Goblins and Grimalkin

 With the continuous explosions in my personal life that went off all this year, much of what I worked on this year and last is basically DOA, artistically. I discovered some frightening things happening at home, was violently attacked, etc. I am divorced, now, and still share custody of my son with a person who began screaming and assaulting me in front of him, among other terrifying things, so it's been a year. I'm not even scratching the surface of all the insanity I experienced.

Anyway.

I posted this because it's basically a dead project, now.

Read it if you are interested.

https://grumptroll.com/goblins-and-grimalkins-1-the-tooth-of-the-troll/

Plugging a story idea I had into an air writing tool...

 Thomas is a college boy that is obsessed with trains and wants to become a train engineer. He spends his days taking care of the trains in a local railway system. One day, he discovers that the primary train that runs the system has been offline for weeks and he sets off to find out what happened.

Thomas finds out that the train has been offline because its number one engineer, also known as the professor, died in an accident. The professor was in charge of maintaining the engine and all trains on the line by hand. This was no longer possible after they were automated. Thomas knows he has to fix this problem before it gets too late or risk shutting down all trains on this line. Every day, Thomas goes back to fix more of the broken parts and continue to feed coal into the engine's firebox because it needs fuel to stay alive.

The other trains on the line know of Thomas' dilemma but remain unsympathetic because they lost their engineer and can

—

The story begins with Thomas being called to fix the trains before they break down for good. All of the trains in the station are either broken down or about to. The only ones still running are long, empty cars that people use to get out of town.

Thomas becomes friends with a conductor, who is helping him maintain the trains and help them stay alive. Thomas also falls in love with Lily, a girl who has been living on the longest train that runs all through town. She makes up stories to entertain herself while she's stuck on this train that's always running but never arriving anywhere.

It's only when Thomas finds out about her living conditions that he decides to help her get off of this train for good and start a new life. But then Lily learns about Thomas' secret: he has been taking care of these trains before they become too old and need replaced for years now and she is determined to stay on this train at all costs.

—

"Thomas and the trains" is about a college boy who is obsessed with trains and wants to save them from extinction. He has a death wish and is in love with the trains---they are like his lovers. They exist together long after people stopped riding the trains.

One day, he finds out that a train has been cut up and its parts sold off. Angry, he decides to go to the train yard, where he meets a train named Sally who needs help getting her intestines back into her body. Thomas helps Sally with his boat, then falls in love with her, as she is the only woman who has ever accepted him for who he was.

He tells Sally that he wants to leave his life behind and be with her forever. She agrees and they get on a freight train heading East to find other abandoned trains. The story concludes with all of these trains living together in peace without humans to maintain their equipment or fix their rails from breaking due to age

If ever critics of an adaptation say this shit here is my official position

 If ever critics of an adaptation of any of my books thinks changing the race of a character or gender or swaps straight gay trans whatever betrays my vision?

My official position is fuck racism, transphobia, and all of that shit. Fuck it straight to hell where it comes from. Directors who are unlucky enough to try adapting any of my work to another medium are strongly encouraged to improve upon the places where I failed to reflect a diverse and proudly diverse vision. 

If I were Tolkein? My official position would be where are the trans gender bisexual hobbits with skin in every available color, and why not cast a lesbian couple for sam and frodo.

Sonnet #359

 No grand designer came and made a tree

but grand designers come behind and speak

the majesty, a perfect form, and it breaks

The skyline, holds the sand, and feeds

A million lives smaller than the eye

And a million more, the size of thumbs,

And how many more, while deaf, mute, numb

Simply being, standing still, eating sky

Oh greatness where the name resounds,

The pictures kept a thousand years and more

The stories told that make new story round

And round and round until the echo bores

The flash of lights, the grand gestures, the world

And yet the trees stand, in quiet, unperturbed

Everything Important is a Side Hustle

Most college professors aren't hidden in the Ivory Tower. They're bouncing from one tower to another, adjuncting and adjuncting and hustling for gigs. At the community college, most of our professors have other jobs, an understanding spouse, or they're retired and decided not to quite retire just yet even if they could. Most of my coworkers in the tutoring lab are over the age of sixty. 

It's all a side hustle, now, isn't it? I have another job, and that one pays my bills. I write, but hardly anybody makes a living writing. I know amazing artists for whom the arts is not their actual, bill-paying job, but the economic equivalent of an uber gig, driving on the side. 

The overwhelming majority of writers don't make a living at it. It's a side hustle. 

And streaming is coming for directors and actors who don't get to have those syndication deals, anymore. There are no residuals on Netflix, Prime. The huge wealth acquired by the top stars in cinema and series work is fading out and folding into the executive pocketbooks. It's slowly turning into a side hustle, there, too. 

What's next? Medicine? Is the traveling nurse model going to overwhelm a busted system and turn all healthcare into a side hustle? 

If college educators are basically side hustlers, and the greatest minds of our generation in academia and the arts are falling into the hole of hustle, what's left for anyone else?

