Confession Tuesday - Paranoia, Writing, Baseball and No Baseball

Dear Readers-

It’s been one week and a doctor’s visit since my last confession. Let’s move to the box.

I confess to a bit of paranoia associated with both my upcoming flu shot scheduled for October 10 and the coughing, congested sinus thing I had going on this weekend.  Why, you ask? Okay, you didn’t but I’m going to tell you anyway. Last year I got a flu shot, just as I have for many years now.  But last year I actually contracted the flu a couple months later.  I was hit hard by this. It was one of the more memorable times I’ve been ill not so much because it was the most recent but because I felt like hell in many ways. We are talking both Flu and pneumonia.  Besides, it came on the heels of two other periods of sickness. I was weak, sore chest, feverish, headache, had a chaotic cough and had trouble breathing. So all this is to say I’m over obsessing about that period when I looked and felt like hell.

Yesterday, I began a six week writing session. I’m working with another poet (this will be the third time in four years I’ve done this) and I confess I always find it both stimulating and a little prone to anxiety. I always seem to get past the anxiety though and quite frankly it’s self-inflicted. I think every writer should do this once a year no matter how long they have been writing.  I recommend you find someone for starters whose work you really respect. I think it helps too if you know something about that person’s work ethic. I sometimes have multi objectives but the major one is always force myself outside the comfort zone.  If your writing is always comfortable how interesting can it be?

I’m excited about fall ball again this year. My San Francisco Giants have won the western division championship once again. I confess that I know they probably don’t have the best talent overall on their team, but they do have talented players and their secret I feel is that this team has real chemistry.  When they went all the way to the World Series in 2010 and won it was good pitching, good defense and out of this world team chemistry.

And now for my disclaimer for the time of year. It’s coming up on SAD time.  I confess that my family doesn’t buy the whole SAD thing. They don’t see it as Seasonal Affective Disorder but rather Seasonal Adjustment Disorder. They believe it is not about less sunlight and more about baseball, or the lack thereof. So to them SAD represents that time when baseball is gone from my life. When it returns in spring, I’m all happy again. Sure, I’ll admit I’m a happier and more amicable person during baseball season as a general rule, but I don’t think it’s that simple. 

Confession Tuesday - Backhoe Edition

It's been a week since my last confession. A cooler week and I got a haircut and mowed the grass in the same week. The weather being what it's been it had been longer between yard mows then haircuts... I think.

Come along, it's confession time and I'm sure I have something I can confess.

Dear Reader:

Yesterday I was driving through the city when I pulled up behind two other cars at a stop light. Hearing the deep sound of gears engaging I saw on the passenger side of the car a big yellow monster taking up the better part of two lanes between myself and the curb. Said yellow monster was backing my direction while on the front end it was lifting a heavy metal plate from the asphalt. All of this was under the direction of a man who was talking on a cell phone in the drivers seat. I confess that my Capricorn sensibility cause me to utter out loud WTF is this dumb shit doing? Neither I our our car was harmed in the incident. All I can say today looking back was thank God he wasn't texting. People - this does not seem like a multi-tasking sort of job. As I drove away I said a prayer that no bad incidents occurred the rest of the day at this work site.

Monday night is one night where we especially enjoy the TV shows. Major Crimes and Perception being two shows we watch. It's a night Cathy (my wife) looks forward to watching TV. So last night was a most inopportune time for our cable to crash but it did.  Now I could I could see how some people could say make the best of it and do something like... read a good book. I confess I did not do that. I too look forward to Monday night TV not only because of the shows but because it's something we do together. So last night was a downer for both of us.  I confess we ended up going to bed earlier then normal.  By the way, tech support was unable to again get it running and we remain without it again tonight and it will be tomorrow before the service people can come out.

I probably should confess something related to writing so thinking back this week I guess there are a few things I can touch on about writing. One is that I am excited that  I am about to begin a six week mentoring session with an awesome poet. This will be the third fall I've done this and it is something I really need this fall. Personally I think this is the kind of thing every poet should plan to do once a year. I confess that if I had 6 books published and another one or two waiting in the wings I would think there is value in this. So yes, I confess that I am excited. I'm always a little anxious at the same time because your work is going to be under more scrutiny in the draft form.

Coming upon the last quarter of the year I always try and take an inventory of where I am in my writing. I confess this can be a humbling experience. So I've been thinking a lot about this year a lot these past few weeks.

And last- on an upbeat note of sorts. A rejection letter this week with a positive note,,,  It read in part, "Dear Michael,  thank you for submitting to XXXXX Journal. It was great to see your work in our reading line up again. We have carefully reviewed your submission. Although it was not selected for publication this time in our journal, we wanted to let you know that your poems XXXX and XXXXXX did make it to our final round of readings for their wonderful images and subject matter...."  I confess that if you are going to be rejected, that a pretty decent rejection.

