The Writing Walls are Crumbling.

Tags

Biden, bipartisan, debate, discussion, left wing, moving forward, right wing, Trump, walls

I have had a very hard time blogging over the past four years. It wasn’t just Donny and his insane cabal but his many followers. I have unfriended many people during this reign, and I have blocked many of them. And I did try to listen. I tried to understand the divide, not just in America but in Canada and around the world . I have teased and ridiculed not only Donny but these followers. I knew converting the mindless was not possible, but they were never my target. I targeted the middle-of-the road centrists, the non-partisan voters who see truth above party politics. Unfortunately, these people tend to be more laissez-faire and vote less than the indoctrinated [on both sides]. Biden winning the vote feels like a victory but a tainted one. We are not in a good place.

Now that we have a change on the horizon, can I dump the farcical memes and get back to arguing with logic? I hope I can. I hope we all can. I would much rather see far-righters and far-lefties write out what they believe and openly discuss their arguments. I would hope we can all sit down quietly, read others’ stances on issues, and work to some consensus. It is this back and forth playing with ideas that moves us forward. It is how I move my writings forward. I don’t write knock-out stories in one go. It takes many tries of pushing that theme or pushing this character or pushing that conflict. All of my best writing has come from pushing into areas I never ended up in. The same is true, I believe, for moving forward in social and political discourse. Life is story, and those of us who write a lot of story can attest that what we think is best almost always is not.

I could not write much about life these past four years because so many have adopted views of life I do not agree with. And no, it is not just the righties. I am anti-government. When governments in my Canada want to implement new programs, I cringe, because I know my government’s debts will rise with no compensating benefit. Too many pay no service at all to our enormous debts.

What do I want to Write About?

The list is long, and I don’t claim to be qualified to write about much of it. But the following is a quick list.

• Socialism
  • what is it?
  • where should social policies fit in a capitalistic society?
  • what do Liberals really want?
  • what are Conservatives afraid of?
• Competition
  • I am for competition, when it makes sense
  • when does competition not make sense?
  • how do we manage non-competitive units so everyone is happy?
• Executive Accountability
  • this is currently a critical problem in not only America but in Canada and around the world
• Taxation
  • does the low-taxation-of-billionaires model make sense?
  • what is the logical management perspective on achieving good government?
  • of course, taxation of expatriates and management of tax fraud.
• Reading and Writing
  • I work at my writing every day. I have many ideas on making writing more interesting and relevant
  • reading is a forgotten skill. We have millions of experts who do not read anything more than Facebook posts or their favorite news headlines
  • how to correctly punctuate lists 😉
• Racial Injustice
  • unfortunately, the list is endless!
• My many other interests: books, fountain pens, inks, poetry, nutrition, diabetes, and more.

There is so much to write about and such little time to do it. I’ve been sitting on my hands for so long, I don’t really know if I can do this. Is Humpty Trumpty falling off the wall enough to get me back into this? But of course I have to write. The only way we’re going to move forward as a civilization is through discourse and debate. I remember when the Berlin Wall started to come down. It was the day my firstborn entered the world. I was so hopeful. The world really did seem to offer a brighter future. But of course we’ve erected replacement walls, and unfortunately we always will. I think the purpose of my writing and many other blogs has to be the dismantling of walls. These ideological walls need to crumble.

2017 Poem A Day (PAD)

Tags

Alden Nowlan, Alliteration, Down River, Haiku, Hamza al-Khateeb, metaphor, PAD, rhyming, Sonnet, Voice

This post is about my experiences at the Writer’s Digest blog Poetic Asides; where each April Robert Lee Brewer runs a poem a day (PAD) event. In 2016 I posted every day with my poem and thoughts. It was too much, and I didn’t want to invest that effort this time. It becomes pretty dull after only a few days of mediocre poetry. Sorry bloggers, but reading our unedited, off-the-cuff poetry is too often a painful exercise.

This season I want to write about what I have learned, with examples. I don’t know how many of the 54 poems I wrote this month I will post, but it will not be double digits.

