Untitled

my breath stinks

my armpits smell

my stomach aches

I am not the man I thought I was

better to be dead

then have to spend a

lifetime dying. but

I’d be awkward as anyone

else in anyother life

so there is only

this and

with all,

it perseveres.

I cannot wash the

stain of maleness

off my clothes

I am not the man I ought to have been

only recently realizing

that I have to obliterate all

that should not be known

or read, less it be known

and read.

and still,

my breath stinks,

my armpits smell.

my stomach aches.

 - Hoc Scripsi

Mad Swirl

or also

Mad Swirl

new blog policy - I thieved it from Micael Chadwick.
Since I was never any good at replying to comments left for me, I now respond personally to them via e-mail. You have to have your email addy enabled for comments otherwise I will not respond but do appreciate the commentary.
it's better this way I think. and for some reason, it is easier for me to respond to everyone rather than write one response that covers everyone.

I hope you all can dig it. I can dig it. Man, I can dig it twice.

West Coast Image

A good, longtime, friend of mine sent this photo to me - taken from his cellphone. I am in love with it. I haven't seen my friend in nearly a decade, he smartly left Illinois and has made a life for himself by greater beaches - I'd known him since we were both small, both naive, both hungering for a greater tomorrow and freedom. I think of him often, without heartbreak, as ours is an unspoken commitment of kinship.
This image is from the younger brother I never had. and it's poem is building within me as we speak...

nearly this weeks magpie - but it isn't.

the light has sometimes painful burning but I miss the sun on my up turned face.

the
light
has
sometimes
painful
burning
but
I
miss
the
sun
on
my
up
turned
face.



                                           the
                              light
                                                    has
                      sometimes
                                           painful
                                                        burning
                                                                        but
                                             I miss
                                                            the sun                           
                                                                           on my
                                               up turned
                           face.


 - Hoc Scripsi

Today, everything is beautiful.

the weather is beautiful, the sky is beautiful, the hum of the IBM Selectric III is beautiful, Chopin's Nocturnes are beautiful, my wife is beautiful, my wife is beautiful, and there is nothing else.

everything looks ugly today.

have the mother effin flu tuesday

Charlie Chaplin died on my first birthday. I don't remember if there was  a pall over the celebration or for that matter, if there was a celebration of any measure besides the obvious, Christmas.

I've been getting sick for the past few days and today am full blown - too headachey and tired to write worth a damn, mainly posting to let the people I owe letters to that I haven't forgotten them. I will write soon, this week in fact - just not today.

February 15
and I sober from
valentines day, sober from
cards revealing love
and whatnot
sober from peanuts specials
sober from cupcakes
sober from closeness
sober from rich dinners
prepared and consumed
with bread

 - unfinished, Hoc Scripsi

Happy Birthday Gregory Heins

oh, and it's Valentines day too.

a love poem

 

I caught your glance

and offered a small gift

which you refused.

an apple,

a token, to toe

the water.

another month and you would acquiesce

to my teenaged display of nerves.

I was twenty-three

you were soft and scared

and thinking I’d meant to use you

but I’d love you instead.

you humored me

answering every question

I had.

 

you were twenty-five

and I knew, over coffee

that first night

at Denny’s,

our life would be braved

unknown

together.

Oh, what a weekend.

Every muscle making a fist, the half muscles left my leg twitching and contracting, expanding in rapid succession; spasm is what I am talking about but wording my way around.
Listening to Fryderyk Chopin - Nocturnes, Op. 15: No. 3 in G Minor at present.

drinking well made coffee from a comic mug and helping my son write Valentines for his class and a special one for a special girl. He will unfortunately be ill for the party tomorrow. Poor kid.

I am leaving this post unfinished and later am going to take a muscle relaxer while I sit down at my typewriter and write my fellows - return the letters received, work on my newest poetry, and try to start writing a play for Theater Undreground [sic]. I know the play I want to write, I've been thinking about it for years, and they've asked several times, the least I can do it try.

You've seen this one before unless you haven't - I think it fits in with Jingles newest theme so I will place my name there as well.
Tired and no excuse to be so.

