dealing with rejection is not a strength I posses.

Josephine, Allen and the death of G.F. Dutton

Josephine Baker and Allen Ginsberg share a birthday (born twenty years apart) today. It is easier for me to have two people I admire have the same birthday and I could only wish that all my friends shared a birthday on Christmas and that I was not born on Christmas, not to be difficult but I would like my own day once in a while.

the Scottish poet, scientist and much more, G.F. Dutton died on Monday 31 May.

He wrote austerely passionate poems which search and illuminate the world about us. They are as much explorations as his notable scientific work: both draw on one continuous spectrum of experience.

The above is an excerpt from wonderfully written obituary which can be found at bloodaxe books.

when we know that there were no more deaths during Memorial Weekend (US Holiday) I will complete the work that is my reaction which is not the poem that follows.

LIT MAGS

being rejected by the highbrow
lit mags is good for me.
helps remind me who I am.
where I am from.
which most certainly is not in the
posh offices of the new yorker or a
public space.
I submit to them now just to
be an ass, I imagine that some
poor schmuck sits there and has
the job of reading the unsolicited submissions
only to send out the kindest regards of the
editors. So, I send what I think is good
but I know will never make the mag.
my exercise in futility, I do
this instead of going to church.
the beer I drink tonight is for that
poor schmuck that I am going to
submit the ingredients of cracker jack to
tomorrow.

this is the part of life that gets
me hard in the morning.

 - Hoc Scripsi

unmade bed

this is/this was

here, this is/ this was
the scene of our love
left only now to misshapen sheets
and my hands on your hands
    hands of a body
    your body
    eyes of windows immensity
    after evenings hour
    your moonlit being

here, this is/ this was
the scene of our love
and configuration of sleeping bodies
     head to head
     on cased feather pillows
dreamt singing voices
     of your gravity
     after midnights hour
and my obeisant being

this is
this was
the scene of
our love
now a windowless immensity
after mornings hour
and your vanished being

 - hoc scripsi


at this time I am working on three long poems and a short one. The shorty is completed I believe (I'll check on it in a week or so and probably hate it) but the longer ones need more attention. After that they are off to the New Yorker, then Atlantic and Harper's to get rejected - after that maybe the better journals where the will have a chance. I mention all of this only because I have no prose today other than this. I am devoting my energies to these poems and picking up my new pistol today - Illinois has a 3 day waiting period.

The other day I was called a Buddhist with bullets and it is the first time I enjoyed such a thing as this. It's accurate so it's fun.

om

this self

I seek a world not tainted by
philosophy
not held by mans ambition.
I seek a world free
of delusion and description,
and of this self.

- J.


The poem posted yesterday got summarily rejected by an online journal upstart on it's sixth issue. Not one to get upset by such things I was unmoved until I read the work that beat me out. One poet stood out, the rest are already forgotten. The stand out was Emily Kendall Frey, compelling work and can see why her work beat out my own.
As I also noted yesterday it was no longer a first run so I would have had to pull it from consideration had I remembered I submitted it.