Journal of Fear and Hope

Two Ways to Go
April 20, 2018

Gonna put Will-of-the-Wisp on hold for a moment and post a poem. It is National Poetry Month, after all. So now for something completely different:

My Granny kept a box of comic books in the attic for me and my cousins to look at. They had belonged to my uncles and aunts, and Granny wanted to pass them on to the next generation. Some of them might have been my dad's, before drugs, alcohol, and rage became his new hobbies. I also have his stamp collection. I'm reminded that he was a kid, too, once. His innocence was once intact, and maybe it could have stayed, with the application of more comic books and stamps. In Granny's attic there was also a box of magazines belonging to my grandfather. A collection of Playboys and Penthouses. When I was a kid, I chose to spend time with the comic books. If that had been the only box in the attic, would I have been making a choice? Would I have become a different person had I chosen the contents of the other cardboard box? Or was my personality already such that I could only have made that one decision?

I don't know. I just like comic books. I like superheroes. We have police and soldiers, and they can't stop killing or incarcerating innocent people. I want real heroes with a true fix on Moral North. But with superheroes you also get archvillains whose compasses point the other way. Here I am in the in between grey, dreaming in four colours, wishing I was stronger, wiser, better.

Adrenalin Surge
April 13, 2018

You enter the woods at a full sprint, chasing that glow, leaping over stickfalls and briar snags, headlong and heartstrong. The dream is just within reach. But eventually you start to slow. You catch your sleeve on a thorn, twist your ankle in a hole. You get lost, get bad directions. You put up a tent, a temporary place to stop and rest. Just a for a while. You'll get back to the chase as soon your wounds are healed and you catch your breath and you bank enough money to take a few months off. Then you relocate to a house in the suburbs. There's time to rejoin the chase. That glittering glow still calls to you. The woods still beckon. The dream isn't dead. It's just in a box. In the closet. Underneath some old papers you've been meaning to get rid of.

Music, Man
April 6, 2018

I get really into music, sometimes to an embarrassing degree. I headbang in traffic, bounce around in my chair at work. As a teen, I would bike through the neighborhood with my Walkman, Living Colour cranked in my ears, and I would stop whenever the music got real righteous and Corey Glover dug deep into his soul, and I would just rock out wherever I happened to be. Maybe I'd drop to my knees and punch my fists to the sky, maybe I'd perform a solo mosh pit in a stranger's yard. Whatever the music moved me to do. These days I can keep my surface mostly calm as I rock out on the inside. But once in a while you might catch me making an odd face and scrunching my eyes. Don't worry. I'm just at church, and the guitar is preaching a fiery gospel. Can I get a hallelujah?

What I've Been Hiding
March 30, 2018

I decided to go ahead and post the lyrics from a few albums I've never had the time or talent to write music for. I'm calling these unsung songs. First up is an album of material written across several decades. As usual, the themes are dark, and I mention my father a couple of times. These songs have lived in notebooks for years, floating into conscious thought now and then and filling me with the urge to record. Seeing them gathered here for the first time as a concept, as a single artifact, I want more than ever to make them into real songs. Until I can, here they are as simple words on a screen. Sing them however you'd like. Hear them however they want.

With My Pen and Magic Thinking Cap
February 26, 2018

I've written on computer, on my phone, with a typewriter, in notebooks, on looseleaf, post-it notes, the backs of envelopes, on whatever scratch scrap of paper happened to be at hand. But I’ve done most of my writing inside the bone dome of my head. I don’t mean planning or plotting before I get to the real business of capturing the animal on paper. No, I mean I’ve put together whole songs, poems, and paragraphs in my head and carried them around for hours or days. I’ve written at work, on the commute to and from, in the shower, doing chores, or just walking around among normal humans. I captured and caged the beast between the synapses then transplanted the thing to paper or digital media. It’s an exhilarating way to write. But you feel pressure to get it on paper. Write it down before you lose it. And I’ve lost some. But then again, I’ve lost some things that were on paper, too.

What I’m trying to get at, in this roundabout way, is even when I physically can’t write, I can still write. That feels like a super power sometimes.

