December growth

Breaching the rich, brown

Earth, winter mushrooms thrive in

startlingly warm air

November 30, 2011

The chill in the breeze

Warns winter, though the sun and

Warm air say, “Let’s play!”

Republican Debate

It was so sad to see Governor Rick Perry on TV

He couldn’t remember the name of the Department of Energy

Ron Paul gave him a smirk so smug

While Herman Cain is just looking for a hug

If Rick’s not careful, Newt will get the nomination of the Republican Party

Judith, a Hanukkah ode

Judith, tall as The Hammer, with a heart

as big as her nation and as hard as

the steel she used to hew the head from the

proud shoulders of the Seleucid tyrant,

climbed the hills of Judea in bare feet

and tattered robes until her fingers bled

in the dry, dusty rock, to escape the

destruction of her home and the greedy

grasp of soldiers fed on the bounty of

the land and the lust of their loins.  She sought

the safety of the free people, hidden

among the crags and crevices of the

devious, dark hills, who had long strived to

remove the offending armies from their

homes and villages in the formerly

fertile milk and honey valleys below.

Judith slipped unseen between sentries who

had spotted Seleucid spies a mile off,

and entered the camp with head unbowed, knee

unbent, covered in mud and dust and her

own blood, and the free people stopped to see

a woman where they might before have seen

a girl.  She came before her cousin, The

Hammer himself, and with reckless courage

demanded to do her part, to avenge

their dead, to take up a sword and shield and

fight against the Seleucid invader.

She would do whatever he asked of her

so long as she could strike back at those who

murdered her father, raped her mother, and

ended her childhood before its own time.

In his wisdom, The Hammer bade her to

tend the wounded, to feed the hungry, and

to help make the people strong, to do all

this and smile to keep up the courage of

the people.  Judith lowered her eyes and

nodded as though she acquiesced, but her

heart raged against any wisdom that would

relegate her to menial work when

her warrior’s heart called for blood.  All that

long day, she tended the wounded,

fed the hungry, and girded warriors

in their worn, dented, and bloodied armor, 

and smiled to keep up the courage of the

people, and in the darkest hour of

the night, she slipped unseen from the camp of

the free people.

She sought out the camp of the Seleucid

army, a camp so large it covered an

entire valley that once had fed thousands,

but was now a desolate waste of men,

horse, and disease.  She shortened her skirts, bared

her legs, and slipped unseen past the sentries

who kept a watchful eye for raids from the

brave warriors of the free people.  She

came before the tent of Holofernes,

the great general of the Seleucid

army, the tyrant of her people, and

offered herself to him for a price.  His

hungry eyes saw a beautiful girl,

black curly hair, eyes soft and brown as a

warm embrace, full moist lips, firm breasts, strong arms, 

dressed to enflame his soul, haughty and proud,

a girl who could only be conquered by

one such as a king, and his heart swelled with

ambition.  He beat his ravenous men

down to forge a path for her to approach.

He brought her in his tent for refreshment

and she came willingly, a demure smile

playing on her red lips at odds with her

wanton dress.  He offered her wine, gold, and

jewels, but she declined such treasures.  “I

wish only to serve you, great general,

and welcome you as a guest to my land.”

She prepared for him a feast of many

delicacies of the land.  She helped him

remove his strong and impenetrable

armor, and massaged his mighty shoulders.

He ate his fill of fine foods, and drank wine

to prepare himself for the task ahead.

He sighed the contented sigh of a man

who would be king of a conquered land, and

he grew thoughtful and sleepy with dreams of

crowns and scepters replacing armor and

maces.

As his eyes grew misty with ambition

and lust, Judith hefted the general’s

great sword above her head and swung it with

all her considerable might.  The sword

lodged in his neck in a spray of scarlet

rain as she let out a grunt.  She would seem

to be weeping ruby tears if not for

the feral grin on her face as she heaved

and pulled the sword free.  His dying body

fell as a great oak falls before the swing

of the woodsman’s axe.  She stood above his

twitching corpse and hacked away until the

great general’s head popped free, skittering

across the richly carpeted floor, gasps

of exertion escaping her lips in

ragged regularity.

