348/365

the poems
nearly fifty thousands
words worth
trail behind me
like snail slime:
an iridescent
protective mucus
secreted for protection
to avoid desiccation.  

i hope they look
good in the book.

328/365

we’re in the room:
ceiling lights are off
grey outside. a gentle rain.
lamps spit glow into the corners
soft music. a candle. a gaggle
of fourteen year olds writing
about their hands
with their hands.

we are bundles
of words throwing each other
around like dice: snake eyes. double sixes.

these moments are a shelter from the storms.
we sit. i chat with them individually.
teaching about how using
short. one syllable. words. can.
speed. up. the.pace. of. their. poem.
get weird with structure
punctuation. see what happens.

during sharing time, a girl
unloads her soul into our space,
mouths agape they listen, connect, understand:
we too can do this their silent reactions say.

we snap applause and approval.
that might be our first holy shit moment, i say
grinning, wielding the power of a curse word.

among teenagers. after twenty years, i know
what makes them tick:
music. darkness. candles. building a vibe.

let them know they can do it.
show them how to do it.
let them do it.

327/365

two nights in a row i have gotten into to bed ready to read and block out the world and relieve some pressure from a  bursting mind only to have forgotten this god damn daily poem and had to drag my ass out of bed crank up the laptop and sit at the open faucet like some dumb loyal dog begging to be pet and given attention expectant and eager but ruefully woeful just too full of full to even enjoy the process and definitely hating the product but maybe this is what they mean by ten thousands and honoring the craft sitting in bed angrily typing a diatribe so as to satisfy the vow to be able to turn it all off and disappear into the silence before doing it all again tomorrow and the day after that and you get the picture art is not born of some mystical inspiration there is no muse but the task master forcing you to look in the mirror and hope you are right because if not you have committed to a lifetime of mediocrity on a hope and prayer that it is worth something there is value there is some meaning in all of this even without punctuation or line breaks

324/365

i hate the emptiness
and what it demands.
every night a bout with the
dim shadow begging to be
made corporeal. how many
words can there be to name
this infinite pedestrian panic?

a girl’s father is swept away in a flood
as she plays a styrofoam guitar.
nothing but rice to eat and a gentle
glimmer of sunset on the muddy monsoon
river. weaponising material poverty
like a mallet to instil gratitude.
without sacrifice, empathy is just guilt
dancing with shame.

i remember long afternoons
waiting out the rain, the smell of burning
plastic garbage damped. the sound of droplets
like machine gun fire on the zinc roof. how absurd
youthful optimism looks through the long lens
of aged realism.

i hate the emptiness
and what it demands.
but god damn it, if i don’t
extract something from it
every time.

311/365

the worst thing you can
do is to think too much and edit
yourself before you even start,
open the tap and see what comes
out, save the judgement and evaluation
for after there is something on the page,
overthinking a poem is the best way
to abort it before it has even
been birthed, is what i tell my students
as they sit in the classroom, pens in hands
hunched over blank notebooks, wondering
where in their minds or lives they might
find meaning, you are not writing poems,
i tell them, they are always all around and within
you, like protons, neutrons and electrons,
to your nucleus, poems are discovered
and unravelled never written or constructed,
just keep pushing until one flops on the page,
extract the mucus, wipe it clean and wait to
hear it cry, once it’s settled and you’ve rocked
it to sleep and allowed it to feed, take a bite of
the placenta for strength, you might be covered
with blood and fluid, but look what you hath wrought
into the world, just by sitting there and letting
the universe flow through you.

205/365

sometimes they take
a few days to steep.
soaking in your heart
when you wake,
marinating all day
and still soused when
head hits pillow.

you might have chosen
key words- artisanal.
big ideas- craftsmanship.
they might float around
your head for some time.

waiting for the
right image.
the memorable line.
a viable metaphor.

you need to be in the right mood
when you sit to carve it out.
have the fortitude to wrestle
with it for as long as it needs
to be wrestled with.

don’ rush it.
never rush it.

when you can feel
its heart beating
in the chrysalis,
let it work
its own
way
out.