The Mag 135: Venus Has The Hots

Venus and The Sailor - Salvador Dali

Venus has the hots-

her dancing shadow passes before us.

Swishing her dress about.

The seductive danseur-

she can lure us into her orbit.

We easily feel connected

if not by want then curiosity,

brilliance in the morning

and evening-  

Even mid-day she can flaunt

in our imagination - or is it?

The Mag 135

Michael A. Wells

  

Journal Bits - Sept. 8 - Sept.14

A few items from my written journal...

• September 8, 2012 - Oh how I love to start a new journal. Empty pages to welcome me. I always promise to try and be neat about my entries but I know at some point I will disappoint myself in this regard. 
• September 8, 2012 - How many unwritten considerations/belong to the wind?//The future collect unclaimed thoughts.
• September 8, 2012 - I did not speak/for bewilderment /I did not speak/for an elevator fell/to the bottom of my stomach. 
• September 9, 2012 - "The invented person, borrowed from the real- abstracted, isolated- is the person we finally know, or feel we know. I made myself up from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, That's when I worry." ~ Stephen Dunn
• September 10, 2012 - There is a relevance in numbers/you can have a bullet with each one's name/with nothing to erase the massive history.
• September 11,2012 - Feeling better these past couple of days about the Obama campaign. GOP is spending money like mad but the candidates, Romney and Ryan are making so many mistakes and their campaign handlers are really amateurish. I can hope this continues.
• September 13, 2012 - Heard in a Lionel Richie song this morning on the radio during drive time... "...people want me to be what they want me to be..."
• September 13, 2012 - You keep tabs on the important stuff/the primary colors of our life/I've always dealt with the more mundane-/the black and white...
• September 14, 2012 - from a comment in Modern Poetry class, "the how of what you say is more important then what you say..."

* NOTE:  My journal is where I record notes, quotes, observations (large and small), and poetry drafts. It ranges from junk to gems.

Confession Tuesday - What's wrong with eating your cake?

Oh hey, it’s Tuesday again – I’m off to the confessional.

We’ve been blessed with some gorgeous days this past week and I confess it has at times reminded me of San Francisco weather and I love it!  I know it won’t last.  I love the sun but not so much the heat.  I like sunny days and a bit of cool breeze. Yeah, I’m funny like that. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

When I received an e-mail from our HR department reminding us about flu season and flu shot availability, I have to confess it brought back some anxiety on my part.  I received a flu shot last year, as I have for several years now. Being diabetic I fall into the category of people who are highly recommended to get a shot.  Still, I was hit hard by the flu only a few months after the vaccination. It was an illness that was especially rough on me. So the reminder was not a pleasant one.

I was driving tonight in our (new to us) Volvo which we recently acquired and realized for the first time that I missed the compos that is on the rearview mirror in the Mercury Sable. I confess that I never thought about it but I have depended upon it many more times then I really am consciously aware of.  I had to resort to using my Sprint navigator.  

Thant’s it for this confession, everyone have a great week!

Of Interest to Poets Around the Internet

Below are a few interesting reads on the Internet for poets and those interested in poetry- hope you find something the touches your interests.

• Letters of Interest - shares Letter to a Young Poet
• Poetry Magazine - 100 Poets for change - back for a second year 
• The Guardian - John Clare, The Poet of the Environmental Crisis - 200 Years Ago
• Washington Times - Photo of Emily Dickinson at 30?
• The Atlantic - Found Poetry from Amazon Kindle Reveal
• SF Gate - Chandler Poet finds focus after bipolar diagnosis
• NPR - Safe Landing For 'Stag's Leap'? On Sharon Olds' latest book
• The Atlantic - How Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey Wrote Her Father's Elegy
• The Christian Century -  No Poetry in Politics

Anniversary Missed~

September 2nd was the 9th anniversary of Stickpoet Super Hero.  Nine years of blogging at this site and I somehow missed the anniversary.  That's what life does for you.

In a way perhaps it is fitting that it passed without an anniversary fan fair post. I'm probably blogging less these days then I have in the past. In 2005 I had a total of 421 blog posts - a nine year annual high. The last time I exceeded 400 posts was 2007 and last year I had a total of 257. There are times when I want to so a particular post on a topic but I'm busy and days pass and so does the urge to write that particular post and I'm thinking about something else to write about altogether.

I would like to believe that as I move into the tenth year on this blog that I find topics and craft writing that is increasingly interesting and perhaps is more engaging with readers. I don't want to be just going through the motions of blogging for the sake of it.

The fact that I have blogged with less frequency is not to say I have less interest in blogs as a media. Some have suggested that Facebook and Twitter have diminished the relevancy of blogging. I disagree with this notion and believe that these two newer venues have significant places in the communication spectrum but when best used they supplement blogging rather then replace it. If you said today we must do away with two of these three forms of communication I would argue to save blogging.