April is National Poetry Month, and for me, it has become a month to focus on poetry. Not entirely. I met with an editor this month about my novel. In my mind it is finished and ready to go, but what does ready to go mean? I am not sending it off in queries, yet, as the forces are telling me to self-publish, and do it NOW! Including my wife who has finally read my work. More on that later.

I read one complete book of poetry this month and about 30 pages of another. I picked up a copy of Alden Nowlan’s Early Poems for $8. A steal as other shops are charging $30-$40 for this 1983, posthumous publication by UNB’s Fiddlehead Press.

Nowlan writes earthy poems of simple life-events and often adds a dramatic twist. His rhyming can be forced, and he willingly strays into the dirty areas of life. You will not find a light, airy, emotional Alden Nowlan poem. I sympathize with the style and it has influenced my poetry this month. Here is one example of his work.

Down River by Alden Nowlan

In cities the embittered ones are cunning;
anguish sharpens their wits, I’ve seen the eye
glint in whoresons and beggars, its approach
quick and malicious as a common fly.

But here persistent misery endures;
growing thick-headed like a cow, it chews
thistles in mute protest against the rain
of innocence it cannot lose or use.

This poem I wrote is about a man in a funeral procession carrying a casket, upset at others, his tailor who screwed up his pants is sitting in the back of the church and the guy in front of him wearing jeans, yet he cannot see the irony of himself wearing boots. Most definitely Nowlan-influenced.

Untitled

It is so disappointing when people don’t show respect,
forty dollar dress pants too long, and the haberdasher knew Tom;
he sits at the back of the church, head bowed, embarrassed
as I step on the cuffs with the heels of my boots
afraid I’ll fall while hauling this casket
the weight of Tom’s miserable life on my shoulder,
and the guy in front of me who pretended to cry
while buddy spoke of friendship and sadness and told lies
is only wearing jeans.

Nowlan uses simple rhyming but more complex and subtle alliteration: In, cities, embittered, wits, glint in, its, quick, malicious, persistent, misery, thick, it, thistles in mute, innocence, it, cannot. Fantastic when you look for it and read it a few times. And as I sit in this down-river city with the painting of Nowlan on a brick wall along Canterbury St., look at the persistent fog and drizzle outside my office window, and walk among the thick-headed denizens, oh, do I feel this Nowlan poem beating!

I attribute the following to Nowlan Influence, especially the simple rhyming scheme.

Platinum 3776 Century SF

The sound of this fine gold nib
an this smooth, heavy paper
is the sound of a clean sheet of ice
being etched by a smooth figure skater

It traces ornate twirls as it glides
through the jungle of imagined words
jumps and spins as it writes attacking
the loudest clashing of swords

The following is in many ways concrete and earthy but the conceit is abstract: sitting in a coffee shop wondering if you fit in.

The Sound of Youth

I try to sit in silence
sip my coffee
read my book
the pages won’t lay flat
but keep closing
my eyes wander the rows
tables full of chatter
incessant social banter
not looking at faces
straining to decipher
the deafening sound of youth

I also worked through In The Palm of your Hand by the late Steve Kowit out of San Diego. I read this with some trepidation as Steve called a friend of mine illiterate after she submitted poetry using Canadian spelling. American exceptionalism? Myopia? I can’t comment, but she was not pleased. Anyway, while this book has issues with generalization, examples you have to track down in back pages, and editing snafus, this is actually a stunning read. I highly recommend it.

I am also working through the book Studying Poetry by Matterson and Jones. This is another stunning book. It is advanced and assumes you understand the basics of poetry. These authors dig deeper and discuss how poetry actually works. This month, some of this text has led me into exploring alliteration and forms of metaphor deeper, such as in the following poems.

Haiku 17417

Clothes hang from the line
strung-out lives, histories dancing
in the cold, spring wind

And this poem combines Nowlan subject matter and twist with alliteration.

Untitled

Their 54 Plymouth, festooned
with Green Giant corn cans
and full Cracker Jack boxes
rambled down county road one
scaring the deer and raccoons.

