Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Thursday thoughts on writing, falling and Julia Vinograd

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The great poet, Julia Vinograd, the “Bubble-Lady” of Berkley, noted in an interview that was published last year, that writing poetry, when it works, “…is a lot like flying.” Because, when it doesn’t work, it is a “…lot like falling”. Ms Vinograd, who has been writing poetry since late 50’s, and is the author of no less than 59 books of verse, should certainly know something about the creative process involved in writing a poem. I am thinking of her words today as I peruse a folder on the hard drive of my laptop called poems_unfin. These poems are ones that I started but didn’t finish. They remain unfinished, not because I do not have the wherewithal to complete them, but because the process was becoming, as Ms Vinograd says, a lot like falling. Anyone who has written anything for public consumption (poem, short story, novel, blog post, etc.) knows the feeling, and when you are falling you know it.

Poetry projects, I think, are particularly vulnerable to rapid abandonment due to the very short runway they allow the author. The type of poems that I enjoy writing (and reading) are typically in the vicinity of 550 – 1300 words – and that is not a lot of room for error. Compared to say, a 30,000 word novella, a typical poem does allow you a lot of space to say what you want to say, so you’ve either got to say it quickly and say it very well, or just forget about it. Unlike novels, short stories, or even non-fiction work, there isn’t another chapter to distract you when your motivation drags.

It is worthwhile to note that there are a good many more poems in my poems_unfin folder that reside in my poems_COMPLETE folder. For this reason, often I find myself returning to my unfinished work and giving it another go, but I will be honest, usually it doesn’t work that way. Some poems must remain unwritten until the chemistry between subject and writer comes together and the poem takes flight. Sometimes, well most times really, that doesn’t happen.

So this is what I am thinking about this afternoon at EEOTPB. In addition to several poems that have made it into my poems_COMPLETE folder, I plan to post more about the writing process, and what mine is like, but more importantly I hope to hear from you, about you. I have communicated with some fine poets and writers since I have been blogging here and I’d like to know what makes it all come together for you. Is it a particular time of day, a certain chair, a certain pen, a laptop in the park, or an old Smith-Corona in the basement? Do you prefer classical music playing on the stereo (headphones, yes or no), jazz, kick ass rock, or maybe you prefer stone cold silence. How about drunk or sober (don’t laugh as many have tried both. For me the latter is the only way to go, but the great Charles Bukowski preferred the former, although he did confess to writing a few good poems while in the clutches of a ‘black hangover’).

In closing, I shall link to one of my favorite poems by Ms Vinograd here.

W E Patterson's avatar

washed up

. Poetry, Uncategorized . , , , . 2 Comments

                        i

when i was about nine years old

I asked my old man

about a guy I saw on television

talking to Howard Cosell

He’s a washed up fighter

my old man said

he took so many punches

that it scrambled his brains

was he ever good? I asked

yeah, in the beginning he was good

but they pounded the crap out of him

so bad that he couldn’t win big fights

so he only took little fights

because he knew he could win them

but after awhile,

he couldn’t win those either

so he’d just go in the ring

and wait for the first punch to land

then he’d go down and kiss the mat

playing it safe, just like he was told to do

by the evil bastards who used him up

and when that didn’t work anymore

he quit being a fighter

and now all he has left is Vegas–

maybe some gambling joint will hire him

to pump palms at the door

or smoke cigars with East Coast mobsters

or show up at restaurant openings with strippers

 

ii

so I’m forty five years old

and I’m thinking about the fighter

and my old man, who’s been dead

for twenty three years

as I sit in front of the Olivetti portable typewriter

on the porch of the farmhouse

up in the Poconos

and Leah comes home

from work at the diner at 1:30AM

and asks how the writing is going

and I tell her

I haven’t written a line all day

nor did I write a line yesterday

or the day before that

and the rejection notice

that I received two weeks ago

is still attached to the door of the refrigerator

under the Carlsbad Caverns magnet

where I plan to leave it, until the next one comes

at which time it shall be removed

to join the assemblage of others

in the knife drawer in the kitchen

You think you’re washed up don’t you

she says to me, and I tell her that:

I have had too many blows to the head lately

so it may be time,

to notify Vegas, and let them know

I’m on the market.

nonsense Leah says,

you’re germaphobic

you’re allergic to smoke

and you’re going nowhere near

a restaurant opening.

