The Absence Of Love Yields Hate

Comingle on the corner doorstep

Fate sleeps late at the abyss

Rancid denial of Beelzebub

Waltzes through my brain

Rotting flesh of my bones

Insane in my tomb.

Cell phone rings abruptly

Disrupts me, tear open envelope

Desires, hurts, anger, fear, lust animates me.

She sent outdated information

On purpose to distract me

Life turned to dust

Parked on side streets

Lost causes, and dust

Doubt and drivel hammered in mistrust.

Places fraught, caught naked

Imagination outrun by freedom

cause reductions in usable space.

Distraught and overwrought

Enervated and prostrated

Freedom overrides me

Seek relief, use a cast iron weight

Knock some sense into my head

Whack me into oblivion

All the accusations are true

Guilty as charged

Agree there’s demise in society

Refuse to confess

Turn to empty unpaid banks

Paid in full with retribution

No balance left

Evil can not be undone

Love will not be outrun

Evil never lets go

Love cannot be undone

Evil cannot be out run

Love refuses to be undone

Questions answer questions

Driven to distraction

Sessions single suppressions

Deny any ism is my obsession

Denial analogous to confession
Love's absence insures hate's continuation

*  This time of year drives me to be sad and thoughtful. That combined with all the daily chores and bullshit makes me mad, because I freedom lives in my heart yet I remain prisoner to society too. 

You know how yelp and google are supposed to let you express yourself about any business? Well it's absolutely a farce. Google reviews censored my recent review of Candle Cafe West. Yelp censored my review of a outpatient mental health clinic. This is very disappointing. After Yelp removed my review - they removed all the other reviews of The Post Graduate Mental Health Clinic. 

What does this have to do with my poem? I don't know.

I do know the drive to be free drives me to write as it does to think, consider and design. I write and write and write. It is what writers do. I also do many other things to express myself. I design jewelry, designed my apartment makeover myself, I crochet hats (haven't done knitting in a while) paint, draw and take interesting photos plus, most importantly, I do my rants and raves and poetry. 

You know how yelp and google are supposed to let you express yourself about any business? Well it's absolutely a farce. Google reviews censored my recent review of Candle Cafe West. Yelp censored my review of a outpatient mental health clinic. 

Happy holidays and love to all 

George R.R. Martin - reading and writing

Since Summer I've been spending a lot of time with George R.R. Martin. I read all 5 of his Game of Thrones series, because I was so fascinated with the HBO show, Game of Thrones. Each book was over 1000 pages, easily more than 6000 pages total at the rate of about 100 pages per day - sometimes, more - sometimes none if I was extremely busy. I usually always read on the train too. After reading all these books, I became curious as to Mr. R.R. Martin's other novels and there I began with The Armageddon Rag. I will be moving on to his other novels now.

George R.R. Martin mixes fact, fantasy, and fiction into a delicious cocktail made to spur and goad our insides to believe and question humanity and our purpose. Dialogue and inner conversations portray several levels, superficial, exploratory bestows significance on more subtle references or hidden meanings, devices and triggers that move us.

It is our choices that define us. All humans have these. Our alikeness internally ends here. We all think we know certain people but everyone of us can be surprised because we can only, after all, interpret others behaviors through a screen of our own experiences combined with birth circumstances and living, which normally infants have no power except their tears or laughter, which indeed, moves most of us to console or play with them. I don't need to tell you about the sick few - either perverts or crazies but they exist too - everywhere. Sometimes we too, if we choose, can be one of the perverts, or crazies who enjoy inflicting pain. Strangely, sometimes someone who does not enjoy inflicting pain on others may do it as a means of self-defense. We easily excuse trespasses done in defense on one's person or mental status, or those of us who defend weaker, like our children and friends we wish to help. Mr. R. R. Martin reminds that these truths exist on various levels. Usage of subconscious levels combines with using things we can't understand yet see, serve to emphasize this point.

Good read and I love the music quotes! Worth reading if only to see R.R Martin's creativity in weaving 60's and 70's lyrics from musicians so flawlessly into the plot. His weaving style and ability to do this is truly amazing and entertaining. I certainly wouldn't expect any less from him. 

:) I have been having a great deal of fun reading his entertaining writings!

Happy New Year Everyone

Submission guidelines

We bare ourselves – down to our easily assailable and accessible frail frames to be known in the biblical sense as well as the primary sense when we (writers) create a new true being – a character who others relate to. Everything I spit is born two entities, how the other sees himself and my vision of that person. Since childhood my visions of the world has been very adult having had my parent’s bitter life view force-fed me since my birth. The way this affects me is that I relate to the world by constantly studying everyone around me since we are all cast in our own life drama novels anyway. No one wants to live in a drama but we often do even when it’s third hand or when we are just all “watchers” like in the fringe or living inside Jackson’s Lottery.

