
behind clouds &
cold wind
but
   wishes
        to
shine down on
my garden
for the flowers

 - Hoc Scripsi

just in case you wanted a poem about flowers - sort of.

Alice

I am going to want to say this eventually in a post so I will say it now in its own - I am saddened that Alice in Wonderland has stopped posting with no solid plans on when she will be returning. I didn't comment too much but I always read and appreciated her efforts.

I ate some fruit this morning but nothing since

knowing I can satiate my hunger at anytime seems to be food enough.

Friday and the rain comes

It's raining finally. Meaning that I will not have to go out and water the lawn, the clouds and atmosphere are pulling together and putting water and nutrients into my half assed attempt at an enviable lawn. Rained all night but that didn't come with the usual good sleep, flashes of lightening, bad dreams, and strange noises kept me awake with one hand on my .45 (the strange noises) but last nights sleep was an improvement over the night before. I had seemingly been cured of the plaguing insomnia or I had nearly been convinced that I had been cured through medication which may have helped the sleep and is now weeping out from my skin as I have suspended this particular prescription. Why? I couldn't write and I was too medicated to be angry about it. I've thrashed most of what I had written while on this last attempt at stability. I realize now that I prefer walking on the fine edge of a razor blade to the life that medication offers you.
Wow, from simple rain to the complex world of anti-psychotics.

The walls may start to bleed again, disembodied eyes may watch me from the windows, the noise is coming back slowly slowly slowly and I'm getting the headaches again here and there, here and there. Still not feeling anger but able to meditate and breathe when the air isn't suffocated from under the glass walls.
- it's the good rain that does it, makes me nostalgic for a more unhinged period of my life.


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

late post

sorry about the late post.

I spent the entire day doing other things.

yard work and Miles Davis

I am having that week where it is near impossible to get motivated and out of bed - like the end of a too long vacation.
but the lawn is now mowed and I think even more of a condo, there is still the weed trimming and watering the newest seed and sod. I've already returned to bed and day dreamed another half hour away. I can return to these things later, after fresh coffee midday, after angelic visions, masturbation, time behind the typewriter, and whatever else I can do to postpone the drudgery of yard work.

listening to Miles Davis and drinking that midday black coffee there is little chance that I will recover from this mood quite yet.

somewhat changing the subject:
I have to proof my book this week or next, received it yesterday afternoon. the first thing I noticed is that the cover isn't what I expected or like very much. If need be I can live with it as what is important is on the inside which my mood can't stand to read though right now. I've read so much of my own work lately preparing for this book that there isn't room in my heart for another reading quite yet.

boots

when I go to tie my shoes
and break a lace, I don’t go
crazy and/or go off on a bender
where the normal narcotics are
augmented with an admixture
to include alcohol and speed.
this is not because I had a
balanced upbringing where
stability was taught and soaked
into the impressionistic brain;
but because years of being, bearing
witness to such madness taught me
that shoelaces break and
to only wear
side-zip boots.

 - Hoc Scripsi

Soup

I don’t cook soup often
and it bothers me to have to do it
I don’t know why
maybe it’s that I don’t eat soups
unless they are served to me and made of
yesterdays grease, cream and uneaten chicken
or pork
but my son likes it for lunch and it’s
good for him
so his mother heats it, adding the can of water
and stirring

he eats hot food
I clean the dishes in hot water
my wife checks her e-mail

everybody’s happy

- Hoc Scripsi

the dirty bookstore

The therapist has urged me to start keeping a record of my dreams - I think to try and suss them out. This morning I awoke about five -thirty and recorded the two that were still screaming in my head; dreams, at least mine, are schizophrenic. Interesting to record when everything changes instantly, without segue.
I went to the bookstore to try to locate an appropriate dream journal and was unimpressed by the selection. I have a collection of unused notebooks that I keep on hand so I really didn't need to buy anything and I left the store with books for my son and Mojo magazine edited by Tom Waits, no journal. I decided to simply use the one already bedside that I record my day in and to double it's purpose, I'm sure it doesn't mind. This particular bookstore was dirty and badly arranged but with no dirty books to make the scene complete. There was a section of art books that I am sure people could find obscene but that doesn't make them porn and there were books that I found obscene but for reasons of how poorly written they were and not the content of imagery.

today in 1969 Buzz Aldrin did a two step on the moon - I don't believe that I'll do anything that interesting today.

this is what I am thinking as I am picking the sleep from my eyes.

