This mind can't contain all these words
It’s the last week of National Poetry Month. You did it! You made it! The last terrible poem you have to read!
Until next year.
Get Ready With Me
She lets her coffee cool as
she puts together her face
puts together her day
puts together her life
one coat of mascara at a time
Hang in there. National Poetry Month and the terrible poetry is almost over. Just one more week after this.
My Soul’s Meat Vehicle
Sometimes I think I’m just stardust
With delusions of grandeur
Living a whole life
That I made no plan for
That I’m nothing more than mediocre
A dull, used old soul
Inhabiting a blob of skin
That does little to keep out the cold
Most times, though, I feel rather bold
And insist on my space
My spirit roars into the room
Scattering folks with haste
It’s true, I am not to everyone’s taste
The gallons I get to the mile
How I customized my ride
They can’t dig my outward style
Just like them, I here for a while
Stardust looking for a miracle
Cruising along with the top down
In my soul’s meat vehicle
National Poetry Month continues and so does the terrible poetry.
John’s Last Phone Booth
I’d like to get lost
for a little while
look for the last
phone booth
put in some change
dial a number
and talk to no one
in particular
I’d like to get lost
for a little while
walk cracked roads
to nowhere
see no faces
that I know
or no faces
at all
I’d like to get lost
for a little while
lose myself once
or twice
find my way
back again
the same but
someone else
April is National Poetry Month and in honor of that, instead of a weekly blog post, you’ll be subjected to a weekly poem. Will they be good? No. Like my tiny terribly art, I do this for my own enjoyment. Being good has nothing to do with it.
Even if I did win second place in a state poetry contest my sophomore year of high school.
But I digress.
Gird your loins.
Art
Colorful and dark
I’ll bring the blues
and greens and pinks
and whites
I’ll always bring the white
the too bright washout
fade
the Browns and the Blacks
and the Yellows and the Reds
I’ll bring the beige
The purples we talk about
and the greys we don’t
The oranges we swallow
and the truths we won’t
I’ll bring the indigo, the violet
the night
the rainbow
I’ll bring the colors
smeared on the dark
A painting
A still life
unframed
April was sort of a wacky month. I took a break from the To Do List to do a couple of things on my wishlist and ended up getting nothing done that I intended, but things did get done.
I was supposed to put together a poetry chapbook and do some research on one of the TV books I want to write one day. What I ended up doing was writing a poem a day (like I usually do in April for National Poetry Month) because I felt like I didn’t have the poems I needed/wanted for a chapbook, working on Book ’em, Danno (it’s still a mess, but getting better), writing one short story to submit for an anthology, and two pieces of hint fiction for a contest.
Wild how that happens, huh?
This month I’m getting back to the To Do List. I’m going to revise Murderville Season 4. Yes, that’s it. I’m dealing with some personal shit right now, so I’m trying to play it with a loose hat, as they say. I need the room to be flexible and committing to only one project this month will let me do that.
Besides, we’ve seen what happens when I give myself a little room. Who knows what I might end up talking myself into doing because I have the time?
However, Murderville: Rounds of Luck is running out of time. Only three more episodes left! Episode 5 goes live on May 14th. Become a patron for only $1 or $2 an episode and enjoy the fun. There’s always plenty of time for that.
Last month I wrapped up the first round of revisions on The End of the (Werewolf) Curse and wrote the first draft of a short story called “The Support Group Meets on Wednesday”, as well as continued writing my one page a day for my experiment.
What I did not do was submit any short stories.
It’s the same ol’, same ol’. I look at what I have ready to submit and then I look at the markets that I find that are taking submissions and things don’t match up. At the very end of the month, I did find one story that kind of matched with one market, but I ended up re-writing the story to make it match better. So, I’ll submit it this month. And I’ll hopefully be able to submit another story or two to other places.
It also looks like I’ll be continuing my agent search with (Vampires) Made in America.
I’m not exactly sure, as I stare at my To Do List of Doom, what I want to work on this month. I think that’s a sign that I need to switch gears a bit.
Since April is National Poetry Month, I’m going to attempt to write a poem every day. I’ve done this before and I enjoyed myself. I have so many poem fragments around, I feel like this will be a good way to turn them into something while also shaking things up a bit.
I may also work on some non-fiction. I’ve got some possible projects that I’ve been speculating on and now might be the time to take a harder look at them.
Maybe I’ll work on a script since I have so many of them in various stages, too.
This month is my oyster, really.
Speaking of sea things…
Come to the Rocks is set to be released by NineStar Press on April 16th! Pre-order it and you get three days early. So order today! It’s like set it and forget it and then you get a surprise that will have your future self thanking your past self. Trust me.
Episode four of Murderville: The End Of goes live on April 10th. Become a patron for only $1 an episode. $2 patrons will get a bonus on April 24th. It’s never too late to get in on a killer good time.
April turned out to be quite a productive month for me, quite unintentionally really.
I finished the latest round of revisions on The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys as well as the first drafts of all five of the potential script contest entries (first fifteen pages and one-page synopsis) before I left for Chicago. Part of the purpose of going to Chicago, besides seeing friends and eating orange chicken, was to be able to work on my writing without interruption or distraction. I found myself in a hotel room with no major writing project demanding my attention as I was still undecided what script to do for the contest. I ended up polishing “What You Don’t See” and “Short Hallway” (I polished a haunted hotel story in a hotel room while watching 1408 because my commitment to a theme cannot be denied) and got about a third of Voice polished before I left. A productive short trip despite the anxiety troubles I had.
I finished polishing Voice after I got home. I then turned my attention to the script contest. I ended up picking one called Open Christmas Eve and did my best to get those first fifteen pages perfect. I hit the “What the fuck am I doing? I can’t do this! I have no idea what I’m doing. This is pointless” wall Friday night, got my “Fuck it” second wind Saturday afternoon, and after a few more tweaks and some polishing, I submitted it Saturday night. I recognize that it’s probably a waste of an entry fee (and only with extreme luck will I even win that entry fee back), but I still did it. There is some kind of accomplishment in pushing myself to explore different forms of writing.
Speaking of, April was National Poetry Month and as an exercise I made myself write at least four lines of poetry a day. They’re just scraps of poems, nothing glorious, and I have no idea what, if anything, I’ll do with them (I posted one on my Instagram at the end of the month to celebrate), but it was a fun little project.
After all of that in April, what’s to be done in May?
I’m going to completely finish The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys. It needs a little more revision (just some tweaks), a beta read, and a polish. Once that’s done, I’ll get to work putting together the ghost story collection. I’m also going to work on finishing the first draft of Open Christmas Eve. Now that it’s submitted, the rest of the script should be easy to finish and I’ll feel like less of a cheat having the whole thing written.
I sort of feel like spending the summer writing a short novel. I’ve got the idea (actually, I have two ideas, but I think I’m going to save one for NaNo) and I think I’ll spend some time this month working on fleshing it out.
No worries about getting bored. Still plenty left on my To Do List of Doom.
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