Tag Archives: love

“Hello…

…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

Last Rights For An Anarchist

We live in a hateful world.  
A world that I want to hit with 
my fists, kick with my boots, 
and hurt, the way it has hit, 
and kicked, and hurt, me 
and those I love.  
But the world isn’t a person, 
to be hit, or kicked, or hurt.  
It’s a thing.  It’s a whole 
fucking system, and nobody’s 
ever bitch-slapped a system.  

You can’t counter-punch 
politics, or swing a barstool 
at the lying church that 
taught you God is Love, then 
showed you who and how to hate, 
and in doing that, usher in 
God’s Kingdom just by trusting 
in their pasty white Jesus, and 
in his pumpkin-colored high priest. 
Their crucified and bleeding, 
para-military Lamb of God.

You can’t throat-punch 
a paradigm that makes 
billionaires like it used to 
make millionaires, or break 
the kneecaps of a structure that 
rewards politicians with millions.
And turned the middle-class into 
foot soldiers for fascists. 
 
You can’t choke the system that 
gives you life, whatever that 
life looks like now, because 
killing the system that keeps 
you alive ends what’s left of yours.  
Choke it until its eyes cloud over, 
and hear its windpipe crack, stealing 
the last of its breath, unless 
you’re ready for your own eyes to 
cloud over, and for you to 
breathe your last.  

I’ve been impatient, I know this, 
because I’ve lived long enough to 
see what old looks like in a mirror, 
and how the end of my life is getting 
closer, but the end of the system isn’t.
And I feel about as lifeless as the 
system that gave me life, then took it 
all away, until all I want is for 
this system to die.  

So today, the only question I have 
left is, am I prepared to die with it?  
Because I already feel so dead.

Love Poem



Is a love poem always about love? Yes always,
although sometimes, a love poem is about
baseball, or a dog, or where you were raised,

even if you couldn’t wait to get out of
where you were raised, before you knew the
first thing about love, which you probably

only learned from baseball, or a dog.

I learned that love can make you angry when
things don’t go your way, like when the Dodgers
lose to the Yankees, from something as out of

your control as Reggie Jackson’s right hip.

I learned that love can make you cry when the
best friend you’ve had since you were six
looks you in the eyes at the vet’s office,

right before you go home without him.

And all of this, somehow, SOMEHOW prepares you
for a moment when you finally, FINALLY meet the
love of your life, who understands all of this,

and does not let you go while your child self,
that loves baseball and dogs, is working out
all the things that will lead you, one day,

ONE DAY, to them. Until you are home.

Home with your memories, and home with
each other.  And you understand that yes, 
a love poem is always about love.

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 Eighteen and the Birds

(Artwork by Michele Thomas)

Birds

•

Let the birds come. 

On the gray-eyed mist of May,

with flower’s breath,

through rusting screens of

second story window panes,

facing east and waiting for the sun.

Let the birds come.

To sing the blanket from my shoulders,

and greet the bottom of

my empty morning cup. 

Wanting more, but nothing more than this. 

The place where stories run.  Let the birds come.

•

(for Chele)

Day Four and the Reminder Notice

Last week, got called a

Nazi for endorsing peace

by means other than genocide.

–

Yep, that’s the poem. 

Closer to home, in case you forgot, just 365 days from tomorrow, there’s a damn good chance that an election will be won by a candidate who actually hates Jews, Muslims, women, queer folk, Black folk, Asians, Spanish speakers, Democrats, all news outlets that call candidates out on their bullshit, defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, incarcerated people, the list goes on. 

I mean, the only people the candidate doesn’t hate are people stupid enough to vote for him.

So, while our limited attention is elsewhere, consider this a reminder notice. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for.

Just don’t vote for a Nazi.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Saying Goodbye

We have less than a week left together and already, I don’t know what I will do when you aren’t here.  I’ve gone from tolerating you, to hating, to… what?  Missing you, before the moment comes?  You know how matchbook poets glibly tell us that we ought to cherish the days we have with someone, because no one knows how many days those are? 

Yeah, well I know how many days I have left with you.

It’s too many.  It’s also not enough. 

I don’t think my heart is strong enough for this, because it breaks so easily, that I built a wall made of flesh and Teflon and razor wire, just to keep you out, and these feelings in.  And I was the idiot who also built a gate to let you back inside.  So what am I supposed to do when you use that gate to leave me, one more time?  I guess I could make a bomb with whatever resources I have left, and will run out, when December comes.  But that would ruin everything you and I have built in such a short time, that we could have never made without each other.

Fucking God, I’m gonna miss you.

And yeah, I could tell myself that you’ll be back again; that you always come back.  Except I know that even if you would return to me, I also know that I might not be here waiting.  Because the last time we were here, I wrote a story about how we are all living on borrowed time, and there are never any guarantees. Not now, not ever.  A story I couldn’t finish, then.  So for the time that we have left, I will live with you so hard.  See you, appreciate you, breathe you in.  And maybe just sit silent in your presence, waiting for the end.

Is this how we know that we love?

.

Have you come to the understanding that NanoPoblano 2022 is almost over? How are you dealing with it? Here’s your chance. I’d really like to know.

Talk to you tomorrow.

All the Leaves are Brown

And the sky is gray.

It doesn’t take a keen artistic eye, or a love for 1960s pop ballads, to recognize signs in the heavens, or atmospheric conditions at the end of a November on the east coast.  It’s not cold, it’s bleak.  The sun rises almost two hours after I wake up, it sets in what feels like early afternoon, and I realize now what I must’ve sounded like when I still lived in California, and the morning cold was chased away by an afternoon Santa Ana blowing 40-plus miles an hour at 90-plus degrees, and my 60 years in the same place mind would think,

“I feel a chill in the air”.

And in my right this minute mind’s eye, I am staring at myself, and thinking,

“You’re an idiot”.

And I’m right.

I hope that, wherever you are as I write this, you are okay with how you’re talking to yourself.  And by the way, before I get too much further into this, let me say that, I believe accuracy is a form kindness.  I also believe that kindness is a good way to approach things, in the same way that a wall that needs paint needs a paintbrush, not a sledgehammer.  That said, when painting, sometimes a wall needs a paint roller, not a fine-bristle edge brush. 

And sometimes, it’s okay to be harsh with you, with words or names that we wouldn’t use on strangers.  Just so, there are moments when, in self-talk, I call myself by the name that appears on my birth certificate, William.  There are other moments, also in self-talk, when I call myself one of a multitude of kinder nicknames, given by me, to me, over years and years of getting to know myself, each nickname befitting whichever subtly-nuanced moment I am experiencing at the time. 

And finally, there are moments when, in the most intimate of self-talk, I call myself names that I might never use on someone I loved, because it could be taken as harsh or hurting.  Or on someone young, because their tender psyche is still in development, and terse descriptives would likely become imprinted upon them in a way that would injure, and cause them to limp through life, not run freely, as they should. 

But I am no longer young, and I am no longer tender.  Not in the sense that I am still a psyche in development, or someone who may, with his own words, say something that others have used, or have not already used, in anger, on myself.

Now I use these words on myself, with consent, and in full understanding of how they might sound in the ears of another, who might not understand that the years it took me to unlearn the hurt in these words from my self-talk vocabulary, have also taken the sting from them, because the power for me is not in these words. 

The power is in my breaking the grip these words once had over me.  In intimate words that once might have swung like a sledgehammer, with angry eyes and a clenched jaw, but now are as soft as a paintbrush, wet with colors that feel like love, accompanied by a smile, a shake of the head, a roll of the eyes.

Talk to you tomorrow.