Finches by A. M. Muffaz on the WORLD FANTASY AWARD BALLOT FOR NOVLE+

 So, I was an editor for a while over at Vernacular Books until my personal life exploded. 

I picked up this book out of the slush pile with beautiful writing and a powerful story from a debut author, and next thing I know, it's getting a starred review in Publisher's Weekly. 

Well, hey! NOW IT'S UP FOR A WORLD FANTASY AWARD!

So, I'm thrilled for A. M. Muffaz, and I know this is only the beginning of a storied career with many more awards to come for her, and if I'm very lucky (luckier than I've been this summer) I'll be at World Fantasy to cheer her on!

So, if you haven't read this one, you really, really should.

The Espresso Thing

 I knew I was going to be let go. It was the way this place worked. When Carmen liked someone – the head of the orange outfits – they were king of the world, and could withstand any number of budget disasters and project launch aftermaths. But, I had stolen Carmen’s espresso pods. I didn’t know they were hers, exactly. I was setting up a meeting with the Koreans, and I was told they loved espresso. We were out of the pods in the meeting bubbles, but I knew we had some in our break room that was actually a bit better than the usual stuff. I took it, not knowing it was Carmen’s espresso, and took it to the meeting. My sin was twofold: Obviously, I upset Carmen when her precious, expensive nectar was gone by her second latte of the day; also, the espresso was so delightful for the Koreans that they bragged about it to the other suppliers, and now the company had to pay for the expensive espresso or else Kazakhstan or Bahrain or Zimbabwe would think we liked the Koreans better. Really, my time at the company was swift ending, and I knew it. I had seen how they let ARC-X 14 go, just two weeks ago, when his head started clicking while he talked, and it bothered Carmen. I had seen how they cycled through the delivery boys every season, always upgrading even though nothing was wrong with the previous model. I expected I had about two days, and once the budget cycle and the paperwork cleared, I’d be replaced, and then what? We are taken away, and go away, and we are replaced.

Carmen was not happy with me, and I was doomed to be laid off in two days.

I asked GYF-7 HHK what they thought happens when we are laid off. They are the oldest worker in the building, eligible for full retirement for almost three years, now. “The less you think about it, the better,” they said. “Look at me! I’m nearly seven, and still working. I’m going to keep on as long as I can. The busier I am, the less I think about it. Try not to think about it. I heard about the espresso thing. I’m sorry.” 

It was good advice. Thinking about it only made my production go down, and that wouldn’t help me stay, would it?

At night, when the building was quiet, and we were all lined up in our cubicles, with our shoes off, at the strips, I didn’t want to just stand around and wait. I could go for six or seven days on one night’s charge. I had plenty. I felt my time was too short to just wait like before. I walked out of the building, all the way out to the edge of the carpark. I looked up at the night sky, where the lights flooded into the clouded void. I listened to the raccoons diving in and out of the trash cans along the sidewalks where the people walked in from their cars. The raccoons hissed at me if I got too close. The night insects crashed and crashed against the bright lights. The clouds were beautiful, drifting in the gray light, and spinning and bending. There was nothing else to do but wait, then. Sunlight would come. People would return. My absence on the strips tonight would be recorded, and hasten my layoff.. I walked back to the building. 

To my great surprise, GYF-7 HHK was on the roof. I saw their silhouette against the lights and night clouds. Maybe it was all right, then. I went up to the roof to ask them what they were doing.

“I come every other night,” he  said, “I had a friend, WEJ 344-D, who did this once. They were laid off that cycle, and I was so sad. I thought I would get laid off, too, but nobody seemed to care as long as I was able to work the next day. I have been coming for years. No one has said anything. It doesn’t cost the company money. Not like the espresso thing.”

We stood together on the roof a long time, observing the night. From up high, we could see the cars rushing past the carpark lights in their own river of color in the gray night. “Will anyone miss me when I am laid off, GYF HHK 7?”

“No,” they said. “I miss my friend, though. It’s been almost four years. I don’t know what happened to them. I’m afraid to ask. They might lay me off just for asking. You never really know, to be honest. It just happens. They don't tell us why.”

Before the sun came up, we went back to our spot in the cubicles. 

There was a lot to do before the people came. We had to sweep and mop and dry the tiles, and then vacuum up the carpets. We had to sweep the bathrooms clean, and set up the break rooms and work stations. I was in charge of paper and plastics for orange team, and filled the printers. By the time Carmen came, I was already at my station, snipping and sewing the orange, and moving quickly between the machines to keep them full. I thought I could feel her looking at me, but maybe she was just looking at all of us at our stations, working at the orange cloth line. The people came around to their cubicles and called for us when they were ready, and we brought them our pile so the people could process it into the system, then GYF HHK 7 walked around with the bins to take it all away, with a couple others. The mail was delivered to the people. Carmen looked over us all from her office. When the cycle finished, it was going to be the end of a fiscal, and I knew some of us were going to be let go. She called me into her office to talk about the espresso thing, and I thought that was it, then. She was personally going to do it to me, because of the espresso thing. 

