Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Liner Notes

It’s strange feeling, having your rambling-as-stanzas published in literary magazines. I’m going to ruminate on the inspiration for them, mostly because I want to better understand why I do this. Unfortunately I don’t want to post the actual poems because they’re all in publications you can purchase and I would hate to screw over these magazines, and I would also hate to see my work posted on some joker’s Instagram. With that in mind, I’ll break it down by the stanzas and go in-depth as best I can.

Title: The Privilege of Gardening – PALABRITAS Magazine

Why submit there?

I wanted a Latinx publication because the poem had that theme baked in. Simple as that. I also wanted to support a student-run organization, because I’ve run publications when I was at school and it was tough.

Stanza 1

So I’ve helped my mother with her gardening since I was a teenager. This hasn’t changed – I’ve helped on winter and spring breaks in college, and when I moved back east I resumed my work as her manual laborer. At times it becomes meditative, hence why this is the seed (no pun intended) to this poem. The stanza describes those moments when I work in the backyard, my hands dirty and ready to place seeds for plants that somehow got through customs.

Stanza 2

A continuation of the narrative, starting with a command in Spanish from my mother and a careless thought of my gardening. This comes from actual events, and is the crux of where this poem came from. that disregard in comparison of where my mind was going.

Stanza 3

The chorus, so to speak. two lines, meant to cap off the narrative of my gardening with my mother. Again, it’s meant to push the almost-indifference to the action of planting a seed. You ever wonder if you can be so blasé about something so deliberate?

Stanza 4

I remember reading or watching a bunch of reports on undocumented kids crossing the border into the US. Images of them jumping onto La Bestia and braving a deadly train ride into an unknown future. Then I read the reports of how those very same kids were the ones harvesting the tobacco plants in the cigarettes you’re smoking. Dark stuff, and while I don’t smoke my immigrant experience still has a connection to it.

Stanza 5

Written in the same style as stanza 2, but in the POV of those kids. I could only imagine it as an exponentially harder level of raw labor than anything I could do in my parent’s backyard. All I could see was what the reports would say, of workers passing out of dehydration from the uncompromising sun. Poor new bodies for the soil, and it made me feel so insignificant.

Stanza 6

Same chorus style as stanza 3, hammering down the abject neglect to the undocumented. Where stanza 3 was meant to show disregard to seed, it takes the same energy to how we don’t give a single damn about those people in the fields. The only ones that do are there families.

What Does This All Mean?

It’s a matter of remembering how you take for granted what you do at home in comparison to what the disadvantaged are forced to do just to survive. I still have family members sin papeles that have to hustle however they can, and I’ve worked with the undocumented. It’s a matter of perspective.

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Poetry, Writing

This Vero Thing Kinda Sucks. Let’s Have Some Fun With It.

So I joined Vero a few days ago and I’m going to be honest, I’m still not entirely impressed. I got over their serious server overload issue (I’ve sat through enough games to know the score) but there’s still something missing that will make it an Instagram-killer.

Don’t get me wrong, what the app offers is cool. Algorithm-free, more post options, selection of who can see your post – those options really go after a lot of crowds. Doesn’t cover up the fact I might have to end up paying for it, or that the owner basically committed human rights abuse back in the Middle East.

So my days on the app are rather limited. I won’t extend my “brand” there – Haiku Mixtape, photos, and other stuff won’t be posted there – because this is just a fun transient thing. When the going gets fatalistic, the fatalist gets funny.

I’m putting up a different kind of poem/passages on my Vero. Consider them as manifestos from what drives me insane on IG and poetry in general. I think of my Vero account as a rage-dump, something were I can poke fun at the waves and waves of insipid content I see day after day.

I’m writing on borrowed time here. The moment they ask for my credit card, I’m going straight for the long, arduous process of deleting the account. Until then, #veropoets, let’s have some fun, shall we?

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Personal, Writing

Epil(NaNoWri)epsy Month Thoughts

November is an interesting month for me, personally. I always try the NaNoWriMo thing (never completing, because it’s just not something that works for me but hey it’s fun). But also that it’s also Epilepsy Awareness Month (because that that’s not so fun, but hey, it completes me as the person I now am).