 

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why I don’t cruise

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my friend Mimi says
she’s leaving town
and tells me that she’s going cruising
NOT in the Volvo
I say to her
not tonight – please
because it’s in no condition
to be on the street

and neither are you

dear Mimi
for that matter
but she laughs and
we order more wine
(Bordeaux)
and she says she’s
cruising to
the Caribbean
to Nassau
and St. Kitts
and Barbuda
Barbuda?? What the hell??
Where the hell??
I tell her that you couldn’t get me
on a boat, for any price
Because
I can’t swim
I have scanty identification
I am of uncertain national origin
I’ve been investigated
and I have:
pale complexion
unpaid parking tickets
in the city of Margate
a delicate constitution
and my night vision
is compromised
to say nothing of the fact
that
my second wife
depleted my savings
my MasterCard is rescinded
so therefore, I have no inclination
to gamble with
Norovirus
nor with
real estate agents from Paducah
or CPAs from White Plains
nor with
long winded Dallas day traders
who cruise
with their platinum haired
mistresses
and I refuse to
listen to the confused ramblings
of a misplaced heiress
in the throes of delirium tremens
so I shall remain here –
until proverbial hell
freezes —
and again I say to Mimi
I’ll remain ashore
my feet in the sand
my dry elbows on
polished teak
right here
until the Bamboo Bar runs dry.

 

W E Patterson's avatar

my last cigarette

. Poetry, Uncategorized . , , , , . 7 Comments

last night I dreamed of you

wept for you, called out to you

but prayed fervently

that you would never

resurrect,

not you…

…you one hundred millimeter

mentholated bastard,

because I see you yet

in the last moments of

disintegration

your heinous life, snuffed

and ending in a bitter blue haze

that steams forth, as you lie

crippled beyond repair

your slender body

crushed and fragmented

into a cluster of a half dozen

tiny glowing cinders,

embers that gleam

like demons’ eyes

phosphorescent

and dying

as they devolve into ash

and join the others

in the black, hard-plastic ashtray

that sits beside a white, bone china mug…

“Patty’s Diner”

“Open all Nite”

“Since 1955”

it says on the mug

a mug that’s beside

(and slightly to the left of)

a plate of scrambled eggs

and overdone potatoes…

…the platter uneaten

as Charlie Pride sings

on the tablejuke

“Just Between You and Me”

and I declare that tonight

on April the eighteenth

nineteen hundred and eighty two

at ten thirty seven PM

we are officially over.

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midnight at the Edsall Road Denny’s

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You,

dressed in your corporate finery

your laptop computer buried beneath

your legs

your sixteen hours at Labor

just another day

and my disaster

at Manassas

hidden in the bowels

of a locked hard drive

in the password protected

fucked totally

world of the Governmental

warlords

but:

together we push

our bodies toward each other

in the red faux leather booths

in the expression of final

Governmental Approval

all denied, then security

granted another day

amid the Beltway masses

half-assed coffee with creamers

pies with ice cream

scrambled eggs and

fries

on the side

workers from the night shift

poking their heads

around the corner

wondering if there is hope

in this  land

and we tell them

there’s not.

W E Patterson's avatar

lost travelers all

. Poetry, Uncategorized . , . 2 Comments

“how did I get here?”

such words of desperation

are spoken so often

softly

in the first half-light of day

or harshly,

in the aftermath,

of a knockdown fight

sometimes spoken whimsically

but other times

uttered with grave reverence

to the dire consequences

and the inevitable

unpleasant results

5 words which are:

murmured by the infirm

mumbled by the forgotten

shouted by the incarcerated

slurred by the inebriated

cried tearfully by the lost

whispered by the humbled

you know…

those who:

were momentarily, and

with very little ceremony

given over to reckless

pursuits, in the dark of night

5 words spoken usually

as the color of the new day

pours across the rose colored sheets

of the Waycroft Motel

or lightens the sky above

the White Sands Motor Lodge

or heats the cheek-side desert sand

of the El Paso train yard

or tumbles into the alley behind

the Side Pocket Saloon

or causes the bars

of the Clark County Detention Center

to cast long parallel shadows

down Cell block B

or whitewashes the corridors

of Jackson Memorial

where it

brings the hope of new day

to the victim of

last night’s bike crash on I -95

“how did I get here?”