A long time ago – in two separate universes – one undergraduate writing class at Columbia University General Studies and the other two decades later in the Master’s Degree Creative Writing Program at The City University of New York City, A comment/ question was made regarding my style.

A fellow student said, “her characters lack any empathy; for my part they’re completely lacking. Why should I care about them?”

Basically both professors said the same; “The point is not whether you like them or not, but that you feel something about them. You may not like her characters, but they are real enough to tick you off. I care about what her characters will do next and that’s more important than liking or not liking them because that will keep me reading!” After this the class calmed down about my characters’ personalities. All I can guess is that they led more conservative sheltered circumscribed lives than me.

Not to disappoint but I also had the opposite happen with a weak instructor who later stole a few lines from my writing. He asked for my complete novel and I stupidly gave it to him. The class said I’d already presented enough when one of those times was an assignment no one else did – we were asked to choose a character from history and write a page or two about them. I read mine since no one else had one. Ah well, I was disappointed he didn’t defend me since I clearly hadn’t presented my two short stories. It bothered me but I pity him too as he hasn’t written anything worth reading in a while after he stooped to a new low. No one else from there gained name fame either so ... onwards all to a new phase and forgetting the past!

Creative people often set a standard and in that standard social commentary is included. If you don’t like a character I’ve made, that character has already served his purpose because he has provoked your dislike and judgments.

Writing is all I know and the only way to show true purpose. I’m also part of my own commentary emerging from a consistently frightful analytic mind. That said, like everyone else, I only want to be my best.

Ta Da!

Back to where we began:

May your new year be all that you wish it be; blessed be.

busy busy busy

Working hard at the Cartier Street Review- yippee.
We're now on Poets and Writers list of Literary Magazines. For those of you who don't want to go; here's the spiel copied below. I included the quote from newpages blog since I was very pleased to see us there too.

CSR is an online quarterly poetry and art publication on Issuu. CSR accepts contemporary poetry, articles on contemporary poetry, short prose, writer interviews and reviews. TCSR is an international literary magazine and will publish in other languages alongside translation. "The masthead of The Cartier Street Review is a testament to online opportunities … opened for literary ventures: Founding Editor Bernard Alain hails from Canada, Principal Editor Joy Leftow and Assistant Editor "Dubblex" from New York, and staff member Thomas Hubbard from Puget Sound, Washington." Newpages blog.

We've been working on redoing our garage band tunes. The first blues tune was very elemental compared to the tracks we put down today. Featuring DubbleX playing back up blues guitar and melodica in the background. I'm tellin' you people, I'm not tryin' to lose ya'll - I want to share ya'll with his artistry. Please visit DubbleXDiaries We collaborate a lot so I think you'll enjoy the entertainment. Right now we are working on some poetry collaborations mixed with a spoken word skit with a hook. DubbleX has a lot of ideas.

More news to report; Brad Eubanks has joined staff, Bernard Alain, Joy Leftow and Thomas Hubbard as editorial intern. We are pleased to have his help. I am looking for one more reader and someone who could continue the same level of expertise Bernard provides in doing layout. I am also talking to another person about helping with business acumen as related to carrying on this literary endeavor. The work is phenomenal.

I've brought up readership at Cartier to 2000 hits a month and according to our leader and founder, Bernard Alain, these are no BS hits, many from university and faculty members. Dubblex thinks we need to charge 99 cents per download for the mag and someone else suggested a poetry contest. I was thinking a reading fee; 2 poems for $5, 3 to 5 poems for $10. Any ideas or comments folks? Feel free to email me.

On that same subject DubbleX and I are cutting a promotional disk of 4 bluetry & 4 musipoems and we were wondering if anyone cares to buy one for $5 including the postage.

I also have some paid work for next month so for the next two weeks I will be working hard at this project. It's already half done.

the beat goes on.

