"Incoming"

A new poem. They said it couldn't be done!

"Incoming"

The sound-bullet labyrinths
its way into my head. All
the past remembered as well
as it was previously forgotten.

That heavy, candy-sticky 1998 feeling,
when I was unsure of the map of
the map I was tracing into the road
that kept churning itself to mud

under the wheels. It made little
sense then, even less now,
though I seem to understand something
new about that map of a map,

and this new map of a map of a map
of now (then, whatever and whenever)

that we are creating together,
certain and unsure, and absolutely,

absolutely yes.

Godful

the desire to stop desire, silence
as the ultimate benefactor of grace, a
godless void full of god.

Musically youthy

oily, seedy provocation relents
for the tongue in groove machine thing
and only then with a stutter-step
of recognition.

that's how lived-in arias are born
and punkily careful recklessness
dies. this ain't new york or l.a.
being painted in thick, toxic strokes.

the romantic images are better,
and t-shirt-ready:
an idol pounding back another
party cup, forehead bleeding,

getting buried in the streets
among hangers-on, junkies,
girlfriends, groupies,
confused cabbies, bored cops.

but before that did-up death croak,
he carefully sculpted his hair
behind stage, in the glass
of a pinball machine.

A newbie's journey through Japanese: The very small archive

Here are the posts I have written so far for Nihongo Ichiban. I just completed a new one earlier this week about the first steps to learning kanji, but it seems the site's owner has taken a hiatus, seeing as his last post was last month. Until the new one goes up, here are the previous entries of my series "A newbie's journey through Japanese":

A newbie’s journey through Japanese
My first post, outlining my reasons behind wanting to learning the language.


A newbie's journey through Japanese: Step 1 -- Learn the kana
Explaining why it's important to learn kana and not use romaji as a crutch.


A newbie's journey through Japanese #3: All about Japanese podcasts
I walk readers through some of the podcasts I listen to that help increase my understanding and fluency.


Thanks, guys. I hope these are helpful.

Elegy for Jeff

I'm already forgetting about you.
This ceaseless move-ahead is making
it hard to fathom or focus on the
reality of you no longer being here.

Not dead, but excommunicated
from my life just as surely.
Barely had time to pack your things
before they shut off the spigots:

e-mail, done. Company phone,
we'll take that back. Did they
even give you a chance
to let your former clients

and industry friends
know about your new condition?
One that is not fatal if caught,
but the dreams are dead, anyway.

You've been here since the '70s.
Worked with me for nearly a decade.
The next manager in line better
prepare to have her neck slashed

by the next manager in line after.
I will be trained via e-mail
with the newest protocols
to sop up the gore.

I take that back. I can't forget.
Always concluding your thoughts
with a "And that's the story."
I thought it was a tic.

"And that's the story."
Not the final thought.
Not your final story.
But mine knowing you.

The Story Behind The Stock Photo #2: Quiet Desperation

Dear diary: Today to pictorially represent my marital anguish and quiet desperation of inner suburban solitude, I had my soon-to-be-ex give his best Rodin The Thinker expression while I did the same in the foreground. It was SOOOOO hard to get us both in the frame at the same time, while keeping our drawn, pained, distant expressions! Angst is such hard work! Tomorrow I think I'll go to the gym and cry on the treadmill. Hugs and kisses!

Winter wins again

A catch in the throat,
a broach of speech,
these winter clouds
piling up in October.

How many expletives
in a plow's smoke?
Let's count.

Know this:
We will haunt the
fast food lanes
with the rest of you

when the power
stutters,
and spirals out.

***

Well, New Hampshire has decided it would be a fun trick to snow a huge amount at the tail-end of October. The ultimate trick or treat? Anyway, according to media reports, this one is going to be a record breaker if it snows a mere 2 inches in the state capital, and this storm looks like it will produce a lot more than 2 inches. Knowing the Somersworth power grid, I doubt I will have power in the next few hours, for the next few days. Don't you just love winter, especially when it's still technically fall?