156/365

he found an old file on
the computer called
the book,
and started reading
another batch of mediocre
first thought best thought
ramblings, he must have
scribed when the words
were flowing.

another half-assed project
stuck at the start.
he once wrote
five hundred and seventy two
haikus. one every day
for nearly two years
and then deleted them
to make a point about
impermanence.

the stories on the file
weren’t half bad:
a writer trying hard
to write well
and honest
and true
about love and loss
and destruction and rage
and all the things writers  
have been writing about
since there have been
stories to tell.

so much love
for a life so hard fought,
filled with the need
for unearthing,
igniting, unleashing
back out into the world.

i am here.
i was there.
i will be there.

155/365

if you stare
at the emptiness
long enough,
waiting on nothingness,
with the intention
to will something
to life, putting your
hands on the keys:
mindful, mediative, still.
desperate. patient. faithful.

they are,
after all,
nothing
but words
we drape
on the everything,
like dew
ready to expire.

142/365

the soft hum of the ceiling fans,
the cat’s water fountain,
a gentle groan as she shifts
her place on the couch.

a minute ago
there was nothing
save for frustration
and trying to salvage
the drunken garbage
from last night.
thought it was decent,
but looks ridiculous
with the passing of time.

nothing here
about plums
or wheelbarrows,
just a few more hacks
of the ax to make
the kindling that might
lead to an inferno
down the line.

i stop somewhere
waiting for you.
a good enough place
to end for the night

127/365

the poems come now in waves.
opening lines and verse
invading the mind
like a platoon of ants:
first thing in the morning
surrounded
by darkness and squinting eyes,
in the shower, on the drive to work.

like the obsolescent
box of slides
he hid in his drawers.  
projecting them
on the white sheet:
images of the caspian sea
rivers and horses
all of them looking so young
and me as that child
from that other place,
mother tongue
desperately hanging on.
looking at them(our)selves
in the motherland
before arriving.
year’s later,
“i never felt like home here.”
he would tell me.
an immigrant story
the american dream
more struggle
than accomplishment.

the poems come now in waves.
one after the other
like a ten dollar bill
of jukebox songs,
some familiar
others surprises.
maybe i’ll write
the rest of my story
though these shabby
indifferent poems.
listening to cat power
drinking whisky with
cherries and bitters.
no stanza breaks
just spinning the wheel
betting on the next  
fortuitous line.
an extensive list of memories,
a rustling ego shoved
into a brain and a bag of guts.

the poems come now in waves.
making it impossible
to see the world
any other way.

119/365

he sits on the couch
every night, in the glow
of the machine,
glasses on,
to read. to write.
saturated by the glare
that makes his head throb
most days- searching.
waiting. for it.

doom scrolling. likes. hearts.
google searches:
poems. inside he breaths
quietly with intention.
mindful awareness
leads to boredom
most days.
the ball starts rolling
him chasing
to keep up,
desperate for an image
or some efficacious metaphor
he can dress up with
rags from the thesaurus.

there is nothing glamorous
or romantic about this
procedure. like all habit
there is a comfortable familiarity
that hems the mundane
spectacle of routine.

but to disprove the notion of talent
he clocks the hours
every night. like erosion
or rot. as everything breaks down
he will be there,
to see what’s
next. 

31/365

the problem is—
it’s much harder
than just letting it drip out
like this.

sure the little snapshots,
diary entries
and clever quips
feel good and are easy

but surely these are not poems.

where is the revision,
the intensity,
the literary devises?
not to say anything about
beauty
or fucking meaning.

these drab little
puddles are barely
more than jokes,
observations,
social media posts.

call me
when you’ve found
depth:
start with the poem about
the barber shop
or the power of
kittens and their connection
to gentle masculinity

or the mechanical march
of the magical mundane.

call me
when you’ve found
anything
better than this.

28/365

i need inspiration to get this one off the ground.
i move to the bedroom
grab the novel i’m reading
mine a line
to get things started.

once in the room
the light of our
permanent plastic mini
christmas tree
and the whiff of
a homemade
cherry merlot candle
are calm and soothing

i execute push ups
60-90 of the daily 100
only 10 left before bed
that’s a 100 a day for 393 days
but the middle-aged gut
still feels foreign on this former skinny body.

i grab the book and flip it randomly:h

her eyes sour with animal confusion.

what the hell do you expect me to do with that?
the cats were angry
when we all got home after dark
sitting in the silence
pacing
moaning
perhaps with sour
animal
confused
eyes

19/365

it’s not there is not enough to write about, it’s that there is too much.
each day i’m assaulted by an abundance of poems; each with its own agenda.

got me up against the ropes in the twelfth round—
cut above the eye. mouth guard chewed to a nub. nose broken. teeth loose.

wobbling, i search for a stool and my cut man, with some water and vaseline.
to offer me a respite. a few minutes to catch my breath. assess the damage.

but the jabs keep coming fast and hard. to the face. kidneys. even below the belt.
waiting for that final uppercut to dislodge this trite metaphor.

and knock me out.

