"I write, I voice, I am."
The book is finally (FINALLY) here.
Seven (uh-huh 7) years in the making, my third full-length book of poetry is now here.
(thanks for your patience)
Now available, both on that oligarch mega-site (ISBN 979-8-9940843-0-4) OR by direct contact with the author… yep, that’s me… for a signed copy by DMing me with your mailing address and payment information, via PayPal, Venmo, or CashApp.
230 pages. $20 US plus $4 s&h.
Can’t wait to hear from you!
“Your boyfriend flirts hard,”Continue reading “Boyfriend”
he wanted to say.
“I don’t believe you,”
she would’ve replied.
“That’s okay,”
he kept thinking.
Everybody else does.
One day I swear,
I will do all the things
you couldn’t bring yourself
to love like I did.
As if I’m gonna
need a reason,
but I remember
that one time, when I heard
you say that everyone should
love themselves
more than the one they
let break their heart.
It is written,
“The Lord is my banner.”
But I have said,
“When we see the banners on
the back of their pickup trucks,
we know who they are.”
Those who come with
warning labels like,
“This vehicle stops at all
railroad tracks... to reload.”
“Proud parent of another
school shooter.”
“The only thing thin about
me is my Thin Blue Line.”
We know intimidation when we see it.
The red ball cap, the billowing flags.
We’ve learned how to identify the bullies,
but have we also forgotten how to
love our enemies?
I no longer see the image of their God
upon the faces of what passes for their
humanity. My heart is now bound by a
weight that sinks me under waves of hate.
In a future time,
others may come with
warning labels like,
“The only good bully
is a dead bully.”
“It’s okay, no one
will miss you.”
“I’ll make yours look
like a suicide.”
“Be happy I’m
a pacifist.”
…What’s going on? How are you?”
I know, asking that doesn’t help. Personally, after November, I’m thinking of writing a book of pre-, mid-, and post-dyspocalypstopian* short stories that try to make sense of all… okay, any… of this life. And not just this last week, or the last three months before that, or even the last thirty years before that.
Stories take a long time to tell. Stories take even longer to tell themselves.
So I’ve made my mind up that these are the stories I’m going to tell. Something I failed to mention in the first post of this month was that I believe, and have believed for some time, that my poetry career is coming to a close, and that thing I have always wanted to write… scary stories… is about to find its way onto my horizon. I’ve been influenced by scary stories my whole life. Kaiju. Zombies. The childhood fears of Stephen King. The whole catalogue of Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone. Depending on what decade, these were my bedtime stories. I mean, even now, I still doze off at night to reruns of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. All of these are straight up cautionary tales of what happens when humanity forgets what it means to remain human in the midst of a fucked up world.
And as far as I can see, like with those times long ago, there is no better time than now for me to resurrect this genre for fun and profit. You know, like Gage Creed’s dad did for him in Pet Sematary. Just a little object lesson that hopefully works out better for me than it did for all of them.
So while I’ve got you, tell me.
What kind of stories to you want to hear out of me, when the poetry has all dried up, and there’s only one kind of tale left to tell? Let me know in the comments. I can’t wait to read what YOU have to say.
Talk to you tomorrow.
dyspocalypstopian*, a portmanteau that stands for dystopian apocalyptic literature. a neologism. one that I just made up
Sometimes it takes a day,
sometimes longer,
sometimes it never happens at all,
if I’m not in the mood
to write as though
a muse just brought me
black coffee, and a brownie.
I like black coffee. I like brownies.
And I like a muse who
brings them to me, as if all they ever
wanted from me were my words.
Trying to remember
the last time I felt full.
The way a grave feels full
with a coffin inside it.
The way a coffin feels full
with a corpse inside it.
The way a corpse feels full
with a life of regret inside it,
and nowhere for the regret to go,
so it always feels full.
Trying to remember
the last time I did not feel
like a corpse.
Poet Laureate
.
Find me a town where the outskirts
roadside sign reads: “Pop 3”.
Two blind, one deaf, then me.
Where I will write for the two,
speak for the one, then petition the town
to nominate me its first
Poet Laureate.
They will proudly display my books in their library.
Print and audio.
I will appear at important public functions.
Give invocations. Lend words to things that
never needed words before I showed up.
Snaps will abound.
This must be immortality.
Yesterday, being the Tuesday after the Monday that followed the Sunday that brought back another vastly under-appreciated time change, I felt the usual, annual letdown that tends to hit, one week into November Blog Month. So with that, yesterday I decided to pull something out of the unreleased archives file. A poem, already written, waiting its turn for publication, or maybe even already submitted for publication and rejected, because, for a poet, to be rejected is just any day that ends in, well… D-A-Y.