sobs the girl at the Paducah Greyhound station

Kleenex tissue in her right hand

ticket to Albert Lea in her left

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Seeking decadence and inspiration in Sin City and finding only a little bit of both

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vegas_stIn case you’ve noticed, this blog has been neglected for a short while. Not a long while, but maybe long enough for you to wonder if I’ve taken ill, or been arrested on some sort of trumped up charges, or perhaps abducted by vengeful Balkan gangsters and hustled off to Karakastan in a sea can, or maybe you think, he’s just gotten tired of  blogging. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is, sometimes I need to get away. I need to shut off the computer, leave the laptop behind and fly away to somewhere.  If I don’t do that periodically, I won’t have anything to write about, and frankly if I am going to write anything worthwhile, I have to have just a little decadence in my life. Oh, not big sinful decadence, but the kind of decadence one finds in a place like Las Vegas, which is where I have been for the past few days.

Few people are ambivalent about Las Vegas. One friend who travels there for a convention once or twice a year hates the place. There is nothing there but wholesale drinking and gambling she says and I can do that here in Florida. I tell her that’s true, and you could do that in Dubuque or South Sioux City, or even Booneville, friggin’ Missouri for cryin’ out loud. But those places aren’t Vegas. The sinful gaming industry hasn’t been around in those towns for enough years to allow them to develop real decadent character. They boast smooth, clean, well ventilated, almost ‘family’ oriented casinos. They’re the kind of casinos that reside just a couple of notches south, on the decadence scale, below a trip to Disney. When you want a particular type of decadence you need an old place with a certain vibe and a hell of a lot of history, a place that’s seen more than its share of fun, glory and drunken misery, debauchery for debauchery’s sake, someplace that is soaked in the desert springs of the once quiet and nonchalant citadel in the desert:  Las Vegas — for me that joint is El Cortez Casino.

Now, I’ve been visiting Vegas fairly regularly since the early 70’s — since before Fremont Street was an experience — since before they lopped off ‘Vegas Vic’s’ hat so he would fit under the Fremont Street canopy. So I know what I’m saying. When I go to Sin City, I rarely gamble on the Strip. It’s far too slick and expensive for me. Give me Glitter Gulch. No matter how you dress it up (and believe me they’ve tried), it stays the same — “cheap booze” reads a sign over one establishment, “5 dollar blackjack all day” reads another — my kind of places.

Vegas Vic

Vegas Vic

So back to El Cortez. This place has been around for so long, and it is so poorly ventilated, that I’m sure that the smoke from Lee Marvin’s Pall Malls still lingers in the stuffy casino air. Sitting slightly apart from the casinos on the main downtown drag, the El Cortez on 6th and Fremont, has been around since 1941 and has the distinction of being the only casino in town to have never changed its signage or facade. Once partly owned by Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, the El Cortez was originally thought to be too far from the action downtown to ever turn a profit, but time has proven otherwise, and I have recently learned that the somewhat dicey area east of the Fremont Street Experience now has its own gentrified area identifier: ‘Fremont East’ — come on, did they have to do that…can Starbucks be far behind??

Walking into the El Cortez last Saturday evening, I found everything pretty much the way I’d left it 18 months prior. I ordered my usual – a house wine in a water glass (stemware doesn’t fit well in gaming table drink holders). Before heading off for the roulette wheel, I scanned the joint for decadence — a guy on the run maybe, or a down and out gambler who owes some serious dough to ‘some people’ and is looking to recoup his (or her) losses. I struck up a conversation with the bar’s only video poker player, a guy who looked like he’d been there since Thursday, but it turned out he was just an accountant from Dallas in town for the weekend.

