John Rachel poet? Is this a joke?

 

I've made no secret of my lack of understanding of poetry, nor my thus to be expected zero talent for writing poetry. 

I'm not sure why I write poems.  I guess a poem has some vague resemblance to a song at a very superficial level -- meaning the way it looks on a page -- and I haven't been writing songs lately.  Let's call it reverse sublimation, a clumsy surrogation.  My writing poems is like a ping pong player playing tennis blindfolded on a quicksand court.

I even did a tongue-in-cheek piece about the process of creating a poem, one which I've tastelessly shared with some serious poets, and made even more enemies than I thought one human could make, with just a few clicks of a mouse.

Now, really strange things are happening.  I just got four poems published!

Apparently I've submitted some poems lately.  I say "apparently" because I frankly don't remember submitting two of them.  But one called Messenger Deranged just appeared in a poetry magazine called Lone Stars, based in San Antonio, Texas.  They even requested more and I submitted two more, One Life and Light and Dark, which my lovely wife then translated into Japanese.  Lone Star will publish both English and Japanese versions in their December issue, the English under my name, the Japanese as poetic works by Masumi Nishida.

Then just today, I got a congratulatory letter from VerbalArt, A Global Journal Devoted to Poets and Poetry.  They are including my poem Tapioca Cyber Trails in their upcoming issue, appropriately splattered across all seven continents like a Cardassian tanker of jellied starch blasted out of the sky by a orbiting rail gun.

Mind you, I barely remember writing this poem, so it was quite a surprise when I read it. They sent me a proof of the coming issue for my approval.  There it was, right on page 17. 

What a pleasant surprise!  It's actually pretty darn good, i.e. not terribly terrible.  Not to inflate expectations, I actually think this almost qualifies as a credible work.

I'll let you be the judge.

TAPIOCA CYBER TRAILS

A sweet jest broke water
Birthing artificial intelligence
As if the clusters of CPUs
Marked the non-event event
We reeled and rollicked
In childish mirth-driven panic
Salivating porn-addicted cherubs
Lost in the heavy-breathing fog
Flying the vaporous trails
Of evaporating illusion
We wept but didn’t

You are no more
I’ve remade you
In my image
In your image
I fear meeting you again
I fear disappointment
Shattered expectations
Revulsion and despair
A binary epitaph
Suicide is in our DNA
Zero one zero one

[ DO NOT ask me what it means . . . I haven't got a clue. ]

They always say when warning against getting too excited or overly optimistic:

"Don't quit your day job."

Since I don't have a day job, night job, weekend job, or any job, I think this is advice I can follow without any risk of failure.

Moreover, I certainly don't want to let any opportunities for fabulous riches and universal renown slip through my gnarly, hangnail afflicted fingers.  And the poetry track has proven to be a straight shot to the top.  Maybe I should finally call that number on the ad I posted in that article on writing poetry I mentioned.




If all works out as I expect, instead of signing all my letters . . .

John Rachel, Bipolar Humanist

. . . very soon I can proudly -- and profitably -- stake my claim to untold wealth, fame and adulation as . . .

John Rachel, Poet




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]




John Rachel poet? Is this a joke?

Clouds of Pollen in the Spring

"The awareness is spreading like clouds of pollen in the spring."

That was a comment I made on a progressive website about the worldwide demonstrations, street protests, and rallies celebrating this year's Earth Day.

I must confess that until two weeks ago I had a highly prejudiced understanding and appreciation of pollen.  I associated it with red, runny noses, puffy, squinting eyes, an annual epidemic of misery among a sizeable chunk of the population.  This limited and highly negative view was shaped by thousands of ads for over-the-counter remedies which had been embedded in my brain, probably from my first days of watching TV as a child.

Of course, a little basic biology is a powerful corrective.  We find that pollen is the delivery mechanism of male sperm cells for plants.  Pollination is about reproduction.  It's how vast landscapes are turned into breathtaking fields of flowering plants, a floral explosion that here in Japan transforms the whole country into a beautiful garden stretching sea to sea.

My awakening, however, did not come from a text book.  It came -- as is quite common these days -- from my lovely and truly brilliant Japanese wife.

 

Masumi and I were on our way to an outdoor market in a nearby town.  It was at the peak of the cherry blossom season.  Cherry blossoms here are not confined to parks or community malls.  Tens of thousands of cherry blossom trees line roads, rivers, canals, and crisscross fields of rice and other crop plantings.  It's absolutely spectacular.

