Sunday, May 03, 2009

NBA Predictions, Poem, New Review

The last NBA playoff team to advance has been determined: The Atlanta Hawks. Cleveland should beat them four games to one.

The second round begins today with Dallas vs. Denver. This is a hard one to call, but based on superior inside strength I think Denver should be favored to move on and meet the Lakers, who should beat Houston in six.

In the East, contrary to most expectations, I think Boston will handle Orlando in six or seven and go on to be beaten by Cleveland in a tough series. Despite the loss of Kevin Garnett, they are still the champions, and under pressure they play like it.

It's a gray day here on the Mendocino coast, post-rain. It's great that we got our garden in during a sunny spell and that now it is getting a thorough watering from nature. I can't wait for our flowers to mature; many have started blooming. It gives me joy to stare out to the oceean over the colors of our garden.

I actually beat my wife and editor tonight at Scrabble. That was a feat I can get fat on. Oh, and she called me "fat" today. Like I didn't know it. I immediately comforted myself with extreme nachos. Actually I ate a salad.

Salads aren't bad if you put enough croutons and nuts on them to get some real calories up the pipe.

Yes, I need a diet.

No, I'm not smoking.

But do I have a poem?

Poems divide my readership to a certain extent; the literary folks read them while the mood-disordered folks sort of gloss over them, with the natural exception of mood-disordered literary types.

Oh, there's a new review out on my book at The Pedestal, a fine venue with an insightful reviewer who really gets the dark side of "Unexpected Light."

Here's a recent poem;


The Stranger

This morning I wept for no reason.
I've been pushing back the terror
like a stage curtain, one arm
holding back the darkness,
all that muffled noise of sets being moved,
sets for my future
when I don't want the present changed.
I wonder if my understudy
will look like me, act like me, suffer like me.
Of course not, he has his own life.
But isn't it my life, too?

Computers have a trash bin
for every stump of a poem we tried to save
although our grafts would never take.
But just to keep on writing, holding
the curtain at arm's length, is this not a life
terrorized? Shouldn't I welcome the stranger,
who comes robed in the future,
equally prepared for sadness or joy?

Perhaps at every moment of awakening
we generate a ghost, a dark companion
to drag the hero down to where
the dragon sits, whom we must overcome
by being still; to fight
would only seed another monster.
The one in the mirror is quite enough.


All for tonight.


At 1 Kilobunny,

CE

5 comments:

  1. I want your dog.

    Trade ya.

    Your niftier than nifty dog for my not so nifty and a little bit too fat cat.


    Go Cavs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. So good to see you Laurel, I haven't been visiting your blog of late mainly due to book promotion, an endless preoccupation of the newly published (again).

    BTW, did you buy the book?

    LOL!

    CE

    p.s. We think a coyote ate one of our cats but we would not trade J. Alfred, truly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I haven't bought your book, but that's only because I haven't bought anyone's book in an awfully long time. I have zero dollars for anything that is not a necessity right now and it's been that way for months and will probably be that way for months.

    Kinda sucks.

    But if/when I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'll certainly plunk down the buckage for your book.

    Patience, my friend.

    Meanwhile, my word verification is trater.

    Hmmmmm.

    I can't tell you how alarmed and saddened I am to read that your cat became a coyote snack, sir.

    Have you noticed how quiet all the blogs have become? Everyone wastes all their time over on Facebook now. Which sucks. I loathe Facebook. I don't tweet either. Guess all that social networking wasn't made for loners like me. I like blogs because the good ones feel like someone's left a door open and you wander in and sit down for a while, warm your hands by the fire. Whereas Facebook feels like cell phones to me. Too much ringing. Too many calls about nothing. I never did like phones, cell or otherwise.

    I hate seeing people wander around in grocery stores leaning on their carts chatting into phones.

    My god, I miss phone booths.

    I'm happy, but at heart, I guess I'll always be a bit of a grouch.

    ReplyDelete
  4. In my experience it went from newsgroups and listservs to boards to blogs and then to my space and facebook and now to twitter. It's an evolution of brevity, what marketing requires. It's all about marketing. Marketing.

    I know, I'm sad about the cat but consider it MIA for now.

    I hate the phone.

    I hate the phone more than the web.

    I hate cell phones more than land lines.

    I think most phone booths get scummy pretty quick, except in nice hotels and such.

    I'm patient. When did you say you were going to buy the book?

    CE

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ha.

    When I have money, honey.

    Which may be in about a year.

    Can you wait that long?

    I know phone booths get scummy, but geez, don't you miss being able to step into that little glass world and have a private conversation? Or walk by one of those glass worlds and wonder what sort of conversation was going on in there?

    Everyone's lost there sense of discretion. I blame it on cell phones and the internet. I wonder if we'll ever circle back to that quieter world in which people kept their private lives to themselves.

    Most men used to lead lives of quiet desperation. Now, most men twitter. And no one cares. That's the most beautiful part. Everyone's so busy telling everyone what they're thinking and doing and feeling RIGHT NOW that they aren't really paying attention to each other.

    What's that quote about an unexamined life...? Ah, yes. The life which is not examined is not worth living. I think the human race has taken that quote too literally. We've all turned into a bunch of boring navel gazers.

    No one can keep a secret anymore. That makes me sadder than I can say.

    ReplyDelete

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Unexpected Light

Unexpected Light
Selected Poems and Love Poems 1998-2008 ON SALE NOW!