Confession Tuesday - An Emotional Knot

Tuesday night... It's time to confess again and it's getting late so let's head to the confessional.

Dear Readers:

It's been a long seven days, an emotional seven days, a worrisome seven days. It's also been a week in which I had two poems accepted for publication and another poem hanging next to an awesome painting at the Albrecht-Kemper Museam of Art that inspired the work of art.

I've just come from a Royals - Indians baseball game. I was a bit conflicted because both teams are within reach of the wild-card for post season and the Indians are my second favorite baseball team behind the San Francisco Giants. But the home town Royals have not had a winning season like forever. I wanted to see a good game and confess that I kinda was pulling for the Tribe but wanted it to be a good game - not some blow-out. The Indians came from behind and won 5 to 3. Wahoo!

Some weeks from one Tuesday to the next seem to zoom by and I wonder where it all went. A week ago we were saying goodbye to our beloved dog Moe. I confess this continues to be hard for me to deal with but I'm somewhat sobered by the fact that our long hared dachshund Berry is sick as well. He has been shedding weight like crazy and after some blood tests it appears he suffers from EPI or Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency. I confess that the emotions related to Moe's death and the decline of Berry offer a very rocky emotional ride. The loss, the fear of losing another, coupled with cautious optimism  that there is something that can be done for Berry and yet the ongoing struggles to get him eating again and keeping food down. It's this mixture of emotions that has stretched this week like taffy, and me at times to a breaking point.

Friday two good things came my way and I confess that they have helped keep me sane.  The opening of the Jennifer Rivera Exhibit "Between the Lines" Pictures with poetry at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. A poem of mine shares wall space next to one of Jennifer's pieces of art. I am honored to have a poem that is part of this exhibit.  The other positive note is that I heard on Friday that two of my poems were accepted for publication in January in a venue that I've never been in before. This offsets the rejection I received this week.

I confess that sometimes I have be open to looking for the little things. Just as I will be looking for little signs of improvement in Berry this coming week.

Miss You Mo-Mo

Moe Cooling Down 

In Loving Memory September 9, 2013

The Poet Prism

Always a poet, always searching in wonder.  To me, some things can only be seen through the prism of a poet's mind.

 

Its seems to me that much of my life has been an internal dialogue which in the past twenty years has manifested itself in written word. The Welsh poet R.S. Thomas has remarked that "All people talk to themselves. Some are overheard, and they are the poets." I suppose this is so, and I was trapped in this path long ago.

 

Maybe there are more people that are on the cusp of becoming poets and don't quite realize it. I've always felt that there are people I know that express disdain for poetry and yet I feel they don't really know what it is they don't like. It's more of a idea that they are arguing with themselves over they any concrete purpose. They just haven't quite figured out how or to whom to express it. If they did, maybe they world cross over the line and become one of us. 



Confession Tuesday.. Er Wednesday

Dear Friends & Readers:

Another Tuesday has come and gone. This one slipped through my fingers and I didn't realize it because being off Labor Day made it feel like a Monday. That’s my story and I’m sticking by it. So here I am heading to the Confessional a day late. At least there is no line.

I confess that it is hard to believe that it’s September. Hard to believe because it seems like the first pitch of spring training was just thrown out yesterday. Hard to believe too, because I usually make some provision for coaching/mentoring in the fall and I've done nothing towards that end this year. This I just realized today.

I've been so busy writing and submitting that I confess that I have in some ways been less aware of the world around me. Oh, I’m not neglecting to interact with my family. I’m not hold up in a room writing and forgetting to eat (though that might be a way to shed a few pounds) and I know about Syria, I know about sequester, and I’m aware that poetry & the world lost Seamus Heaney. It’s perhaps the more subtle things around me that are racing by.

I confess that days seem long and months seem fast. Does that make sense? Is this what getting older is like?    

True, time is an arbitrary measurement created by man but I confess that I wish it were more arbitrary to me personally. I’d like to stop the clock at times or at lease slow it down. True, I’d probably speed it up weekdays between 8 and 5 but I’m sure that as soon as I realized that I couldn't get all my work done I’d be more responsible or judicious in how I allocated it. At least I could make sure I got my confession done on Tuesday and not Wednesday.

Amen!

Slipped Out Of Her Jeans - Liquid Imagination

LIQUID IMAGINATION Issue 18 is live and I am fortunate to have one of my poems with so many other really outstanding works.

You can catch Slipped Out of Her Jeans HERE and an additional treat is that there is an audio read of the poem by the vary talented Nic Sebastian. Here voice gives depth to the poem and I was thrilled to have her share in this publication with me.

LOSS

Seamus Heaney 

13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

Confession Tuesday on Wednesday

Dear Reader:

I confess to being absent minded yesterday. Yes, yesterday was Tuesday and that's Confession day here except my mind was, we it was somewhere else because It didn't even remotely think of  confessing anything.

Some days I think about it and I'm too tired and just put it off a day. Sometimes I'm out till late and by the time I'm home it just seems like it can wait. Not yesterday... yesterday was out of sight and mind.

                                                                ~0~

I'm starting to realize that summer is not long for this year. Of course today the heat wouldn't agree, but the shadows that fall across the yard this time of evening, the fact that schools are starting and this weekend is labor day weekend, these things are a reminder that the season of color is coming. Maybe an even stronger indicator is the fact that baseball is at that stage in the season where people talk of magic numbers. The number of games remaining till post season nearly half my age and a melancholy umbrella seems to shield me from exuberance. I confess that I'm feeling fall in my bones.

                                                               ~0~

My wife is a bead artist. Some days she will tell me she doesn't feel much like an artist but some days I feel like it's a stretch to call myself a poet. Don't all artists do this to themselves at times?  I've shown some pictures in past years of work my wife has done and it you would look at it you would likely agree that there is artistry in it. Every once and a while I get to thinking that I wish we would collaborate on something - maybe an abstract bead-work with a poem.  I confess that I realize there are real challenges that couples who are artists have in dealing with each others artistic approaches and work itself. Cathy is not particularly a poetry person though she is very supportive of me. The one art issue we most would butt heads over would be when my work tends to be more abstract. I confess that I love working in abstracts. I confess that I have no hope of convincing her to work in abstract given how she feels about abstract poetry.  Still, I can dream.

                                                           ~0~

I confess that lately I've been challenging my own tendency to want to procrastinate over things that I am anxious about. I would not say that I'm in danger of getting kicked out of procrastinators anonymous but I'm sure the general membership would disapprove of some of my minor successes of late.

That's it for this week.

Amen!