Poets and Writers and the Mysteries of Digital Serendipity

When Poets and Writers publishes one of your film poems (which you didn't submit to them and have no idea how they found, but would have gladly submitted had you known they published film poems in the first place) it would be awesome if they told you about it.  But I guess that would deprive you of the very pleasant surprise of discovering it three years after the fact while researching new places to submit new work online.

I am Not [ ] Enough (Erasure #5)

In common.  An entity
explicit or sublunary
what is does follow
the pair, that third thing
arises, perfectly safe
it will will this premise
a first step precisely
here
        conclusions
become particular, implicit
form god, the pair
wishing wishing to be
the maker.


(source material:  lit-digital.com)

For my father Bernard "Moon" Mullins.

Poem Explaining the Purpose of the Moon

I have a theory born in grief

though tempered by hope:

When night shrouds this Earth

after someone we love dies

the moon becomes a hole in the sky

is no longer the moon shining

the sun’s reflection down on us

but a portal, a window, letting in

a glimpse of limitless light

from a place we can’t usually see

It’s that portal each loved one

we lose steps through as they leave

us behind, only to emerge blinking

I imagine, smiling, a hand shielding

their eyes, in a place beyond

our lives.  A place somehow familiar

yet new.  A place they’ve felt before

but never known until now

And in that place they wait for us

though our seeing into where they are

through this moon, this hole in the sky

can only last so long, perhaps only as

long as our grief is fresh or as long

as our minds are capable of pulling

us back and forth between life and death

until this death becomes something

we can, we must, live with, because

somehow, the moon always seems

to become simply the moon again.

Except for those of us who know

otherwise.

Mull (An Absence)

I recently discovered Alan Bigelow's amazing digital literature website webyarns.  One of the many excellent pieces on that site is called Moby Dick, which drew my attention because of my friend John Minichillo's excellent novel The Snow Whale.  So I dove in.  First, this piece presents you with a number of "classic" literary novels which are summarized in four sentences.  Then it allows you to write your own.  The parameters: four sentences, 800 characters.  The gauntlet had been thrown down.  I went for it.  Here's the result:

Mull (An Absence)

Mull liked to mull so he mulled

day in, day out 

answer in the bottom of an empty glass: mull 

fly on the screen: mull.

Mull met an unexpected girl

fell out of mull and into love 

what he didn't know: the girl

loved to mull, not Mull.

Mull lost the girl to a man who mulled

and when he asked her to think it over

she said, "What's to think about?"

Now Mull had to mull so he mulled

day in, day out.

Three Ways of the Saw

I've been focusing on the recent publication of my first collection of short stories, Three Ways of the Saw. So not much has been going on here lately. If you're new to this blog, sniff around, there's some fun stuff. If you've been here before you've likely seen it all. So head on over to the Three Ways of the Saw blog, which is where I've been spending my time lately.

Read on!

Matt

Seven Stones

That tragedies can destroy what happiness there is in an instant.

That countless are dying and being killed right now.

That considering this is doing nothing to solve the problem.

As the whore packs his junk into a codpiece.

As a president signs lives away with her pen.

As I realize, again, how much less I am here without you.

Who I’ll never know.

What So Proudly We Hail (This is the Space Age)

Oh, say can. Oh, say can. Oh, say can.
You see the stars bleed their red troubles
across the junked night sky. You hear
the white light of the universe grinding
on an axis bold as love. You know
the blue purpose of our future. This is
the space age. And we are here to go.