Laptop open, a couple of clicks later, and I’m looking at specific poems written after my move to New York, between the summer of ’22 and the summer of ’23. And with a keen eye, sharpened by months of doing other things, I saw clearly, for the first time, exactly why, if I was in charge of reviewing submissions for publication, my writing was rejected.
TYPOS.
I may not understand every nuance of the word “irony”, but I sure as hell know how to type it WITHOUT spellcheck.
(checks spelling)
Yeah, irony.
Also yesterday, two writers I know well, actual friends, both dealt with the subject of TYPOS, one in an Instagram Story, the other in a post on Substack. Each bemoaning, and rightly so, the accidental OOPS that happens when writers, or in their cases, EDITORS of writers, get bitten by that pesky typo bug. One of them even had a typo in their post about typos!
I smiled, I laughed, I even pointed out the typo for the one… because I too have been an editor, and then got on with the day’s business of dragging a poem of mine into the light of day for others to read and maybe enjoy. Until I realized that even in mine, there were typos everywhere.
So, a few deep breaths and another cup of afternoon coffee later, I spent an hour editing a less-than-forty word poem into something that had a heart, a soul, and no nasty punctuation or spelling errors.
That I know of.
And I hope you liked that one, the way I hope you tolerate this one. Also, I hope that The Sad Typo Club has taught me what I need to know for the future. For the next three weeks of blogging, and anything else that wants to call itself “writing” in my foreseeable future.
A future that’s not been written.
Yet.
A little backstory.
I belong to a Facebook group where what we discuss is film, comics and graphic novels, film noir, more film, novels of the pulp variety, TV, and even more film. And not to hurt the feelings of anyone in the group but, they/we/me are nerds.
A little RECENT backstory.
On Monday of this week, one of the members of the group posted a link to a YouTube video; an interview with screenwriter and indie film producer Alok Mishra (1BR, Hanuman Da’ Damdaar, Mallika). In the course of the 19 minute Q&A, Mishra talked about the 3 things a screenwriter must do right for their script to have any chance of getting interest from a producer.
Now I’ll be honest, after watching the video TWICE, I still only counted TWO THINGS, but I also only got my high school diploma with a truly stellar 1.88 GPA, so I very likely missed THING NUMBER THREE, just because that’s what D+ high school students do. But what I loved most about the interview, and Alok Mishra’s answers, were just how easy he made it feel that, if you did these little-bitty fixes that everybody else does wrong, that YOU, with a fresh idea and novel sense of humor or horror, still have a puncher’s chance of getting your words read, sold, and made into a real live movie.
And NOW, the actual story.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
Twenty-something years ago, when I felt the pull of writing again after mostly ignoring that pull since college… which, if you math together all the years, would be more years than anyone with a 1.88 high school GPA can count, but this is writing, not math… what I really, REALLY wanted to write was movies.
Fast-forward a few more years, and the idea of writing lines for other people to speak gave way to journalism, essays, humor, and finally, God only knows why, poetry. A couple of books and a few more years after that, and with some unexpected bonus life shit thrown in for awkward giggles, I have been writing again. And I mean really, REALLY writing, with a plan for that writing to become my third, and possibly last, collection of poetry. I say “last” because well, life shit and awkward giggles. And, like with anything creative, sometimes life shit gets in the way, less important things become priorities, and it’s just hard to care about stuff other than laundry and remembering to eat regularly. The book is coming along, and it’ll probably be in print before the end of this year. Maybe.
But right now, I need something more than poetry in my life.
So, while I continue to scratch out a poem here and there, this summer, I want to have some fucking fun with words. That fun is going to be in the form of what Alok Mishra talked about. This summer is me, writing something that no producer has read yet. Something full of humor and horror. Also, something that can be shot, chopped and distributed for pennies on the dollar, compared to the big budget studio version of what all the cool kids have already done until no producer wants to see another one.
Welcome to Bill’s 90 pages of summer fun.
(Note: 90 pages is the length of a script that Alok Mishra says producers like him currently want to see. And because nobody wants to see the Snyder Cut of anything, anymore)
No spoilers… yet. But the notes are flying, and the ideas are popping, and I’m awfully glad that I still have Final Draft 10 on my ancient laptop. So, when I finally hit SAVE for real, even if I never get a sniff of indie film fame and fortune, I’m still going to laugh all the way to Social Security and a bizarre little book of poetry, just in time for Christmas gift-giving.
But for now, it’s laundry, lunch, making myself laugh, and writing lines for other people to speak.
FADE TO BLACK
William S. Friday