15/365

more poems escaped
than were captured today:
the holes in the net
too wide
to yield a bounty
of any value
or worth.

in the morning
my students
put up a good fight
and caught a few
with my help.

words about:
time
gratitude
refugees
orca captivity
being ignored.

“a poem is like a maze
you have to explore every lead
but you might not always make it out.”

they wrote and re-wrote
and re-re-wrote for an hour straight.
tinkering under the hood
turning the poems inside out
and poking at their guts.
knocking them over
to see what might spill out.

“take a risk.
get weird.
you never now what poetry
can be found inside you
around you.”

13/365

most days are roller coasters
days are roller coasters
days are

hard to handle;
filled with joy;
heavy with an aching
that leaves us numb.

take right now:

the house is dim
with low watt bulb light,
a chill glass of eggnog
and my first born
tickling her new keyboard.
her voice,
timidly working
its way through a song.  
a set of songs.

most days are roller coasters
days are roller coasters
days are

hard to handle;
filled with joy;
heavy with an aching
that leaves us numb.

take earlier:

teaching
other people’s children:

“let the poem go where it needs to.
don’t be anchored by your first draft.
follow it down many alleyways.”

“never evaluate as you create.
everything feels like shit
until you revise,
even then it takes time
and you seldom get it right.

poetry is the fight.
never the poem.”

they wrote with earnest intensity.
the classroom filled with highs
and loops
and screams.

most days are roller coasters
days are roller coasters
days are

hard to handle;
filled with joy;
heavy with an aching
that leaves us numb.

take later:

the students are:
tired
stressed
anxious
looking
for strategies to cope:

cuts.
ideation.
safety plans.

she sings the songs.
we write the poems.
get back in line
and take another ride.

Calcified

Over the weekend, I attended the Singapore Writer’s Festival. Perhaps the word attended is a bit generous- I went to two sessions. The first was a panel discussion with Q& A about the need for diversity in YA fiction and the other was led by Nicola Yoon called “How To Write YA Fiction.” This second session was designed for writers to listen to Nicola talk about her practice and ask any questions we might have about our own writing.

I felt uncomfortable listening to her, as other, more earnest and committed writers had legitimate questions, while I was thinking about the ghost of a novel I started and abandoned a few years ago. What was more discouraging and made me feel like a complete imposter was the fact, that not only had I stopped working on said novel, I hadn’t really written anything in months. Years? It has been a long time. 

I have forgot what it feels like to have things to say. I've allowed myself to be erased. I've chosen to be silent, and not in any profound way, like when one chooses to be silent to better listen. No. I have simply turned inward and fallen asleep.

In the past, even when I wasn’t working on an extended project, I always scraped together chunks of words here and there. Once I wrote an extended blog post/facebook post every day for a year. I have written my share of Tweets, rambling on ad nauseam into corners of the Twitterverse.

But sitting in that session, I was threatened with a clear accusation from myself- how can you even pretend to call yourself a writer anymore. You no longer write. Anything.

I thought about my Twitter profile, and lo and behold I have the word Writer as a descriptor. What a fraud! I knew I had a choice. I could go home and edit my profile and continue to feel comfortable following in my own quiet laziness and let my voice atrophy and my skills dull and give up on the myth of being a writer, or I could kick myself in the ass, turn off the sports youtube debates- arguing about Antonio Brown's mental state and his future in the NFL, crank on Trent Reznor and the Social Network sound track and start writing.

Don’t worry too much about what I would write, but I would have to just get my fingers used to this new keyboard and watch the words form cross the screen. In a perfect world, I would jump right back into the novel, but the joints are too stiff for that kind of work. I need to warm up. Get myself back into simple habits.