Had a nap yesterday that didn't feel like a nap and last night didn't feel like sleep until about seven am which lasted until roughly nine. I'd call it sleeping in if the night was full of sleep. Most nights since I stopped taking the anti-psychotic have been fine but the main reason to stop taking the meds has not reversed itself as of yet. My mind is still clouded and the creative drought still exists. There is the other thought that I am splitting my mind between too many things right now to be able to concentrate on new poetry or prose.
I decided this weekend that I ought to have been applying labels or tags to each of my posts for easier reference. As I had not been doing this I am now going back and having to skim each one to apply the labels or tags and avoid the temptation to revise and rewrite passages that are not on the level of quality that the others are. Last night I did over a hundred thus completing the bulk of them and tonight I may finish the project but now I am thinking that I would be better off thinking of about 15 tags and only utilizing those which would mean that I would have to start over. I am not being kind to myself.
This morning is a Tom Waits morning and currently the song "Kentucky Avenue" is playing - brings me to tears every time.
My coffee is good and thanks to Kara for making it this morning when I was refusing to rouse myself. There is nothing better than walking into a kitchen where there is fresh, hot coffee and clean mugs - I drink it black and burn your fingertips hot.

I wonder what is done with medical waste and what will alien anthropologists think when it is found?

I'm almost sure there is a simple explanation but I am too nervous to use Google thinking that flarf may lead me into a new direction where there exists the pornographic denizens of the internet.



Words are dry, meaningless

words are dry,
expression faceless.
the ladybugs came here to die
on my window;
baking in the sun.

a hundred portraits
unhung,
composing city life.

walks along South Michigan
in Chicago;
children think I am homeless
and dirty.

find Buddha in the patrons .
find Buddha in the hall.
find Buddha on the front steps
of MOMA.
je suis beau!
find Buddha in me!

on these steps I ask for a light;
and I am
not thinking that I’m going to write this
a year later, or more, sitting at
my desk. where
ladybugs come to die
on my window.

- Hoc Scripsi

my wife is the killer of flies.




It's a good thing that they pray from both ends.

"you need to bring an eraser because I think that the pencil can get tired." - Jackson, 6

Mostly wondering what comes next

Listening to Rachmaninov (there are too many fucking variations on how his name is spelled for spell check to keep up thought it offers nightwatchman as an alternative) and thinking about this kind of poetry I've just read about called flarf. The example I saw was from a Google's search prediction - someone put in half a phrase and then took what was there and called it a poem. Here is the Wikipedia definition of this avant garde nonsense. And it is nonsense in my not so humble opinion. In the article it compares it to so called "cut up" - which really is the Tristan Tzara method where you cut the words out of something else and rearrange them like either a ransom note or magnetic poetry. The Tzara method takes authorship as where flarf takes an audience to simply recognize it to be something and react to it. I don't call it poetry but accidental art and it would more belong in a museum then in a serious journal. As accidental art I think it's interesting and engaging. Like typing in an innocuous phrase and searching images until you manage to find porn - normally about ten pages for any keywords.
another way to look at flarf would be closer to photography - taking what is already there and manipulating it or pulling it into focus. Forcing a viewer to read beyond the goal.
So, I am not saying it's bad art - just incorrectly categorized.

edit: I use the word authorship - I think it is the wrong word - what I mean is that to come up with this flarf a writer is unnecessary - a poet would only get in the way, I mean that there is no single creator but an audience to recognize it for it's writerly quality but without the writer it is avant garde art, that should be on the walls, not on broadsides.