The guards outside the great general’s tent

smiled conspiratorially to each

other, thinking, foolishly, that their lord

was satisfying a trollop with his

manhood.  Judith was satisfied, it is

true, but not in any way that would have

pleased Holofernes had he been alive.

As the camp settled down that night, Judith

wrapped the head in a sturdy sack from which

came part of the general’s final feast.

She disposed of her bloody attire, and

dressed herself in the great general’s day

clothes.  She slipped past the sleeping guards and out

of the Seleucid camp with her prize, and

did not spare a backward glance as she once

again made the treacherous journey up

the hills of Judea.

As the sun crested the ridge, Judith slipped

unseen past the sentries who sought her out

with worried eye on the order of her

cousin, The Hammer, and entered the camp

of the free people, dressed in a man’s clothes

with a man’s blood staining her girlish face,

head unbowed, knee unbent, and the people

silently stood aside to let her pass

with her heavy burden.  Again, Judith

came before her wise cousin, The Hammer.

“I come to you with a gift,” she said, “which

I think will inspire the wounded to

tend themselves, which will feed the hungry with

hope for a future free of invaders,

and make our people strong.”  And then she pulled

the disembodied head of General

Holofernes from the sack and held it

high, a look of surprise frozen on his

great warrior face, and she smiled to keep

up the courage of the people.

The Long Break

All of a sudden, I realized that I had barely written a thing in almost three weeks.  At the conclusion of the thirty days of the haiku-a-day challenge, I felt it necessary to take a few days off from writing to release all of the static electricity that had built up in my mind from not only writing haiku, but all the other poems, short stories, and other writing projects that bubbled up during an incredibly creative period.  Unfortunately, my daughters simultaneously caught long, drawn out colds that developed into ear infections.  All of that cleared up just in time for Thanksgiving, which for the erudition of my non-American readers, is a huge secular civic holiday celebrating family, general thankfulness, and the final autumn harvest, as well as kicking off the holiday shopping season.  The continuous influx of extended family and accompanying friends coupled with the increased ambient noise of holiday cheer drowned out my inner muse for the entirety of the long weekend.  I am still working on more poems regarding the Occupy movement and the despicably violent response by several municipal governments and their representatives that I began in mid-November.  I have also begun to write more haiku and some limericks, inspired by the sublime Salman Rushdie’s Kardashian limerick, as creative jump-starters.

In the meantime, following up on a Thanksgiving tradition, I want to express how thankful I am to my wife and several close friends who have acted as beta readers for my poems prior to my posting them on North Station.  I am also very thankful for my new friends in the local North Shore of Masschusetts poetry community who have ancouraged me and made me feel welcome at poetry readings and writers groups.  Finally, I am thankful for the readers of this blog.  Thanks for the break.  More poems are on the way.

Teabagging

Where was the outrage when the

Tea Party teabaggers armed themselves with

guns and knives, racism and oppression?

Why did the powers that be not

protect me from violent minded

hate mongers who want to

deny my children basic health care while

I struggle to provide a decent meal

every evening because their

trickle down economics has

showered urine and feces on

my earning power?

How are sad, desperate, dirty,

homeless people a threat to
armored suit wearing power

elites in the glass steel ivory towers

conservatively arrayed in Fox News

reality distortion deflector fields?

When the teabaggers compared our

President to a rabid monkey, which

mayor sent in the troops?

Why was the gun-toting teabagger who

stalked the President as he valiantly

worked to fulfill an honest campaign

promise not pepper sprayed?

Tell me Fox News,

tell me Mr. Mayor,

tell me phalanx of

faceless police troopers.

You obviously don’t trust me to think for myself.

The Crackdown

Yes! Crackdown on the Occupy movement.

Crackdown on democracy.

Crackdown on the Constitution.