Blog Postings & More

I don't want you all to think I'm not writing, I am. I'm just slow to posting (forgive the pun) write now. Thoughts come and go, my life comes and goes, take care & hope to see you there. (hey Coyote, did you steal that line from me or I from you) I have it in a previous post, 15 Minutes of Fame.
I've written 2 more blues poems that I'm still thinking about. I promised myself to write a series & to sing a few lines when I read. This is very difficult as my Dad was a musician (indeed his entire family were musicians) & Dad always told me I'm tone deaf but DubbleX has me convinced I'm far from it. DubbleX pointed out I always recognize a sour note!
I'm also considering removing my gcast player from way back where it is on the beginning of my blog and putting it in a new entry up front where it's more accessible. This way people who have already listened can turn it on & off more easily instead of searching for it. Really at this point, there's so many writings on my blog that friends of mine have commented that they keep trying to keep up with my writing but there's too much there. I could just recycle everything.
Let me tell you what's going on. It's 27 degrees out and I'm trying to force myself to go to the Post Office & pick up a few things, but I haven't left the house since Sunday last. Am I crazy? I never denied it.
Artistically, I have been producing poetry but neglecting my novel and I'm up to page 183. Also the CEO of Augustus asked me to submit another short story for Lipstick Diaries II but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I am also supposed to put together a poetry manuscript for him plus I have a childrens' story and my artist needs to give me the drawings or we may lose this deal. Hear that Heather Levy? I also am helping Bernard Alain with The Cartier Street Review. In addition, Roxanne Hoffman from Poets Wear Prada Press offered DubbleX & I a chapbook deal which I am more inclined to work on right now & get together than the full length book of poetry.
The other thing I always do is remember others. When I get requests for submissions I look them over and pass them on to people that they seem appropriate for. I also started the fan club for Ira Lightman, and yikes, how it's grown. Get the point? I like sharing. That's what makes life worthwhile. On that note I encourage you to check out Renee Dwyer's blog, Pocketing the Anvil.

thinking reading & writing

My characters come alive when I write them and very often I am acting entire scenes out while writing ... or so it would seem to anyone watching me. This is great for writing dialogue because when you speak your characters' lines you know when they ring true.
DD says he never did this before but by watching me he observes how it helps me. I do this with my narrative poetry as well. I love friends with keen ears too. I like to read to people from my book or new poetry. Either. Somehow either way - I'm not exactly what you expect me to be. I've been compared to post modernist and confessional style poets but the truth is, at the time I was being accused of following or imitating them, I had never read Ginsberg or Sylvia Plath. I was too busy writing 10 to 30 page term papers several times each term. I didn't have time for much else besides being a part time mom. Back then, I didn't do a lot of creative writing except for my journals. I went to Columbia for 8 straight years to get a B.A. & M.S.W.. Before that was me & my GED.
It's kind of amazing when you consider that drop out Joy became the ivy league drop in and now has two masters degrees. Colombia is tough and competitive - I kid you not. To maintain a 3.3 average is a full time job. After I finally graduated and settled into a J. O. B., I began writing again. It's hard out here for us poets and writers.
The point is that sometimes it's a deterrent when you really are difficult to pigeonhole. When you sound truly like you and no one else - it's harder to fit in anyplace. People say they want creative and unique because that is what we're all trained to say. The truth is sometimes the feeling you get from reading someone and feeling uncomfortable can be ok too and has its own power. Not everyone can love me or you or anyone else's work. Some people are naturally more controversial and colorful. It's the way life goes. "Explore ... Search for more, no more prisoners of war..."
Celebrating page 170 on my grind plus maintaining this blog and writing poetry too...
Oh and I forgot and working on the magazine and two anthologies!

Reading writing ... equals living - how what you read can affect what you write.

Right now I'm reading Carl Hiaasen's Nature Girl and recently finished Juno Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Also in the past year, I have read a lot from Elizabeth Benedict, who analyzes and fully understands the depths of her characters. The point of all this is that in the last two days of writing I feel my style being freed up and am more willing to take risks with my writing style, which is also fun. When I read Diaz, I noted how sometimes I had been amazed at certain turns of speech he used because I had used the same exact turn of words in dialogues. Coincidence or perhaps observational skills. Some of his language was very flavorful. In thinking more about that I realized that there are many are euphemisms and dialectical familiarities specific to people who have lived in the Heights or maybe I could spread that to include the whole of the northeast.
These thoughts and feelings brought me a step further in my novel writing. On around page 90 of my novel I started to cut loose more. Another thing I've begun to do, is to let some rhymes slip into my character's speech only when when they appear there on my tongue. Diaz inspired me to explore my own style more.
I have great respect for poets who write in form although mostly I tend not to. That said, I have pantoums and sestinas as well as quadrants, sonnets, lists & several others. The same with rhyme, I respect all poets who rhyme. I say what I mean to say if I rhyme or not in the spheres of time. DX always teases me and says I rhyme all the time when I speak so I don't have to rhyme in my poetry. He's prejudiced since he loves my poetry.
I have always read a great deal my entire life and still do. Reading helps make us good writers. On occasion I like to imitate someone I like. Early on in this blog I have an imitation writing posted of Marguerite Duras. Check it. I also recently friended Marilyn Nelson (on FB) whose work I greatly admire. I actually wrote a poem imitating her style in a class in my Masters writing program. Maybe I'll post it & maybe not. I'll think about it.