The Delinquent Blogger, and Rejected Poem of the Week!

I know, I have been horribly remiss in keeping this blog updated the last month or so. I have posted a few entries here and there, but for various reasons, I've taken those posts down, either because I thought they were too mopy, or I was getting ready to send some of the work that was put up out for publication. Also, I have been metamorphosing into 40, and growing scales and snaggle teeth takes a lot of energy! Also, I went to Vegas, (another first!) and I got some mild bug on the plane that has made me just want to sleep for the past week straight.
All that, and I am trying desperately to keep up with my own self-imposed poem writing schedule. I'm two weeks behind because I have been struggling mightily with a poem about about a deformed snake. I think it's almost done, though.
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So, this post will be a hodgepodge of stuff, but I should be back on a regular posting schedule soon. I know, I know. You can all breathe easier now.

Part of my ennui the last few days is that I found out some really sad news about blogger and writer Mac Tonnies, whose blog, "Posthuman Blues" has been my inspiration for the last six or seven months as I've gotten interested in writing poetry with a more speculative/sci-fi bent. He had a fascinating perspective on the UFO phenomenon, he was a fearless, open-minded thinker, who wrote with keen intelligence and imagination about the potential of human consciousness, and was deeply respected among his peers. Mac died suddenly last week at the age of 34. I don't know if the official cause of death has been announced yet, but it seems that he suffered from an arrythmia which had been causing symptoms several days before he died. Bruce Duensing has written a fine tribute to Mac on his blog "Intangible Materiality", which you can read here: "The Death of Mac Tonnies". I will really miss visiting Mac's blog every day and drawing inspiration from his quirky view of the world. Also, although I don't count myself as anywhere near Mac's league as a writer or a thinker, (I mean, I don't even know how the toaster works), I felt a certain cyber-space kinship with him that was comforting. He thought about the same things that I think about, but couldn't articulate as well. It was nice to know I wasn't the only one of us "out there". Goodbye, Mac! I hope that the afterlife, if there is one, brings you even greater mysteries to muse upon.

(And everyone, please--men and women alike. If you have heart symptoms, just take the risk of feeling silly, and go to the doctor. That's nothing to mess with. Trust me, I know of what I speak; for telling people of such things is my job; it's what I do for a living).

I went to Vegas! It was...interesting. After now having a bit of time to recover and process the experience of non-stop stimulus, I've been inspired to write a series of poems about it. One of the things I remember most about the trip was watching the sun set of over the Nevada desert from the plane. Several days after we came home, I awoke from a deep dream of that desert. The land was in my spirit, and when I woke up, I felt a terrible, sad, heart-deep longing for it. I can't tell you how puzzling I find this. I love living in coastal areas, and have a horror of being landlocked. I love the rain, and the trees, and the lushness of Seattle. I don't like sun, and there is something deeply frightening to me about the desert, although I'm not sure what it is. But I can't deny that in the dream, the land and I were connected, soul to soul, and since then, I have wanted to go back to Nevada, but not to Las Vegas, although in a strange way, I found it to be a deeply spiritual place. Just to the desert. Which I hate and am scared of. Maybe because it's so open, maybe because there is no shelter there, maybe because I seem to need rain like a vitamin...I don't know. But it's tugging at me. And it's tied up in these poems that are tugging at me; poems about dreams, desires, and fate and the turning of a hand, the turning of a wheel. So, I'm going to walk into the mystery and see where it takes me.

I hope that you're keeping up with Read Write Poem! They have fabulous new stuff posted up there all of the time, and Dana, who must have somehow cloned herself, continues to facilitate excellent content.

Oh, and not to forget the long-overdue Rejected Poem of the Week! Since I've been traveling a lot the last few months (and how I do long to travel more, and more), I thought I'd put up my poem, "Travel". It's light verse, but you wouldn't know it, since it's been summarily rejected from four different magazines so far that publish that sort of thing. Well, who needs them, when you have yerself your very own blog? Enjoy!

TRAVEL

All my life, I’ve roamed from nation to nation
Audaciously backpacked through foreign terrain
Wandered from continent to lush, savage plain.
That’s all quite true—in my imagination.

I’ve clung fast and firm to familiar, kind home,
Content to dream of Belarus and Sonjhang
And imagine teeming street life in Nah Trang,
While bathing by candles in lavender foam.

You see, I suspect that I’d turn out to be
Someone who likes the idea of travel
But when faced with actual travel, unravel
And I loathe to admit that sad fault of me!

I couldn’t face my cool, blasé, hipster friends
Grown bored with countries I can’t even pronounce,
My raw xenophobia theirs to denounce;
A cumbersome weakness no kinship transcends.

How I envy the jetlagged, urbane and free!
True travelers, dropping obscure country names
Kayaking expertly down the blue Thames
And blogging on art from cafes in Ceri.

Bulgaria, London, Phuket, Saint-Sauvant
Are lively and lovely, and so is Dubai;
All perfect as is in my dreamy mind’s eye--
So send me a postcard, and have a great jaunt!


--Kristen McHenry