But I read a couple of poems at Seldom Seen Poets this past Wednesday that folks were asking about, so instead of just linking to old entries, I’ll post them here.

(Also, if you want to find more poems, here are the most recent entries marked under the category of “poetry.” Most of them have poems in them. They’re also, unfortunately, the most recent pieces I’ve written. But that might change soon. I’m feeling some poetics rising up, from, uh, somewhere.)

vegas poem number three

August was monsoon season
and my brother and I
morphed into mud monsters
’cause our street was never paved
and instead of throwing rocks
at road runners
we’d throw dirt clods
at each other
and I would try to catch clouds in my hands
in this valley
let the mountains hold us
let the rocks scrape our knees
like cuneiform
let the lightning be our battle cry
see we’d gather the starlight
reflected in midnight puddles
and bury it in the dust
when the sun came
and still
my best perfume will be rain
sunsets painted purple and orange
like blurred fireworks
paused in the pacific sky
and I used to dig holes
in my front yard
the summer sun retiring
and I’d let the minerals
chalk up my hands like a ghost
and the land that birthed me
is made of big bang theory
a gravity of love harsh enough
to make my heart
beat like quail wings
and my brother and I
still shake dust from our hair
still only feel safe
with mountains around
and we still only trust each other
as children our god
didn’t have a name
something about the sunset
stole the words away from us
and if I could catch a patch
of raincloud in my hands
I’d carry it to the hearts
parched from being broken so much
and I’d quench the loneliness
and I’d teach them
how to light the right fire inside
so let the valley cradle us
let the sky tuck us in
let the stars dance with the moon
so we can choose
love
so let’s choose love
let’s remember the moment
when we looked at the sky
and knew
we didn’t have to give god
a name
or a gender
let’s just let the rain
drip from our hair
there
in clouds made of mercury
hurrying to give the world water
is the answer
the cure for our wounds
and words
we wished we could tell god
but that we need to tell ourselves
with trust
with rain in our hair
and mud between our toes
let’s choose love
like our hearts
had never tasted water
and we finally found the source
in ourselves

***

untitled
if I could wrinkle time to find you, I would.
ain’t a thing in the universe could stop me
but the sun
and the sun ain’t nothing but a magnified star
ain’t nothing
but the spiral from god’s navel.
everyday I find myself unravelling
like my skin was candle wax
and only the act of fingertips
would stop the melting.
you.
you’re a dream out there,
’cause in dreams the lovers
never have faces,
a dreamer can’t trace back their ancestry
and the question
sounds like fingerprints on glass.
mystery ain’t nothing
but history not written yet
so if we set ourselves open
maybe we could find our future together.
something about the distance
between the head and the heart
feels like the difference
between waiting and right now,
’cause time ain’t nothing
since we decided to measure it,
and if I could stop measuring time
I’d measure out the beautiful moments
and sprinkle them around
so they could always surprise me.
or surprise you.
I’d pull them out of my pockets
and press them into your palm
to make your fate line parallel to mine.
’cause we got time, you know,
now that we decided to measure it.
maybe time is the treasure chest
like we’d found the X
that marked the spot in the universe where we belong.
’cause the universe ain’t nothing
but a big, slow rubber band.
and who’s to say when the universe
collapses and expands again
we won’t be living this life over?
I’m gonna do myself a favor
and get it right this time
so the me in a billion billion years
won’t have to make tears her currency.
or maybe I’ll be you
and I’ll know where to find who you are.
a story of souls not forgotten.
honestly, I’ll wait for a couple of haley’s comets for your kiss,
a transmission of a heart in supernova,
transposing a million languages into one
’cause if we only have to speak with body heat
then I wanna be binary stars.
I mean I wanna be your heart.
I mean I wanna be holy to you
’cause the only things holding me together
are your breath and your yes.
so hold me
hold me like the rapture was happening
inside our own heartbeats.
’cause this life ain’t nothing
but a freestyle over the breakbeat
god planted in us,
and you make my drum beat so fast
only an Irish reel could outlast that tempo.
they say dance like nobody’s watching,
but I say play.
play like your life was on the line
’cause this is it.
one stage, dancefloor, mic, pen, mind, idea, beautiful.
you.
you with the erased dream-face,
a smeared soul of Picasso perfection,
the angels don’t have time to waste.
since they don’t measure time, they waste nothing.
they’re waiting for us to get it,
get god, get each other, get to the point already.
this ain’t a poem about eyes,
our eyes ain’t nothing
but a trick to get us to give up.
’cause they don’t pop out of my head
when he walks into the room,
so that I can finally see him:
a hummingbird heartbeat,
a butterfly tummy flutter,
a dragon’s breath of heat in my cheeks.
don’t misunderstand me,
imperfections are the perfections I’m looking for,
’cause even if I don’t know your face
I will know you by the morse code
of your fingertips,
a paint brush of lips,
this moment we own like it had our own name.

