Category Archives: Doggerel

January 13, 2023

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

And now for some verse…

Petrichor

The skies are black over the city today.
The smell of rain, that sweet perfume.
I’ve never been good at names for things.
But I know what it is to be rained on,
to have the sky open and the city close,
to have the petrichor rise up and embrace your face:
like motorboating Mother Nature.

And so much for all that.  Today is for serious book work…not for windy walks in the rain.  The time has come to kick ass!  In fact, it’s long overdue.   I am behind schedule, and that means that there are asses in desperate need of kicking walking around unkicked.  So I’m gonna get back to it.

I’ll leave you with this note from Fitzgerald:

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late, or in my case, too early, to be whoever you want to be.  There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want.  You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing.  We can make the best or the worst of it.  I hope you make the best of it.  And I hope you see things that startle you.  I hope you feel things you have never felt before.  I hope you meet people with a different point of view.  I hope you live a life you’re proud of.  If you find you are not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”  ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Indeed.

N.P.: “I Don’t Care About Nothing Anymore” – Beasts of Bourbon

January 1, 2023

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2023

Happy New Year, dear reader!
I don’t typically make the changing of the calendar year a big deal, but typing “2023” just now felt great.  See, 2023 means that next year is 2024, and 2024 is The Good Year.  Which makes 2023 The Absurdly Busy Year, but I am here for it.

Fun Fact: I have an unusual startle reflex and I don’t jump at all at nearby gunshots or explosions.  Some of my friends know this, but not all of them.  Certainly not the one who gave me the bag of Ambien™ to help me “sleep through the fireworks at midnight.”  She gave me careful instructions about when and how many to take, and of course I thanked her profusely, shut the door, and took everything in the bag.  I don’t have a solid recollection of much, but I know I stayed up quite some time making bizarre art.  And like Christmas morning, except better, the morning after an Ambien™ binge is always full of surprises.  For instance, this “poem” I have no memory of writing:
Happy New Year, my friend
I say to my friend.
The dash between us is like the space
between strangers on a train;
it’s not what we know about each other that matters,
but what we don’t.  The dash is how it feels
to live in two states at once, the territory of the hyphen,
here but not quite, home but not really.  
The dash is how it feels to be in exile,
the space between where I am and where I want to be,
or so I tell myself.
But the truth is I’m happy here.
I’m just not used to being happy.

What the fuck does that even mean?  The dash?  What dash?  There’s no dash here.  God knows what I was thinking.  Doesn’t even sound like my style at all.  Maybe I’ll get back in to writing verse (sober verse) this year.  My sober stuff isn’t that great, but it’s quite better than this dash nonsense.  Never mind.  Happy New Year.  Let’s get weird.

N.P.: “Reduced Voltage” – Blancmange