Crackdown on freedom of speech and

freedom of assembly.  All hail the

National Socialist Republic of Oakland, and

kneel down before the Theocratic Republic of

Denver.  Open fire with

rubber bullets and tear gas and

batons of wood and steel.  Gear up

police state.  Don your kevlar armor,

black plastic shields and helmets, and

gas masks.

Those sad, pathetic, harmless

homeless people are

dying in those flea infested

Bushville camps, so let’s

finish the job and

kill them all!

They have not had the

courtesy to OD fast enough in

hopeless desperation, so

something has to be done to

speed up the process.

Send in the troops,

beat and slash,

pepper spray them as they

crouch in well deserved fear.

They obviously represent a

clear and present danger to

the status quo of

unfairness, hoardful greed, and the

gleeful apathy of the

supreme ruling class.

Clean up this mess

Mayors of the Apocalypse.

Don’t you know Dancing with the Stars is on tonight?

A post-mortem on the haiku-a-day challenge

I gave myself a challenge to write at least one haiku per day for the first thirty days of North Station, and that has come to a close.  Overall, I feel this has been a successful exercise, since I did write thirty new, original haiku over the last month.    The fact that I had to write pretty much every day forced me to carry a notebook with me every day, which gave me a place to jot down my thoughts as they came to me without having to hope I would remember long enough until I got home.  This led to me producing more new poems in a month than I had in the preceding year, as well as working on several short stories, both new and old unfinished ideas.  I have found this to be an artistically fulfilling experience.

I have also been incredibly pleased with the number of strangers who have visited my blog.  In addition to the traffic I have gotten through the incredibly talented Robin Samiljan’s Fine Art by Robin blog, I have also seen dozens of visitors from Russia, Europe, and around the world.  The biggest surprise for me has been how few people have left comments.  In almost of month of posting and closing in on forty posts, I have only received two comments, one of which was from a friend.

I am committed to continuing this blog as a place for me to share and experiment.  I currently have three poems that are nearing completion, at which point I will post them to North Station.  I also look forward to hearing constructive criticism and comments from friend and stranger alike.  The best place to keep track of when I post something new is to follow me on Twitter at @jasonbreitkopf.  Thanks!

Stuck

A glimpse of green, a
Cool breeze, unfelt, rustles past
Outside my window

My journal

Page after page of
Scribbled notes, vague thoughts, poems
Yet to be written

My father, WWII veteran

A faded picture
Of a man tall and handsome
His smile confident

The full moon

Through bare and twisted
Branches, the pale, glowing orb
Shines down ghostly light

A leaf in November

Trapped halfway between
The cool relief of summer
And the final plunge

Horse

Powerful shoulders
Thick legs, strong back, streamlined head
Potential energy

The rock wall

The labor of a
Dozen generations still
Stands the test of time

Horse pen at Endicott Park

Horse and pony each
Silently contemplated
The little girl's song

Thoughts on Death

I don’t like poems about

death.  There is nothing

special about death.  It is

merely an ending.  Every

story has an end.  It is

the story itself which matters.

Life matters.  How you

love it, what you do with it.  How many

lives you affect.  Too many

poets waste words

glorifying death, romanticizing death, worshipping death,

yet ignoring life.

Death can be

mundane, falling asleep for the last time in your warm bed

after a long lifetime, loved ones surrounding you, or

alone in a hospital bed with the beep beep

beeping its long banshee wail.  Death can be

heroic, sacrificing life to save others.  Death can be

tragic, a child lost before her time, or a

genius eaten from the inside by cancer.  Death can be

sad, an old friend who has gone before you had that

one last chance to catch up.

Then there is the death

pathetic, wasteful, and useless.

Suicide and drug overdose both are an

insult to every person whose life was

cut short, whether by

illness, injury, or violence, who strove to

beat back death for

one last lost moment with

the loves of their lives.  Neither

suicide nor drug overdose is

romantic or glamorous despite all the

wet ink spilled in a hurried rush to

immortalize a fool who chose to

tread the undiscovered country like a

holiday spent wandering the

amusement park complaining about

the long lines for all the rides.

