a new 2012 and the year of the Dragon to boot

live with abandon
love freely
hate no-one for it uses up energy that can be used for other things
try something new -
try something old -
try things -

try everything, and if you are really into it - try it twice.
make no resolutions - for they are set-ups for failure
if it needs changing - change it regardless of what time of year it is.

party wildly and in some unorthodox way.

dance.
don't wait for them to come to you, they might not.
if you still hold out hope - don't abandon it but accept its fruition may never come to pass.
don't look for Atlantis, Plato made it up and says as much, create your own Atlantis.
challenge the irrational laws - challenge the rational ones too.
start a swear jar to enable you to travel somewhere exotic you've never been.
swear a lot.
drink, smoke, fuck wildly and with abandon but only the one you love and that loves you.
don't be "that guy".
remember there will only be one 2012 and be thankful that there was only one 2011.
wish to be only the person that time and experience will make of you.
support a charity, I can easily suggest NRA or HRC - they both get shit done.
ignore the bastards (except me!), most of them will never help you but hinder.
sing.
sing in crowded places as if you were alone in the shower where the acoustics make a Pavarotti out of all of us.
but just sing.
make mistakes.
remember that most people have forgotten the mistakes you've made and most people will forget the ones you will inevitably make this year.
so do not be concerned with them.
those who do remember all your mistakes aren't good people to have around unless they are smart and kind enough to have pretended to forget them.
keep a journal or diary. it will be invaluable to your grandchildren or another generation - and if not at least it helped you organize your thoughts of the day and will help you to sleep better.
those who love you are Holy, keep them in your pocket at all times.
also keep spare change to feed expired meters.
time and space are one - so broken watches tell time just as well as others.
remember that.

for auld lang syne. - me

If I knew what to write...

I would have done so already.


There are thousands of words lined up waiting for attention at my IBM Selectric III. there is a tenseness in my shoulders which is found to be un-ignorable. I read the Harper's Index and as usual found irritation and disgust among its figures. There is no way out of this mess - only through it, maybe.
Life isn't a rat race but a series of uninteresting mazes without cheese at the end. No cheese, not even the government cheese.
certainly no wine and crackers unless you are in a daycare filled with white folks. proof of God's sense of humor can be found in every bathroom across the nation simply by locating the sink and looking above it at eye level.

prose/poem/prose poem/ as I opine about my poetry slightly

I've started another blog because I liked the url that was available. I have yet to do anything with it other than ramble about my mental abberations.
it is http://mentalslip.blogspot.com
don't expect much there as this blog is still my main place of blogging communication.

I am having trouble choosing poems for the next print edition on PigeonBike - the first four I sent were rejected much to my surprise but upon rereading I can now see what the publisher wants - this is an important lesson in submitting (submission), knowing what the publisher is looking for. Now I am considering the voice that the original two published there were written in. They are heavily influenced by David Ignatow which is a voice I like to write in as it is similar to mine. What I would like is to find a place for my half poetic prose half poem pieces - this is an honest voice that I love but have found no takers that I know of yet. There are some out there right now but we shall see.

as an example:

stunned and lovely

I'm suppose to be writing the most perfect of poems but am sitting around doing nothing. I'm disgusted by the news on the wire and prose badly written meant to move us to tears. but this is nothing that we haven't seen before this is nothing that I've not written before, it's not my birthday so there is no excuse and the book on my nightstand rests with the mark on page 309, SO I trade in bonds to pay for new landscaping and feel really stupid and wonder what I will hear next but not from who.

most of all I really want to be stunned and lovely.

fuck the songs that say differently, it is never easy unless it is. Standing out strongly but in fear and not beautiful but gently. It was last friday night and suspecting that this would be here like it is and I'm not saying good bye.

here's to life!
here's to life.
viva la vida -
a star, quarter,
four fingers of Johnnie Walker
chocking back the innocence
to truly gain perspective.

 - Hoc Scripsi

I love this style and am still learning to breathe in it.

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

stunned and lovely

I'm suppose to be writing the most perfect of poems but am sitting around doing nothing. I'm disgusted by the news on the wire and prose badly written meant to move us to tears. but this is nothing that we haven't seen before this is nothing that I've not written before, it's not my birthday so there is no excuse and the book on my nightstand rests with the mark on page 309, SO I trade in bonds to pay for new landscaping and feel really stupid and wonder what I will hear next but not from who.

most of all I really want to be stunned and lovely.

fuck the songs that say differently, it is never easy unless it is. Standing out strongly but in fear and not beautiful but gently. It was last Friday night and suspecting that this would be here like it is and I'm not saying goodbye.

here's to life!
here's to life.
viva la vida -
a star, quarter,
four fingers of Johnnie Walker
chocking back the innocence
to truly gain perspective.

