Kick in the Head

I am the Dean Martin of writing.
I realized this yesterday afternoon
Washing dishes at work while
Discussing the virtues of
Subtle denouements, the best nom de plume,
And how zeugmas demean a serious style
To my disinterested friends.

But I go home to write each night
And my three drafts are dusty
And my poetry is like autumn leaves, crinkled and rusty.
I’m alone in a sea of words I sometimes fear
I’ll never see or even hear.

I drink and I drink
Till I’m so sober that I start to sink
Beneath the arch of my living room foyer.
I don’t think I could write any worse or slower
Than if I slurred my words like a sot-weed sower.
But Frankie wants another performance tomorrow
So I puff up my pride to swallow my sorrow.

 

 

NaNoWriMo Word Count: 1933. I’m getting there. That’s one full chapter, by the way. We’ll see how far I am after the weekend.

nine nonnets

the quality of
her journeys
glory and orange scales
end with
her blood

ghosts of old industry
above woodsmoke fog
shudder in the haze
bounded on all sides

sun storm afternoon
checked red shotguns
white on fingers,
snowing shadow,
painted skin
of blood

she hears each
shrunken
cloud

a woman
motionless,

each is made of
the folding
in the stormclouds

time claims
each dawn
old and broken down

jungle
moon, the centre
above the street signs
oasis
above sky

thin,
white flesh

 

 

The way I formed this poem is interesting, and I think deserves a bit of explanation. This poetry is of a genre called found poetry. It involves looking through various random forms of media, anything from an article on the internet to a piece of graffiti on a street wall. Poets then have the liberty of

In this case, I found a website (here) that generated poems, specifically nonnets. As I mentioned the last time I wrote one, a nonnet is a form of poetry where the first line is nine syllables, the second line is eight syllables, the third line is seven syllables, etc. through the ninth line. I used this website to create nine nonnets (or nonets, as the site spells them). The website isn’t very distinct in lines of poetry, so a few of the lines (particularly the ones with few syllables) were repeated between these nine nonnets.

I pasted them all, in order of poem generation, into a Word document and then crossed out anything I didn’t want. In fact, many of the lines in the above poem corresponds to an individual line from one of the nine nonnets. However, I did change the lineation and spacing in some of the earlier stanzas. My goal was to take at least one part of a line from each nonnet, while not taking any direct phrases from the poems. That way, I could give the poem a voice unique from any of the nonnets it came from.

Anyway, as for NaNoWriMo… well, I’ll just go ahead and say it. My word count is 151. All of that was written in the last hour, too. I never really get a good start in NaNoWriMo, so I’m not very worried (especially since I’ve been too busy with school and work to care much). I’m hoping to have a very good weekend, though. Perhaps… 15,000 word good? We’ll see.

NaNoWriMo 2013

It’s November.  That means it’s time for NaNoWriMo.

For those unaware, NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) is a month long writing spree.  The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.  You aren’t allowed to write anything previously (though you can, of course, make outlines and characters and such) and you are highly discouraged from editing (that’s for December or, if we’re being official, March).

I participated during my last two years of high school and my freshman year of college, and I actually managed to finish each time.  It’s been a couple years since I last had time to participate, and certain events had actually discouraged me from writing fiction for a certain amount of time.

But, I’ve had an idea or two rolling around in my head for some time.  I was going to write this novel in August as part of a senior year project, but I decided to hold off until November.  It’s just been far too long since I last participated.

So, what does that mean for this place?  Well, paradoxically, when my month is filled with this many projects, I find I typically have more time than usual.  Here’s my goal for the next month: I plan on posting at least one poem each week in November (yes, I know that’s my general goal, but I haven’t been good on keeping that recently).  Each time, after the poem, I’ll update my word count.

There may also be another way to keep you apprised of my progress, but I’m still thinking about it.  Anyway, I’m shooting for Wednesdays for these posts, so look for them.

I’ll have more information about what my novel is actually about next week, maybe.  As for now, I have to go write my main character’s death scene.  And yes, that is in Chapter One.