I tried not to, but I also strayed into politics again. I have often made statements such as, “America will never be able to change its ways; it can’t even adopt the metric system.” And when Robert gave a prompt of ‘metric’, I knew what I had to write.

Untitled

When hicks talk in klicks
you can bet they’ll accuse
the country of Bolshevik
influence and interference
calling the president a lunatic
and march on Capital Hill
with night sticks and booze.

The following poem hurt to write. When you write a poem, the emotional impact is many times that when you read it. I spent half a day reading about Syria; because I didn’t understand it. I stumble across this article in Al Jazeera and decide I needed to write a poem about it. It put me in the darkest mood I have ever been in. Ever! After dinner my wife and son went out and I was home alone. I couldn’t take it, so I went to my favorite pub and played trivia a night early with friends. Oh the beer went down fast!

Hamza al-Khateeb

You loved it when the rains came
filled a simple irrigation ditch
a makeshift swimming hole; you weren’t to blame
for giving your family’s money to a boy without a stitch

The Arab spring promised freedom
a loner, you joined the protest
an easy target, young and without wisdom
al’aman, security; we all assume it protects

They whipped you with steel cable
shocked your knees, elbows, hands, and face
left your tortured body on a table
a bullet in your belly, they cut off your penis

Hamza al-Khateeb, what have you seen?
you were an innocent boy; you were only thirteen

Yeah, a tough one.

Of course I also had some fun this month. Some of my poetry was light and airy and even made me smile 😉

This aphoristic poem in response to ‘in <blank> of love’

Laws of Love

There are no laws of love
no rules or conditions.
There is no bad love
to avoid
and there is no good love
to prefer,
no rolling of the dice
no depending on tossed rice.
The only love that matters
is the love you live to make.

And another metric poem.

Untitled

I waited for you
until the parking meter
ate all of my coins

It was a very good month for me. I wrote 54 poems in 30 days, learned a lot, and I explored much. I took another baby step towards learning my poetic voice and becoming a confident poet, if there even is such an animal.

November 2016 Poetry – PAD

While November is my primary novel starting month (25,435 words written through the first 17 days), I am also participating in the Chapbook Challenge, a poem a day event run by Robert Lee Brewer over at Poetic Asides.

I will be honest: I am putting nearly all of my energy into getting this novel on a good road. 50,000 words of prose is not a finished novel, not the first draft, not even close. But in my experience, the tighter you can make the story now, the easier it will be to finish later. It’s one of these things called paradoxes: two extremes with no logical compromise. I do want to keep it tight and in track, but I also need to ignore my boundaries and explore when the urge arises.

They call this urge ‘characters telling you what they want to do’ in your story. Right up there with other myths like women are unequal to men in every discernable way except for having babies and doing housework (I am writing about women’s rights, and I am being facetious, unenduring as my words are). The truer version is our minds are not linear, organized machines. They respond to input. Our minds are much more reactive than active, sometimes. The reactive minds are creative: throw a word, an image, a sound, a smell, a situation… and the reactive mind finds a new door and opens it. And if they are willing to step through, there is always a whole new world behind that door. The reactive mind become an artist: painter, photographer, designer, musician, sculptor, dancer… a writer, a poet.

Poems are created by walking through new doors but are also unexplored doors themselves. There is an element of craft to poetry, an element of care. Those first responses are first steps through doors, down new pathways, and they need further exploring. But my mind this month is wandering down prosaic doors this month, secondary pathways, ideas of white privilege and feminist movements and high school immaturity and searches for personal freedom without entrapping yourself in media prisons. I am writing first drafts of poetry this month, then abandoning them for my novel.

And then there was the election. In my mind, there’s a name for a person who cannot open doors in their mind. It’s a Republican!

Here is a collection of my poems from this month so far that might actually resemble poems. I’ll give the prompt for each.