However, I mentioned casually to her that is seemed a little hazy that day.  We're downwind from the China mainland, which hosts many coal-fed power plants, heavy-industry factories, and the like, so I just assumed it was the usual dust and smoke blowing our way from our Chinese neighbor.

"No, that's pollen," explained Masumi.  She directed my gaze to the face of a forested mountain we were passing.  There was a huge puff of what appeared to be smoke, but not really the color of smoke, or the way smoke looks rising from burning debris.  No, it was a cloud of pollen, which was being released in that section of the forest, I assume from the floral undergrowth beneath the trees.
Thus began my quick education and new respect for pollen.  That cloud was the promise for the continuing regeneration of the awe-inspiring bouquet we and others across Japan were now enjoying.

Okay.  I believe in balanced reporting.  So let me explore the other side of this story.

Some folks are allergic to pollen.  Those ads for over-the-counter remedies turn their misery into cold, hard cash for the manufacturers of these palliatives.  Point taken.

 

But there are others who don't have this excuse.  These are folks who choose to seal themselves up in an artificial cocoon, stare at flat-panel displays, thus have no idea about clouds of pollen, pollination, flowers, or anything that doesn't conflate with living under artificial light, being captive of a hermetically sealed environment; no concept of a reality which doesn't adhere to and reify the rules of commerce and commodification of everything.  This is the model embraced by an economy-fixated society, which exclusively views humans as components of monetary mechanisms, consequently only values them as producers and/or consumers. 

I would surmise the notion of beauty for such champions of greed is skyrocketing returns on investments and a bulging portfolio of winning stocks.  I seriously doubt either of those has much of a fragrance though I may have on occasion heard someone say: "That person smells of money."
For these individuals, flowers are "beautiful" depending on how marketable they are and what sort of profits they produce.  With no sense of irony, they would deem the distress of those allergy sufferers as an opportunity to turn a profit.  The more misery these folks have to endure, the better the prospects for some fat returns on pharmaceutical stocks.

We're told that this is the new way to look at the world.  Those old valuations -- meaning just the basic use of our senses, and gauging the world around us by the joy and delight we feel in our hearts -- are passé, and have been replaced by the new tools of capitalism, the free market, and the now dominant neoliberal paradigm.

Yet, the Earth day protests and celebrations convincingly offered a very different message.  That message was loud and unambiguous.  Treating the Earth as a factory for man-made goods, narrowing the contribution of human beings to merely producing and consuming those goods, subjecting everything from happiness and love to the value of a human life, only to the metrics of economic worth, reducing all of the potential for human creativity, ingenuity, compassion, nobility, vision, altruism, excellence, and achievement, to mere numbers on a spread sheet, is suffocating the human race, exterminating the human family, eviscerating the human spirit, and destroying the planet.

I've made my choice.  It took me a while to come around.

I'll take my chances with the clouds of pollen.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Clouds of Pollen in the Spring

Creativity: Creating Memorable Characters

 

With the incredible success of my new novel, The Man Who Loved Too Much - Book 1: Archipelago, released only two weeks ago but already peaking at #11,496 on Amazon's Fiction/Coming of Age/Fantasy/Zombies /High School Cheerleader/Romance best-seller list, people often ask me:

"John, how do you come up with your characters?"

First, I drive my Mercedes to a local ramen restaurant, where not only do they
have great meals, but I can get my kitchen knives sharpened.

I walk in and sit down. I say something in Japanese. They just roll their eyes.

An eighty-five-year-old lady is across from me, slumped over at her table.
She might be breathing but I don't see how, with her face immersed in
the bowl of noodles.

I picture her as a twenty-year-old university student, dressed in either sexy
lingerie from Fredericks of Hollywood, or a Lycra fetish costume
purchased from an online store in the West Village. There's a tennis
ball strapped in her mouth.

Now . . . what is she feeling?

Suddenly, an off-duty Japanese police officer drives through the front of the
restaurant on a Harley Davidson. There is broken glass and disposable
chopsticks everywhere!

Inspiration!

And the plot thickens.

I thought the police officer had tattoos on his arms but they are just temporary removable sheer hosiery tattoos he picked up in Thailand, while on his police precinct's annual sex tourism holiday.

He orders the lunch special, Salty Miso Beef Ramen with Deep-Fried Pork Dumplings
on the side. Of course, all the rice you can eat is included . . . and it's free!

Now I hear the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead. Understandably, my first
instinct is that it must be Navy Seals either conducting exercises or
mounting a raid. There are so many suspicious people everywhere you look
these days. Especially here in Japan!