I have no interest in death, though

I know that one day

the final word of the the final sentence in

the final paragraph on the final page of

the final chapter of my life story will be written.

I love life.

I love music and poetry.

I love watching a great movie in a crowded theatre and

reading a good book at home alone in the quiet of a winter’s day.

I love in running in broken-in sneakers on a warm, bright

spring morning and walking leisurely through

fire colored leaves along a shady trail on a

cool, crisp autumn afternoon.

I love meeting new people and

catching up with old friends.

I love a good game of baseball, especially when my team wins, and

I love playing a really long game of cards with my wife.

I love sex, singing, and a good joke.

I love my children, and look forward to meeting my grandchildren in twenty years.

There needs to be more poetry about

life, and less about death.

Everyone dies.  Not everyone lives.

As told in Eeyore's voice

How many Eeyore's
Does it take to screw in a
Lightbulb? Why bother

Thanksgiving

Sumptuous repast
Warm family gathering
Please, let's not argue

North Station "Train Schedule"

During the haiku-a-day challenge, readers of North Station can be fairly certain that I will post something each day.  As we reach the “home stretch” of the challenge, now in its final ten days of a thirty day challenge, it occurred to me that readers might want a way to find out about new posts without having to guess & check.  Luckily, some enterprising fellows created a no-cost, low-effort method of keeping up with friends, celebrities, and your favorite writing blog(s).  Enter Twitter.  A sure-fire way to keep up with my blog, in addition to following me here if you already have a Google and/or Blogger account, is to follow me on Twitter at @jasonbreitkopf for regular updates and notifications on when I post a new poem, short story, or blog post.  As always, I welcome your comments here at North Station.  Thanks!

Summer longing

There is nothing more
Sad than a swimming pool closed
For the long winter

Sherman the Cat

Cautious explorer
Eager to play, do not touch
Squeaks to ask for food

Red-tailed Hawk

Piercing eyes searching
Silent serious stillness
Sudden flight swoops past

Autumn

Golden afternoon
Warm light infusing cool air
With crisp sharp flavor

The first flurry

Snowy dust clings to
The earth in desperation
Autumn sun too warm

Dear Google

Dear Google,

Please don’t steal my stuff.  I know you have to feed your infinite

hunger for information, your insatiable appetite for every scrap of

data about my friends, family, shopping habits, intestinal cycles,

sexual desires, political ideologies, coupon clipping appointments,

and kodiak moments.  You have mouths to feed, Google, blind,

gaping, yawning chasms to fill with all the knowledge of the

universe that you can identify, sort, catalogue, categorize, classify,

index, and sell.  The highest bidders are forever gasping, grasping,

clasping, clawing for eyeballs, ever open, unblinking, to beam

banners and blocks of advertisements that beg, demand, command

clicks, taps, and swipes.  We together, Google, are on the Brin of an

abyss and all you want to do is dump page after Page of every book,

screen after scene of every video, and note after note of every sound

into your rumbling, tumbling, churning, yearning stomach

for consumption, digestion, and regurgitation.

My poems, small though they may be, are mine, and mine alone, to

share with the brave and kindhearted readers who have found a few

extra moments in their busy days for a small spark to ignite an ember

in the back right corner of their brains wedged in between that

delightfully funny scene from last night’s very special episode and

that snippet of song you don’t want to get out of your head.

So don’t steal my stuff, Google, or you’ll be in deep Schmidt.

Love and doodles,

Jason

On Opening a magazine

I like the perfume
Inserts in magazines. They
Make the trash smell great

Thoughts on Twitter

Like the first zombie
Out of the ground, all I need
Is some followers

Autumn Ocean

Steely gray waves crash
Cold sharp sand streaks through the air
Salt crusts on my coat

Wake up call

Through my bedroom door
The laughter of children rings
In the new morning

Variations on Ginsberg's "America"

There is a lot to be

angry about with

America now, but it is not America

herself.  She has a

disease, a

cancer inside her.  It is the

mutated remains of

dead cells that is

killing her.  A

bee sting

poison from her birth has

festered into an old wound

infected with dry cracked

fingernails clasping onto the last

wrinkled dollars drinking the

life blood that feeds the

healthy pink and green

growth of the next generation.