I do think Facebook and Twitter have become popular for a couple of reasons. One is the narrowing focus many have on reading. To may 140 characters has become  something the can wrap their attention around. Maybe that's because of how busy we have all become but I think it also reflects a decline in the emphasis overall of reading. The other aspect is the electronic aspect of socialization that has in many respects replaced real face-to face-socialization. In this respect, blogging differs from Facebook and Twitter and underscores why I believe it remains an important means of communication.

All this is to say that I Stickpoet enters year 10 with a anticipation of continuing dialogue and information as well as sharing some personal aspects of my writing journey.  It's my hope that we will look back on this current year no matter the number - with quality first and quantity second.

Confession Tuesday

Dear Reader;

I confess that the DNC tonight was powerful stuff. Each of the speakers made this election relevent and personal.

I confess that I'm tired and going to bed.

Journal Bits from the three day weekend...

• Oh my God it's September! So hard to believe that this year has actually come to this. This month will be the stretch for the Giants run to post season.
• Lazy Saturday under the potion of stationary rain pushed here by Issac with a September chill piggybacking the storm. 
• The shadow cast dirt upon the stairs-/each time I've walked them today I've been barefoot and lax in my resolve.
• The neighbor's flag waves-/it's the most friendly gesture I've seen.
• No one much minds us-/I like it that way. The quiet/turned inside out.

The Mag 133: The Women of Summer Night

Summer Night - 1913 by Albert Bloch

They gather in secret

in the garden of delight

they leave behind 

much shame

and every other form

of constraint-  real or imagined

in the twilight of tenderness

they speak of no evil

they harbor no disdain

they are hear for each other

they are hear for themselves

they are here and this is why they come

The Mag 133

Michael A. Wells

I confess...

For the past hour I've been making a list of phrases and questions that comprise subject matter for free writes that will hopefully lead into some new poems.  When you are brainstorming in a relaxed manner that allows your mind the freedom to explore such ideas without pressure it's amazing what you can come up with.

This has been a lazy approach. The cap on my fountain pen comes off, I write a line or two, re-post the cap, few sips of a drink and something hits me again and I jot another one down. There was no certain number I was looking for or specific amount of time. I fixed something to eat during the process but at some point I thought, this has been a good start - and after some rest tonight, the second phase of some free writes will start tomorrow. 


On another note, I love it when I go back to my old journals and read through them only to find a poem draft that surprisingly I says to myself, did I write this?

Thinking about Client Eastwood the other night...

Immersed in the unexpected satirical dialogue with an empty chair, I thought why do we have elections anyway? The line between serious and funny morphed into the sad and pathetic. Poor Client, a man of major significance, with Dr. Emmett Brown hair managed in two hands full of minutes reduce himself to cognitive deficiency before millions of people, mock a sitting president at the same time he demonstrated significant disregard for facts.

The extent to which any of this was funny lies not in the lines themselves, but the fact the the convention handlers allowed this miscarriage of both fact and humor to eat up one sixth of the national TV coverage
prime hour on the mos significant night of the convention. Who was responsible and what might they have been smoking?


 

Once - Twice in August 2012

Once in a Blue Moon came twice this month!  This picture is for those like myself  under the influence  rainy skies brought to us by Isaac.

Moons have often been the subject of songs, poetry and props for movies. Sometimes I think God hung the moon in the sky for writers. A guiding light at night to write.

Nonsense~

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. - Dr. Seuss

Confession Tuesday - Optimist Edition

It's Tuesday for sure and that means it's time to head to the confessional.

Dear Reader:

It's been a week, a zoo trip, another mobile market trip, a few showers (very few), a handful of new e-book downloads since my last confession.

We went to the Zoo this past weekend.  I confess that walking around the zoo on a very hot days will give one a good idea just how out of shape they are. By the time we were finished for the day, we were truly done. All that was left was to poke a fork in us. I enjoyed the outing, but wow did it take a lot out of me. I always enjoy the Tigers, who were looking quite lazy all sprawled out on the rocks in their enclosure.  The most unique thing I observed was the Kangaroo with baby in pouch. Just watching her move about hurt my back.

I've journaled a lot this past week. Perhaps more then normal. I've done some writing too but I confess the poetry drafts I've developed seem to be coming from good ideas but I'm just having trouble satisfying myself with finding the right language. I can be really hard on myself at times when it comes to looking at my own work. Sometimes I think the problem is that I pick on myself too early in the process. I confess that it's hard for me to not be overtly judgmental of first or very early drafts.

