keyword #3:"a city at night"

steel beams sigh at
sun lost, a slow
abandonment to sole,
single strolling night-watch
men, remaining world alight or
soundly snug; a couple screams from
abstract, accusations lost from
windows that once cried joy,
splendor, now a dismal hum against
the dreams that drown them out.

Keyword #2: "despair" (as conjured in Martyn by Nabokov, in two parts)

"despair; 2.1"

these facets sprawl
labyrinthine, corners cut
deep below the surface
of highrise expectations.

surfaces jagged, engraved with
freedom of choice:
layers abundant
measured in metric scaling
of toxicity.
facades chipped, fading
falling fast to wasteland arms
that grasp the only, the
singular stance of reprieve--
none of the above.

________________________

"despair; 2.2"

a hand to beseech amongst
debris of emaciated intent
lopped off at the wrist
digits flexing toward a final
repose, to clenched
hand-in-fist. why
does it always end like this?
amputated extremities with
chain still attached
key down your throat, lost
left less a limb but
an X on the wall
signaling all I ever wanted
a maligned statistic.

Keyword #1: resistance (in shades of etymology...and pretention, it seems)

ramparts loom
above the dusk, quiet, assuming
the isolation sewn
from strands of a self
in retreat

carousing steep stages
unrepentant of this
object, if I'd
only relented
an age ago

if I'd
abjure, if only
recognize--obtest
vertigo's mournful hues--
panes of sky broken
beneath the rising weight
of regret.

Daily Keywords with Martyn Conterio and Danielle Booth: A Joint Poetry Venture

My dear friend Martyn, who lives in London, finally shared a stanza from one of his poems with me. It happened to be about the first time we met face-to-face, as we'd previously known each other through a Myspace literature forum of awesomeness called The Fiction Files, and he flew to Venice to meet me and experience the Biennale. It was a lovely time; we got on great, wandered about, chased hordes of Japanese tourists in a bizarre attempt to make a short film via digital camera video about the resurrection of dead philosophers descending upon the sinking city,

Anyway.

Martyn's a writer; I'm a writer. He writes poetry; I write poetry, though not as often as I'd like to force upon myself. Martyn never lets me read anything, even though he's been published. I'd like to write much more frequently and keep in closer touch with my friend, and suddenly--in an IM conversation with him, he properly pissed and me on a 4-day run of avoiding sleep almost entirely--I thought of something.

A joint poetry writing project wherein we send one another daily keywords or concepts, picked using whichever method we choose, with or without specific stipulations as to context, usage, etc--a launching pad to drive the both of us into the daily practice of poetry composition. I am sure the results will produce a lot of useless swill, but the focus, the repetition, and the discipline will help the both of us to hone our poetic senses and that both of us are producing will drive each of us to fulfill the commitment.

I've been assigned my first keyword, no stipulations: resistance

Results to follow.

Pointless inner self-criticism leads to completely anti-climactic not-so-much-a-resolution

It's not so difficult a task--to scour a stack of CDs for pre-licensed mini-edits or stingers in order to buffer/add flair to the intro & outro of my project's very first audio "cast." The generosity of the teams and individuals with which I work is astounding, and when I asked for some music to cushion Gary Barth's excellent rendition of the script I wrote, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, I was greeted this morning by 23 CD cases, many of which are double-disc editions of songs, edits, stingers, and loops from varying musical genres: Urban Drama, Funky Soul, Garage/Pop/Punk/Rock, etc.

Yet I struggle, every genre with potential casting an entirely different, apperceptive ear towards the tone and thus the trend of the project itself. Currently I lean toward a 60s groove funk reminiscent of B-line spy flicks a la What's Up, Tiger Lily?, but there are also some great guitar riffs and elegant beats that conjure contrasting aural experiences.

