Category: Blog
You say Liebster, I say Lobster.
Dancing with Fireflies and wwwpalfitness both nominated me for a Lobster Award, and because I like them both, I won’t even comment on their misspelling of ‘Lobster’, both having spelled it as ‘Liebster’. WordPress is an inclusive, supportive, and forgiving community. If it weren’t, I’d have been chased out with pointy sticks on my first day here. Thank you both for the nomination, and thank you everyone for enduring my nonsense. Please visit their blogs. They’re good peeps.
Two lobster awards in one day, tho. I’m not sure what to make of that. Perhaps I’ve written something questionable, something that left people feeling a bit red and peevish, or that made them think of boiling me in a pot. That’s entirely possible.
The last time I was awarded a lobster was by my cousin Marcus, who dropped a live one down my shorts. This, of course, was completely unprovoked. I was just minding my own business, like always. He’s in an asylum now, echoes of maniacal laughter haunting the cement-brick hallways. He’s batshit crazy, and the lobster was in therapy for many years following the harrowing experience. The lobster still twitches and shakes when approached. So does Marcus, and so do I.
The honor and distinction of this Lobster Award, as opposed to an irritated one stubbornly clamped onto one’s unmentionables, is that this award is in recognition of something. Tho I haven’t ever actually accomplished anything at all besides surviving my childhood and continuing to not self-terminate long enough to procreate, it seems that these small measures must be worthy of some recognition. Anyone who knew me as a disturbed child might agree that my odds of survival weren’t good. Let it be said that it was all for science, and that the statutes of limitation have likely expired by now anyway. As far as the procreation goes, there was nothing to it. Besides, I was probably drunk. I don’t recall.
I understand that there are some rules to this lobster business. I’m to answer some questions or something. I believe there were ten. maybe fifty. I never follow directions, so I’ll do one.
Why did you first start writing?
I have an active imagination, and that creativity needs to go somewhere so that I don’t end up in jail. As a kid, maybe seven or eight years old, I ‘wrote’ a book. Writing a book for me at that young age meant that I stole it. If that felonious description is too strong, then it’s still fair to say that I borrowed heavily. That said, I did embellish, adding color, plot twists, and developing characters, and I learned from the experience; I was writing.
I began writing poetry as a teen and continued into my early twenties. Many of my poems at the time accompanied my art, drawings and small sculptures. In my mid twenties, I wrote a homeric-length epic poem about the sadness of man and then I didn’t write again for another twenty plus years. Now, I’m back. Writing is a part if who I am, perhaps the largest part. I’ve been writing again for a couple of years, and the most rewarding part of it has been encouraging or inspiring others to share themselves. We’ve all got something to say, in a way that only we can say it.
In seriousness, the Liebster Award is intended to recognize up and coming blogs, and those which deserve to be be seen by more people. I’m not sure I agree with that last bit of it. As mentioned, everyone’s voice matters, none above another. Still, I’ll nominate a few other bloggers, in the spirit of brotherhood, sisterhood, of sharing, and of discovering.
If nominated, you may choose your own questions to answer.
Have fun with it 🙂
My Liebster Award Nominees are as follows:
http://victoryintrouble.wordpress.com/ (some mature content – cover your eyes, kids.)
http://laurenlalasimon.wordpress.com/
http://tiffanybeingfree.wordpress.com/
Please visit their blogs. You’ll be glad you did 🙂
I’m One Lovely Blogger, Dammit.
Paul (aka wwwpalfitness) nominated me for the Lovely Blog Award, and I’ve been feeling lovely ever since. Paul is generally pretty awesome, writes some cool poems, and he retweets my rather questionable poems on twitter sometimes. Thanks Paul! 🙂 You guys should follow him now. Really. Right now. Then you won’t have to read this drivel.
One Lovely Blog Award
The rules are as follows:
Thank the person that nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
List the rules.
Display the award on your post of the award.
List seven facts about yourself.
Nominate 15 bloggers for this award and comment on one of their posts to let them know you have nominated them.
Stuff about me.
1. I work in insurance. Ack. But not forever. I’ll probably do something to get myself fired sooner or later. Then I can spend my newfound free time writing sad country western songs.
2. I’m a black belt in Kenpo and teach karate a few times a week at my karate school. I’ve been throwing kicks for about 30 years, on and off. Yes, I’m an old fart. Sorta. I’m 46. And I wear those sock-garter thingees too. They’re itchy.
3. I’m very conscious of my use of the word “I” in my writing. Already, in writing this, I’m quite certain that I’ve used the word “I” or some variation of its self-centered flatulence at least a few thousand times. I’ll count them later, wearing a clothespin on my nose. Then I’ll flog myself ten times for for each abuse, replace each one with the word “fuckhead”, and then listen to the My Little Pony theme song until I’m fully repentant. Two minutes should do.
4. I have two black dogs and a (soon to be) 11 year old son. The boy doesn’t yet heel properly, but he’s coming along. The shock collar helps, tho he often complains that none of his friends have to wear one.