Recently I've been annoyed by the amount of computer gadgets I have on my laptop.I suppose applications is the more appropriate term. I confess I can be a sucker for applications that do one thing or another. Different versions of To-Do Lists, programs that track your productivity, fancy calendar programs, clocks, alarms, if it's a bell or whistle I've probably had it. I've started divesting myself of many of these items slowly.
Some of them I've found slow down the initial start-up of my system and in particular those have been some of the first to succumb to my scrutiny.

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm looking at such time wasters is that I'm looking at the remainder of the year and I have a lot of personal expectations. I'm wanting to really maximize my efforts and get myself into a level of work that pushes the envelope. I'm looking at a window - September through December and I am hopeful that this is the best 4 months of the whole year. I confess that sometimes I can be a real optimist. Though I think sometimes the Capricorn in me is reluctant to take risks.

Help...

This may sound like a strange request but I'm looking for a few good poets. Okay, really I'm wanting really good poets - awesome poets...

I'm simply looking for a few poets that perhaps I've not had exposure to that are worthy of a read.  I'm open to suggestions. Please leave your recommendations in the comments. Thanks!

The Mag 132: Off Limits

Big Room, 1948 by Andrew Wyeth

I get the chills here;

this room so open

voluminousness of air.

Even the grand fireplace

cannot cut the impersonal 

feel.       The stark neatness,

not thing out of place.

Nothing ever happens here.

People come, look, but never sit

or stay. 

The Mag 132

Michael A. Wells

Thrall Is on My Radar and List Of Books to Read.

There is a fascinating article in the Sept/Oct issue of Poets and Writers about Natasha Tretheway by Kevin Nance. I read this article while riding in the care yesterday - something I generally find distracting and often ultimately will quit in frustration and pick up again later. Not this time.

I think what I find so inciting about Tretheway and in simultaneously this article was the depth of authenticity. As a writer Tretheway peels back the onion skin layer after layer until the stark truth resides in her own words. I am quite anxious to read her latest book of poems titled Thrall and described as ambitious.

Tretheway acknowledges it as ambitious but with as price. How many of us as writers are ready and willing to bare discomfort that such honesty exposes? I see it as the hallmark of exceptional writing; and the hurdle that every write struggles to get over. Some never, Tretheway certainly has.

Around the Internet - On Writing, Etc.

Several things I've seen here and there that should be of interest to writers and I thought I share the in a post since I've been lazy and have posted much lately. Actually that is not exactly true... I've been pretty busy and when I've had a night that I wasn't it has usually followed a day in which I have been really tired and crashed. (actually I'd like to do that now)

If you are a writer looking for a presence on the Internet then check out List of the Top Nine Word Press Themes for Writers.

Speaking of presence in the digital age for writers... Kelli Agodon has an outstanding blog post I recommend reading  that sorts out some things you might want to consider doing and some you might want to avoid in here post Social Butterfly - How To Deal With Social Media As A Writer.

Looking for a new place to submit your work - Subscribe of a routine e-mail listing of Literary Magazines.  You may find some totally new to you.

Read an Interview with Michael Nye - Managing Editor of the Missouri Review.

Check out current issue of POETSArtists.

Writers.... Don't Forget to Read!

What Successful People Do With The First Hour of Their Work Day.

There you go.... Hopefully there is something for everyone!

Confession Tuesday on the Cheep

Dear Reader:

It's been one week, three rejections, 40+ Kindle downloads and an aching back since my last confession.


Since my last confession I admit that I've come to like my Kindle. So I've counted and I have 44 eBook downloads in the past week. Of all my eBooks I've acquired, I confess that I may have only one or two I've purchased. Call me cheep, old fashion, traditionalist, or whatever you will but in have no problem paying for a real book but eBooks feel like virtual books or something. It's just hard for me to spend money for them. If it were a perfect world (admittedly my own view) you would purchase a book and receive a "real" book and an eBook file. Then when you go out into the world you could take your library with you while the real thing was still in tack ring in your own home.

For the past four weeks I've been visiting the Mobil Vegetable Market that comes every Tuesday morning into the city and parks right behind my office. I confess this has been really cool because they have had some really good stuff. Among my favorites would be the cantaloupe, blackberries and really sweet tasting Delicious apples. My wife has some things she especially likes that I pick up - avocados (yuck) and blueberries.

I love blackberries and Bing cherries.  I've enjoyed this past week snacking on both of these. I confess I could be really happy if I could just carry a container of these around everywhere to snack on as I wish.  I confess that I'm out of Bing cherries presently and I'm wishing I could pluck one into my mouth right now.

I confess that I downloaded a new book today [Four Days With Hemingway by Tom Winston] that I'd like to start reading right away but I'm in the middle of another and am trying to force myself to finish it before starting another one. I'll let you know what I think of it when I get into it.

That's it for tonight - I must confess that I'm tired and since I worked on some office work which I brought home I'm wrapping this up and going to try and unwind a bit.