Every writer I have ever known has said that writing is not about inspiration or waiting for the mood to hit you. Writing is about making time to sit in front a machine and seeing what happens. Opening the tap and letting the dirty rusty water run for a while.

I am aware that this tepid warm-up writing, should seldom be made public, but a few years ago, some people said they liked my work and looked forward to reading this gibberish, so I have relied on your generosity and my insecurity demands that I share- even these worthless drills. I have always felt that knowing someone might take the five minutes to skim my words, gives them a tiny bit more value than if they sit cloistered on a file somewhere.

It’s been so long that I have forgotten what to say. Sharing and writing seemed so easy in the past, but I have allowed the well to become so dry that I can’t imagine what it was like to reach the cup in and find moisture. 

Of course there have been stories and poems and posts and tweets that I have ignored because of the lure of lazy procrastination, but now that I am at the computer everything feels so trivial and vain. And to be honest so difficult. There are webs of ideas that have been tangled in my mind for months. Issues, personal and family that I do not even know what I think about, because ignoring them proved more manageable than trying to write about them.

I have lost myself within myself. And need time and effort to scratch away the rust.

I want to find a way to define friendship for myself and a close friend. I need to learn to be more caring and less selfish with my interactions. This cloistered hibernation I have described has affected more than my writing. I have allowed myself to become shallow and predictable. Boring.

I want to be deliberate about learning guitar solos from some of my favorite songs. I am currently working on the solo from Time by Pink Floyd. I am learning it note by note, as well as learning how to feel it and play more improvisationally. I am studying the tab. Watching you tube tutorials. Playing the backing track through my amp and headphones and actually trying to get the timing right. Believe it or not, for the twenty plus years I have been playing, I have never practiced this deliberately. 

The process is making me think about active learning versus passive learning. Much like my renewed writing practice, I will only get better at guitar by deliberate and intentional practice. This is hard work and feels easy to give up. But after two days, the solo feels manageable and more predicable. I may not know the theory, or even need to know it at this point, but the drill and practice is making me able to sound like the song. I look forward to ping-ponging back and forth between writing and playing and reflecting on the learning process.

The common thread is to work each night on both. No more sitting around wasting time because I am tired. This apathy has weighed me down for too long. I need to find a way to work even without motivation.

I will start with a few nights of writing warm ups like this and try to build a nightly writing routine, with a few nights of more specific work on my novel or other more coherent projects. At school, we have started to teach a poetry unit at school, and it felt disingenuous to promote the virtues of poetry and writing if I am not wrestling with the work myself. So I hope to scribe a few poems as well.

Having said all that, it is football season and no matter how I try, this goddamn team is infested in my soul. I think about them way too much and the players and the games take up an improbable amount of space in my psyche. There will be posts about the Raiders. There have to be.

Other things that need attention:

• Run again? 
• Get into some kind of shape with a consistent workout program. 
• Back off on junk food and dairy if not go vegan again. 
• Spend more quality time with my kids now that they are older instead of parenting them all the time. 
• Is there a creative outlet beyond writing and guitar? Am I biting off more than I can chew? 
• Can one go from complete sloth to active artist by shear will alone? 
• How long will it take to change the habits that have calcified over the span of so much time? 

Finding Meaning

Some days you sit in front of the class, after lunch, grounded in your breath, stable in voice and determined in purpose and you speak of meaning.

“What is it you ask? What do we mean by finding meaning? Deeper meaning?”

You ask the tired slightly bored children in front of you if they know what you mean when you say that we construct meaning, and that there is no such thing as the truth in texts, but rather a panoply of truths, that each reader begins to construct on their own, by reading closely and thinking and talking with a partner and examining their own context and world view, and the worldview of others, and you explain that even the writer’s intention is not always the truth, but one of many, and that it is the readers job to uncover what meaning maybe hidden below the surface.

The girl in the back corner is zoned out and staring blankly at the carpet, but that one to your right is all eye-contact and engagement. You look at her directly and say, “The magic of reading and thinking is that you are an active participant in truth finding and meaning making. The text is just a catalyst to your understand of self, the world and your place in the universe.

The kids listening are 50/50 at best, but that percentage feels workable to you. After all, not every lesson is this hyperbolic and self-aware. If even a few of these kids can walk away feeling empowered to be truth makers in the world, haven’t you done your part?

