I got rated #45 overall for poetry blogs over at Blogged.com. Unsolicited rating…kinda cool.
I suppose I should start posting poetry again to take advantage of the hordes this will bring to the blog. (HA!) I’ve been writing, of course, just not posting in the storm of poetry that’s coming down due to NaPoWriMo (and guys, it’s good stuff from all of you…). I feel like I post poems pretty regularly year round and I thought it might be nice to take a break from it.
So I’ll see you there. All 200+ people who read this blog will be there, no matter where you’re from. Yes?
Good.
I will be posting no poems during the month of April. I pretty much keep that kind of pace anyway, and I need a break in order to focus on other things. Good luck and congratulations to you all.
I’ve also stepped down as a staff member at GotPoetry.com.
I’m not left handed but I wish I was
so everyone could envy me my special-
ness and my cool factor and how
I play the guitar the same way Jimi Hendrix did
or that I’m so good to have spent so much time
creating my own adaptation to life in the
righty world. Right? Right! Righty-right, righty-right,
the whole world seems so righty-right that I grow tired of it
more and more often and I reach for the door knob
with my left hand once in a while just to feel better.
I’m not a happy man but I wish I was
so everyone could envy me my special-
ness and my uncoolness as a happy man
would be suddenly cool the way I worked it
with a steady smile and a glad hand playing
the breaks the way no one else does, as if I expected
them and just did the opposite of what was customary.
Happy now, Tony? No? Then, GET HAPPY!! Let me once get joyful
as a hymn in a whitebread church or a public television cartoon,
and while I’m not a happy man I can imagine myself having a moment
once in a while where I could fake it well enough
to capture that smile on my own face.
I’m not much to look at, have no distinguishing
features other than a big gut, a grey beard, and a petty gift
for making the sound of my voice stick in a head
for more than a second or two past the end of
a conversation, but if I could be the handsome God
of someone’s religion, if the real God could let them love my own special-
ness more than I can love it, I’d be so glad to be their poster boy
I’d even cut my left hand off to spite my smile.
Give me one jealous bone of my own to gnaw and I’ll find a scrap to sustain me.
Give me one of your leftovers and I’ll warm it up for you.
Give me anything that isn’t mine and I’ll make it my own.
Anyone who’s been over to the apartment lose a Leatherman? Standard model, no case. Rosie was playing with one under the couch this PM, and mine is accounted for. I’m thinking it was either lost before the couch was here and it fell out of the springs at some point, or it belongs to someone who lost it here.
There’s an outside possibility that it was a extra one I had in an old guitar case and thought I’d let go with the guitar when I sold it, but I don’t think so.
If you’ve sent me an e-mail of any importance over the last day or two, you might want to resend it — I’ve been wrestling with this fucking Microsoft Entourage (the Mac version of Outlook) for the last day or so and while I’ve finally got the data base rebuilt, I’m not sure what got lost in the rebuild.
(Don’t lecture me about the email program — I loathe it, loathe it with a passion, but unfortunately it’s the ONLY program I can use in order to interface with the email and scheduling functions of the company that does 90% of my contracting for training jobs. Believe me, I’ve tried everything else and this is sadly the way I have to go — they have some sort of proprietary software they use that ONLY works with Outlook so using the Entourage program is pretty much mandated if I don’t want to miss stuff or do everything manually, which also leads to me missing stuff. Grr.)
Duende’s cut “Where Do You Live?” is currently the featured cut on TWiN East Poetry. Here’s their promo for it:
My cat loves his window perch,
but only when it’s bright out there.
He watches the neighbors leave for work,
then pads off to more food and more bed.
At regular intervals, he will come forward
and demand attention before returning to his slumbers.
If something isn’t to his liking, he lets me know
with a whine not commensurate with his size and age.
All day he either sleeps or fusses.
I don’t know where he gets that from.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*tip of the hat to Christopher Smart …
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-i-will-consider-my-cat-jeoffry-excerpt-jubil/
Another night in the coffee house
among hordes of worshipful
classic rock T-shirts burnt thin
from pre-sale washings
in foreign laundries…
I bet no one here understands
how it worked back then:
we either wore the shirts to threads because
we loved them to death, or hated to see
the silkscreen chip away and stored them
when they started to look like this
until we could get to the next stadium show
and get the next one.
It wasn’t style. It wasn’t fashion.
It was a medal for love
and death by tinnitus
or misadventuring among the rows, tongue twisting
under the seats with the new friend
and the new shirt tied over the old
and hoping no one found the stuff in the cigarette pack.
It was the way out blazoned on a 60-40 blend.
We’d compare them
at school next day
and envy each other swearing
we’d never miss another tour,
until a day came
when we looked in the rear view mirror,
kissed off all the expensive devotion,
and proceeded straight on to mortgages
and beer guts unconcealable by any shirt.
I’ve found T. Rex on the radio tonight and
can see Bolan’s big platforms and rainbow swirl
on black across my chest, big ass chunky music
gonging in my head for two days and the shirt
telling everyone I’d gone to see The Man.
I saw that same shirt earlier tonight on a kid
as skinny as I used to be except
it was grey as a post and scraped evenly clean
in all the right places.
I don’t know what he saw in it:
how you buy damaged goods
and call it fair trade
without putting your own time
into the wear,
I’ll never know.
4,000 US military deaths as of tonight. Official Military count.
This site ( http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ ) keeps track of civilian Iraqi deaths by violence.
Make sure you note the quote at the top of that page.
Sometimes, no editorial comment, poem, or rant is enough.
Dark Matter 