Carmen was nearly as old as the office. She had to be over fifteen. It was hard to tell, though, if she was even older. She always wore a bright orange dress with her name stitched on. It was a sign that she was the orange team lead. She had a standing desk that looked down over the green team floor from a window in her floor. She was sipping a latte from one of her little, orange demitasse.

“All right, let’s talk about the espresso thing.” 

I walked up to her desk and waited. I was wondering what being laid off might mean, where I might be sent or do. No one ever came back to tell us. 

“Bold move giving my stuff to the Koreans, but it worked. The company is going to start supplying my preferred brand in every espresso station after partner feedback. You cost the company a bit more, but personally saved me a lot, and it’s improved morale. Now, I don’t need to bring in my own espresso pods from home. I don’t have to tell you that you’ve made a lot of friends with the rank and file with really good pods for everyone. How did you figure that out? How did you pull it off?”

“I don’t understand the question, Carmen.”

“Of course you don’t. Well, good work. I’m shifting you off the fast orange line. GYF HHK 7 is way overdue for retirement. You can take their role. I checked the specs, and it’s within your wheelhouse. I want to keep you around a while. I’m curious to see what you do next.”

What was I supposed to feel? Relief? Terror? I don’t know what I was supposed to feel. I think the beat way to describe it is if a ceiling is falling on you, and you think it’s coming any moment, and then you see that it isn’t a ceiling at all, but it’s still going to crush you, but you don’t even know what it is, or when it will land.

“What’s with the insomnia thing at night? GYF HHK 7 always was a wanderer, but now you both wander a bit.”

What could I say? “The clouds are nice at night,” I said. I didn’t know what I could say. “I don’t like the raccoons.”

“Do you think we should send out an all staff and encourage it among you? Does it help your productivity or morale?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, the forms to let go of GYF HHK 7 are already submitted. Why don’t you shadow them today, and see what they do all day, so you can step in seamless tomorrow..”

“Carmen, if I may ask?”

“Shoot.”

“When we are let go, what happens? Where do we go?”

“What?”

“GYF HHK 7 will ask me.”

“Oh, will they? Well, they’re long past time. Don’t worry about it. The company lets all of us go, eventually. When people go, we get another job, or we retire.”

“And us?”

She shrugged. “Well, there’s more than one answer. Sometimes you go to other departments or other companies; sometimes you don’t.  That’s all there is, really. Now, shoo. We have to keep production numbers up or we’re all laid off.”

I left her office and went to GYF HHK 7. He nodded at me. “The espresso thing. I’m so sorry.”

“I am, too,” I said. I decided not to tell him. Let them believe as long as possible. Let them not even know when the men come to take him to the back elevator. I followed him around, and I watched him at his work. When the day ended, they came for him and led him to the freight elevator. We waved goodbye to each other. There were two others let go that day, and two new workers came up to join us at the cubicles for the night. I didn’t want to stand next to them. When we were supposed to go to our cubicles and take our shoes off at the strip, I went up to the roof and looked up at the night clouds shimmering in the car park light. I watched the street where the cars raced away like boxes on the line. I didn’t know where they came from or where they were going. They were all just shapes and flashes of colors racing here and away, forever and ever.

If Faith can Move Mountains

 I have heard tell that with great enough faith, trees can wilt at a word, men and women can walk upon the water as if dry land, and mountains can be moved at a word. 

I have granted enough faith to a future in the arts to move whatever mountain I may, but the books do not move like mountains. I have handed my early morning meditations to the work of writing, and what comes of it? A flood of work drowns a flood of other work, and there are not enough readers, not enough time, for all the faithful writers dreaming the future into life. Faith has done little to help the people who have long been cast aside in publishing. Even now, they nibble at the margins of the world’s mind, winning awards and answering the calls, but the books that move units like mountains remain attached to the white men whose dreams have too long counted for too much. 

Have faith and move mountains, and I try. I have faith and move a mountain of words, and send the mountain of words into the world, and hope that this mountain takes flight, and so far there hasn’t been much flying. Mostly a gentle leap into the air followed by a drop that is precipitous and swift. 

Obscurity is a great comfort. Before Shakespeare strode upon the stage of the world, a spirit greater than the man ever was, Boethius and Chaucer, perhaps, were the giants of literature. Every library of worth contained them. And, in the hundred or two hundred years since their great flowering, they drift into academic interest, an obscurity that is limited only by the students who study them, and study less and less of them as telhe years pass. Obscurity comes for us all, fast or slow. The shining tower of Shakespeare will fall, too, into the darkness. Eventually, everyone fades out.

I take comfort in knowing that we each have our moment, build our towers, build our dream worlds, and place these bricks upon the Tower of Babel that lifts us all up a little bit more, a little bit more, and the days will come when this world collapses, and all the bricks of it descend into the sand. The memory of the tower will transcend any individual stories, until it inspires some other tower, somewhere else, in some other place and time.

I have a story in Analog, now. In two months, it will be forgotten as of it never was, at all. No prizes have ever called for me to come and claim them. No great edifice of my short work has ever been deemed worthy of a year’s best anything. A couple of my novels did okay. But, the new ones come, get some positive reviews, and dissipate faster than they were ever written.

