Hello, my name is…

It’s been a minute, so let me re-introduce myself.

My name is Friday. Bill Friday. A lot has changed for me since 2015, The first year I signed up to do National Blog Posting Month, or NanoPoblano as it was called, before Cheer Peppers became our official name. Back then, our Forever Admin and Moderator Emeritus, Ra Avis, asked me ever so politely if I wanted to do this thing, though I’d already been a WordPress blogger for a few years, so that I could discover the joy… and occasional panic… of writing a blog post a day for 30 straight days.

And after Rara gave me the hard dinosaur side-eye, I willingly caved.

Now it’s 9 years later, though not 9 years in a row, and I feel like I have some unfinished blog business. That’s why, just a couple of days ago, I let our little corner of the bloggy world know that I was back.

But don’t call it a comeback. I been here for years.

Now, the basics, for those I haven’t met. Blogger since 2007, author of two books of poetry with one more on the way. Born, raised, and almost died a few times, in Southern California, but now living in the cautionary tale known as Long Island, New York. I have two grown children, three grandchildren, and three grand-dogs, all spread out across the country, and friends… my chosen family… even more spread out than that.

And for right now, I think I’m going to take this month to not only re-introduce myself to you, but re-introduce myself to myself. I’ll be sharing thoughts I scribble much too quickly into the ongoing journal I’ve been keeping since 2017, both the joyous, and the painful. Things in the news, which will likely piss some of you off. And poems I’ve written that will, soon enough, find their way into print. Maybe even poems about love, or baseball. Probably both.

And you never know, I just might tell you about my long overdue creative plans, that really ought to see the light of day, before it’s too late. So for now, let’s all get settled in. I’m looking forward to reading as many of your posts as I can this month, and for us to get to know each other along the way.

Talk to you tomorrow!

Day Thirty and The End

(from my morning journal)

“[08:39] It’s the last day.

I cobbled together pictures to include in this last November blog post, before December comes, and my life changes back again. Before my life changes forward.

I’m tired. We’re all tired. More than just body tired, although that’s a lot of it. The brain affects the body, and the body affects the brain. This world affects the brain AND the body. I’d like to think we all see that now. Remember that. Scrapbook that. And keep that scrapbook on the coffee table of our lives. Always handy. Always at hand [08:45].

[08:46] I don’t want to write any more than that on this subject. Not here, in this journal. Not now, before I get other things off my mind and out of my system. I have a lot to do. Not today, but very soon. Maybe even tomorrow, when there isn’t THIS to do. No, really, move off now. Move onto something, anything, else [08:50].”

That was the first page of the day, handwritten, before following my own orders for the day. Now, I’m making this up as I go. Gathering the images that meant the most to me over the last 30 days of NanoPoblano. Playing connect the dots with content, hoping that things end up where I want them on the page, and NOT like David Hedison’s head on the body of a fly, crying “Helllllp meeeee” before Vincent Price ended what would become Jeff Goldblum’s least appreciated SciFi reboot.

Oh yeah, help me. There’s a takeaway that I’ve tucked in my pocket on the way out the door of this November blog month, that reads loud and clear in the image above. That “sadness isn’t the only muse”. I vaguely wrote something in the neighborhood of that, in passing, somewhere inside the post with the Motorola Razr in the picture, about how, if I had released my next book back when all my motivation for writing was dark, sad, angry, drunken pain, it would’ve been utter and total shit. In the half-dozen years from the release of my last book until now, I’ve LIVED all the shit that needs to be lived, and lived through, before you can listen to another, better, muse.

Now, all there is to do is look forward. Thanks to all who read, wrote, or participated in any form they chose. These last 30 days have been my love poem to all of you. As someone who once wrote a poem about never again writing love poems, I hope you can appreciate the irony.

For now, I’m going to leave you with that thing I write at the end of most of my November posts. It might not be literal this time, but the wish is always on my heart.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Twenty-Nine and a Catchy Title Escapes Me

It’s day twenty-nine and I didn’t get an early enough start.

I thought, as the day kept getting on with itself, and I wasn’t, that maybe there was something in the archives I could slap up on the blog, then take the rest of the day to come up with something fresh to end the month on, tomorrow.

A thought flashed across my mind; the remembrance of something I’d already written, a year or more ago.  So I set myself to digging, and I found it.  I did a few edits on it, because this poem I haven’t been able to let go of, and even submitted to a couple of places at the end of 2022, always felt bloated and croaky, like words coming out of someone who had spent a long winter with laryngitis, forgetting what their real voice sounded like. 

I was about ready to copy and paste from Word Doc to WordPress, when the whisper of a thought floated in the space between bits and bytes.

“Is it, has it, was it, did I already… maybeeeee?”

Scroll-scroll-scroll on the blog, back, back, to day eleven.  One loud exhale through pursed lips.  One more click, and, and.

Damn.