Let the coffee flow, flow, flow and the cigarettes smoke curl in query marks, curl into hearts, curl into clouds of what children lay and witness.

3 poems fitting harmoniously together

1

third rate diner

writing poems on

paper napkins;

inadvertently blowing my nose into

the most recent.

2

modern medicine

modern medicine is/was always a marvel

no matter the year

until we need for the end

then it’s simply horrible.

3

loving

such good loving

such good nurturing,

such good loving,

such good fucking.

 - Hoc Scripsi

Monday Monday...

but it's Saturday.

Two Am.

Shoulders tense, fingers missing a number of keys and the birds are not singing.

I cannot sing this early or late, normally I'd be singing or gesturing gutturally, but it is as stated, two Am.

It's is difficult for me to watch the small calico cat shivering outside. Capturing her is a fate not intertwined with my family, there have been efforts, she likes the food we buy but not the warmth and carpeting.

I've somewhere to be eight hours, roughly, and I've no desire to back out.

At least the accustomed mood has lifted while the noise reasons.

I've yet to determine if I should post daily or as daily as I feel moved to. Either is accomplished with ease.

The Calico (Momma Kitty) perched on the railing, cleaning herself while the surfeit of raccoons have fits and theorize and chatter.

There are fucking raccoons - big ones - on my three season porch. it's too late to fire a gun. Lucky fuckers.

This has been brought to you by...

"no cure for insomnia inc." 

where people rock back and forth all night, 

muttering balderdash and realities.

Gimmie Some Truth Friday

I woke up late,
I need a shower, badly.
I spent a few hours in a mall where the people observation was all the out of work and didn't shower today crowd.
I've considered learning how to juggle running chainsaws but decided on sporks.
My son asked me if you could stab someone with a fork, and in saying yes I had to relay when I did so in High School. The guy stole my fries. I was provoked. We weren't friends and I haven't heard from him except for once when he saw me in a restaurant and ran out the door. I don't know why.
I am not a violent person but do suffer from various mental aberrations which leave me unable to predict behavior when provoked. I always feel at least a little bad.
I once went in to sign up for the Marines. When I spoke with the recruiter I asked if they were hiring Generals, he said that I shouldn't think that I couldn't...., cutting him off I said that I wanted to apply for the job of General and if they weren't hiring for that I would try the Navy. He was less than enthused by my joke.
Years later I almost joined the reserves with a friend of mine, who is a transvestite, he was x-military and wanted the bonus. I wanted the bonus too and felt that I could get kicked out or just put up with it for four years. K wouldn't allow it and I was very happy about that.
Yesterday I started a letter to a pen pal, two pages in I felt it wasn't good enough, I wasn't smart enough, I crumpled it and tossed it. A similar thing happened to yesterdays post - on the same topic as today's.

If I am the sum of all my experiences, decisions, mistakes, loves, triumphs, showers, deformities, delusions, et cetera, then at present I am perfect.

 - or - as I put in on another blog...

if we are, indeed, the sum of our experiences and actions to date - then we are, in a word, perfect.

I don't need a gun to defend myself, I am capable of being a reflection of my size - a monster. I need a gun to prevent me from killing an offender. Often the display of force is enough of an equalizer to prevent a further confrontation.
I am a Buddhist who has let go of the materialism of being a Buddhist. Many people see this as me not being a Buddhist - I have no alter, I have to shrine, I do not sit on my Zafu and zabuton (I can no longer sit in lotus anyway) - they are long gone, I do not carry my beads anymore, I make no physical declarations of my philosophy, I do not claim to be transcendentant, I do not claim to be enlightened - I claim no thing.

okay, now I must shower.

Poems not by Jhon Baker, poems by one of my favorites -

Did I ever tell you that my son writes poetry? I think I have  (this post)- I love his efforts, such as:


Stars beneath

Stars are beneath
the clouds
in the sun and rain

 - or -

o, dear, O
dear
what shall we do
in the horror

 - or -

Rain

Rain falling
from the sky
really, the clouds

 - or -

wow
wow
wow
how many candies
are there?