“What’s more is that as a writer you are now going to be meaning makers on another level. You will have to leave clues and layers of truth that will allow your reader a chance to infer and unpack what it is you might need to say.” You are preparing them for a personal narrative unit. They will have to brainstorm story ideas and learn ways to get close to a universal meaning that will resonate with themselves and their readers.

“Here’s the secret,” you say “You might not know what has meaning in your life until you try and write it. The act of writing fiction reveals meaning to you as the writer. The very act of writing will help reveal what is meaningful to you.” A few new faces look up, some are dubious and wondering what the hell you are talking about, but a boy in the back is nodding his head. You maintain eye-contact, “This is the magic in what we do. This is why we read, think, write, think, write, read, because we want to learn about the world and who we are and how we fit into it and how we interact with each other.”

You are feeling better about your soapbox, but you know that this talk cannot last much longer than ten minutes or you’ll lose all of them.

“Let me give you a tip while you brainstorm potential story ideas, DO NOT edit yourself in the idea generation stage. Every idea can be a good one. Do not judge your life meaningless before you have had a chance to write it. A good writer can turn any experience into one fraught with meaning. (YOU do not use the word fraught, but it sounds good when you are writing about it later)

As you brainstorm, remember that the more vulnerable you are willing to be, the easier it will be for you to find meaning. Our emotions are powerful and a bit scary, but when we wrestle them in text, we open our hearts to how they affect us and those around us. Allow yourself to be open to who you are, even if you don’t know who that might be. Allow the stories you write help define you. There is magic in all of your experiences and the act of writing about them, will help you understand their secrets.”

You don’t know if these kids understand or care about what you are saying, but you remember being thirteen and wishing that someone would have spoken to you like this. You remember wishing that someone would have helped you curate the chaos in your life, that someone would have equipped you with the tools to be your best self, that someone would have given you the right books and taught you how to read them and told you that you too can write and that reading, thinking and writing, could be the best kind of escape from the noise and pain in your heart. Or an expression of your joy.

You break eye contact and send them off to their next class. They will now probably sit through some spiel about the beauty of numbers or the miracle of science. Who knows what stick or what they learn, but this banging your head against their apathy and screaming in what often feels like a void is the path you have chosen, this is the only way you know how to pay back everything that you have learned.

Errant Bullets

Here is a chance to let spill a few random thoughts a bit passed ten in late August whilst listening to Leonard Cohen in order to clear my head and rattle this rusty cage to try and free a few ideas from their slumber.

Sometimes I get too hung up on news stories about incompetence and ignorant criminality, that I forget that I can create a universe of verse anytime I want. I just have to sit focus on my mind and the words it might conjure. No about of exhaustion should ever get in the way of the attempt to create something from nothing. The faith in anything, in many things, in these little things can be all I need on nights when I’m left tattered from the teaching and parenting and from simply being me. Buried beneath the weight of self, pushing these words onto to you to help carry the burden, seems to help.

The thoughts ricochet like errant bullets:

I really hope the Raiders sign Kalil Mack before the season starts. I don’t have to have an opinion about everything or feel the need to respond to every one of his idiotic tweets.

A school is a collective place that is not ever meant to be perfect. It’s an exercise in evolution and everyone plays a part. Let some things go.

If I want to learn about mindfulness and I want to teach mindfully, I must practice and take the time to be present. That doesn’t mean fast forwarding videos or doing other things to save time.

I want to make a T-shirt that says, "It’s not work, it’s teaching."

Every moment, everyday in the classroom in front of those kids has the potential to be magical and I cannot allow the mystical to become the mundane.

Listen more. Listen More. Listen more and actually care.

Don’t be so frustrated with kids. Argue less. Give in more. Use your voice to reassure those around you and emit peace through word, action and thoughts. Give yourself a break.

You’re doing alright.

Your thoughts matter even without the likes, even if no one sees them. Give them shape, wrap them in syntax, but don’t worry too much about how they’re received.

Write more. Write more often. Write more

Three weeks have passed. Get back to the novel. If you can’t run, go for walks. Remember when you used to play at open mic? What happened to the nervous thrill of the stage? What songs would you sing in 2018?

