Pain is Universal

There are times I must leave this planet

and speak with the spheres who know

the pain of loneliness and isolation.

They have learned to live in silence,

sending out soundings to one another,

a low hum that draws them together

in the set course of their circular paths.

My ship is green with gray highlights.

A 2-dimensional black orbital byway

guides the daily commute to and from,

where I float amongst celestial beings,
colleagues, coworkers, and clones.

I reach out with the hum of who I am,

harmonics filling the gaps between us.

***

Picture Poems and Prose

I have some good ideas for stories bouncing around in my head but commitments at home and work have put the kibosh on the time needed to write anything substantial.  In these times of chrono-scarcity I've found that I lean much more heavily on writing poems and short prose.  Twice in the past month I have written what amounts to short introductory scenes to what could be longer tales, likely short stories, hoping to return to them at some future time.  These include "Jude Vestivus, at your service" and "Thunder Road."  They were both inspired by pictures.  This is a relatively reliable source of stories for me as I am a visually oriented person.

In retrospect, this inclination likely had its beginnings my freshman year of High School.  The English assignment was to write poems and then look in magazines to find photos to cut out and illustrate them in a book of ten or so pages.  I only had one idea for a poem and needed several more.  The magazines I had at home were things like Omni, The Smithsonian, and National Geographic, all full of strange and striking images.  It became the images themselves that inspired me to write poems about them.  I was turning the project on its head, but the poems that came from those images were not too shabby in my immature estimation and the teacher was none the wiser for my contrarian approach.

I've thought about that booklet of poems w/ pictures off and on for decades and I would love to stumble upon it in the proverbial box-in-the-back-of-the-closet, but so far no luck.  I wish I'd continued that process as an ongoing literary scrapbook of my life and a tool for introspection.  I stumbled back onto the practice when I was deployed to Iraq and looking for ways to deal with the stress of my deployment.  It started with "A Lonely Chair" followed by "there is a place."  Those ideas began to take hold in the cold concrete shell of my room in Tikrit during the evening hours, thinking about my wife and two year old son in Ohio.  If nothing else, that experience was the rekindling of a desire to express myself in this way.

So, this explains the fact that I find it nearly impossible to post something on my blog that does not include a picture.  I'm sure some of the poems, short stories, and autobiographical tidbits could stand to be picture-less, but the hardwiring in my brain makes that nearly impossible to contemplate.  It is an itch that demands to be scratched.

I sometimes put a post on hold until I can find a picture to go with it, which is what happened with "The Crow."  I started out looking for a picture of myself from childhood and a picture of a crow that I could superimpose using Photoshop (this idea found fruition in the follow up, "Crow Analysis," using a picture of my Mom).  During this hunt I stumbled upon a picture of my son in my photo files on flickr.com where he was about the same age I was in the story.  It was a long exposure so that you could see right through him and he appears to be imitating a bird w/wings.  I then put it into a photo app and worked with it until I got the final photo which appears to me to imply he is damaged in some way due to a reddish smudge.  These elements of ghost-likeness, Elias's creepy expression, and the red-tipped "wing" fit the story perfectly.

Another strategy I use is to brainstorm an idea for an accompanying photo, then go on to snap the shot de novo and manipulate it to my purposes using Photoshop and/or a photo app on my iPad with a very a specific outcome in mind.  This would include the short story "Hospitocalypse" and, more recently, the poem "Tin Rocket."  After writing that poem I found Elias downstairs watching TV in his shorts and had him stand in front of the wall with his back to me.  "Move your legs apart just a little.  OK, now straighten your fingers and move your arms out from your body... stop."  He is usually a good sport and doesn't ask too many questions.  He knows I'm a bit on the odd side and seems not to mind it, as long as these characteristics do not manifest in public places.

Lastly, there is the occasional poem or story that is inspired by the picture itself, similar to the process I used to create the poems for my High School English project.  These incidents are more rare, but include some of my favorites and are increasingly a source of ideas that keep me writing.  A recent example comes from attending a conference in Toronto two weeks ago and being captivated by the immensity of the CN Tower that dominates the city skyline.  The structure screams "SciFi!  SciFi!" and I could not ignore it.  Pictures I took of this structure inspired "The New Canadians" and "First Contact."

This simple idea of coupling a picture with writing has given me a tremendous amount of pleasure in recent years as well as helped me work through some pretty harrowing stuff.  It has given me the courage to look at some painful places inside and find a way to get it out and share it with others.  I have found it to be healing and my hope is that in sharing it, others can benefit as well.  I believe we are here to help each other get through life with as much grace and clear-sightedness as possible.  The choice should not be between despair or denial (the natural outcomes of going it alone), but in mutual support to acknowledge our struggles and turn the hurt into hope and healing.