Advice to poets

Try publishing your poems in book form, rather than on the internet.

See, it’s simple. You have to do the math. If something inspired, say,

is available for virtually free on my PC, why should I buy books of poetry? This is good for me, but I was just thinking, you poets would get more money if you’d put this stuff into book form instead.

The problem is, however, you’d all have to do it. If one good poet keeps publishing his or her poems online instead of in book form, then everyone would read that instead of buying the other poets’ books probably.

Also, it would make reading poetry in the tub safer. Like, only the sheer inspiration of words would shock you.

When in doubt, quote a poem

    Why do you stay in prison
    when the door is so wide open?

    Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
    Live in silence.

    Flow down and down in always
    widening rings of being.

Says Rumi in A Community of the spirit, to be found on p. 3 of The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks.

Or as Rainer Maria Rilke put it in his Stundenbuch,

    Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,
    die sich

A god dragging a civilization through deep space walks into a bar…

There I was in deep space talking to this god with stuff wrapped up in white cords, or ropes of twisted linen; a civilization’s-worth of stuff he had, buildings and other structures, rocking chairs, you name it, pulling it all along and we were chatting.

Frustrating in a way – finally encounter a god and talk and then forget what you talked about. We talked for a long while about interesting things, I’m sure. I needed to use the restroom and so I walked over to the restroom, through this lobby-type area and along this brown carpeting towards this corridor (in a large convention hotel I visit often in my sleep); just before the corridor was this glass door. Above the door was a sign that read “AUTHOR” and inside sat Brendan. I planned to go in and talk to him after taking a whiz, cause cool, B. is The Author! I had no idea!

I had no problem finding the restroom, this long hotel-type restroom with a lot of clean, white porcelain urinals lined up under bright lights, including the long multi-user type you used to find. Only you know how hard it always is to turn around in a dream? How uni-directional they often are? So not only did I not see The Author or the god again, the entire dream turned into something else and quickly ended and I woke, needing to pee, and thought, yay, I didn’t wet the bed and I talked to a god. Not to mention B. etc.

Nutcracker

That Christmas classic, The Nutcracker Suite, at Raising Hell.

Celebrity

Woman: You could be a famous singer, you know. [Sips coffee.]
Man: [Chews cornflakes.] Say what?
Woman: I mean, you have a great voice.

Man: Aw.
Woman: And you’re good-looking.
Man: Aw.
Cat: [Looks up in anticipation.]
Woman: Your problem is the personality.
Man:
Cat: Heh.
Woman: [Sips coffee, turns page of newspaper.]