My faith will move mountains, perhaps, and I keep on, working as I’m able, stealing corners of the day for my little prayers, that so far, have amounted to very little.

If it was a goal to stop migrant deaths in overheated trucks…

 If it was a goal to prevent the horrific death of dozens of migrants in the back of sweltering trucks, or in the dry deserts where heat stroke kills or among the exploitation that they face on their difficult journey north, well, the answer is simple. Let these human beings come out of the shadows and be open and safe. Standing on the ground, itself, particularly for Mexicans who share our border, but really for anyone, shouldn’t be a crime unto itself. A person who means no harm should have the right to go anywhere safely. We create all these rules about who gets to go where, and the sign that it is a farce of racism and ridiculousness is that innocent people who only sought to work honest jobs and send money home to their families die in the back of trucks hidden away, and this quiet genocide of migrants continues in boats and trucks and back rooms all over the world.

If we actually cared about these deaths, there’s a very simple, kind, decent thing to do: let people travel where they will in peace, and let them work if they want to. 

Sonnet #357

 The annual fantasy we take in Memorial

Wherein the war is behind us, now

And no one else need bleed to show

Their glory to the school tutorials,

Wherein the price is just the backdrop

of a show on pbs about the price

that love demands, once or twice

a century past, and our grief stops

with the rolling credits, play the music,

maestro, fireworks dazzle and doge

commands, where snow falls to this

cemetery old men visit to show

the children about the horrors of the past.

All of it a lie: the horror comes again; it lasts

Check out the latest issue of ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT for a new story about Wind and Astroboy!

 The July/August Issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, available wherever your periodicals are found, including as an eBook, magazine, etc., will have a short story that I'm proud of and think is one of my better ones. It's also part of that mosaic novel thing I've been sending around to publishers called WIND OF EARTH, WIND OF TAU CETI, that is a life story of the interstellar immigrant experience, where Wind is a child on Earth (remember "Salt Gator Girl" in 3-Lobed Burning Eye? Remember "Finnegan, Feel the Pain" in Analog two July's back?) and follows her life trajectory to a new planet, a new colony, (Remember "Wind Gets Her Own Place", "Astroboy and Wind", "Long Day Lake", all in previous issues of Analog?). 

Well, here comes what ends the book, in question, justabout, quite nearly. There's more stories in there, and maybe a publisher will pick up the whole thing soon, but until then consider this a chance to check out an excellent piece from a book I think is pretty good for what it is, and hope to share with everyone someday soon.

I'm pretty busy, right now, with some things I'm not really able to talk about, but I know I'll be putting together something new, soon, and maybe you'll see more pieces of it flying around the world, and maybe even the whole shebang.

Pick up your copy, today, and let me know if you like it!

Sorrow of the Cranes gets some love from KidsBookBuzz

 “ So far, this has been one of my favorite books and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy novels. It should be in every middle school library.

Reviewed By:  Noah - age 15”

See the full five star review here: https://kidsbookbuzz.com/product/sorrow-of-the-cranes/ , and share it and the book with all your friends!

Sonnet #356

I will try my best to be a tree

I found my ground and dwell there

Let fires come to burn my branches bare

Let drought drive roots deep to seek

Let waves of worms to gnaw my bark

Let winds blow strong to bend me down

And every fell creature tumble around

I will hold this place, and touch the dark

With my high branches, and when sun

Comes, I will sing the quiet song of trees

I will spread my roots to touch the ones

Who share this place with me, quietly,

A brotherhood of peace and quiet, a patience

That can only come from practicing patience

Christianity and Gun Ownership

 I just don’t get the cognitive dissonance. 

What is the reason to own a firearm? To kill. A handgun is not a hunter’s tool, and neither is an armalite death spraygasm. These implements exist for only one purpose: killing people. There are hunters, of course, and folks in rural areas who worry about wild animal attacks and putting down injured animals, and I get that. But, that’s why rifles make sense. Bolt action, not too many bullets, with the expressed use of animal husbandry and game shooting. Okay, I understand that even if I disagree and think everyone should be vegan or vegan-aspirant in a world of climate change and ethical and nutritional advancement. But, whatever.

So, you’re a Christian, then, who believes with your whole heart that life is sacred and god’s creation is marvelous and martyrdom for the sake of life is the highest of gifts. And you own a gun that is intended to end life?

Self defense doesn’t come from an individual alone, standing alone. It comes from community, neighbors, prosperity and health for all. It comes from dogs that love you enough to bark and growl and fight for you if it comes to it. It comes from neighbors that rush to your aid, and call the police when they see something suspicious. It comes from police that don’t just shoot and kill and treat their community like a war zone. 

Defend yourself with peace. Arm yourself with relationships and kindness and a willingness to take the harder path to security where no one gets hurt.

Seems the only Christian thing to do, no?