 - Hoc Scripsi

nearly midnight

It's nearly midnight here, outside Chicago and I've written nothing today, nothing is two lines which may or may not get me in and allow me to write something.

in the room with my murderer

Lately thoughts have been churning about constraints and how it may help get me out of this writing malaise I've found myself mired in. As a poet there are always constraints but some have been used to their natural end. There are others that must be delved into now to take the word to it's next logical step.

such heavy air in early summer and in
the southwest it's drier

This is the writers bondage, there is no free will as even free form is constraining as even flow of consciousness is constraining. this is all that is going to be written right now, this is all there is for the taking.

take it.

I once had a heart

Love regards people as mystics, casting their powers of future perception against another torrid lovers premonition.
The diseased mind finally discovers the secret of happiness but it is not accepted so it makes those practicing it miserable.
dreamt last night about playing an electric guitar with heavy use of the tremolo bar, making the strings ride against the fret board, I've tried this many times and have been unable to produce the sounds the dream tells me I want.
the medication levels the mind while making it harder to express these same thoughts. though the end product may be better, it is harder. Four daily medications make the writing better, the sex better, and anger better.
also, they make the moments of staring into apace more profound in quality, more consistent in quantity.
I can hear song birds congregate next door where we've recently placed a bird feeder. It is always easier to give away things that require upkeep then try to have them around your property, like said bird feeder or pets.
the reemergence of insanity lost me most of my friends but those that stayed get to enjoy the cure. Ironically they became my friends before the psychosis went into remission and left when it came out of remission.
I am not lost without them.
I am simply unburdened of them and their troubles.

I've decided to end this one by saying, _________________.

ad infinitum

The only great part about waking at five am is the quiet abound in the house. Even the cats still stalk the bits of paper and toy mice in silence. The coffee grinder makes noise but this early it is brought to the garage for it's duty.
I'm awake now because I was worn out early yesterday and managed sleep by eleven pm. The new dosages make my sleep sound and solid, they offer clarity for a time now and I can breathe slowly without malice.
I'm awake now because I've enough of dreaming, I've enough of the parallel universe where it is the only place stranger than here.
I'm awake now as if I wasn't this would not have been written,
I'm awake now to appreciate the body of the coffee, the smooth nature of the crushed bean.
I'm awake now because time is immaterial and time is only linear if man is.
I'm awake now.

I've had clarity these past few days and it is good, though I will doubt my own veracity tomorrow when the diseased mind takes control.

I still write love letters on her birthday and other hallmark recognized holidays, this is a failure as I should write them more now then ever as I am harder to love on a daily basis.

I am haunted by old friends whom I do not call anymore, I see them standing in windows looking on and through the corner of my eye, in the room with knives out.

the madness of poets is measured with a mythological ruler bought from a store called romantic bullshit.

today I will put holes through the words that failed to align properly and a memory that persists but asks for death and the mercy of a bullet (the papers are taped to targets and not my brain).

I'm awake now and can keep writing and writing this until I fall asleep again tonight.
so I will stop.


ad infinitum

my hair is dusty and I need to
take a shower.
I’ve been busy but I guess I
don’t move too much.

the sky has stopped falling and the
tractor has been repaired.

I’ve noticed that sex dreams only
get better with age and
experience.

same day same thought procession all in time
ad infinitum.

 - Hoc Scripsi

Seis de Mayo

Chewing the skin off my lower lip
does not help the poetry arrive
or give me a way in.


I have been unable to find out what the cows, pigs and chickens were named before they were led to slaughter. In light of this I have decided to start naming all of the meat that comes into the house as a matter of honest and simplicity. Simplicity in that trying to chase down somethings name is impossible and honesty in that I don't want to look at something and become disconnected to what it was. A steak was a cow, bacon was a pig and eggs could have been chickens and most broths were chickens.
the overall task is a difficult one in coming up with different names all the time and then not sharing with those around me - not many people want to know they are eating Blue Betty who was raised for our consumption but would have rather been somewhere else.
I wonder if cows ever would thank Dr. Temple Grandin or curse her - I think they ought to be thankful as their death is made more humane and they were going to die regardless of her ingeniousness. Did Blue Betty (who is not tonight's or last night's dinner but will be in two days) ever think to herself, Wow, I'm not freaking out on my way to perish for the greater weight gain of America and for this I have Dr. Gradin to thank. My death has been made more pleasant. Why not? As a person I know I would be grateful to whomever could make my death more acceptable and calm - of course this is not true as I want to be assassinated - but, then again, so are the cows.

Loving Cows and eating them does not make me a hypocrite.
practice non-violence and own several guns. this does not make me a hypocrite.
have no qualms with taking medication to help me be a better buddhist.
I miss my chaotic mind and still take the meds. this does not make me a hypocrite.
writing poetry and rarely picking up a thesaurus in revision does not make me a hypocrite.



it would be satisfying to me if the packaging always had a name on it.
When I eat in Chinese restaurants I will often name the Kung-Pow
cinnamon or fluffy.