This is it. This is the moment where you start. This is your life and it is passing, every time you complain about being tired or overwhelmed. Now is the time to be the better dad, husband, teacher or friend. Now is the time to be the best you.

The way you interact with those around you: kids, wife, students, colleagues is who you are, so do it with intention and love and peace and attention.

None of this matters. Hit delete. It’s all self-help gibberish. But what if someone likes it? Are you doing this for that validation or because you needed to clear the cobwebs? Can’t it be both? You are a vain insecure narcissist who does most things for attention. Even your honesty and vulnerability reeks of an attention seeking scam.

Please stop being so cruel. I need you to be kind to me.

I need to work my way through these thoughts, and to me that has always meant sharing. It makes me feel less alone, less helpless to know that someone out there understands.

Sleep well friend.

Sick Of Doubt

The next time I write some bullshit post about how sad I am or if you catch me allowing myself to wallow in insecurity and self-pity, please tell me to shut the f#@k up.

Why can’t I remember that for every day I allow to melt into a morose mess, there will be days like today when I can’t help but notice the sheer perfection of my life?

Today was magical in its ordinariness.

I taught a group of thirteen year olds the power of pacing and music when making a short film. It was a simple concept, taught simply, understood and executed minutes later. The kids were engaged, excited and working with passion and purpose. It’s moments like this when you wonder to yourself why and how we make school so complicated.

 

I caught up with colleagues and email and started to make my back to school to do list. I wrote my parent news letter and general got caught up after a break.

 

I worked with Martin tying to map out our last few weeks with the Daraja GC. Things are looking a bit vague and confused, but the kids seemed interested in doing whatever needs to be done. Now to see what they (we) come up with to showcase our action part of our service learning. Forces beyond our control have altered our course and we will adapt and move forward.

I worked with Anne Marie in a coaching session to try and improve my craft teaching kids reading skills. We completed a very simple and pragmatic task. Simple. Done. Next step?

I met with Off Tangent, the literary magazine I run with a group of thirteen middle school kids. I had a moment of panic because our launch date is May 3rd two session away. I was sure that I had dropped the ball and we wouldn’t be ready, but after our one and half hour session, I was blown away by their dedication, hard work and efficiency. We will send the manuscript to the publisher tomorrow, marketing is ready with posters and other media for promotion, and the launch party committee did a nice job of mapping out our venue and getting ready.

This is what school should be like- A small group of kids, with little guidance from a teacher bringing to life something that would not exist without their collaboration and love.

I was reminded that when I get down on myself for all the things I get down on myself about, it is good to remember that on any given day I might be feeding the fire in the hearth of a future author, artist, activist or film maker. My seemingly mundane daily activities might have lasting effects on hundreds of kids.

How else will the world change?

How else will tend these fires?

The work we do as teachers, every single day, is heroic and important. It is crucial that we do not forget that, or devalue what we do.

I came home and put in some vital work on my novel. Reading a writing book, I started to outline my protagonist's dilemma- which is her strong desire and false beliefs. I finally began to explore some structural possibilities and the dead end I was feeling a few days ago, is suddenly a wide open road of possibilities.

Maybe I am not worthless and talentless. Maybe I do know what the f$#k I am doing. And maybe I don’t, but forty three years and I’m still following my own path and figuring it out.

Years ago, whilst living in NYC, one Halloween I dressed up as fat Jim Morrison. I wore a weak beard and stuffed a pillow into the shirt tucked into a pair of black leather pants. I followed the party around town and felt like a fraud, because while the girth and the beard were meant to showcase some kind of wisdom, I was still a youngish man, wearing a pair of aviator ray ban glasses at night in a city that never sleeps.

But tonight, as I looked into a mirror I saw a beard and an actual gut that was real. I was no longer wearing a costume. I have some how become my authentic self. Staring back at me from the mirror was a face I have been looking for since the darkness of my youth.

He knows some shit and he is figuring the rest of it out.

Wow, I'm sick of doubt

Live in the light of certain

South Cruel bindings.

The servants have the power

Dog-men and their mean women

Pulling poor blankets over

Our sailors

I'm sick of dour faces

Staring at me from the TV

Tower, I want roses in

My garden bower; dig?

Royal babies, rubies

Must now replace aborted

Strangers in the mud

These mutants, blood-meal

For the plant that's plowed.