All by Jackson Grey

His favorite poets are Shel Silverstein, William Blake, his Daddy, Bob Dylan, Sylvia Plath, Bukowski, Langston Hughes, Jack Prelutsky, Carl Sandburg, Garcia Lorca, Emily Dickinson, Ogden Nash, WCW, Paul Simon, and so many others
when asked he says - "mostly it's you, daddy."

"My poetry is great, but I still need to write poetry in my poetry book that I'm making. I make poetry because my Dad, he makes poetry." - Jackson

He want's to add -
"Jhon is a great poet, everyone should read it and tell your friends and they should tell their friends, and everybody should read the poetry, tell everyone is the whole wide world." - Jackson

Magpie #52

 from across the street


we've sat across one another for years;
you, always green
me, always gray.

I sit and wonder about
the trimming of your lawn
about the condition of your bath.

how we've stood through better times.
but it is not proper to discuss these things
until we've grown at least this old.

 - Hoc Scripsi





image courtesy of Magpie tales #52
follow the link and discover others -


a few earlier Magpie efforts...

Magpie #51
Magpie #50
Magpie #47
Magpie #46
Magpie #44
Magpie #43
Magpie #42
Magpie #41
Magpie #41 a different one
Magpie #37
Magpie #36

Monday, in the gloaming.

My last cup of coffee for the day and it is burnt. The smell coming off the mug is too much for me to have my head around.
such a shame.

I need a cigarette and an off button for my brain.

yes, both are for my brain - because smoking does nothing positive for the lungs and I hate the way it stinks up the joint.

I've been creating and writing lately but have nothing to offer here as of yet. soon, soon.

more snow but I did nothing about it

a few more inches or nearly a few inches - I did not step outside today.
I have little to add. Little to express. It is Sunday and I have spent a few hours in my writing room and have not smoked enough or drunken enough coffee to be nearly genius enough to keep going. So the blog suffers.
my mind suffers, but what is new?

Magpie #51

I've never fallen to my knees
     and prayed to God;
tumbling on loose cobblestones
in old town squares,
I've spilled coffee over my shoes
but not often new ones.

perplexed but not quite daunted
or reversed stretching out at the frailty
     and being only man among men,
     poets.

2.
walk with me,
though I do not walk so much as sway, pitch
or stagger.

walk with me,
though I shall be muted, scarcely
swinging my arms at the sides.

walk with me,
though hell I walk, ancient seraphim
in ash and agony.

walk with me,
though hell is too wide for eidetic
narrative.
 
- Hoc Scripsi


image by Tess at Magpie Tales #51

beginning of Year 2

Here it is at my one year anniversary and I've been out for the past nearly seven hours clearing the drive and digging out 1 of 2 vehicles. I am exhausted and going to go lay down.
I might post later on, I might not. We shall see how the evening progresses.


a poem though -

hors de combat

        for the dead and dying; to you, I bow low.

it is another footprint we

leave in death, last

of our own,

another in the scores

of the bewildered mourners.

you did not break form when

abandoning the body,

exchanging it to worms for dirt.

those left shall make new footprints

from remembrance of you.

leaving fading impressions in the grass.

- Hoc Scripsi

a comment reposted.

Have I ever mentioned that I studied philosophy with a mind to be come a philosopher - instead going to fine arts as the job prospects were the same while the papers I had to write were less. I am reminded of this when I read blogs like Weaving the Moon today and I comment thusly:

now involves so many things, past present and future all tied into a non-linear fashion, how can one focus on the now without proper regard to a timeless essence permeating the outskirts of consciousness?

of course my bent of philosophy is tempered by my poetic style but there you go. That is my thought for the day.
I was awake last night fairly late and begun work on a magpie write, that'll be tomorrow probably or later today. Who knows? I don't know what I should post for tomorrow as it is my one year anniversary of blogging. I've damn near made a year! unless I perish while snow-throwing on my tractor today a year will be accomplished.

I can be proud of myself now.