Keep in mind that getting your story critiqued has nothing to do with you. At some point you have to realize these are not some precious babies that are above being constructively criticized. If you think you have nothing wrong with your prose, you better think again.

I don’t say that to be mean. I really don’t. But a lot of people seem to think that getting critiqued is the same as getting smoke blown up your ass, and it drives me crazy when people get mad over something that has everything to do with their writing and nothing to do about them as a person. If I didn’t like you, why would I be helping you?

On the other side, when you’re critiquing, don’t just say, “I don’t like this.” Why don’t you like it? I’ve been in workshops where someone literally says that and that’s it. Can you explain this for me? How am I supposed to take this as a critique? I don’t know why you don’t like it, so I’m not going to take anything else you say seriously. That, too, drives me up the wall.

I always admit my biases before I start talking about your story. For me, I have a bias against Bible-referencing titles. I also have a bias for titles that are lines from poems or lyrics or song titles. Sometimes if I have to do research, I’ll state that as well.

The idea is to be critiqued by other writers who can see why things don’t work in your story. In fact, writers can tell you what works as a writer and a reader, and that’s the most helpful of all.

Start with close reading of published work: what did the writer do that was so effective? How were the characters, dialogue, sentence structure? What was it about the story that moved you?

A great, constructive critique should make you feel pumped about going back and making changes. It should make you want to be better, that there are good and bad things about your stories that can be changed and improved upon.

Name:
Age:
Family:
Want:
Fear:
Habitat:
Significant Other:

What you might want to do is ask questions of your characters. Think about what you’d ask if you were interviewing a celebrity or famous figure past or present. If you’re feeling extra plucky, you may want to use lines from famous speeches as answers, or lines of poetry. Maybe this character only answers in titles to Beatles songs. You never know what you’re going to get. Write the interview out as if you were going to publish it in a paper or other similar kind of publication.

I’ve used this with my own characters, and actually got some lines of dialogue out of it. It’s great for me when I’m writing a character that doesn’t exactly line up with my feelings and beliefs, because I get to think a little deeper than normal. I get to flesh out a history and emotional backstory for characters, especially for my protagonist– he/she can have a justification for their actions that I don’t have to explain if I don’t want to.

It was a duh moment, because I just thought, why the hell didn’t I think of that before? That semester I ended up taking a class on foreign films, and one of the books we read was Syd Field’s Screenplay. I ended up writing a 90-page screenplay the spring semester of my sophomore year.

Since then I’ve written music criticism, a short film, a TV pilot, a one-act stage play, narrative poetry, a comic script, prose poetry, and even experimental textual fiction. And it really doesn’t matter to me what I write in — if the story seems to work better in something other than traditional fiction, great, let’s learn about it and figure it out.