5. I wish this was number seven already. I hate talking about myself. That’s what poetry is for.
6. I do not eat any weird gourmet stuff. I will not, and you can’t make me. Not even if you wear something revealing and crack a black whip on my ass.
7. My name is Eric. That might be posted around here somewhere. I go by brazenescape because it’s the screen name I used when I started writing again a couple of years ago.
The rules of this ‘suggest’ that I nominate FIFTEEN other people for this. Yowsa. Not happening. I don’t even know fifteen people yet. I’ll do just three at this early, dribble-chin stage of this blog’s infancy..
http://woodlynnsance.com
http://thoughtsgather.com
http://ruchirabiswas.wordpress.com
negro streets and lascivious priests
There are poems everywhere. Mine. I find them on my phone, and on my computer, electronic napkin-back scrawlings I’d thought to hold some poignancy at some point, ideas or phrases shouted into my phone while speeding at 85 MPH and late for work, poems that I’d planned to finish when I parked the car later that day, or later that night, or maybe the next. Most never get written. But even of those that have, just look at them all! There are thousands of the damned things! And what have I said so far? What has anyone said so far?
Think on Neruda, or Bukowski, or on Ginsberg. Pick your own poet. How many poems that each has written are actually remembered? Maybe a phrase or two is retained. Certainly, the theme is more likely to stay with us, the tone, the title, hopefully. Everyone remembers ‘howl’, at least by title. Fewer know any of the words. Unless studied, nobody remembers the words. No, you don’t remember them either.
Thinking about ‘howl’ now, all I’ve got is ‘negro streets’. Two words made the cut. And I remember that Ginsberg seemed to be pissed off or quite anxious about something or other, but didn’t necessarily hold any hostility toward anything black or any streets in particular. Though, I haven’t had my coffee yet, neither black nor with cream. To be fair, I’ll try to remember again when more awake. Though, also to be fair, I expect similar results.
I stumbled upon a Neruda poem the other day. This was just a couple of days ago, maybe even yesterday. He seemed to think that young men and priests tend to masturbate in the early afternoons. That’s all I’ve still got from that one. It was unclear as to whether they do this as a group act or in each in their own privacy, but that’s all I remember from the poem. Priests jerking off.
Poems are small, haughty trifles, and many poets the shock jocks of literature. Poems are the shining copper pennies dropped on the sidewalk that few bother to pick up. Most wash into the storm drain when the rain comes. Of those noticed, they are quickly jammed into a pocket and later dumped in a bucket with the other loose change. They all seem the same, one indistinguishable from the next. And yet, we have those who wish to call themselves a poet.
I’m a writer. That’s all I ever wish to be. But I’ll write some poems, and you’ll forget them, that is, if any of my poems are even read. Let’s not make too much of this, but let’s write, if that’s what we desire to do. And if it’s fame or immortality that you seek, be sure to include terms like ‘negro streets’ and don’t neglect to include some lascivious priests.
shithead
This time last year, I had no costume to wear to the party. I found a spare toilet seat I had laying around in the garage, wondering for a moment why I would have such an item kept as a spare, but just for a moment, and then unwrapped its plastic and put it on. The seat rested on my shoulders with my head poking out of the hole. A dark stocking with knots tied in it graced my cranium, and I wrote, ‘out of order’ on the front of a white shirt made to look like a sign.
All evening, glisten-bosom women in purple-sparkle masks and snug, black dresses called me, ‘shithead’, and they brought me more drinks.
“Hey shithead! Want another drink?” they’d say, and I’d answer, drunk and smiling, the bowl-seat wobbling on my shoulders.
Dreaming of Hope
I suppose that when we go, we all go still owing a debt somewhere, a loan unpaid, a good turn still un-returned, a forgiveness not granted, a wrong never made right. And some would say that we get what we’ve got coming, but we never do. We get what we get. We know who we know, and most of everything that happens along the way is just dumb luck. Tho we never really know anyone; we never really have anything. Possession is an illusion. It all passes, sliding between our fingers like the salty-sand of childhood’s soft-curve coasts, bathed in blue waves’ laughing froth as they come and go.
She’s twenty-three and she’s dying. Her lungs are done, they say, diseased and tired, filled with bile and mucus, and regret. She’s drowning in infection. She’ll never eat or drink through her mouth again. She’s got a tube down her throat to breathe and mittens on her hands so she can’t hurt herself or anyone else when the drugs wear off. She tries though. These things don’t come without anger over the unfairness, seethe over being out of time.
Others might get a lung transplant, the gift of another chance. She’s not a candidate because she smoked cigarettes and did drugs. Who decides these things, who decides who lives and who dies? The doctors told her parents that without a transplant, she’d live on a respirator and be institutionalized for the rest of her life, however long that is, and if she lives at all. They’d pull the tube out of her throat and put a hole on her throat instead.
“I know she wouldn’t want to live that way,” they both said.
Still, life is life, if there is still sentience; if there are still thoughts, even occasional, we are as alive as anyone ever is, and if we’ve nothing but time to know the shadows and light of our own notions, we’re more alive than most.
They’ll do it as she sleeps, dreaming of hope. They’ll pull the plug.