Disappointed, I grunted and sauntered away to the $3 roulette wheel, exchanging a 100 dollar bill for 200 fifty cent chips. It was a lively crowd, and I squeezed into a seat beside a couple probably in their mid-30s, she: blonde and betting every number on the board. Him: hoodie and dark sunglasses, betting cautiously, sipping a Corona beer and whispering something to her periodically. Could be a dangerous couple I thought.

The blonde was reckless, slapping down chips on almost every number on the table, playing it straight up on the inside and black on the outside. She was hitting just enough to stay in the game. Soon I noticed that she was inching ahead. After watching her play for awhile, I noticed that the last number she played won regularly. Still wondering if these two were on the up and up, I followed her last bet and put a chip on top of hers, on number 5 and hit it. I played the next bet the same way. I continued that way for a some time, making all of my own bets first, and then piggybacking on the last number she played, number 13 hitting three times in a row. Chance??? I thought not. I followed her lead for the next three spins, hitting two out of three, and the chips were coming my way. Then the guy in the hoodie and dark glasses whispered something to her in her ear again and stalked away, leaving the blonde on her own.From the Neon Museum

After that, the wheel went cold. She covered the board and I held to my plan, plunking down chip after chip on her last bet. It was no use. Nothing is as unforgiving as a cold roulette wheel. In desperation, I followed her onto the black outside bet that everyone runs to when the chips are literally down, and made the worst mistake of a roulette players life – I forgot zero coverage…damn…when those double zeros rolled up and I lost my stack on that back outside bet, I could have kicked myself.

“It was a good run while we had it,” I said to her, draining the last of my water glass wine and thinking about my missing Benjamin.

“Yeah,” she said. “I thought it was going to turn out differently too.”

“Hey,” I said. “It seemed like the karma left when that guy disappeared. Who was he?’

She laughed. “He’s my husband Carl. He’s a high school math teacher.”

“But he was whispering in your ear when you were winning,” I said. “Does he know something?”

“He was telling me never to play this game,” she said.

When I left El Cortez, the accountant from Denver was still ensconced at the video poker machine, the blonde was preparing to play another hundred and Carl, the math teacher was shooting craps.

W E Patterson's avatar

ode to the mundane, or 47th day of unemployment

. Poetry, Uncategorized . , . 7 Comments

how wonderful the mundane

is true bliss tedium uninterrupted?

a place where there is…

no office to attend

no bank to offend

no Coffee Club to fund

no inane

water cooler banter to deflect

and certainly…

no evil Apple laptop computer

glaring at you

in whitewashed contempt

daring you to inundate

the Corporate Elite

with an intrusive

tho’ artfully crafted

Electronic Mail epistle

that defines our corporate role

as global environmental stewards

as ecological shepherds:

defenders of the rainforest

and the Great Redwoods

and the Canyonlands

and the endangered Panthers

and the damned owls…

You think of that early in the morning

on the forty seventh day

of your unemployed citizen

status

as you walk outside

in the Florida Everglades heat

an hour before sunup

you think of it still

as you feed the cats their mix

of Purina and powdered milk

out by the edge of the garage

behind the Subaru

before you totter to the end of the drive

in your abysmal brown bathrobe

the day’s outgoing mail in hand

all set

to feed the next Visa payment

into the hungry box

to stave off delinquency

to save the judgments

and phone calls from

the heavy-handed collectors

for another day

“thieving bastards” you say out loud

to the lady who walks her Chihuahua

by your place every morning

at six AM

she glares at you —

then rushes past

and you go on to retrieve

the Pennysaver

from a puddle in the street

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Happy Birthday Wolfgang

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On this date in history, January 27th, my favorite composer of all time was born in Salzburg, Austria. If he were alive today, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would be 258 years old. Mozart, who began playing musical instruments when he was just 6 years old, is said to have composed his first symphony at age 8. From then onward, until his death from a mysterious fever at age 35, the Great One churned out more than 600 musical compositions. By my calculation, that averages out to roughly 22 compositions per year, or 2 per month for each month of his life — prolific composing to say the least.