Dead skin should

slough off to let the

new growth rise

fresh and clean.  But this

disease collect itself in the

decayed detritus of old skin.

Absorbs its own breath and

caked white blood cells

depleted of nutritive value so it can

dig deep to the bowels of the

power plant at the

heart and soul of

America where it will

inbreed gray-suited

Don Draper drinking

paramecium, all

brylcreem sheen and big teeth smiles,

pumping clots into the

blood stream of America, blocking

glass ceiling shatterers and

lightning bolt pen wielders.

How many nines does it take to

see that the medicine

that has been prescribed by the

tea-stained hand is poison,

more poison for the

papery fleshed billionaire zombies to

drink like so much champagne at a

Hampton’s dinner party.

Even underneath the grime of a

thousand factories pumping

climate change into her lungs,

American is beautiful.

America is good.

I stood still for a

heartbeat moment and

saw the wind through the grass

in the front yards of

ten thousand New England colonials.

I saw the gentle lap lap of the tide

on a rocky beach beside a

windswept lighthouse.

I saw the ghostly spires of a metropolis

hovering on the horizon through the

golden stalks of wheat in the city limits.

I saw a city in the trees on a mountaintop.

I see the purposeful, honest

ebb and flow of humanity

carefully picking a path along

the edge of the platform in a

renovated subway station.

I see the people.  Eyes sharp, searching,

lips pursed in worry, ears pricked to

hear the news of an 

America growing healthy.

They’re waiting.

America is waiting.

From poetry class

My thoughts on freewrites:
Be a stenographer for
Your mind wandering

In the woods near home

Storm ripped roots splintered
Horizontal trunk tilted
Skyward in pleading

Impressions on Occupy Boston

On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, I went to Dewey Square in Boston, just across the street from the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, to attend the OccuPoetry event at Occupy Boston.  All this week poets will be speaking between 2pm and 3pm as part of a series of scheduled events.  I was invited by well-known Boston poet Peter Desmond to read my poem Occupy Wall Street along with several other poets, including Ginsberg Award-winning poet Richard Cambridge.  The readings will continue through Friday if you are interested in attending, as well as interested in seeing exactly what it happening in the protest.  I had no clue what might be going on down there, and was very hesitant to put any stock in a news report that I had heard about from Fox 25 news.  Here are my impressions.

It’s a Hooverville for the 21^st Century.  A tent camp full of the unemployed and recently homeless.  They are mostly in their 20s, but there are several in the 30s and older.  Most of the 20-somethings have cell phones.  Adjacent to the tent camp is a garden which they work on together to grow food.  Closer to South Station is what would  normally be described as vendor tents, like what you might see at a craft fair.  Let’s call it Bushville.  These are the “beneficiaries” of the Bush Economic Policy™ and the two, count ‘em, two recessions caused by Republican Supply Side Economics.

These people are jobless, homeless, but not quite hopeless.  They like President Obama; they respect and still believe in him, but they want more of the campaign Obama than the compromise Obama.  They are sick and tired of the obstructionist Republicans and the lie factory that is Fox “News”.  They’re smart and aware of their rights.  They’re political without being ideological.  They’re peaceful, but on edge.  They are expressing themselves through music and poetry, and by growing food in the park.  These are not hippies.  Most of them weren’t even born yet when there were still hippies.  Sure, some of them grew up poor, but most of the people I met have some college education, if not a degree.  They are the displaced middle class.