ab initio

Been sleeping in too late all this week. unable to shake myself from the bed at a reasonable hour - I don't know what to blame. My dreams are intense like the greatest movie you've ever seen only I'd rather not be watching them. Some people don't dream, how I envy them at times.
If I knew then what I knew now, how much more I would know now.

on one blog I read nearly daily there was a great question - what is a long poem? I think it was misread by the majority of commentators as  - the long poem -  and also confused by many with the epic poem and the narrative poem but here was my response and I feel like quoting myself today so....

I’ve been referring to my poems as short and long and now reading through these comments I think I ought to start referring to them as short and longer poems. I always viewed the long poem as a relative term in accordance with the normal output of the poet. For example, Gerog Trakl's poetry never ventures into the type of long that most people are talking about here but his psalm is considered long.
I think to define the long poem as rigidly as having to contain a certain number of lines is a bit incorrect as the term long poem is merely descriptive and not definitive.
Maybe long is when you see a poem and realize it is several pages long or longer and you say to your self – holy fuck do I have time right now?

I probably don't add much with my comment above but I thought it interesting enough to bring over.

I keep thinking of shaving off my beard but am afraid that my son wouldn't recognize me and my wife wouldn't kiss me. mostly lacking the energy to alter it so it grows longer.

I wrote this poem in February when news first came around of F. Castro's improved health and lately there has been more of him in the news and on the Cuban Television so I thought it apropos.


it seems (prisoners of consciousness)
    for Orlando Zapata and Fidel Castro

F. Castro is 
doing well
it seems
Cuban dissidents are
still dying
in prisons
it seems
R. Castro blames others
for the blood but not
his blood
it seems
all the while we
mostly remain silent
it seems

 - Hoc Scripsi


So, here are my questions. What is the long poem to you? what is Castro to you? what is God to you? what is poetry to you? What is the sun to you? Have you listened to Sparklehorse's last album yet? What is sleep and dream to you?
write what you want.
where you want.
ode to SAMO.
ode to illogical graffito on bathroom walls.
four letter words written in crayon.
or carved into the paint by those with more time.

 - Me

the minutae of 07/15/2010

I am trying to write from my screened in porch today. It isn't working well, or at all really. I suppose that I could write about the birds or the trees that adorn my property. My son and beautiful wife are basking in an inflatable pool which took about an hour to blow up with my compressor and fill from a hose connected to an indoor faucet. I am going to demand at least an hour of fun out of them individually for the effort expended.
Speaking as an animal lover, I am about to start picking off the plethora of fucking squirrels and chipmunks that are overrun on the property. They are cute up to about a dozen, I suppose I am the one that moved into the middle of a forest (not really just a lot of old oaks scattered about). Then again, there is a small forested area on the property where most of them live which is great - stay there, frolic in peace and cease digging little holes in the lawn and driving my cats out of their collective minds (actually this is quite funny and I don't mind that part a bit). We have a gofer I think. I haven't seen it yet but know it from the enormous holes it digs into the ground, if it knows what is good for it it will move away now that I've packed dirt into the tunnels - we haven't seen a resurgence as of yet but I think a 8mm German Mauser ought to scatter it about the yard as food for carnivorous birds and other scavengers. it is funny in that I used to not care about these things when I rented apartments and houses. Now that it is mine I have a different expectation of the critters and neighbor kids - mainly staying off the lawn unless they are playing with my kid. , this going for critters more than the neighbor kids where I have actual liability.
Last night I forgot to write in my adversaria or at all yesterday. I was distracted by searing amounts of pain running through my leg. I have been making a habit of overdoing it, yard work, proper relations with my wife, standing and walking about and such, even lying down does not diminish only not adding to the current level. Today is better and I am still learning to take it easy after 3.75 years of this.
You may have noticed that I haven't posted part two of the thirty-aught six poem as of yet. I decided in the late hour that it needed a complete rewrite and as I do that we will all have to wait. Only the first two verses are done but there are things that time should move aside to allow them be written.