The Mag 131: Detroit's Past Through The Fog

Under Windsor Bridge by Adolphe Valette

Entombed in the gritty fog

rolling under Windsor Bridge

the past hangs heavy;

smells of damp basement.

Thinking back in time I remember

how many young men crossed this bridge 

north bound to Canada 

placing themselves in a sort of purgatory

not knowing if or when they might make a return trip.

Those were dark times in America

even darker for Detroit;

smoldering nightly somewhere in the summer heat.

A big time city eating it's own young.

Cannibalizing it's inner soul. 

The decay remains evident today

in areas blackened

that have not and never will come back. 

That's what they say.

Funny thing this city, 

where peace-nicks 

flowed to Canada;

while in the heart of old Detroit

riots raged to burned out store fronts;

skeletons of Detroit made cars smoldered.

Motor city became the capital 

of civil-disobedience & of civil-unrest.

The Mag 131

Michael A. Wells 

Confession Tuesday - Kindle Edition

Tuesday has arrived... to the confessional, shall we?


Dear Reader~

I'm glad you came along. Misery loves company. Just kidding!  I don't think I have any misery to unload today but then I don't often really know how these confessions are going to go till they are over.

I am glad you did come along because every once and a while I get the impression that I'm writing to no one here. I know that is not exactly true because I confess that I do look at the site stats.  I'm not as bad as I used to be about it. Trust me, this is a good thing. You can become obsessed about such things, or so I've been told (I mean I wouldn't have any first hand knowledge of such things) by others who would know.

I am going to move for a moment from one medium (blog) to another - e-reader. I've written blog posts about them in the past and have not been especially kind to them. So, it would only be appropriate for me to confess that this weekend I got a Kindle.  Now I've had the Kindle application on my laptop and on my Blackberry. While I have used them I've never found them to be especially easy to use. I don't mean from the standpoint of technical ease but rather the matter comfort in use. My laptop for example has one of the the larger screens available on a laptop. Sitting up in bed with it to read on in the evening is not really comfortable. Trying to read from from my Blackberry isn't comfortable either. It's size makes the screen area pretty small and you have to jack up the font size so the amount of copy per page is minuscule.

I confess that I still prefer holding a real book in my hands to an e-reader but I do like my Kindle.  Yes, I confess I still have problems with the idea of paying for what seems like a file that is just born out of nowhere (cyberspace) and is there on the device. I don't get a cover with color?  Where do I have the author sign this book/ file at? 

Yes, I confess that I have discovered free books.  There may be no free lunches but there are free digital books. Of course these are not really the books on my wish list. But hey it will force me to read some pf the classics again. Okay, some of them I haven't read for the first time. I confess I still consider myself a bit of a newbie or e-reader virgin.

So while you may be reading this and think - about time, I will acknowledge that almost anyone reading this has more experience with digital books then I do. I am also interested in the process of publishing to this format. I confess that I will defer to you, the experienced digital reader for any recommendations or suggestions on how I might enhance my Kindle experience.  I mean I can't stay a virgin forever.

Unabashed

Divisions according to gender should apply only to changing-rooms and public toilets – because of natural bashfulness. In poetry, there is nothing to be ashamed of. ~ Aleksei Alekhin

Technorati Tags: quotes on poetry

The Mag 130: No Shell Game

Image by Francesca Woodman

Don' t dare look past my flesh self

ignoring what discomfort troubles you.

I've come out so that I can be everything

I truly am-   the co-worker, the mother, the friend

the wife and the lover.

I don't hide my intellect behind my body

anymore then I will shelter my flesh

with intellect or my personality.

I've shed my shell;

these breasts, the curves-

this flesh and bone

this is my architecture-

I embrace all that I am.

The Mag 

Michael A. Wells

The Nightly News I Remember

There are times I remember the nightly news
framed in a seriousness and we all watched.
I would come home from school  and the others
they came from work or household chores
but we watched in the same room
the same RCA Victor
that doubled as a piece of furniture;
topped with white lace doilies and blonde lamp-

and always a man with a voice of authority
and there would be body counts every single night.
And for the longest time this went on
and we all watched and when it was over went
our separate ways.

There was no liberal newscast or conservative choice
there was only news and it could be very brutal.

Confession Tuesday Under Cotton Candy Skies on Thursday

A storm is threatening if that is possible in this drought inflicted Midwest.  We are already a day late - let's hurry to the confessional.

Dear Reader:  I confess I know I'm a day late. It's been 8 days since my last confession so lets get this over the cotton ball sky is moving quickly.

I confess that as I gassed the car this morning and realized that gas had shot up considerably since I last gassed the car I so wanted an all electric car. Of course wanting and having the ability to obtain something are two different things. Even a gas electric hybrid is out of the picture unless that lottery ticket in my pocket is a winner. I'm really pretty good normally about not wanting things I know are beyond reach. Occasionally some electronic gadget will creep into my wanting eyesight but I mostly try and contain myself. These are usually things that I could have, I have the means available to go get one, but don't because my better wisdom says don't.