But no, it's a medical rescue team. Four paramedics tethered to long nylon ropes
drop down onto the street out front. They rush into the restaurant. The
first medic through the door grabs the old lady's hair. He violently
yanks her head out of the bowl of ramen, then gagging, gives her
mouth-to-mouth. But it's too late. Her wind pipe is clogged with
congealed noodles. She is dead.

While they drag her body out of the restaurant to hoist it into the helicopter,
some young boys, probably elementary school age, are passing. Several of
them are taunting a pathetic little guy, who unfortunately is
cross-eyed and suffers acute lymphedema. His legs look like pontoons,
very unusual for someone his age. The other boys are mocking him by
chanting: "Dalai Lama! Dalai Lama!"

Hmm. I don't get this. Dalai Lama? But I can use it! Sometimes you need
something a little off the wall to keep a reader's attention.

All this time I've been slurping away. The food here is truly amazing! My bowl
is just about empty, when a huge stabbing pain shoots through my gut. I
feel like someone has stuck a samurai sword in my belly button, twisting
it like they're wrapping pasta around a fork.

Food poisoning!

I don't know why I keep coming here. Every time I eat here __ I mean every time!
__ it's the same thing. I get food poisoning and spend the next six
hours . . . well, you know.

My only excuse for this habitual self-sabotage is that this place has been so good for
my writing. This is where it all starts. The huge cast of misfits and
miscreants that populate my stories are all denizens of the social
tapestry of this little hole-in-the-wall soup shop.

I'll tell you something else. No way am I giving away my secret.

You can try Googling "ramen shops Japan" if you like.

Ha! Good luck finding it.


______________________________________________________________


The Man Who Loved Too Much - Book 1: Archipelago


Apple (iBook) . . . bit.ly/1ycltFD

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1tyIRiw

Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/ZDnQVO

Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1w62HOX

Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1r6qWYQ

[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Creativity: The Writing Process

 

With my brand new book, The Man Who Loved Too Much, 
Book 1: Archipelago __ my sixth novel! __ arriving this month, 
people sometimes ask me:

"John, how do you get inspired to write?"

First, I turn on the fan. Then I suddenly realize I that forgot to take out the
garbage. So I do that. Of course, now I see there's all sorts of gunk in
the bottom of the garbage container from the tomatoes that went bad and
the mushrooms that turned to slime. So I have to clean up that mess.

Finally, I pour a cup of coffee and sit down to write. Oops! Forgot to check
my FB account. Whoa!!  87 new notices.  People loved that video I posted
of a kitten chasing a rhinoceros. Hmm. Bad news. It looks like over 30
people deleted me as a friend. Cold! What did I do? Could it have been
the blog I wrote about Mitt Romney being a pedophile?

I'm exhausted.  Writing sure takes it out of me.

I decide I need a nap.  I'll get 20 winks, wake up fresh, ready to really roll!

I try to sleep.  But they are slaughtering a yak next door, beating it to death
with garden rakes.  You'd think they could come up with a more humane
way to kill the thing.  Jeeez!

I take a sip of wine from a newly opened bottle to try to relax.  I decide to 
just finish the whole thing off.

The next few hours are a blank.  I wake up in the bathtub.  
I'm hugging a bag of fertilizer. The doorbell is ringing.

I run to see who it is.  Ah!  The post man.  My new Fiction Writing software 
has arrived. Excellent!  This could be the shot in the arm my career needs.

I spend the rest of the day trying to install the program.  My Windows laptop 
keeps giving me error messages. 

The library catalog file 'clusterfck.dll' is missing. Please reinstall operating system. 

After five hours of this, I am famished!

I head down to the drive-thru window for Magic Rainbow Happy Luck.
It's Chinese fast food.  But they refuse to serve me because I'm on a
bicycle.  I go inside.  Everything is in Chinese.  I order something by
pointing.  They bring me monkey entrails on a croissant. Not very
appetizing.

This would be a total waste of time, except thinking ahead, I brought my computer.
Munching away, being careful to keep the blood and grease from dripping
into my keyboard, I begin . . . 

Once upon a time, there was a large tree in the middle of an island. A boy
of eleven years old leaned against it. A stranger approached him from
behind. The boy turned. The man was wearing a 'Mitt Romney for
President' button. 

Alright!

Now we're getting somewhere.

______________________________________________________________

The Man Who Loved Too Much - Book 1: Archipelago

Apple (iBook) . . . bit.ly/1ycltFD

Amazon (Kindle) . . . amzn.to/1tyIRiw

Barnes & Noble . . . bit.ly/ZDnQVO

Smashwords . . . bit.ly/1w62HOX

Direct from printer . . . bit.ly/1r6qWYQ

[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]