See, my problem with writing is, well… that.  Give it any name you want, it’s that my archives have kinda taken the form of a cave full of junk drawers, all piled up on each other, every drawer neatly labeled, but with descriptions that tell you absolutely nothing about what’s in them.  It’s a filing system that could get you fired, if you were doing the filing for someone else.  For me, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have upwards of a dozen different versions of poems, in various stages of editing.  And even though this is a sort of funny story that will have a fun ending in another 50 words or so, over the days to come, I may have to address this problem before I move forward with the plan I blogged about only yesterday. 

Or maybe I’ll just delete all of it, and start over again.

We’ll see.

But before I cross, or burn, that bridge when I come to it, here’s the thought I came up with to leave for you at the end of day twenty-nine.  How about BOTH POEMS?  Day eleven AND day twenty-nine, side by side, to show you what goes through my mind, every time I write a poem for submission.  Call it the “what to leave in… what to leave out” according to Bob Seeger. 

So, for my next-to-the-last day of NanoPoblano 2023, TWO versions of the same poem.  Also, please tell me which one you like better in the comments.  Because remember, there are no wrong answers, only wrong publishers to reject them. 

Insert laughter here.

.

Half-Staff (day eleven)

I guess the next thing would be to outlaw flags at half-staff.  That is,

if we’re not going to outlaw

their cause. 

It would be easier to do that, because remembering the names of the dead is hard.

.

Half-Staff (day twenty-nine)

I guess the next thing is

to outlaw flags at half-staff,

if we’re not going to outlaw

their cause. 

This would be easier, because

remembering the names of the dead

is hard.

.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Twenty-Eight and the Three More Days

Three more days.

And just like every year I do this 30 day challenge, I fall short.  Short of everything I wanted to write, and short of all the things that have been crowding my heart and mind for the previous year, stored up in such a way that, when the time came to let it all out, it got jammed up inside me like the dryer lint that gets stuck underneath your filter.  A lint clog that, if left uncollected, could… at least according to the manufacturer, TikTok, and all the urban legends… burn your whole house down.

Then again, the stuff I wanted to write this November probably could’ve burned my whole house down, all by itself, if it hadn’t gotten stuck somewhere along the way to all your glowy screens.

So instead, I burn, on the inside.

I guess that means there’s more writing for me to do.

So instead of me curling up into a tightly-packed December ball, and covering my head until that next burst of creative energy shows itself sometime after the first of the year, when THIS December hits, my words will be ready to hit back.  Plans are being made, and not just plans like laundry, or regular grooming and hygiene.  I mean plans like “finish the damn book” and “start the next damn book”, along with “find me a publisher for BOTH damn books”.  Plus, with the 2023 advent of my age-62-and-over, government cheese budget, let’s add “schedule the damn world tour with a suitcase full of the damn books” to go along with all the rest of it.

And this is your heads-up for what, besides laundry and hygiene, looks to be a busy year for me, including the usually underperforming month of December, just three days away.  This gives me two more days with you before I lock the doors and draw the blinds, and knock out more words than the first of any year has held for me before. 

Until right now.

Updates will be here on the blog, and all over the connected socials, when I know more. 

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Twenty-Seven and the Poet Laureate

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.

Day Twenty-Six and All Poets Bear Witness

All Poets Bear Witness

.

“I think all poets… are caught in a situation, have a very difficult role to play.  Insofar as they’re real poets, they are committed to the welfare of people, of all the people… Our effort is to bear witness to something which will have to be there when the storm is over.  To help us get through the next storm.  Storms are always coming.”

-James Baldwin (1970)

All poets bear witness.

Right there.

Full stop.

When I began writing poetry, I was already an old man.  A meme I read the other day will tell you just how old,

“In banana years, I am bread.” 

Not unlike a lot of my poet peers, peers, not in age, but in time served, I wrote poetry because I wanted to die; I just didn’t want to do the deed myself.  Because of that fear of the great beyond, and my place in it, I chose instead to write the poison from my system, one shitty, self-indulgent poem at a time. 

Almost a decade later, my first full-length book of shitty, self-indulgent poems was published, and two years later, a second.  Then, within that same year, and with a third book of shitty, self-indulgent poems set to go to press, I had what I would call a poet’s epiphany.  With a couple of weeks to go before my third book would be made available, I told my publisher no. 

What I actually said was, “I’m pulling the book”.  When asked why, my reply was, “Because it’s shit”.  Now it’s five-and-a-half years later, and I still haven’t written book number three.  Looking back on all the poems I have written from the beginning of 2018 until now, I believe I have done the world a great service, by simply not letting anyone read those poems, except in very small numbers, by only a few trusted individuals.  It’s funny, at least funny to me, funny in a way that most people don’t see as funny, but whatever, that I am grateful that there is nothing come to print of anything I wrote during those five silent years, when circumstances mostly beyond my control afforded me a luxury that a more… accomplished… writer might not have been gifted. 

Time enough to shut the fuck up, and listen.

Time to listen to the hearts of loved ones, listen to the words of chosen family, and not merely chosen by me, but me, having been chosen by them, for reasons I am still unsure about.  And ultimately, time to listen to those who came before all of us, who’s words I do not consider myself worth of, or worthy to share, through my own.  Words like those that preface this post, without which, I would have likely remained silent, still soaking in my own poison.  Words that slapped the self-indulgence right out of me and, I hope to God, make my own words finally worthy of being read. 