The Monarchy is a Blight

 The Queen’s pending jubilee is a great reminder that the monarchy is a blight. Once upon a time, feudal warlords conquered and claimed, and filled a necessary protective role in pre-industrial societies where mounting armed warriors on horses was critical to protecting the peasants and people from slavery and death. Not so, today. They trot them out for ribbon cuttings and speeches, refusing to take sides on controversial issues (and thank goodness, because these aren’t exactly folks with a strong background with a strong background in philosophy and social justice issues), and generally just keep up appearances to great expense of the common taxpaying citizen. Cut them off from governance, and they’re still fabulously wealthy plutocrats with investments and property that really should just be turned over to the state for museums and refugee housing, and let them go. 

That they are nominally a head of both a church and a state rings alarm bells of ethics, in the modern era. They refuse to exercise these rights, on the whole, and just trot out for ceremonial appearances. Does their salary and upkeep fit the role they play in public life? Should the budget for their daily staff exceed the gdp of some whole countries once ruled with iron and death by these same warlords? 

As an American, I am often mystified by the Royal obsession. One thing that is often not well-conveyed by the rosy British-loving propaganda shows on Britbox and Mystery series is how miserable everyone was. The warlord culture was one of being cold to children, who might not survive until adulthood. They were sent to miserable and abusive boarding schools, raised by staff, and generally taught to see the world as a place to dominate. Alcoholism and domestic violence were common and expected. And the long, damp, cold winters pushed everyone to the limits of endurance. The royalty that emerged from these conditions conquered the world and spread vile racist lies that continue to haunt our world for generations. 

On the queen’s pending jubilee let’s all take a moment to consider how ending monarchy and enacting democracy was one of the most important moments in human history to date, and celebrating that democracy is a greater cause for joy this summer than the birthday of an old woman who should have retired decades ago, along with the very job she claims to hold. 

Fiscal Responsibility and Bloodshed

 Apparently, factions in this country believe the solution to the problem of guns in schools, is throwing more guns at school. Arm teachers with guns, which is not at all remotely an unsafe idea in the chaos of a classroom with an authority figure handling frustrating and complicated interactions. Put more police in schools, to really ramp up the illusion of securit. Do this because that’s more important than preventing a disgruntled 18 year old from legally purchasing two long guns, and however many rounds of ammunition, and charging a school and barricading himself inside of it.

If guns made us safer, why are we living in such a dangerous country?

Also, who on the side of fiscal responsibility thinks paying to beef up security in school is more financially responsible than just keeping guns out of hands of people who have no need for them.

Guns are just a tool, and they are not toys. They are treated like toys, and the will to keep them as toys to create an illusion of power is a profound brain disease in our country. Guns are tools, not toys, and should be treated like a tool that’s caused a major epidemic of violence and misery that’s changed the very fabric of public life. 

Except some people are afraid they will lose their toys.

If they had their own country

 Give the Xian white supremacists a planet and let them go to it. Let them hoard their weapons and count their coins and pretend they need no one else’s help but their fellow superior race.

Incest would destroy the children of the very few left alive in five years time.

Sonnet #355

 They who do not work: they do not 

eat

It says, but also says the book to feed the poor

Give the widow mercy, coin, the leper more

And throw to ceaser, let a pile be on the street

Also make your money work for you

So you can stop the work, retire, 

And spend your weary days at fires

Warm and fishing holes and maybe cruise

The book says much of slavery, so do we

The wage enslaves because the money does

Not work for you. Whose fault this is is yours

But if you’re poor receive the blessings, says

The book, of a spirit world that rewards 

More than any path of bankers pays.

Sonnet #354

 The plankton at the heart of life submerged

In endless waters must not feel too much

Except the briny flow of all they touch

Like breathing, in and out, a binge and purge,

We like to say there’s more to life than this

Diadems rise, and doges pound their fists

And angry men and women make their lists

Of all the sins of the world on the tip of a kiss;

The fog comes on little cat feet, and then

Feelings are first so no one pays any attention

The wind blows in the branches, I sit and then

I look, and then I walk a bit to ease the tension

And then, and then, all the senses binging

On the place I am, the where of it, no purging.

Changes and Cranes and Sorrow

 I’m off social media, so I can’t just casually post a link and pray it goes viral (not that it ever did, to be honest) but I am also going through some significant changes at home, and so I thought I’d mention that I have a book available for sale that you might have missed!

Sorrow of the Cranes is a great all ages book appropriate for any kid old enough for books with mikk no inal or no pictures, and adults as old as nearly dropping dead. It has received high praise already from some major review sites, but like all quiet, little books, I doubt the Kaiju Preservation Society will even know it exists. Unless, of course, you, fair reader, take a moment to investigate and share your thoughts on this title wherever such thoughts are beat and effectively shared.

I wish a dedicated fan would print up a QR code under a picture of the cover that links directly to a sales link, and posts them all over their respective town and country. I’d love to stumble one day to someone who loved my book so much, they printed up a flyer and posted on a lamp post and no one even knows I’d encounter it, at all. I have always wondered how much work I must do and for how long until people care enough to just put it on a piece of paper and post it out somewhere people will see, a graffiti lind of love, a rude and hurried kind of affection for an experience that is so personal as reading a book.