Stock photo fail

Coming from a journalism background and seeing firsthand how much the Internet has changed reader habits, I understand how important it is to get people to not only visit a story, but stay involved with it. That said, I think WMUR went overboard with a story about the 50 top-paying jobs in N.H. for 2011. Before I even clicked on the story link I thought "Surely, they're not going to make me click through 50 slides to read this story." But that's exactly what they did.

When you have 50 holes to fill, you're bound to throw pretty much anything in there to fill the space, however tangentially related. Some of the choices were obvious: whenever a teacher job is mentioned, show a grainy shot of a bunch of students milling around at some nondescript campus; whenever anything about business comes up, get to shots of people in business attire doing mock-work for the camera.

And then, there were these two choices.

I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but management isn't the first thing to come to mind when I see a coed barely in her 20s throwing out her hands in exasperation while two subordinates mope with undisguised contempt.

Seriously, how young is this woman? It's quite possible that it's just her body language that makes her look so young, but all I can hear while looking at this picture is a teen-age tirade about how unfair life is that her best friend gets to go to the concert when she's the true fan, followed by a crescendo of slamming doors. Is there a way I can paid nearly $100K to "lead" like this?

The next picture is even better. All I can say is, I don't think this is the standard operating procedure when it comes to fixing an elevator. But it could make a great poster for one of those Z-grade horror movie that you sometimes find for $5 at Wal-mart.

Figuring some things out

I've come to an astonishing conclusion about poetry blogs. Almost nobody reads them. I started this blog earlier this year, and I have had a sum total of 38 views. Obviously, this is not a sustainable model for growing readership, or frankly, for keeping my interest.

I'm going to start switching things up here. Since I have a full-time job as an editor/writer, I can't promise this will be a fast transition. Also, it's almost Halloween, which means the next couple of weekends are not going to work for getting this thing into gear. However, I've decided I'm going to make this a lot more chatty, and a lot less poetry-inclined. Sure, I'll still post poems as I write them, but it's time to move away from "here are a collection of words to which you might have a difficult time figuring out the narrative" to "here are a collection of words where the narrative is pretty obvious, since it's all about life."

The truth is, I love writing. It's the thing I've done the most and the best since as far back as I can remember. Lately though, I've had absolutely no free time for anything even remotely resembling writing, aside from what I do professionally. My poetry has dried up. The only time I write short stories is when I'm entering a contest. (to whit: machineofdeath.net) And most of my little insights and commentary on the day get tucked inside my accounts on social media vehicles like Facebook and Twitter.

But believe me, I have plenty to talk about, and a rich vantage point from which to do it. First of all, though it's been more than a year since we last recorded, I am a member of the semi electronic/semi who knows what music collective (that sounds so much more impressive than "band") Human Beat Box Light Show. We are planning to soon go out and record a video for our song "Cemetery Moves," in an actual graveyard. Of course, we all have busy lives, so whether or not that comes to pass is anybody's guess. But if it does, hello great story.

Even more importantly than that, I recently got married to the love of my life, Jenn. She actually has her own blog at slytheringirl83.blogspot.com. As you can imagine, we've both been very busy lately since returning from our honeymoon and getting back into the thick of things, so her updates have been even less frequent than mine.

More things I can easily write about: the fact I have Marfan Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that makes me ridiculously tall and usually results in perfect strangers coming up to me and asking me about my height and basketball-playing potential; the city of Somersworth, N.H., and the surrounding Seacoast region, which is full of crazy characters and situations; my family and friends, always good for a tale or two (especially the well-intentioned horror of my mom's cooking); hobbies like playing old video games, learning the Japanese language, practicing guitar. Yeah, there's a lot to work with here. As Calvin famously said to Hobbes in that comic strip's final episode: "Let's go exploring!"

Inevitability

We stand all in a group,
leaning against the rope railing
of the bridge spanning the void.

We fondly misrecall the past:
names, dates, places, situations,
and use them as unwavering proof

of how pretty everything was,
the colors and buildings here and there,
how simple it all was before the void.