Nov. 18, 2016
Prompt: write a poem that uses the following six words:

• band
• logic
• pack
• web
• froth
• clean

before coffee

a pack of lies bandied freely
as if authored in biblical times
unseen film directors and misguided preachers
it is now a fact-free, logic-free world
we live in a dream projected through the web of
rhetoric and fallacy
the land without physical filters
and Bubba tightens his tie and grips his shifter
clean living his myth
unclean politics his gift

Nov. 17, 2016
Prompt: Paper

Background: some days you just want to have fun 😉

God made paper on day eight
An afterthought, a flick of fate
He made a mark with his feather pen
Invented glyphics over and again
The very first Ibis
Sat on the first papyrus
And Shat the first whiteout
On the very first script

Nov 16, 2016
Prompt: Play (blank)

Go! We’re through
No choice, no option
No money for a cab home
My dice fail to monopolize
Fives and tens, a lone fifty
No hope of consolidation or peace

B&O and Water Works
The corner store supplies my food
Chips and soda
I can run water
But not was my clothes
Life is no fun
With cards stacked against

A community bailout
My only chance
A gift from the man
A lucky seven
Skirts disaster, again
But all I get is a ban
And do not get to pass Go!

Nov 11, 2016

Prompt: write a description poem. Pick someone or something to describe

My Mug

My morning maw of motivation maintenance
A fire-hardened rock
A liquid lover that sips on life
A great handle, on the trends
It is essential, to my well-being
It is vital, to my happiness
I toast of tastefulness, I boast
Of wastefulness
A Saturday morning reading club, I host
My own internal parties
I get more out of it than I pour in
And it gets more out of me than I bleed out
Shakes me awake, yet grounds me
With its fragile weight

Nov 10, 2016
Prompt: Tragedy

Background: I wrote the last line and asked myself ‘now what?’ I immediately succumbed to Thesaurusitis and looked up plan. I then saw the need to link each line, so I linked them into a story. This is not so much a freely written poem as it is a construct of form. Still, it’s a fun read.

The Plan

Your policy of sympathy, combined
with intentional apathy, implemented
by methods of rationality, coordinated
through arrangements of fantasy, stopped
since procedures for bankruptcy, tempered
his program of apathy, complicated
a project of gadgetry, intimated
her suggestion of jalousie, encompassed
in their system of stagnancy, concluded
the treatment a travesty, became
a strategy of tragedy

 

Nov. 9, 2016
Prompt: Call Me (blank)

Background: this was more about my platonic relationships with women than the image of two old politicians bantering, but that’s what we might as well be. And I wanted to use the image I recently took in Charlottetown PEI of the two Fathers of Confederation named John Hamilton Gray.;)

Call me, when you’re free
We can chat, and pretend
We’re old friends
Catching up on, lost times
Times on the mend
No walks on the beach, for us
No bitters in the pub
Just a cup of coffee
And a warm muffin
We can be intimate
But we cannot be close
We can share our dreams
But not our secrets
We can agree, to disagree
On the pedigree of our lives
We will not jeopardize
This thing we call friendship
So call me when you’re, feeling down
For you know too
I will feel alone
As kindreds always do
Call me, I’ll be around

 

The John Hamilton Grays

 

 

“The Slilent Treatment” – Writing Prompt, 2014-8-20

Our second prompt last night at the city library’s main branch was “Silent Treatment.” Readers in order were Philip, Abbey, a new girl whose name I cannot remember, Megan, Scott, Neil, Sally, Max (female and not short for Maxine), Hendrine, Elsa, and me, John. The six women slammed the four men with their sexist prose, poetry, and historical account *grin*, so I was happy to finish with this little [unedited] piece 😉 

“What are you doing Phil?”

“Huh? Oh, checking out the dog house.” He’s on all fours with his head in the thing.

“Good Lord, no, we are not getting a dog,” Megan says. “We don’t have room in the house for us.”

“I don’t want a dog,” Phil says. “I’m checking out its construction.”

“Get up off the floor already,” she says. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“What?” he says, his words muffled by his new enclosure. His head is shoved in as far as it can go. His stalwart shoulders won’t fit through the entrance.