 - Hoc Scripsi

it seems to be Monday morning, and glad of it.

When I worked, Mondays were always the easiest day, Full of paperwork and sitting at the desk to get everything in the mail on time, I would start early, around five AM usually and be gone between 1-2pm. Of course this necessitated waking up at 4am but this whole thing has been a digression.
or is it? as I am mostly unsure about the direction I want to be in this morning and thinking a little of this afternoon but mostly of sleep and dreaming, specifically last nights. I don't mean to live in the past a little but you have to admit, it is right there for us to do so.
I wonder if I will ever stop wanting to drink, smoke, take drugs.
I wonder if I will ever want to stop drinking coffee, writing, masturbating, playing with legos, loving legal voyeurism, among various other bad or dangerous things.
I don't wonder these things too much because if I allow myself to live in the future I can see that the day will pass when these are not options but memories that I will continue to scribble about.
I look forward to being a dirty old man.
I look backward at being a dirty young man.
Right now is the middle. between two dirty states of being.
my thoughts are often unwilled intrusions, and I don't act on most of them.
which is good because when I obsess, I obsess with the best of them.
I have a feeling that I will be adding to this later as I don't feel finished yet. But am for now.


crap

1.
how much that each
one of us writes
is the summation or
fruition of
last nights dinner
today?

2.
in Irish pubs
you are surrounded by
la  la and hi ho’s

in the American bar
only by tears and
lives regretted or
lost.

I prefer neither nor
drinking – pills and
pain are my fixations.

 - Hoc Scripsi

it is unfortunate that there will now be a lot of poetry about volcanoes and planes traversing the ash.

joy, obsession, fixation

Happy Birthday Rene Descartes, but you had it wrong - it is not that you think and you know you are but - I feel pain, therefore I am.


So, here is what I am thinking, liberals don't know anything simply because they want to rid the world of legally owned guns - owned by responsible people, Conservatives want people to retain their rights and keep gun. Well, what does it mean that we have weaponry? simply that the government cannot become fascist without our consent. I believe the liberals want to take over and control and the old moderate conservative wants freedom. I think something of late is backwards. But this is all true.


only the poor know of love's intensity/ you, the business man, know only of mergers (marriage)/thus propagating the common ideal.// for love you merge the bodies (sex)/thus propagating life./love, joy, obsession, fixation, release/ and good sleep.



Now I don't know what I am thinking and here is a poem.




got this machine to work again poetry

1.

acid-free paper.
jalopy typewriter that
hasn’t been oiled in years.
I’ve quit smoking, drinking et al.
mostly I wonder if I can still write
worth a goddamn.

2.

air condenses outside and on
my water glass.
temps in the mid-sixties or whatnot.
the cat sounds and I know that he wants
but the food is upstairs and put away
the cat can find a mouse
or eat a spider, I don’t care…
   
3.

there is no innocence in the thoughts
of the 30 year old man,
no matter what they tell you.
and don’t trust what women say
when they want something.

they always want something.

4.

I have disembarrassed myself from my original family
this was a necessary move. they should call me a genius
for leaving them in affect, to suffer their own drama.

my own little family needs me to be emotionally available for them
and I can’t do that if I am tied up in fictitious drama, especially
one that disinterests so much. Maybe we’ll miss the gossip, but I
think we’ll learn to cope.

5.

Okay, okay…

I’ll be the fucking messiah.
I don’t see that anyone else wants the job.

maybe it’s the bloody end that makes people
re-think the position.

but fuck it,
I’m not doing anything else;
might as well shit can the rest of my life
as I’ve done a bang up job so far.
    or

Okay,
I might as well be the messiah
I don’t see how anyone else is pulling for it,
and there is no nepotism now due to HR
and the EOEA.

After all,
I was right about that one thing
that once
wasn’t I.


and to wrap now – 6.

it doesn’t matter how much I do
or how courteous I am,

it is always about you.

- I wrote this.





I make no apology for myself.

off the cuff

Most of the greatest poets it seems really are assholes. I believe poets to be highly opinionated egotists bent of displaying to the audience the poets view, almost a forced voyeurism, of not only the world the poet occupies but the audience that reads them as well. As a poet you must be ballsy and arrogant to even consider participating in the art as an adult as a serious pursuit I mean to say.

hand some women a banana
and they eat it.
Hand it others

and they masturbate on the spot.
off the cuff.
but most would talk.

about it, indefinitely
meanwhile, I'll
sleep as sound as poet

in post
coital recreation
aftermath.

- I wrote this - just now.

most of the above was written in response to comment on Jack Gilbert (poet) being an asshole when I just started writing the thing about the banana. I don't know really where the fuck this one came from but I like it. I hope tomorrow when I wake up sometime mid-morning that it still holds - they don't always ya know.