One day, I probably should combine the two. But I don’t know how. Some ideas have popped into my head, but they’ve all come out like both writing a novel or having a seizure – erratic, auric, and confusing. In the meantime I’ll just ramble on this month, working on both with one on haikumixtape and the other perhaps here, perhaps on things that will never see the light of day.

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Personal, Writing

ello, guvna

So, I heard that ello, the ad-free minimalist social media platform, has become a sort of deviantART/Colossal hybrid. I probably linked to my old account in the past, but I’ve decided to use it as a way to post some of my older work in a new place, and as a new avenue for Haiku Mixtape as well.

I also have my first patron on the HM Patreon as well. Why don’t y’all kick in a buck, there’s a few exclusive haiku I’ve put in there already.

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My Work, Writing

My New Weapons For NaNoWriMo

Quick blog post. Doing the NaNoWriMo thing again, going to crash and burn most likely, but there is one thing that has helped me in the two weeks prior to it.

The first is my main addiction which is of course Tumblr. The scene is…interesting at times, especially because I really feel out of place from it a lot of the time. And that’s what keeps me coming back – looking into a petri dish of social commentary, fandom and assorted nonsense that’s intriguing to me. So, that’s where I’m getting my inspiration from.

Second has to do with the thing I started two weeks ago. I’ve been working for a client that has me working at breakneck speeds for writing articles. At first I didn’t really think I could write a 500+ word  article in under 1-2 hours but apparently I can? and I’m getting faster – I wrote one under 40 minutes in sheer panic of the deadline yesterday.

So, that means, under concentration, I can hit the 1667-a-day pace for the 50,000 goal this month in about….6 hours. But, because the closest thing to research I’m using is riffing off Tumblr, it really won’t take that long.

I wrote 400 words when I woke up this morning, actually. From 4 Tumblr posts, completely dismantled to fit the narrative. All in…what, half an hour? This might work, maybe.

Expect updates. Happy writing.

 

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Writing

What I say when it falls apart (A Staggered Acrostic)

(original post in my tumblr)

See, the path is one of loathing –

a hellish endeavor in holding hands

our angelic internal voices collapsing

while trumped up signs lead to the brink.

Feeling tremors never felt so cathartic,

a shade of ecstatic, one step from the

eschaton, a reveal worth division.

Is this a forced escape? No, the torsion

makes the way so detached I feel free

 

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Poetry, Writing

The Haiku Mixtape– Deconstructed (Part 1)

Deconstruct1I’m nearing the end of the Haiku Mixtape project, so I thought that it would be a good idea if I put down the notes on each  haiku. This idea came up partly as a way to see how an explanation would look like in writing, and as a way to show people how the sausage is made to those whose who are working on poetry of their own. I just wanna cover ten from the first eleven haiku ( I already deconstructed one in a previous post).

Ziggy Stardust – It took me a few weeks of figuring out what song would start the project. Any mixtape has to start strong, and I decided the late great David Bowie was the best choice.The inspiration primarily came from the image of Ziggy, of course, and part of the lyrics (“when the kids killed the man…”)

Austere – The Joy Formidable is a Welsh indie rock band. I heard about them years ago through an incredibly-ancient Idolator blog post, and I like that, despite their overall pop sound, they still had a kick to them. Hence why I ended it with the word roar.

Pearls Girl – I had some words to a longer free-verse poem inspired by this Underworld song – I never finished it, and I didn’t like it. I played around with it this time for the mixtape, and made this instead. I think I might go back to the original, who knows.

I Don’t Care (I Love It) – There’s a personal story to why I chose this song that I won’t get into unless we’re friends. The narrative in the haiku give a general idea of what happened, and added a bit of flair ( the smashing/crashed internal rhyme).

She’s Lost Control – Fun fact: Ian Curtis had epilepsy, which affected his dancing on-stage. This haiku goes straight to the point, to the lyrics, because, hey, I gotta deal with it too. And it would feel really cheap if I’d do it any other way.