I confess that I when I learned yesterday that my daughter was likely going to put down Scarlet - her pet rat today - I spent some time just watching Scarlet and taking pictures of her last night.  She was actually pretty cute. So when I learned today that it actually occurred I admit I had some damp eyes for a rat. Okay, not just any rat but Scarlet.  Earlier this summer she lost Mason but as far as rats go I am told that Mason was an old man.

That's about it for tonight... I just realized the San Francisco Giants are on ESPN so my attention is now divided. And I guess that's a confession too. 

Speculation

In bony avoidance I hide
from the possible. Still
my mind is well aware
of what it prefers not

to accept. Would be surrender,
disappointment to the indifference
that might be expected of me.

There is always the possibility
just as there is the what if I had
done differently. What ifs

are lame excuses for the afterlife.
They add nothing to the internal
discussion we have with our self.

Such speculations is cowardice
behind closed eyes. If I must,
speculate by poking out my eyes.



      

The Risk To Write

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. ~ Voltare

Playing in what rain they could find

This morning the ground was wet with fresh rain, I caught sight of  geese across the street on the ball diamond.  The rain would soon disappear into oven baked ground. I would depart for work, and the geese I suppose they lollygagged about for a while and left.

Journal Bits

The following are representative bits, notes, quotes, writings  from my journal July 16 to present.

• 7/16 - fey - pronounced (fay). Adjective meaning 1. strange or unconventional or otherworldly. 2. doomed 3. able to see the future.
• 7/18 - art is not always in the details, sometimes it's the big picture
• 7/20 - Am I cursed? My poet home page dis down this morning. New hosting site and I'm dealing with this issue again.
• 7/20 - never have I laid eyes upon her / that the cortex was not held hostage. / Never have we touched that my heart / did not ache for more
• 7/22 - it will be known as the summer / of toasted coconut lawns / we began to lower our standards / of comfort
• 7/23 - At 9:00 PM the temperature was 102, unbelievable...
• 7/30 - I read Diane Ackerman's poem Between the Creases, probably not for the first time, but it really resonated with me today. 
• 7/31 - "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence." ~ Charles Bukowski 

Confession Tuesday - Olympic Bitchfest

It's Tuesday and them means time to head to the confessional. Won't you join me?

Dear Reader,

It's been another week since my last confession. One more week of mostly ghastly heat.  One more week of week of almost not stop a/c compressor running outside our back bedroom window, and  week and two days since my last poetry submissions.

I confess that last night when I realized it was national cheese cake day I wanted so badly to go out for a piece of cheese cake. When I realized designation of the day it was getting late and I did not want it bad enough to put one real clothes that I could actually be seen in public in. However, our office has a birthday party to celebrate at the Cheese Cake Factory this Friday. It all works out in the end.

I did not see the opening of the Olympics. How big is this? Well, I confess that I do not recall the last time I missed an opening ceremony. I caught some of the Olympics last night and I have to be honest, I'm just not that taken in by it this year. I've never quite felt about the Summer games the way I do about the Winter games. I love almost all of the winter stuff but I confess that less of the summer events strike my fancy. Sure I'll watch some of the gymnastics. I like the volleyball. The cycling and fencing is cool. The Boxing too. I quit caring about basketball years ago when Team USA had pro athletes compete. I confess that was a big turn off and they have never won me back. I was really int the baseball, but with that gone <sigh> so is a lot of my interest. I've never cared for soccer Olympics or otherwise. The canoe event that looks like white water rafting is pretty cool.

Talking about all this Olympic stuff makes me long for the next winter games. The Hockey, skiing, giant slalom, ski jumping (love it - I think I'd like to be a ski jumper at least till I got up on the run and was looking down) and toboggan, bobsled, luge, cross-country skiing and figure skating. Love the figure skating. So you see I'm pretty much a winter games kind of guy.

But there is another problem with the Olympics. The best covered games I ever saw were the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984 and Lake Placid in 1980.  They have gone down hill since and what I've seen of coverage this year is an all time low. I loved it when the coverage included cultural tid-bits about the host country and biographical sketches on the athletics and there home countries. Things about their families and what they went through to get there. I despise the tape delays. I Miss Jim McKay. No one knew the Olympics better.

I confess I did not intend this to be an Olympic bitch fest but is is what it has become. ;)

I confess that I will try to do better next Tuesday and cut this off here for tonight.

Poetry Games: Cast Your Vote!

The ancient Greeks felt poetry and sport went hand in hand at athletic festivals like the Olympics. Poets sang the praises of athletic champions and, at some festivals, even competed in official events, reciting or playing the lyre.  NPR is reviving that tradition with it's own  

Check out and vote for your favorite.  Poetry Games.