That quote of James Baldwin, first spoken by him when I was nine years old, brought me from a place of shitty self-indulgence, wherein the only thing I bore witness to was, well… shitty, and self-indulgent… to now, when we understand that a poet, a real poet, is alive to be committed to the welfare of people.  Of all the people.  And to, I might add, NOT bear witness to their own shitty self-indulgence.

Because there is an entire world before us to bear witness of.  Bear witness of its joys and its fears, its triumphs and atrocities, and its storms, for in doing so, we call out the evil, and call in the good.

Because storms are always coming.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Twenty-Five and the (If I Only Knew What THIS was Called)

I’m ready for it to snow.

If this year is like last year, it means I’m ready for it to only snow an inch-and-a-half by the first week of February, then make the season’s only snow angel on the front lawn, wearing just a tee shirt, sweatpants, and bedroom slippers.  But for this year, what I mean is, I’m ready for it to blizzard; blizzard so hard that it takes an hour to walk the 5 blocks from my front porch to the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Middle Country Road, if I feel like going out at all.

Because this year, what I really want, is to sit, in my cushy blue writing chair, laptop open on my legs and glaring in my eyes, to write the world away.  Write this world away. 

To write another world into existence.

This is a question for all who have read, and maybe written, through this month of November with me.  What do YOU want to write, AFTER November ends?  Leave your answers in the comments.  Let’s make this the beginning of what comes after.  When we all can write another world into existence.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Day Twenty-Four and the End of the Age

The End of the Age

.

I am tired.

You are more.

Maybe it’s my age.

Or just the end of the age,

I’m not really sure.

I don’t believe in a do-over.

Only done.

Are we,

done?

Day Twenty-Three and the PRE (post-apocalypse)

I used to love post-apocalypse stories.

Fahrenheit 451, 12 Monkeys, The Flintstones (trust me on that last one because there IS a THEORY). Hell, do you realize that even Star Trek is, in its deepest origin story, a post-apocalyptic fairy tail. I used to love all of these.

Until a couple of days ago, when a meme came across my socials.

A meme that I just spent an hour digging through other memes, hoping to find, without any luck. In fuzzy recollection, the lost meme went something like this,

“What if we’re already in the apocalypse?”

Take all the time you need with that, just like I did. Don’t rush. Let it breathe. Okay, good. Now ask yourself, just like I did, what if we’re living through, right now, in late November of 2023, NOT just humanity’s latest hiccup, but the actual beginning of the end? I know, there isn’t much CHEER in that thought. I mean, consider that, outside of the cozy fringes of what we, here, call Thanksgiving, are we really just giving thanks for one more blindfold to hide our eyes with?

And no, I don’t care if what you’ve read so far makes you stop reading and start blocking.

Remember that Rome had its Pax Romana and its Bread and Circuses (that last phrase was also a Star Trek episode title, by the way), and Rome was also history’s cool kid on the block for at least 500 years. Even started kicking up its heels a good five or six-hundred years prior to that, before it crumbled on the inside, and then burned on the outside.

We here in the land of turkeys on the fourth Thursday of that month which ushers in our annual seasonal depression, have only been the cool kid on history’s block since that time we bloodied the nose of a bully in a war that ended barely 200 years ago. And since that time, we’ve copied everything we learned from that childhood bully, and then even improved the shit out of a lot of his techniques.

We even copied Rome, and its self-proclaimed Peace, plus its offering of Bread and Circuses, when we crafted our own versions through things like Manifest Destiny and the National Football League. And for every culture that got to experience our manifest, it was, for them, the apocalypse.

So why would we ever think that THE apocalypse couldn’t have its very own origin story… in us? One in which those, once bullied to near-extinction, live long enough to become the bullies of someone else’s end times.

So, while naming no names, and only using well-established histories to make a point for my old favorite Sci-Fi trope, realize that Rome, which wasn’t built in a day, rules the world no more. Great Britain, upon who’s empire, as they themselves used to say, “the sun never sets”, is now little more than the world’s doddering great-grandmum, sitting in a corner, drooling over the smells of turkey roasting in the oven. Just a reminder that history repeats itself often, whether or not we who are alive for it, learn from it.

And momentarily rest in the knowledge that, though history is written by the victors, history also teaches that, eventually, the victors are no more. Then, history will be spoken by those who survived, and live on in what those who would have written, might have called the pre-post-apocalypse.

Oh, and I prefer ham to turkey, and would eat mashed potatoes every day of the year.

Talk to you tomorrow.

(probably)

Day Twenty-Two and the Soft Targets

Soft Targets

.

Today hits near. 

We had made it easy to ignore

the far away.  Miles become oceans,

become sand, far. 

Soft targets found by cellphones

and hot coffee, launched at

father and child.  Miles become oceans,

become playgrounds, near. 

Targets have always been soft.