Flight Of The Feathered Serpent – The imagery of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of wind and learning, is very cool. That was the sole inspiration of the haiku sprinkled with the sonic sprawl of the song.

Beetlebum – I saw Blur live with friends at Madison Square Garden that week. This is my favorite song by the band, and the lyrics just hit me. Used the word Britannia to do a syllabic extension to Britpop, so to speak.

Bela Lugosi’s Dead – The Halloween haiku, obviously. There is no way I won’t say no to a good goth song as my choice for this, my favorite of holidays. Imagery of people wearing black and vampires stuck in my head when I started the writing process.

Teenage Crime – I found this Adrian Lux song on Spotify, and I quite liked it. Nice simple house beat, a coy voice with sparse lyrics that fit. Brought out memories to a lot of old clubbing days that lasted ’til morning.

Her Fantasy – This one is slightly inspired by the music video and combined it with inspiration born from the lyrics in Dear’s baritone delivery. I also used the album cover for the mixtape background. After I finished it I spent a night of watching Kenneth Anger movies.

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Writing

New tricks and light strobes seize me,

drag me far but keep me in a fugue state –

I want to keep lying, trust me, this is what

I am meant to be – protean in the club,

the last human dancing on a barren floor,

uncompromising – my feet never stay bored

and my mind slides, spins along with yours

Poem 6/7/16

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Fiction, Writing

Girl Band, Part 1

Note: I was published in a poetry book by Saul Williams years ago. The title of the poem is Girl Band, and I decided to write a four-part flash fic piece from each stanza.

Little maiden blue, burqa blessed,
she holds monstrous stories told
in the spaces of her lyre; infantile,
how her voice is muffled by the cloth

It didn’t surprise her fans that tickets to her shows sell out in ten minutes or less. She liked choosing small venues – this time a considerably-sized lounge – and a place where protesters would not be an issue.

The fear in her mind left years ago when she escaped the terrorist camps, so she had her dark gray tour bus park in front of the lounge and the few protesters that had made it outside on that cold December night. The shouting were a cacophony of Arabic, Urdu, Farsi while the police shouted in English. She remained silent, her mouth hidden beneath a black burqa adorned with a bronze grille. Her blue eyeliner gave the looks she made at her opponents the more menacing while she walked inside the lounge.

The techs set up the stage quickly – all that was needed was a rug to cover the  stage’s wooden flooring, a comfortable and stylish seat, and a table at the proper height for her instrument. She had been using a three-foot tall lyre, gilded and Sumerian designed for the better part of a decade.

The red and purple stage lights came down on stage, and she came in, draped in a long, light blue burqa with a golden mesh. It looked as if she was floating towards her lyre. She sat down on the seat and pulled her arms out from under the burqa. Both her arms, covered in full-sleeve tattoos, depicted images of the bloodshed she witnessed at home, like a dark tapestry of sorrow and violence. She plucked at the strings with her right hand, whose arm had images of AK-47s and beheaded infidels.

“We born from the earth leave buckets of blood,” she sang, her voice the exquisite mix of the child and pixie, “my clit is gone…”

She commenced with her left hand, the one with an arm draped with buildings in ruin and explosions. The complexity of the melody was beautiful, making her lyrics and odd juxtaposition.

“I’ve run thousands of miles in the woods and the mud, but my clit is gone…”

The crowd could not make it if she was in pain or or if she was detached as she sang. There was a whimsy in her movement, swaying her head side to side and tapping her feet in black leather boots that seemed impossible to think she could be enjoying singing what was coming out of her mouth.

“My family is under the sand with the rest of the town,

The killers blessed my neck with knives, and I lied down… now my clit is gone.”

Her die-hard fans soaked into every word – some knew the lyrics and whispered it to friends and lovers. Others in the crowd simply walked out in discomfort or repulsion.

The song ended with a complex arpeggio. Afterwards, she spoke softly on the microphone.

“Thank you that was the easiest song on the set list. Let’s continue.’

With that, she removed her burqa, revealing an Afghani woman wearing a Rancid t-shirt and ripped jeans. The scars on her face mapped her life’s pain, but she maintained a genuine smile as she moved onto the next transgression.

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