poem for Chicago

    for Carl, of course

I was gong to write about
my city,
barely to the east
an obstruction between Elgin
and the lake
but what is to capture that
Carl did not
still the cunning, devious
and proud mother, it is
still wicked, cruel and
brutal.
beautiful, but
no longer the hog butcher,
tool maker, or
stacker of wheat/
still having glad
handed politicians
painted women
and free killers.
tho, it’s beautiful
and the people who
bent and bend so far
twisted so much
now nearly inhuman
standing erect and/or
collapsed neatly street side
or on park benches
they are the true
beauty of the city,
reflected against the
far reaches of glass
buildings or deeper
through the broken
windows of public housing.
so , sorry Carl, your
poem is still neatly perfect,
it still is as we see
our city,
proud, tall with incredible
weight on our ever broadening
shoulders.
as a side note to Nelson,
if you be in Heaven with Carl,
yes yes yes, we are
still on the make.



 - Hoc Scripsi

this post was deleted.

RIP Harvey Pekar

RIP

R. Crumb said Pekar's work examined the minutia of everyday life, material "so staggeringly mundane it verges on the exotic." 

life ends

life ends abruptly.

the shadow ceases.

loss is registered but
life goes on,

indelicately as it
must.


 - hoc Scripsi

sometimes when I am writing in my journal I have my .45 acp out on the bed. Mostly to admire it as it is a fine example of what American craftsmanship could be.

shifting rock, unable to roll.

I really want to stick with yesterdays poem for the remainder of the weekend.
find that here: poem to Richard Daley

Today we shifted a lot of rock around the yard. Tomorrow I will do little as this has left me in visceral agony. I intend to complete my study into the psychology of Gerog Trakl tomorrow, I am tied to this poet though his malady and mine are different and of different intensity. The question remains - is good poetry only written after the poet has suffered the break - the full force of his/her psychosis if there is one. I believe no but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence suggesting that I am wrong.

I will continue to work on part two and post some of it on Monday if it is ready, If it is not I will post something else.

I use to leave milk and cheese out for the neighborhood cats when I was about 6. I didn't know then that it was bad for them or that the raccoons were the ones probably eating it.

I load my 30.06 to board the downtown train

                             dedicated to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley

I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
walking invisible between the rows of seats unavailable to me
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
ancient conductor asks for the ticket and punches it without a wink
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
heading towards the art museums to view and mentally remark on
Van Gogh, Kline, Man Ray, Adam Brooks, Lichenstein,  James Roy, and others
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
passing station after station, people herding on, off and back again
they are all the same as I am the same
never looking out or in to see occupation, feet or briefcases
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
passing abandoned buildings, many more now, with squatters
looking  and ducking, smoking pot and never hurting anyone
hanging out on fire escapes where the American Flag still flies
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
streets  filled with one way signs and homeless with distended bellies,
hungry stomachs, dirty fingernails asking for a quarter
and being obliged without notice to their clothes or faces
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
thinking of Sandberg, Algren, Brooks, Rodgers
Stryk, Dickensen and others who have come before me
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
MOMA, MCA, Art Institute, holocaust Museum, Museum of painted glass
artists individual studios open to whomever come who may
offering wiskey, raw whores, coffee and conversation
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train
policemen looking everywhere, looking nowhere, looking for
bearded men, homeless beggars, flower salesman and business girls
with tight skirts and blazers low cut displaying breasts and lockets
I load my thirty aught six to board the downtown train

 - Hoc Scripsi

This is the first part of a much longer poem that I've been working on for awhile. I think that this is about finished and the second part is getting there as well. I have decided to dedicate it to the Chicago City Mayor for reasons that are nationally known. I can illuminate if needed.
Some of the names, I am not sure how known these people are outside Chicago and a few I have chanced to know personally - how personally is up for debate.
I can only hope that this poem is read when I am finished with it - this one is close to the vest, It may be my Howl, who knows.
 - J.