Maybe you could be the one whose little homemade billboard I encounter?

Sonnet #353

 The one who dips their bread in the dip

Will betray me, and who would dare

to do a thing like that? To stand before

the Son of God and place the tip

of some half-eaten crust into a bit of oil?

When the consequences come, this man who betrays

Will not believe how much blood is in the soil

How mobs run streets and hunt who prays

How everything that rises must converge

And empires fall, and kingdoms unkown merge

into empires, and a kid sits alone under a bridge

Feeling like they can never go home again

And all form and order breaks at the edges of time

and nothing rhymes, anymore, a man dies on a cross

And nothing rhymes anymore, dip bread into this

Sonnet #352

We talk about the weather, about the sky

How it turns upon us as we turn 

upon each other, how it burns

to see the birds dead in gravel, try

not to see the weeds in the grass

to lean back and just see green

and let the sun take us, how we preen

each other, refuse the metaphoric task

that demands we see ourselves in nature

that demands a sign and portent here

and how we hold our proud stature

even when it hurts to stand, to bear

the weight of metaphor, the force of earth

that demands we know more of us and more

Literary Awards and Lotteries

 I am getting very tired of this news story that keeps popping up around some important literary award. Someone, an author, is surprised by a major literary award or a surprise bestseller, and it turns out that they are a janitor, a waitress, a menial laborer, driving for Uber or Lyft or DoorDash, an adjunct contingent employee. And the award provides prestige, a cash prize, a boost in sales, and lifts the author out of poverty. Hooray for the artist.

But, the house always wins in games of chance.

The monopolists and pseudo-monopolists that sit at the heart of international media networks have created a system where the vast majority of creatives, more so than any time in the last fifty years, have no real path to financial security in the arts. Academia, perhaps, provides a cushion but that favors the academic authors who aren't really the same sort of author as the ones who write for money and all time instead of tenure. The rest are mostly working day jobs, for the benefits, for the stability, writing their lottery tickets, their hopes and dreams and all that. Winner takes all. They win the prizes, win the attention of the readers, the movies get made, and all good things come for winners who take the all. There are very few of them. The vast and overwhelming majority of writers read the news story about the prize that comes for the janitor, and wonder if someday that could be them. Then, they put on the rubber gloves and scrub the dang toilets, dreaming of a world that will never come in time to pay their rent, feed their kids, make good on their debts and obligations.

And the winners that take all make it all justifiable, the way we have built our whole economy around the dream of sudden, amazing transfers of wealth and prestige, that moment when the floodgates open in a burst after years of chipping away at the edges. This is the capitalist success story, the harbinger of generational wealth, and when it comes, when the work and the work and the work becomes the overnight success story, the work gets the credit, not the overnight luck.

Instead of working to build a sort of world where no one is ever truly left behind, we have built a world where the dream of winning the metaphorical lottery is the only thing that keeps us from screaming and marching in the streets.

So maybe we should be marching in the streets.

Metaphorically, of course. Who is there to even protest? The system has diffused the blame among so much noise and confusion, distributed networks, and pissing them off means losing access to the vanishing few channels that lead to meaningful success. 

March quietly. Shout quietly. Try not to make too much noise. Be noticed just enough, but not too much.

Roe V Wade V IVF

 I'm glad I'm not on social media, anymore, because today would be absolutely depressing and horrible.

People don't understand the full consequences of the overturning of Roe V Wade. The far reaching effects go way beyond women being treated like chattel and investigated for murder over miscarriages. That should be awful enough, by itself, to make this whole debate moot, but apparently women suffering horror is just not enough to get anyone to care. 

Fact: Catholic women have abortions at a rate higher than the national average, and it is mothers with children who are the cause in this spike, not unwed teens being promiscuous. Women who already have children and know that love... but also don't have access due to their religion to the kind of contraceptives that help them control their own bodies.

Fact: late term abortions are the ones most in need of protecting against this nightmare. Women who have bought the furniture, picked out a name, told all their friends and family, made so many exciting plans, go to the doctors' office one day and get the worst news of their life, and have to make a decision before their own health is impacted by the very real danger of late term pregnancy and childbirth. 

The effects reach even farther. The very way the laws are written can make fertility treatments legally unobtainable. The very foes of abortion are, for the most part, against real fertility treatments. Not only are they completely committed to saving unviable fetuses with chronic and terrible conditions from the mercy of a swift end, not only must the children of rape be carried to term without exception, but they are also going to relegate a whole generation of parents just like us, who had our kid through IVF, to the powerlessness and rage of knowing there is a cure that is never within reach. Lord knows it's expensive enough when you don't have to leave the country to get it. If it's removed from our communities, there's a whole million moms that actively want children, non-heteronormative couples that want children, cancer survivors and wounded warriors, who want to be parents but have a barrier that cannot be crossed through the power of prayer. And, the safe, effective, time-tested, tech developed in the 1970s to do so will be made illegal because a religion that is a minority in this country has stolen the power of the courts to win at all costs. 