Summer of Discontent?

Will I look back on the summer as the summer of discontent? The heat, the lack of rain, a time when the leadership (with a small l) in our nation's capital was largely dysfunctional. And then there is the Aurora, Colorado mass shooting.

It's a summer when I've lowered my comfort standards by increasing what I consider to be a palatable temperature.  As for the disappointing circus in Washington, D.C., I refuse to lower my standards.

I've tried to find the good in things this summer and that's not always been easy. In people too. I try giving grouchy people a bit of a break because given the heat I figure we've all had some days in which our own irritability seemed to take over. Actually, I've found in many instances it's not quite so easy to find reason to get upset with others and this is a good thing. I'm not professing to be perfect at it but I'm vastly improved in this area and that makes me a happier person.

I've also been in search of the art in life. I keep telling myself there is art everywhere if we look hard enough. It means finding a different view of things so that you see some other meaningful aspect what might otherwise seem normal.  I like to find art in the randomness of things. If I can find art in the everyday then how much easier to find poetry in the split open bagel or the uneven seem of a concrete walkway.

This summer is not over and maybe I'm being too judgmental trying to chalk it all up to the negatives. Like the water over the rock slabs above there is movement. Things are happening and the year is in motion as well. I'm ready for some surprising good news, good things and feeling good.

I hope others are looking for art in their own day to day world. After all, art is for everyone. Art is for the masses and for all time.
 

Small wonders...

Rain fell overnight and surprisingly I recognized its remnants this morning.

The Heat Goes On...

Confession Tuesday - I don't give a Klout Edition

It's Tuesday... Tuesday, got that?  (this is for my own benefit)

Dear Reader: It's been a week since my last confession. Another hot week. How many is that now? I honestly can't remember.

I confess that all day I've tried to convince myself that it's Wednesday. This was complicated by the fact that I had a Chiropractor appointment tonight and I normally have those every-other Wednesday but I had to shift to Tuesday this week.

Last night it was 102 at 9PM. Sun is down and it's still 100+ and I confess that I am losing faith in the possibility of again enjoying the weather.

I noted my Klout has been falling. It's dropped to 40 and I confess I don't care. I've been far too obsessed with it this past month. watching it inch up and then retreat. I confess that I also believe that it fails to adequately reflect certain social media that it supposedly is plugged into. For example nothing has changed like forever with my Google + even when I do public posts on it.  So I remain convinced that whatever their  algorithm settings are, they fail (assuming they really use algorithms)Anyway, I'm through being obsessed with it, thank you very much. If I check in with it, it will be rare.

I confess that I did get a cool Klout perk that I will mention in another post. Still, this doesn't change my previous confession.

I suppose I should be grateful as I just checked and it's only 96 tonight but I confess I am Cranky Michael because at 10PM we could do better.

Several times the past three or four days I've heard bird chatter at home. Lots of it. You know how in the wee hours of the morning you sometimes awake to it? Well this has been like that except at various time of the day. Tonight I cam home from work and was cooking dinner and I hear them and it was like after 6:30PM. Now I confess that I find birds fascinating. I hope that the next time I hear them I can slip out and find exactly where they are and what kind of birds have been serenading me.

The Mag 127 Shavings

Figure Eight, 1952 by Franz Kline

The center of balance shifts.

An axis that wobbles.

A toe scuff here,

there; a bit of flair

finished with a jump-

a Salchow,  the sit-spin

and  kowtow to the judges.

Michael A. Wells

The Mag

July Shameless Self Promotion

A poem I wrote several years ago found a home in River Poets Journal  Spring-Summer 2012. At this link you will find a a pdf file of the entire publication. My poem titled Night Wish can be found if you will scroll to page 7- bottom right column. 

Realizing Our Bearings

It's seems to me that times like these often become a compass  for us.  The tragic Colorado shootings reach beyond victims and family and seem to touch us all. Communities expand and become more inclusive. We all share (perhaps in different ways) the pain and sadness but we also find our bearings. We see with more clarity. We come to understand what exactly our values are and the gray lines become more focused. 


Realizing the fragility of life changes everything and even the little things with loved ones suddenly rises to the top. I'm thankful for our health. I'm thankful for times of laughter. I'm thankful for the poetry I see in everyday life, in nature and on the page.

Brandalism: Street artists hijack billboards

Street artists are targeting advertising billboards in a new movement nicknamed 'brandalism' for a Subvertising Campaign.  And what has this to do with poetry?   [READ THE STORY HERE]

Congratulations to Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine is the new Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington a city just a stones throw from Seattle, Washington.  Speaking of throwing stones, Jeannine comes from a part of the country that you can't cast a stone without hitting a poet. I think it's especially cool considering how how poetically inclined people in Washington seem to be.

