a friend came over and i showed him a little about the publicity angle of the poetry reading which is coming along much better now. i have a facebook page; i've told all my facebook friends; i have a poster (though i haven't copied it), i have actually called both newspapers, though both were closed, it being saturday and all. i uploaded pictures, built sites, did p.r.

but, as i said to my friend, and he was somewhat mystified by this, my motivation is really that in a sense, being a bum and a hobo, albeit 40 years ago, i feel like i've been carrying around this secret, and in a sense i'm telling the town now what i've been carrying. i walk around, and, if i'm trapped in a line at the post office, i write haiku, and that means, i get my head into some moment, which could have been in, say, texas, and i try to condense that into seventeen syllables, and it may be good or bad poetry what do i know, but it gets me out of that feeling of being stuck in line. it's a kind of discipline, to take all those moments, and condense them into seventeen syllables, with a clue of both the place and the season, the season as they would know it in, say, texas, and then i have five hundred or more of these, and i have them all in one volume, and now it's time to show. i feel it, that it's time to show, and i also owe the homeless shelter a favor, since they were there for me one time when i was freshly kicked out of my own house.

the homeless shelters, they say, and others of its ilk, such as the women's center, are responsible more than any other thing for the reduction in the murder rate. i guess that, in the old days, if folks had nowhere to go, they simply went back & murdered the aggrieved spouse, so that this is a benefit of the modern world, one that should be upheld and maintained, like an interfaith center and a teenage help line. if it saves lives, i'm for it, because it could be mine or that of my kids, and i'm glad they are there when my folks need them. that's the first thing. but second, if i'm scrawling this little poetry on little sheets of paper and stuffing them in my pockets at places like the post office and all, i'm hiding secrets, and that doesn't quite feel right, i'd like to say, at some point, yeah, i've been pushing my kids in the swing at turley park for years, and in my head, i'm thinking about that time i was out in west texas watching the san juan river crawl its way down toward mexico, and you want to know what i got in my pocket, here it is. so the little logos i put on my poster say, southern illinois poets, stand & deliver. it's got a kind of wild west, up front feeling, hopefully someone will show up.

turns out the story itself is worth hearing, i've certainly told it enough (see the template of this very blog, where you can read the true versions, in prose, of every step i took) and in fact i rarely tire of telling it so if that's all that happens on that particular night, or if the poetry is bad (which is a distinct possibility in my case, i say possibility because, isolated as i am in my own head, it's reached the point where i almost wouldn't know one way or the other, unless forced to actually read it out and see what people think), at least i'll have an entertaining story to spin out and give people to carry with them, out into the february night. just from the telling of the story to my friend, i know how easy it is to get carried away in the details of what happened say, when the al-can highway washed out and we spent days and nights in a tiny mountain town of british columbia, looking at the northern lights and waiting for a little road repair. or, the mexico and guatemala part, which are pretty much left out of the book but nonetheless tellable, interesting stories. the real version, the prose, just passing through, i actually need to work on and finish this year; that's part of my goal.

so a week from wednesday (or wenny-denzy, as i've taken to calling it), i'll be there, reading this stuff out, and raising money for the local homeless shelter, which i consider to be an important contributor to sanity and sustenance of life in this town. but in the meantime i have to print more books, print and deliver posters, and keep up with other work-related stuff, which is also heating up and causing a certain amount of busy-ness and panic on my part. i've got irons in the fire. a few too many, in fact.

it's cool and clear out, and this is good because a plastic-handled spoon fell down into the dishwasher and melted on the heating element causing a wretched stink to fill the house and leave us a little aggrieved. not a bad time to air the place out though as februarys are known to bring ice storms not to mention leap day, which could add to the misery this year if not thow off all the electronic devices. the powers that be want to eliminate "leap second" because it really gets in the way of all that electronic calculation, but in fact if those electronic devices are off by one second or so, we're all a little better off, because we won't be able to be anal and all worked up about it. it's like that woman in iowa, whose house was about an inch off of the straight north-south axis, and she knew it, and she went bonkers. why? because she couldn't pick up the house and move it. i say, pick up the earth's axis, and move it about an inch, and see how many people we lose. but do it gently, don't do it with a tsunami.

which reminds me, i finished the jigsaw puzzle, and it was missing two pieces, so finally i moved the couch and got everything out from under there, kids books, a sock, a paper clip, all kinds of stuff. and sure enough, one of the pieces was down there. but the other? it's still gone. who knows? those reindeer, they contributed one of their own to the great environment. but what does a single jigsaw puzzle piece do, when it's out in the world, say it fell between the pages of some book in the end-table magazine-holder, and it's just sitting there until we find it somehow, years later? it's worthless, separated from its friends, much like a single sock is worthless without its mate, unless you happened to buy a dozen that were all similar. as i put this puzzle away, i'm intensely aware of how useless it is, i can't even give it away, when it's missing one piece. the hardest puzzle i ever did, too.

so what's with the world pictures? it's a picnik retrospective. picnik is the poster-art maker, photo adjuster, pop-artist toolbox, it's been free all these years, but google is closing it down, maybe because it was too popular, or too free. we can make all the pop art we want until april, then it's all over, maybe somebody will come 'round and provide another, but maybe not, and that's ok, i feel like once again, i'm rolling from one free site to another, like i'm on the road again, or maybe on the train, jumping up but trying not to kill myself, or landing on the gravel and hoping it doesn't put a hole in whatever i land on. one side of me, and you can check out my template here, is always on this big long ramble which, one could say, just goes from one public spot to another. and as long as you're not a public nuisance, you kind of stay under the radar, you help folks out and don't cause trouble, then the world allows you to pass through and says, be my guest.

which reminds me, it was polar bear weekend here, which meant, mass binge-drinking spectacular among the college students, kids puking and ending up in the e-r all over town (at least last year they did) and everyone a little worried that someone might die, or sit down on the railroad tracks, or some other thing, so they write letters to the parents and everyone gets offended, like you're telling on us before we even did anything. but i say, and i'm kind of part of the reformed community, i've been there and back, and somewhat grateful not to be in the clutches of alcohol or any other drug, to speak of, i say such warnings may be offensive but aren't really uncalled for, if they save anyone's life. we are here, and stay here, because this town needs us, it's a drinking town, has a drinking problem, and it needs someone to say, you can beat this stuff and come back from it and live to tell the tale. which is what i'll do on wednesday. i have no intention of encouraging people to jump on trains. as i tell my kids, it's a different world, and you have to be smart, 'cause folks love you & want you to survive. chao