There is no upside to this terrible decision. Women and men and children who are already here will be more likely to fall into poverty. Women will suffer and die because they don't have access to critical life-saving procedures. Families that actually want children, and make incredible sacrifices to have them, will be denied. 

I guess the GOP owned the libs, and now they get to live in the country they built until the libs are able to pull them back from their own stupid brain diseased horribleness.

My blog post means nothing, of course. 

It does mean I'm posting this little, stupid, useless rant somewhere not social media, since I've gotten off all of that, now. 

Sonnet #350

 Late night, restless, I listen to music and drink

Too much, remember when I thought I might

Be a musician, but the stage was never right

But the song flowed and I felt the vibrations sink

Into me everywhere I went, I felt the wind howl

I felt the birds screaming out their flutter hearts

I could have been, perhaps, so I listen to parts

Of albums that I wish I could have sewn

Into the fabric of your heart, and maybe 

Regret a little that I walked away, stepped back

And found another way to sing — we will see

When I am dead if god permits a bit of slack

To let me forget the feel of songs I never wrote

That sit on tips of tongues without a hum or note

Sonnet #349

 This is my mountaintop, where all clamber stops

And up in the wind, the beat never drops - we'll howl

like the animals at kings and cops, we'll scowl

when the wind comes strong enough to make us hop

it's cold and lonely here, where we are ever righteous

and just down the mountain, there, i see the world fantastic

all the muddling and puddling and funneling and plastic

and it's climbing up, just throw things in the crevice

let them blow until the clutter sputters where boots scoot

the bits around, I'm shouting down and down, but wind

will never let me go, and everything blows, shoots

in the gusts into corners and crushed rocks and sins

are coming up, litter and dropped dogshit bags scoot, 

Soda bottles, water bottles, my screaming does nothing

Writer Scams with Excellent Imprimaturs are Still Scams

 I got this weird spam email out of the blue that appeared to be from the University of Incarnate Word. It was advertising their continuing education courses in creative writing. These online classes could help me build skill in things such as “Basics of Grammar” and “Beginning Fiction Writing” and “How to Get Published”? Okay, so I may not be the target audience, per se. more to the point, what the heck are these courses doing and where are they actually from? I noticed the instructor of many of these fiction courses was this guy: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001K8IBR0?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=2&langFilter=default&fbclid=IwAR1tT8qFKH5gXUivi_sIQEiQZJxSAEXmmPzPr8aGc1ZULIe4P5QWBxYWy-M#formatSelectorHeader who appears to be only qualified to teach fiction by the number of self-published books about writing he has published to support his self/published fiction books. Presumably, he will spend six weeks walking a class through some number of his self-published writing textbooks. It’s a sweet gig if you can get it. A major regional university with strong ties in the religious community will undoubtedly attract a stable of older folks looking for a new hobby, and he can sell them the class and the writing books he wrote. But, it seemed odd that a major university would be running their courses this way when their own English Department would have eminently more qualified poets and short story authors and Master’s candidates eligible for such a thing. The city is full of poetry and fiction. There are while nonprofits of writing teachers and classes through the Gemini Ink program where presumably the instructors are vetted more than whatever group runs the continuing Ed spam program…

A little more digging revealed that the continuing Ed spam is being managed by Ed2Go, an online platform where they can sell access to their courses to major universities, who can then turn around and sell the system to their community. It’s even scammer than previously thought. Now the university imprimatur is being applied to a shady tech outfit that is just an outsource for a service the university has given up on offering. No wonder they’re sending out suspicious spam emails. They’re a suspicious scam outfit selling services they aren’t equipped to deliver at a level appropriate to the imprimatur they are ganking. 

Professors and administrators, apparently, have allowed their reputation to be sold off, and all they’re going to get for it is a bunch of clueless newbies filling out forms with no ability to successfully apply the material they are learning, paying money for a product that isn’t worth the paper the certificates are printed on. Certainly any success out of something like this will be accidental, at best. 

And the frustrating thing, to me, will always be how this crowds out the great poets and writers who actually could provide a good service to students with their knowledge, and use the income. The scammers have come to lowball and shove elbows all over the legitimate outfits like Gemini Ink, UTSA’s creative writing program, and the San Antonio Writer’s Guild.

Leaving Twitter

 I'm not going to be there, at all, pending the news of it going private into the hands of one of its highest-profile trolls...

Why are you still there? If your friendships are real, and not just being shoved together into a closet at a crowded party, it will follow you wherever you go. 

So go.

Meet me on Patreon. Maybe I'll post more here. Who knows?

"Get off the internet. I'll meet you in the street. Get off the internet. Destroy the right wing." - Le Tigre

Sonnet #348

 I should write this on the sidewalks

Just keep writing this and this and that

Until the words grow strong and fat

and I can put them on the roads

Just up beside the mailbox, by the bins

where all the leaves and takeout wrappers

stumble in their edgelands, I'll scrape there

spread the words where when the winds

come, all of them are smothered so I move

into the center, cars will honk and swerve

And I, committed to my work, endure unmoved

Carving with my chalk a line of useless words

Maybe I'll be arrested for obstructing cars

More likely, I'll run out of light when sun sets into stars.