Basically, don’t be afraid to get out of your box. I’m not saying you have to write your whole story as a screenplay or whatever, just read up on the basics of construction and try to write a page or two like that. I find that sometimes when I write things in a different format, I can see things differently. Like, if you’re writing dialogue, think about how it would be constructed in a screenplay format: it’s very very tricky to tell a story with just conversation, but that’s what you have to do with a screenplay format. It can force you to economize your details and dialogue.

You never know, you might like it enough to try and get it made… you never know.

It turned out okay. Writing this month was a challenge because of starting the new job, but I powered through. Or tried to, anyway.

The next two months will be working on a collaborative project, so there won’t be full pieces posted, but I’ll get some previews up before I leave for vacation.

It needed a lot of work, but I learned that maybe trying to go full tilt for an entire story may not be the best idea for me. But there were bits that were chuckle-worthy, and I was able to see how I constructed the bits that worked.

But if you are scared to write a funny story, start small and try to write some absurdist dialogue or a scene that has a comedic element. Rewrite a famous comedic scene from another character’s point of view: reach high, try a scene from a Monty Python movie.

Don’t think of it in terms of whether you can or can’t be funny, or even if you have a humorous disposition. Think of it in terms of what makes you (or anybody) laugh. Deconstruct those kind of scenes. You don’t have to be a joker to write good humor.

Some of my favorite stand-up comedy is observational humor, and Richard Pryor was an absolute master at this: all he’s doing is telling a story about catching on fire while he was taking drugs, and heading to the hospital, but think about the rhythm of his storytelling.

His timing in telling this story is just genius. You can do this in your fiction if you think about sentence structure, punctuation, word choice. Don’t worry about making everybody laugh — not everybody will get it. Just go for it.

I can’t really give you tips on writing endings. Most of the time I write a page too much. I’m so worried about wrapping everything up that I just go “Get it over with already! Jesus.”

For me as a reader, I don’t mind endings where I think about the characters beyond the story. Some people like it wrapped up tidy. Your mileage may vary.

Ending Clarion was difficult. 19 of us had been through this life-changing journey, had critiqued so many stories, experienced epiphanies, and most of all had a blast doing it. I got to workshop with some of the most talented writers I’d ever met, and to be able to get high-quality feedback changed my writing for the better.

If you ever get a chance to go to Clarion, don’t hesitate to do it. The experience you’ll have there is unlike anything in the world.

–You can hear how authors read. Everyone has their particular style of reading, and it’s a good idea to see what you like and don’t like about reading in front of people.
–Hearing how authors interpret their own work can give you insight into how to construct your own sentences.
–How’s that dialogue doin’? Listening to authors read their own dialogue can give you some ideas.
–See if you spot the sense of performance in readings: I’ve seen authors really go for it.
–Watch how they interact with the audience.

I highly recommend reading your stories aloud to an audience. You can either go to an open mic or sign up for a reading at a con. If you’re still working on it, you can hear what’s wrong with it. And if you have a time frame for your reading it’s a good way to edit and revise it. And, you never know, you might find you like the performance aspect.

If that scares you too much, it’s always a great idea to read your stories out loud when you’re done. Can you tell yourself the story? If it’s funny, can you make yourself laugh? If it’s sad, can you make yourself tear up?

But really, if you can, it’s best to get some exercise.

I’ve written about running before. It works for me. It took a long time for it to work for me. A long time. Most likely, it won’t work for you. But having some kind of activity that gets you out of the house and clear your brain is better than you think it is. You can zone out and not drive yourself crazy. I run to not think about stories, and I can feel accomplished about working on my distance or speed or whatever I’m working on. I can come back fresh to the story, try to look at it differently.

You don’t have to be constantly going all the time. Though, if you have that kind of energy, great. Go for it. But me? I get too involved to just push through. I’ve tried, trust me, and it just ends up completely unsalvageable. At the same time, I’ve had stories crash and burn that I’ve been able to take things away from it. Every once in awhile you might have a good scene, or a line, or even a character you like, all isn’t lost. I just had to walk away from it for awhile.