And here I am, expressing an abhorrent, perfunctory display of anxiety over what should be and truly IS a fun and exciting process leading to an eventual decision. Now I've made that decision, and I'm entirely happy with my choices, and perhaps it was the breath of a deadline breathing down my neck and the perfectionist in me unwilling to sacrifice the finer details for the rush of corporate exactitude, along with emails from "risk assessment" because the ergonomic situation at my desk (of which there is none) has been leading to increasing quantities of pain in my shoulder that forced me to leave work early on Friday...and all the further technical corporate jargon that befuddles me when all I want is an ergonomic keyboard and a sliding, under-the-desk stand for it (which I'm forbidden to purchase and bring in myself).

Maybe...maybe I'm just smothering in layers of stress I've yet to resolve individually...but that could pertain to most things in my life. I suppose.

"Things My Typewriter Taught Me"

Sitting at my typewriter, the force of my fingers banging away the loud click-click-clack of the keys, thoughts form in tiers of heavy, rounded letterforms, errors are common and, in this age, even quaint. Backspace on a 1929 Remington portable lets me type over the wrong letter until I bleed an illegible mess on the page. There is no automatic return, so the page twists up and to the left every time I start a new line. No exclamation point, the apostrophe hidden in the powerful effort of shift8, and the ribbon turned upside down in response to my sudden demands after years of nonuse.

The tips of my fingers prance discordantly, striking ‘9’ instead of ‘o’, ‘4’ and not ‘r’ or ‘e’ or ‘t’, and so accustomed am I to the automatic response of “delete, correct, continue” that I plow through half a page before I realize the gibberish I’ve been concocting. I lean over the carriage to glimpse the wreckage and ponder its results.

Where have all the errors gone?

We live in a world without mistakes, shiny and new with plastic coating and car wax to hide the dull unsheen of time. The soft whisper of my fingers on computer keys, squared and silent, lets me drift back over a misplaced letter or spelling error. We airbrush pimples, fat, redeye and other unwelcomes from our photographs, painting time with perfection so our lies become transparent.

But the world is not without mistakes, so where then do we err?

We’ve come to treat every interaction of our lives with the same disposable correction as the devices that communicate, transport, wash, fluff, dry, dice, slice, and shred. Working on a typewriter you’re forced with the unretractable forward thrust of intention and consequence. White Out may rescue a letter or two, but forget a single word and the entire page must be rewritten. Surely, this is seen as a good thing—a time-saver, salving our patience with convenience and editability.

I’m afraid there’s more to it than that.

Typewriters were built in an age like most other things were built—to last. If it breaks, you fix a knob or replace a spring and it’s good as new. If the computer malfunctions inside your new flatscreen TV, you have to buy a new one. Not a new part for the internal computer, but an entirely new television. What happened to the time when you fixed things that were broken? Where we had an inkling of consequence because errors were so common, such an inevitability due to a misplaced pinky finger striking ‘9’ instead of ‘o’.

If it can’t be fixed today, we throw it out. So where do we err? Everywhere else. Without the mundane to trip up and force us toward caution, we only have the rest of the world to destroy with our distorted view of simplicity and self-entitled amenities. Filmmakers and photographers don’t have to work to get the perfect shot because of digital’s infinite opportunity. Anyone with two fingers and brain enough to use the ‘delete’ key can write a novel these days.

We’ve lost the rite of passage, the threshold guardian that protects integrity because doing something and doing it right is supposed to be a pain in the ass. It’s supposed to be time-consuming and dangerous, with a consequence every time you hit that ‘9’. It may be more democratic with an access free-for-all (and how else would an illiterate cokehead make it to the White House?), but it’s just not as good.

In fact, it downright sucks.

So I’ll stick to my typewriters, bungling along with an appreciation for manual dexterity, until arthritis cripples me or I succumb to the cancer of convenience.

"some kind of love story"

my favorite verb and I are sitting together
on a bench in the park
(this doesn't mean, however,
that my favorite verb is 'to sit')
we speak, hold hands,
it runs its infinitives through my hair
and I sigh, knowing all too well
this can't last
familiar as I am with
action's whimsical nature -- one second
in the present and, before you know it,
we're speaking in past participles
when all I ever wanted from it was the
future perfect.
but I'll enjoy the moment.
my verb and I in this discreet act of
exhibitionist wordplay, then its
final consonant drips off my tongue
and leaves me a mere pronoun,
singular and
searching for my adjectives.