“Jesus Phil, get your ass out of there!”

Phil pulls back and slowly stands. “I don’t understand,” he says. “I can hear you just fine from inside this one.”

Phil turns and walks towards the power tool section.

Writing To Prompts

Tags

prompts

I started a writing group at our library where we write to prompts. I call it Writers Huddle. I usually pick simple words and we let go, write until everybody is finished, and then we read what we wrote. In two and a half hours we usually get through three or four prompts. Our first prompt is always Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides Wednesday prompt. This week’s was “front.”

Here is my poem followed by what I wrote at the library.

In front of all the hard work are our words
They stand, some proud and some tall
Some weak, and some will fall
But they stand up front
Like kids in a choir
Embarrassed in front of all the eyes
Lights shining down
Like those kids who want to cry

Our words stand on the road
Like a soldier off to war
Carrying the load of a nation
A family
A town
Don’t leave them unproud
Don’t give them a reason to hang their heads
Do your patriotic duty
And tell the story

Our words stand our front
A defense of our hearts
Our values dripping off their branches
Our emotions tangled in their serifs, ascenders, and tails
Our words are all they’ll see
Pick the best ones

This is unedited, and of course it has issues. Are our words. Gawd. Anyway, I enjoyed writing this poem this week. I felt into it, and I suspected more from our library session. Here is what I wrote there. I decided to keep it short. I leave it open for people to decide what they want to write. It can be poetry, prose, an essay, a historical note, whatever. It doesn’t matter. We just write.

He hates when fronts blow in, and stay. Rain, fog, the constant stickiness, life’s problems running down your armpits, your back, and into your butt-crack, lost who knows where, just like this story.

I achieved a laugh badge.

There were nine of us last night, and we engaged in some discussion. I won’t get into it, not in detail. What gets written at Writers Huddle stays at Writers Huddle. We discussed purple prose, free indirect speech, trope, and plural and singular versions of to breath and wether we could hear breath or breathing. Really, it was interesting.

I started antibiotics yesterday for an abscessed tooth, and while I waited in the dentist’s office, I felt anticipation, and I saw someone wash their hands with antiseptic soap. Our second prompt was anti_____.

“You’ll be okay, he said, and he wished he could take them back. He knew she wouldn’t be. How could she ever be the same? Mercedes Benz Coupes can be replaced. Diamond jewelry can be replaced. The physical – aspects of a relationship can be replaced. But there is no antidote for a broken heart.

Bah. Two dangling sentences and an incongruent conclusion. Nothing leading into it suggests poison, so does antidote make sense? This was a response to a prompt. I wrote it very quickly. Bah. But I enjoyed writing it. My mind went places I never expected to go. I wrote words I never would have written otherwise. 100% success, eh?

Our final prompt was a little different. The assignment – write around a letter. Then we’ll try to guess which letter you wrote around. Use techniques as you wish – alliteration, consonance, onomatopoeia, or whatever – or include the letter as a subject, somehow.

This was a fun prompt. I described it as trying to ride a tricycle with two wheels. It hauls you off into tangents simply to incorporate letters. I also described this as a brute force approach to lyrical writing – somewhere in there is a good sentence. Extract it and use it.

Standard Oil Company, the red, white, and blue gas station. Patriotic. Overrun with rednecks dodging rattle snakes hissing in the shadows. Strolling into the endless sun to piss six hours of desert driving and a warm cooler of Coors Lights into the sand.

Susan the simpleton watches the day’s excitement from behind the shaded glass, the barred resistance of forced entry. An endless emptiness echoing Shondelles tunes over and over and over until Sammy finally shuts the shit off.

Can you guess the letter I wrote around? Can you see the images? Can you feel the setting? I could. Five minutes of writing around the letter s.

Prompt writing. Get a group together for a couple of hours and write to prompts. Start simple and experiment. Question but don’t judge. This is fast, open, creative writing. It’s not meant to produce quality but to engage your mind. Try it. Run with it. Watch your confidence and attendance grow.