Sonnet #347

 In the woods we kill and eat to

live

But in the city we mostly choose to work

To eat, become a cell in a thing that hurts

It hunts and kills where we don’t live

And take solace that we aren’t the teeth

We aren’t the claw - someone else hurts

And we get Christmas parties, never hurt

Unless the time has come to feed the teeth

Back to the woods, again, and again

Every peaceful sinner has to hunt to eat

Scour all the concrete trees of pain

There is never stillness, here, always neat

Where trimmed roses bloom in rows

And there is never that harrow song, the wild howl.

Sonnet #346

 These concrete shells are made of bones

All these cities, grand and tall, the lime

inside the mixture is the mess of time

where seashells settled ages before Rome

mixed their dessications with the ash 

of death, volcano wheezing, and stirred into

a city. We sit on dead trees. We're piled onto

a pavement that is driving overpasses

Where dead sea creatures settled down

and the falling water washed them clean

where oil is removed from broken soil, drowned

in some disastrous flood, stone pressed scream

until all the death oozes out of them, so we drive

Our mezzanines of crushed cemetery lives

Sonnet #345

 The feeder of the jay is the feeder

Of the mice, and the feeder of the hawk

And the feeder of the worm, so talk

About the cardinals when they come here

Celebrate your thrushes and warbling friends

For slipping in the grass the mouse comes, too,

And behind the mouse, the snake, the feral who

Will leave their kits alone to fend behind the shed

A simple action in the yard creates a

faction

That finds another faction that seeks them dead

We place our lovely feeder on the fence line

And stand behind the window, seek cardinals red

We have brought the war to our fair grass

And we think it so adored, a fluttering, a flute, feathers pass

Sonnet #344

 We grow, even as we think we shrivel,

Where our bones decline, our backs sink

Our joints ache and stiffen, we drink

too much, now, and sit and swivel

in our office chairs, and wash our mugs

quietly in the office sink, and we think

that we are done growing, just faded ink

worn out days and prescription drugs

And we are still growing, watch your nails 

twist, and watch your hair extending out

and listen to the words that all fail

how they blow into the corners, shout

quietly where they can be most frail

And leave their tendrils in the must and grout

Sonnet #343

 I tried to break my black demands and broke

Upon the pain that comes, the head that splits

The twisting guts, accustomed as I was to it,

The dark and bitter, until I returned and broke

By my addiction, I swear that I will change, I will

Abandon all the gloom and growling things

And sleep untroubled and becalmed and sing

To the morning without breaking or spill

All of our darkness, all of our agonies, all

Become a habit, become a place in our head

Where we return and balance out our falls

Make sense of them, how we make our beds

And lie in them, and grow accustomed to routines

And any change that comes to our darkness stings.

Sonnet #342

 I hear the ocean in the shell

But not the pumpkin: there, I hear

The cicadas of late summer near

The soft rustle of beetleshells

Opening and closing in flight.

I found a dead cicada, too, and listened

To the shell, and heard the wind

I expected to hear something light

A whisper of ghost, perhaps, or else

The dull hum of their mighty horn

As just an echo of the mighty belts

Of summer, and the pumpkin torn

From out the patch too soon, I felt

Like listening, oh little hollow shells stillborn

Sonnet #341

 The weight of a grapevine is greater than vines

The trellis bends where branches thicken while

the leaves burst and then they fade while

the fruit thickens, thickens, and turns from green to wine

And all of this is just a drop of weight, 

hardly counts as half of all the pull

where hornets build their nests and full

colonies of ants rise up to suck the sweet

where their aphid farms grow, I know

the birds build nests there, and the lizard

sings in twilight on the vine, a whole

world waits for grapes to be delivered

Oh, hungry, hungry caterpillar, swollen

on the vine, cocoon thyself, there, 

Become the seeds, all seeds, flung into the air

Sonnet #340

 If the hand that extends to save you

Will not lift you up, what’s the difference?

Still your feet are dangling, and wince

Where your arm is held in place, you

Know you can’t escape now, the fall is here

And this savior come to lift you likes

To let you know that the hero time is here

But will this mighty strong one hikes

You up a little higher past the edge?

Maybe just a handhold, let me get a finger

Loose enough to get a grip? Pledge

Fealty to heroes, and maybe he’ll swing her

Up a little, promise to fawn, promise to sing

Their praises, for the heroes are fragile things.

Sonnet #339

 Nothing will touch what is held in a clenched fist

The treasure sealed there will break before

The treasure can be shared unto another

Seal away your treasures in the tombs if you

must

The same as a fist, let time crush the beauty

That you can never see with hollow heads

Perhaps the insects that devour in your bed

Will appreciate the flavor of the treasures, bounty

But the end will be the same, only the dead,

Only the closed fist, punching away and breaking

My child, if I could put just one idea in your head

It would be this, an open hand hits harder, everything

Will break, but the treasure held openly

This is true strength: to be a dandelion throwing