Already Gone
February 16,2018

There's a line from a Rollins Band song, "Don't let me forget that satisfaction has no friends." When I write a new poem or finish a project, I like to bask for a few days in that did-a-good-job glow. Parking Lot is a reminder that nothing I do will survive for long in this world. What is the lifespan of a poem compared to a structure of concrete and steel? Think you're so great because you can string together a decent, alliterative line? Sorry to say, you're already gone.

But have you experienced the world you're in. Have you breathed it in and tasted the air, either fresh or foul? Or do you only pay attention to your own, insignificant words? These are questions I need to ask myself once in a while. This poem is me doing just that.

Soul Coughing
February 13, 2018

I wrote Before the Clouds as an act of desperation. I hadn't finished a poem in weeks, and I had no ideas in the hopper. So one night, on my way home from work, I had to stop at the grocery store to stock up. My daughter was sick, and I wasn't feeling too great myself. I was depressed. I felt low. I felt useless. Walking my loaded cart through the parking lot, I looked up at the night sky and spoke the first line of the poem aloud. Not the greatest line of poetry ever written, but it was something. The next line came as I was putting everything in the trunk. Then my wife texted, adding more to the list. I walked back inside and spoke another line under my breath. It really got going on the second trip back to the car. I like the line about dreaming a river's dream. I drove from the grocery store across two parking lots to the drug store and picked up some cough medicine and another line of the poem.

By the way, as they were coming to me, I would dictate the lines into my phone using text to speech. Yeah, it knew the word “eons.” I'm sure I'm not the first to write poetry that way, but it feels nice to add to my list of tools.

I finished the poem as I left the drug store, spoke it into my phone, gave it a title. It was finished. I had done something. No one on Earth knew. Very few know now. But I felt lighter having completed it. I was a writer once more. I know you're always writing even when you’re not putting the words down. But putting the words down is essential. Even if the final product is only just okay, you're a better writer and a better person each time you do it. But don't worry, I didn't let myself stay satisfied. I started a new poem the day after, and I made myself ponder some tough questions. I'll tell you more about that next week.

For a Friend
February 9, 2018

I wrote Acorn for a friend and fellow writer, but I never let them know. I saw from a few social meida posts they were have doubts about their writing, so I wanted to throw out something I thought sounded catchy and poetic and helpful. Then it turned into a poem. By then a bunch of their friends were chiming in with support, and my poem seemed more like attention seeking rather than a true attempt to help. So I held back.

We all get lost. I thought this was a nice thing to keep in mind when now is not what you thought it would be.

Electric Pie
January 30, 2018

I wrote this essay as an introduction to a book that I hope, hope, hope, to have completed before the end of this year. The book will be about growing up as a nerd, not fitting in, finding comfort in games and books and like-minded friends. My usual. I've been heavily editing a bunch of stuff that's on the site now. I'm somewhat uneasy retreading and repackaging old material to sell as something new. I take a little comfort, though, in knowing that many websites so the same thing. So keep watch here for more info on that project as it progresses. I hope it progresses.

The book was going to be called Facing 42, which a play on a poem by Ogden Nash. Forty-two is a special number to me, but I'm not 42 any longer. Of course, I can still call it that, but I can no longer say I finished it while I was 42. It was supposed to be a gift to myself at that age. But as usual, I'm late. It's still a fun project. Last year was super hard, and it's looking like 43 will be even harder. I need something to distract my mind from the pain and difficuly. Writing is one of the few panaceas I have left.

Another Chance to Do It Right
January 2, 2018

It took longer than I thought it would, but part two of Twenty-Five Years of Reading is finally up. That concludes my self-made deadlines for 2017. I'm going to lean on the positive, as I do, and celebrate the fact I got it done. Doesn't matter if it's late. It's complete. Now on to the many projects I'm tasking myself with this year. Get that book done. Talk into a microphone. More essays. Post some old stuff no one's ever seen. 2018 will be a year!

--More Journal Entries--

"Too many flames with too much to burn, and life's only made of paper" --Ronnie James Dio

"Words are flowing out
Like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away
Across the universe" --John Lennon

"Bow to the paper Gods in a world that is paper thin
The fools in town are ruling now" --Duran Duran

"Here I sit writing on the paper
Trying to think of words you can't ignore"
--Alice in Chains