To book or not to book?

For the majority of my life I'd dreamed of being a published author. My ambitions throughout high school and most of college was to work on my writing to eventually be published. I wanted to have a tangible book to be able to put on a bookshelf someplace to gather dust. Since then I have come to question the idea of what it even means to become a published writer in an age of e-books and twitter's 180 character limits. Bloggers getting paid to do what they do without ever having to involve a large corporate entity's approval to put their words out there. What does it mean to even still want tangible books instead of an e-reader that has a whole library in it?

John Waters', a fellow Baltimorian, said it best: "We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them"

I don't know if books will ever be able to be cool again in the way they once were. Having a new Android tablet often turns more heads than a bookshelf full of even the most amazing and wonderful books. Books may be a dying format like so many other analog media formats. On top of that where would I even go with a poetry manuscript to try and get someone to pay enough attention to publish it? I see a lot of small presses that are publishing poetry all over the place, but most of these places require a year long tour commitment to create the audience to buy the work. I'm still in the single digits as far as public performance goes. I want to be a poet, not a rock star. If I wanted to be a rock star I'd have joined a band.

I've been thinking a lot about how I'd like to pursue my ambitions to get my writing to an audience. I don't know how I'll go about it exactly. I just know that trying to get a collection of my work published isn't really something I want to do right now. I want to try to build on my performance. I need to spend more time reading my work aloud to get used to the sound of it. I need to stop hating the sound of my voice so much so I can record and learn from the way I read things. I accept that if I want to have a wider audience I need to work on my presentation.

I've been brain storming ideas. for what I may want to do. I think I want to try doing some recording of various places I enjoy and then record a poem over the audio of the footage. Maybe I can wrangle some of my other unemployed or empty scheduled friends to help out with it. It is a fledgling of an idea. It may work out better in my head than in execution, but who cares. It's something to keep busy with while I'm waiting for the next thing to come along and pay me to do something.

Poetry Post: Keep Calm and Carry On

I've lost the "f" in the un
of my employment.
My belt is finding notches
I've never needed.
I am losing weight
I didn't know I had.

The place I live holds
no more surprises.
I've collected the dust bunnies
in all the out of the way corners.

I'd exercise myself
into a healthy state of mind,
but I can't afford
to burn the calories.
My shoes don't have
very much sole left,
I don't want to waste it
pacing out my insecurities.

I just want to catch a break.
Give me a chance
and I'll find a way
to help fix it.
I'm tired of holding my breath
until I'm sure I should
have given up days ago.

Poetry Post: The Fish Tank Diver

I know I know. I'm shitty at updated, but I don't think I got a wide enough reader base for anyone to notice. I'll be better about it this week. I've got a lot I've been dealing with lately so I've been sort of scatter brained. Just starting to get everything settled to put some thoughts together into a blog.

In the meantime, here is my first draft of a poem I've been working on. I say first draft, because I tend to write something ignore it for some time then go back to it later to cut it all up and make it smoother. I never know how much editing will actually be done to it until after it happens.


The Fish Tank Diver
The life of a plastic fish tank diver
is stationary and boring.
He stands guard over a treasure chest
filled with fools gold and bubbles.

His gaze is fixed,
focused on point beyond the glass.

That was where he saw her.
Leaning close to the glass to feed the fish.
She was an air breather,
a dry-land girl.
She was beautiful,
give up your treasure and learn to dry out beautiful,
hold your breath to keep from scaring her away beautiful,
wish you could jump start your plastic guts and run away with her beautiful,
compelled to tell her nothing but the truth beautiful.

Since Welsh is the only language
that can be spoken under water
he confessed with it:
“wrth eu bodd”
“fy nghariad yn unig”

As his oxygenation broke the surface
she turned and leaned into his gaze
tapping the glass to say hello.
It was the first time
he’d felt the click clack of
his plastic heart beat.