revision

Right now I am busying myself with looking over everything I've written since the start of the new year and deciding what needs work and what is perfect in situ. I like to look at things with a mind that has moved on to know. I always surprise myself when I put something on this blog for public consumption without have allowed it to be thought about for at least a day first - but first thought best thought and sometimes it is even worded correctly the first time out. More than once I have edited a post several times throughout the day and I am starting to think I may need to write them all in advance but then my readers might miss the fresh crazy.
It was Allen Ginsberg who first taught me (not personally) that first thought is best thought and for the complete education one must look at the amount of time he puts into each poem and how much rework is really done. It's the first thought that is best - not first strophe best strophe or first word best word.

just this note today and that is all I think, I can smell dinner cooking and it is blanking my mind making any sort of first thought be about pork chops.

small idea

staring at a blank page doesn't help
anything get written
so closing eyes to regard each thought
as it passes
'hello thought! you are going no where.'
'other thought, I may not be able to keep up.'
'ah! small idea but you're growing!
growing!'


 - Hoc Scripsi

Ramble

 I am not concerned that it's four thirty and I've written nothing here yet, and I am unconcerned that I don't really have any ideas of what to write here. Trimming my unconcerned fingernails, thinking my unconcerned thoughts and contemplating one particular medication I'm on.

This is the thing about all creative people we will have intense periods of creativity, steady periods of creativity and then nothing. There are days, weeks and sometimes months where we are simply useless. Depression usually kicks in if it hasn't been what you've been feeding off of, personally I hate to write when I am too depressed as everything comes out of self pity then, like writing when you're drunk too often. My preference is to have the ideas arrive at great pace where I don't have time to consider if I am depressed or happy, a mess or about to get laid.
Now (when I am mired in creationless oceans) is when I like to study other poets or read things that are not in my normal line. Right now I am studying the life of Georg Trakl, the short life fraught with madness, drug abuse and incest (unproven but think along the lines of the Royal Tennanbaums without the adoption). I find a lot of his translations lacking a poetic quality that is present in the German version and am happy to report that a new translation of his complete body of work is being worked on but in the meantime I may find myself reworking some translations to reflect his poetic style. I don't speak German well but I do write poetry so I have an up there. I did a similar thing with Lorca's poetry years ago and never really did anything with it as I will probably not do anything with Trakl if I do re-translate. Translating syntax in the poetic method is difficult no matter who you are and you are almost writing an entirely new work when you do it, but one you cannot rightfully take credit for, just the translating part.
This has been a ramble brought to you by the poet Jhon Baker.

three poems fitting harmoniously together

third rate diner

writing poems on
paper napkins;
inadvertently blowing my nose into
the most recent.


modern medicine

modern medicine is always a marvel
no matter the year
until we need for the end
then it’s simply horrible.


loving

such good loving
such good nurturing,
such good loving,
such good fucking.

 - Hoc Scripsi

premature ejaculation

firecrackers, bottle rockets and gunfire.
July 3rd premature ejaculation punctuating
already poor sleeping summer night.

roman candles blue center light sizzling
like so many horribly dangerous sparklers
blinding and burning.

mortars shake the house and

dozens of fingers and hands sacrificed
at the alter of popular patriotism.

je ne sais plus parler

je suis beau

without title

my head a cumulonimbus
and reminded of just how broken the leg was

keeping his desires hidden in plastic bags

standing next an old jukebox, this Fonzi-lite motorcycle thug secretly writes poetry and wonders quietly if that makes him a homosexual. He's from a small town where the local library has more gun magazines than books of poetry. he wantonly fucks every waitress but only gives poetry to the sheriff's wife whose smooth flank and hard belly keeps him coming back.