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.