The Washington State Poet Laureate did a blog feature on Jeannine today that can be found here.

Confession Tuesday - Yes, I was Naughty Edition

Well, it's been a week since my last confession. Shall we head to the box?

Dear Reader:

It's been a strange week. Some highs and lows but mostly everything evens out. So that said I will get down to the ntty gritty.

I confess that when I left the office today my desk was in great disarray. My desk reflects far too many projects going on, but my job is crisis driven so that's pretty much what I deal with all the time. Of course I periodically restore some order to it but daily it seems to resist order. I confess it's a constant battle.

I confess that I found a writing fellowship that I felt was perfect for me. That was till I realized how much time I would need to be in the LA area next year. I confess that I scrapped my plans to apply. There may come a time when one such program will be a good fit and all-round and when that happens I hope that I have the ability to apply.

Off and on during this past week I've wondered about the Higgs particles but I must confess having them on my mind has only resulted in mass confusion.

I confess that three times (count them), three times this week I've checked in on Scarlet the rat to make sure she is okay.  Scarlet is my daughter's rat and she has been under the weather. I've never been a fan of rats since as a kid growing up in apartment near Hospital Hill I would see rats big as cats when I too the trash out. Still, I confess that Scarlet is kind of cute. In an rat creepy sort of way. Yes, I want her to get well.

I confess I had a rejection letter for three of my poems this week including one I truly believe in. I confess that I'm confident it will find a home.

I confess to drinking Arbor Mist Peach Chardonnay this week. It's not exactly like drinking quality Chardonnay but it feel kind of naughty like drinking semi-frozen Ripple or Boon's Farm Wine as a teenager. Hey, it goes down smooth. 

Well there, I guess a naughty confession is a good place to stop. Even if it was a bit peachy as well.

Can I get an Amen!?

Love this description of what a word does...

Utility is the dream of every poem, large or small. Does each word carry, embryonically, the intent of the entire poem? Dave Smith, Local Assays, 1995

Picturing a word embryonically carrying intent... how awesome is that!

Insanitry

The Mag: Waiting for the Car

Artwork by Jack Vettriano

Another event-

the compulsory

making an appearance.

When does he dress

for an outing with me;

hang like a doll from my arm?

When do I get to show off

his fake smile?

The Mag

Michael A. Wells

Poetry Mail Bag

What better way to start the weekend then to come home and find something poetry related in the mail. On the basis of a blog post recommendation  by Kelli Agodon I ordered the Poetry In Person on Wednesday and low and behold it arrived today already!

The cover is rather nondescript but I knew from what Kelli relayed about the book it would be something I would likely dig into and enjoy.  Transcripts of poet interviews over twenty five years. I'm a sucker for interviews, biographical material collected notes or correspondence from poets. I'm pretty sure this will keep me out of trouble for a few days. Actually the biggest concern is I have a tight schedule of some projects that require my attention. Still, I will make some time to read this book this weekend. After all, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to or it would not have arrived till Monday!  ;)

I'll let you know what I think of it.

Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night - Dominoes

 Eleven hours and 7,000 dominoes later

Confession Tuesday - All-Star Edition

Dear Reader,

Another week has come and gone. It's Confession Tuesday and MLB All-Star game night here in Kansas City.


I confess I'm multitasking right now watching the game as I write this post.

I confess that I'm kinda proud of Kansas City this week. I'm a bit of an oddity I suppose because while I do enjoy going to Royals games (I enjoy watching just about any baseball) I am really an avid San Francisco Giants fan. I follow the Giants like they are my home team and have for quite a few years. I've been spoiled by attending games at (what I still call) Pacific Bell Park.  But hey, I even loved Candlestick Park. I have not been a big fan of the stadium here in Kansas City but they have made some significant improvements in the recent renovation.  But I'm proud of the how the city has responded and and represented Major League Baseball here.. We are a small market team but hosted the event in a Major League way.

I confess I appreciate the minuscule lowering of temperatures the last few days. It's still hot but at least tolerable

I confess now that the All-Star game is over I'm so excited - the NL not only rocked they shut out the AL. Great hitting and pitching. The Giants contingency really did their team proud.

I confess that I have a lot of writing related stuff to do this week and after last nights attending Fan Fest and  tonight's distraction of the the game itself on TV, I have to double down over the next couple of nights.

Have a great week.

The Mag 125: The Same Beginning

Chilmark Hay, 1951 by Thomas Hart Benton

Golden goose-bumps rise 

from the sagging country side

awaiting collection.

They are the remnants of harvest.

Cured in the sun - their sweetness

locked in.

Here, everything comes down to earth.
We plant in it, work it, extracting from it

feed it to the livestock.

It's a simple life.

Not an easy one

but it always cycles

back to the same beginning. 

The Mag

Michael A. Wells