Everything Limbaugh, Beck, the RNC, the Republican presidential hopefuls, the info-zombies of Faux News, etc., says about them is wrong.  They have clear needs and goals.  Make the bailout babies of Wall Street, the whining millionaires & billionaires, and the corporate overlords pay their fair share for a change.  Reinstate oversight and regulation of banks, Wall Street, and corporations because those jerks can’t be trusted.  Stop wasting money on useless wars, and spend the money instead on important things like education, health care reform, feeding the poor, taking care of vets, and job creation.  Read the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and you’ll clearly see that this county belongs to the people, not soulless corporations.  While I am paraphrasing, that seems like a clear and concise “mission statement” to me.

This is not and anti-government protest.  It is anti-corporate, anti-lobbyist, anti-hypocrisy, and anti-obstructionist.  These people want their government back from those who have taken it hostage and used it against the people it was designed to protect.  This movement is pro-people, pro-poor, pro-middle class, and pro-democracy.  It is respectful of our country and its traditions, and therefore as patriotic as any battle ever fought on this soil.  It is organic, leaderless, and real.  In other words, everything the Tea Party protests never were, which were clearly run by a lobbyist, Dick Armey, and the HMO/health insurance industry.  This movement is non-violent, again, unlike the Tea Party protests, which was as gun-toting as a Sylvester Stallone movie.

The guiding spirits of the Occupy Wall Street movement are Gandhi, Chavez, and King.  It is color-blind and inclusive.  It is not racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic, despite articles in the conservative-leaning big media to paint it as such.  These are nameless, faceless American heroes who just want our nation to fulfill its promise unburdened by the clasping, grasping greed of a few who see life as a zero-sum game.  These people know that a rising tide lifts all ships.  I know this because I saw it in their kindness and generosity towards each other and towards me.

This little Bushville, and the Occupy movement as a whole, are also incredibly sad.  It should be absolutely unnecessary in a country as powerful, advanced, and wealthy as ours for a place like Bushville to exist.  Everywhere I looked there were words of hope and encouragement for the pro-democracy citizen revolts throughout the Middle East that made up the Arab Spring.  Here is Boston, and in New York and elsewhere, we now have an American Autumn to follow the Arab Spring.

The last lavender

The last lavender
Shivers in the cool autumn
Breeze. The bee moves on.

I am not a Communist

I am not a Communist.

I am not a Socialist.

I don’t want the government to own

everything.  I don’t want your stuff.  I’m poor and

I’ve got enough stuff of my own already.  So much

stuff that I need to sell my stuff or donate my stuff or

get rid of my stuff just to have space for more stuff.

I believe in making a buck and having a

place of my own, and I want you to

make a living and have a place of your

own.  All I want is for you to keep your

hands out of my pockets and stop

pretending that that my wallet is an

ounce and a half lighter because of

government taxes. 

The government is not out to get you.

I do not want your guns.

I don’t want any guns.

I don’t need a gun to speak my

mind or make myself heard.  If

the pen if mightier than the sword, then

my keyboard is mightier than your gun.

All the time you’ve spent afraid that the

government would try to take your guns,

did you never stop to think how

afraid I am that you would come with

your guns and try to take my life?

Did you never stop to think that maybe

it is not the government that is the

threat to you, but you the threat to us?

You say that the power to tax is the

power to destroy, and I say, so?

When have you ever seen a tax destroy

anything?  I haven’t, but I have seen

poverty and hunger march across the

land with a scythe leaving a trail of

toxic floodwaters.  You say that

taxation without representation

is wrong, and I agree, but

stop to think.  If only

one percent of all

Americans are millionaires, yet

fifty percent of

Congress are millionaires, don’t you

think that it is us, the

rest of America which is

underrepresented?

You can try to bullshit me all you

like, but I’m not stupid and neither is

the rest of us.  Working together

doesn’t make us Communists, it

doesn’t make us Socialists, it

makes us Americans.

We, the people,

are the government, no matter

how much you try to buy it.

When you’re ready to grow up,

man up, and

put up or shut up,

we’ll be out here.

I’ve read the

First Amendment.

Have you?

The smallest pine tree

The smallest pine tree
I have ever seen is no
Taller than my girl

Park St. Station

Hot dry solid air
Distant clattery rumbling
Is this one my train?