That said,  in addition to recognizing the birthday of Johannes Chrisostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (the name on Mozart’s certificate of birth), I think that this is as good of a time as any to mention the firestorm of controversy that has erupted in the blogosphere, in the wake of free-lance writer, Mark Vanhoenacker’s piece in Slate magazine announcing the death of classical music.  (Click here to read.)  To quote Mr. Vanhoenacker:

“When it comes to classical music and American culture, the fat lady hasn’t just sung. Brunnhilde has packed her bags and moved to Boca Raton.”

 While I can say that so far, I have not spotted Brunnhilde on the streets here in Boca Raton, Vahhoenacker does present some interesting data regarding the current state of, and the future of, classical music. For those of you who do not like to click links, one very telling example he cites is that “Symphony Hall”, one of the only two remaining Classical channels offered by Sirius XM radio, has 3500 Facebook likes, while the All-Pearl-Jam channel has 11000.  He also points to the fact that in 1937, the average age of Los Angeles orchestra concert attendees was a baby faced, 28. Suffice to say that the average age of today’s concert going audience is significantly older. He goes on to present further evidence of classical music’s death, which I shall not detail here. Simply stated, however, the reasons for classical music’s demise are many and varied, ranging from its becoming lost amid the plethora of popular music available to today’s youth who find it boorish and uninteresting, as well the lack of government funding for the arts in general, and perhaps an all around perception that classical music is the province of the overly educated elite, or formally schooled musicians, and without a degree from Julliard one has little chance of understanding its complicated compositions.

In any case, the reaction to Mr. Vanhoenacker’s piece has been especially heated, with classical music lovers going on the attack. In response to his detractors, Vanhoenacker granted an interview, which was published on New York’s classical station WQXR’s website. (Click here to read.) In this interview, Vanhoenacker defends himself by saying that much of the vitriol sent his way by angered classical music lovers is misdirected, and that he is, in fact, a classical music fan. He goes on to explain that the title of the article “Classical music in America is dead” was composed not by him, but by an editor. So in a sense, Mr. Vanhoenacker seems to be saying that he’s only the messenger, so please don’t shoot.

Personally, I enjoy classical music for the simple reason I can work to it. When I am writing, I can’t work in total silence, but I can’t work to the right-wing talkers that dominate the airwaves either,  or to rock, country, R&B, hip-hop, bluegrass, or jazz. I found out years ago that playing classical music when I work improves my focus and helps me to ignore background distractions. And understand that I have little in the way of  musical education, so I am far from being an elitist music snob. I simply find the strains of Mozart, Brahms and Haydn uplifting, and when I find myself in need of inspiration I turn to some of the selections I keep on my iPod, or I stream one of the (few) classical radio stations that remain on the air.

In the end, I imagine that Vanhoenacker’s dire predictions shall prove true, as few radio stations, even public radio stations, can afford to play classical. Government support of any substance is unlikely to rescue them from their fate, and their once hardcore benefactors are aging and fading from the scene.

I hope that I am wrong.

Happy Birthday Wolfgang.

W E Patterson's avatar

Lisa paints

. Poetry, Uncategorized, Writing . , . 6 Comments

Lisa paints

like I want to write

passionately

colorfully

in imaginative detail

with soul bearing confidence

with bittersweet honesty

and when she stands

before the canvas

with Haydn playing

in the background

it is then you know

that there’s no turning back

she takes no prisoners

or so I think, as I watch her

on this particular day

when it is raining outside

and we are stuck

in that tiny apartment in Miami

the one we rented out of desperation

after the foreclosure

and she’s wearing the smock

that I bought for her at Target

for Christmas

the powder blue one

with the four big pockets

for her artist stuff

but it is smattered now

with misplaced paint:

Titanium White

Burt Rose

Radiant Violet

Tree Sap Green

Bee sting Yellow

“don’t move” she says coldly

as she adjusts the blinds

I’m drinking bourbon in the nude

tired and tortured in an ugly little room

in a miserable part of town

Prussian Green

Cobalt Tourquoise

Winsor Emerald

Vandyke Brown

she snaps on a light

I soak in its radiance

I’m grateful for the heat

the minutes crawl by

while

Lisa paints.