I am not an alchemist, I am an architect.
I do not create gold.
I design a vault in which one might place gold
and wait
for a builder, a banker, an heiress.
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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Bukowski’s Lemonade
Things that make me feel like a writer, in order of increasing conviction:
0) Not writing
1) Thinking about writing
2) Writing
3) Drinking wine straight from the bottle
Revisionist Poetry
One of my ideas before I forgot I had a website (Can someone send the URL? Can’t find it in my bookmarks…) was to post revisions of poems here as well, the idea being that I was going to be posting here so frequently (srsly…URL ne1?), that a lot of posts would need extensive revision. This would help me because I’m usually terrible at revising what I’ve written, and I end up with the same piece of writing in 13 different documents with no dates or records of what I’ve changed, so after reading a few lines I get frustrated, stop writing and watch How I Met Your Mother reruns. Also, I thought it could be fun from a reader’s perspective because everyone can decide which versions they like better and argue about it in the comment threads.
I have a pit in my stomach from using the word “fun” in that last sentence, but it’s too late to turn back now. I’ll catch it in the next revision.
So with that said, I’m going to post this (done!), post a lightly revised version of ‘our quiets,’ and then drop offline for a few weeks, never to be heard from again. Thanks for reading!
Thank You, and Thanks
So I want to (slightly-belatedly) thank everybody for reading, liking, commenting, sharing, etc. I haven’t been posting quite as frequently as I was hoping to when I started this site, mostly because I’m lazy, and in the battle between writing and watching How I Met Your Mother reruns, How I Met Your Mother wins like pretty much all of the time. But I have been writing more, and I will take small victories over no victories.
Please feel free to provide feedback if you read something that resonates (and share – I appreciate the shares), or even if you read something you don’t like, let me know why, and after spending a few hours despondent in a dark room with a bottle of Jameson and my Smiths albums, maybe I will emerge from it a better writer. Just kidding about the dark room. I take criticism much better than most dictators and about equally as well as the hitchhiker from There’s Something About Mary.
So in summary, thanks to Cobie Smulders, Jameson whiskey, the Farrelly brothers and Morrissey. And to everyone who has been reading, thanks especially.
And, I hear you: there should be fewer pop culture references than there are short paragraphs in a blog post. That’s a great rule to live by, and I’ve broken that rule, and next time I’ll do better. Thanks again.
Special Sneak Preview of Upcoming Poem Posts
Happy Reader(s),
It is your lucky upcoming day(s). Soon, I am going to write poems about:
a) Coded euphemisms for sex disguised as innocuous messages to boyfriends/girlfriends and slipped into high school yearbooks.
b) How we separate ourselves from savage animals by exercising a perverse sense of decency, such as providing death row inmates with last meals or agreeing to international rules on how to wage civil (not intra-country but polite and mannered) war.
c) Writing lists for an audience and how when the author approaches the last few entries, he can pretty much phone it in, because the audience is already committed to reading, and as long as they keep clicking next, his parent company keeps collecting ad revenue*. Example:
COSMO’S TOP 7 SEX POSITIONS TO TRY
1) Bodhidharma’s Tin Staff Supplication
2) Upright Triangle No Quarter Levee Breaker
3) All those
4) other positions
5) you already
6) know about –
7) whatever.
Or:
GOOD FOR YOU FOODS TO EAT
1) Avocados
2) Kale
3) Blueberries
4) Blueberries
5) Blueberries
6) Blueberries
7) Blueberries
8) Kale
These are going to be some very good poems – the early reviews are overwhelmingly positive and imaginary, so the sky is the limit for us; we are unfettered by anything having already happened.
Sincerely [a],
cohesive narrative
*This site is ad-free and eschews a) similarly duplicitous tactics, b) readers, and c) probably some other things, I guess.
Right on schedule
It’s taken me about an hour to select a background image, size the background image, crop the background image, re-crop the background image, and delete the background image after deciding that the image was unnecessary and intrusive and – I’ll say it – just fucking awful.
Please revisit in 2013 when there will be a new* background image and maybe also some words. Hopefully some words.
*It will be the same background image.
Evening Dusk 