In the stacks at the library

Kinetic stillness
Patiently waiting knowledge
Silently calls out

The girl at the Tannery

Whining endlessly
The teenager on the floor
Blocks the whole hallway

Revitalive Cafe, NBPT, MA

Usually bland,
Vegan desserts from this place
Are shockingly good

Occupy Wall Street

A holiday chug chug march of blue uniforms

crisp and clean and silver wings gleaming

in the bright dawn of a true blue, white, and red

revolution leads teachers and toilers, the down-

trodden and uplifted, the wise and the foolish, the

best and the brightest of the ninety nine percenters to

take back the street from the ravenous, howling,

slavering, slobbering, sleek headed, greed drunk,

thousand dollar suit wearing bailout whores who

cracked our nest egg to make caviar omelets from

sub prime junk sauce.  College coed sisters with their

coupon clipping mothers and daughters against

dangerous drooling nightcrawlers took back the night from the

overreaching slime under the workboots of society, but

no murder rapist mugger thug hurt as many as the

smiling, shark toothed madoffs of canyon towers of MBA

clown car firms.  Too big to merely fail, they imploded in a

nuclear reaction of greed and stupidity, and like the

childish churlish whining brats who want what they want

when they want it and don’t look at me that way

I’m going to my corner office in the clouds, door slam.

They need discipline.  They need the firm hand wielded by the

red hot red blooded red white and blue.  The princess of

cornpone homily distracting dissemblence harkens for

the real America, but one only has to look at the

teeming mass of honest yearning to find the real

America, the teachers, tailors, and toilers, the

unemployed, the underemployed, and the disenfranchised.

The first steps are the hardest and the first barricade the most

vulnerable to the pepper spray violence of the mindless

automatons of fear.  Hold hands, link arms, replace violence with

love and fear with hope, and we can take back the street and

secure the day.

Self-critique

Alliteration
Exposes every urge
To sound so clever

Lynch Park, Beverly, MA

Hidden rose garden
Arranged in perfect balance
Bumblebees buzz by

Driving North on I95

Autumn leaves revealed
Shocking golds, sharp oranges,
And seductive reds

The Haiku-a-day challenge

The Haiku-a-day challenge

I love to write, but I find that I don’t always have the time to do as much as I would like.  Life gets in the way, especially small, cute, and young life, also known as my daughters, who require a great deal of attention.  Who knew that parenting was so much work?  Well, other than everyone, that is.  This led me to follow in the footsteps of several of my friends on Facebook, who have posting updates on various 30 or 60 day challenges in which they are engaged, whether spiritual or health/fitness related.

I chose to make this a 30 day haiku challenge for two reasons: 30 days seems reasonable, and I love haiku.  I love the surprising depth and simplicity of the form.  Traditionally, a haiku is a nature poem consisting of 17 sounds in the Japanese language, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five sounds, respectively.  The concept of 17 sounds has been mistranslated as meaning 17 syllables in western languages.  Haiku written in English do not strictly need 17 syllables, however, I prefer to follow this rule, as it forces me to carefully consider each and every word, which I believe makes for better poems.

Haiku are written about topics in nature, however, there is a parallel and identical form known as senryu, which can cover almost any topic, usually with a more humorous tone than the more serious haiku.  The only thing that differentiates a haiku and a senryu is the subject matter.  I tend to write haiku and senryu in equal amounts.

For me, haiku and senryu can contain a kernel of beauty and wisdom that allows them to be as meaningful as any longer poetic form.  I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have and will enjoy writing them.

North Station

Welcome to North Station, my new writer's blog.  I will be posting poetry, short stories, and the odd essay.  I am a writer, actor, director, filmmaker, and educator from the northeast of the United States.  North Station represents a hub for exchanging stories and ideas and sharing them with the world.  It is my goal that having this platform will inspire me to create and share more than I have before.  Please feel free to leave constructive feedback.  Thanks!