Trailers: The Words

The Words - September 7, 2012:  I saw the trailer for this movie awhile back and I CANNOT WAIT for it to come out!  The movie boasts a solid cast with Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons, and Dennis Quaid to name a few.  The story is about a struggling writer who finally achieves literary success with the publication of the next great American novel.  The only problem - he didn't write it.  Best part is it comes out right before my birthday!

On Tap: This Means Warsteiner

I'm back!  After a few days off from the blog due to work-related issues, I'm ready to once again regale you with tales of my beer exploits.  It's been a little while since my last On Tap segment, and in that time I've sampled several new brews, both good and bad.

Lets start with the bad.  The worst beer I've tried recently has got to be Sly Fox's Phoenix Pale Ale.  It is both copper in color and flavor.  I literally almost spit this back out after putting it in my mouth.  It was terrible.  To make matters worse, I went on Sly Fox's website and discovered that they hale from none other than my home town of Pottstown, PA.  What a disgrace.

Another flop recently was Rogue's Hazelnut Brown Nectar.  To quote Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons, 'It tastes like burning.'  I didn't get any hints of hazelnut while drinking this beer, I do however, now have a pretty good idea of what drinking charcoal would be like.  This beer definitely will not make it into my fridge again.

Now for some of the better brews I've sampled recently.  I first tried Troeg's Troegenator Double Bock over Memorial Day weekend and have been meaning to include it in an On Tap segment ever since.  This is a fairly rich beer with a malty aroma and subtle spicy flavors.  You should be careful when drinking this beer, however.  With an ABV of 8.2%, this one builds up quick and can have you tellin' stories and actin' stupid in no time.

Finally, the best beer I've tried recently is Warsteiner's Premium Verum.  Fairly well carbonated and slightly tart, this beer is an excellent mix of just three simple ingredients: water, hops, and barley; I'm beginning to realize that the Germans know how to make good, simple beer.

Well, that's all for this week.  Next week is the Fourth of July, after which I hope to have a number of new beers to discuss.  Until then, happy drinking!

New Poem: An Empty Glass

For quite awhile now I have been meaning to write a rondeau, which is a traditional French poetic form.  Perhaps the most famous rondeau, and one of my personal favorites, is Paul Lawrence Dunbar's We Wear the Mask, which I included below.  Mine is nowhere near as good as that, but I thought it turned out pretty well.

We Wear the Mask

by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask! 

An Empty Glass

An empty glass leaves rings just so

To mark a place that cannot grow,

There just beneath a window sill,

Repeating endlessly until

Grief encircles one loose shadow.

In books we too would often go

To places that we didn't know

And in so doing hoped to fill

An empty glass.

We read apart tonight although

A gust of youthful wind might blow

Back unturned pages and thus spill

Memories we never made, still

Circled on the calendar below

An empty glass.

New Poem: Listen

I wrote this over the course of the last few days.  It has been through several revisions and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.  Additional changes may be forthcoming, but for now, enjoy!

Listen

Beneath the whimper of the ocean there is nothing.

In a seashell gripped loosely in your hand,

No audible language is heard, no distant whispers

On the lips of waves, only the endless wind is sighing

Through the foaming surf that sinks between the sand. 

You offer me the pale shell, disinterested,

As though it were a telephone in which

There rings the dull horn of a smoke-veiled ship

That moves secretly through charted courses and

Whose call you’ve heard before but never understood.

In the muffled terms that often fall under my breath

As you pass, there is some sun-bleached speck of truth,

Some small grain hissing through the hourglass unseen,

A siren song that’s meant for you who hears the words,

But never stops to listen to what was sung.

So much moves past us unperceived in time,

Both spoken and unsaid; old messages drift

Toward the shore years later, quiet and insistent as

The oscillations of the lighthouse turret,

Never heard by wrecks before the glow is read.

Sketches

From time to time I have been known to get ideas for drawings, paintings, etc.  In the past, after getting one of these ideas I would find myself saying, "Man, if only I could draw."   The fact of the matter is I'm not a great artist and never will be, but that shouldn't stop me from trying to put my thoughts to paper in the form of pictures.  No one has to see them but me, and maybe some lucky blog readers (hint: that's you).  Anyway, I've decided to start sketching my ideas as they come.  It should serve as a nice additional creative outlet to supplement my writing.  Here is what I came up with today.  Again, I'm no Picasso.

Father's Day

On Saturday I went up to my dad's house.  I wanted to take him out for a Father's Day dinner and thought Saturday might be a little easier than actually doing it on Father's Day.  When I got there I noticed a photo album sitting on the kitchen table.  I opened it up and was surprised to find that some of my baby photos had survived our '97 house fire.  According to my dad, after the fire he was allowed to walk through the remnants to see if anything could be salvaged.  He grabbed several of the family photo albums and condensed what wasn't too badly burned into one photo album.  While it's not a ton of pictures, it's something.  I had a blast looking through it with my little sister and I thought I'd share some of them with my blog readers.  Apologies for the picture quality.

 I was a pretty cute kid if I do say so myself.

 Lovin' my dad's fro.

 It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.

They were calling for showers in the living room.

New Poem: Noah's Ark

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about my muse.  All artists have to have one, and for me, I think mine is my mother.  She has inspired a number of my poems and she was the first one to encourage my writing.  I have tons of great memories of her.   I remember she would often take us to Pizza Hut for lunch once kindergarten let out (which is probably why I love pizza so much).  One of the last memories I have of her is sitting across from her in a diner as she ate french fries.  I felt this great swell of pity for her.  I thought of her as a young girl eating French fries, dreaming of what her life would become.  And I sat there thinking of that young girl, knowing what awaited her, knowing this life was not the stuff of her dreams, knowing I could be that young girl too, sitting in a diner, waiting for my dreams to end.

Growing up, my mother was a fairly religious person, although her condition kept her from attending church on a regular basis.  I wrote this over the last few days and am fairly happy with it at the moment.  I may add to it, but for now, it is “complete”. 

Noah’s Ark

Divorced and in a diner,

The lupus looming just beneath her skin,

My mother sits stern-faced

Abandoning a diet.

In between the silence that is saying nothing

I remember a picture I did not keep.

My father showed it to me once

In a hallway of our house.

Slim and in her 20s, well built,

Some wildness beneath her smile

Is pacing back and forth

Within the confines of its cage.

Looking down I catch our reflections

Rippling on the surface of the tabletop,

A pair of empty vessels,

And as a great flood wells within my sockets,

Her hand leads French fries two-by-two

Into her toothless mouth.

New Poem: The Underground Railroad

This poem was inspired by my recent trip to Cleveland.  It's not meant to be a slight against Cleveland, it is just my impression of the city or rather, how the city made me feel.  In truth, Cleveland is a very clean city with a hometown feel where one is never overwhelmed or made to feel small, even among the skyscrapers.

The Underground Railroad

Everything is rusting in Cleveland,

But it isn’t from neglect.

Rust ascends the wrought iron gates

Surrounding the preparatory school,

Scales the walls and in-between

The pipe fittings of an old WWII submarine

Whose gears have all been welded into place.

Water trickles over the rusted doors

Of a mausoleum and through the red grate

Of a storm drain, like inmates

Slipping through the prison bars.

Oxidation seeps out of the joints

Of the train car I am sitting in,

As steel tracks on rotting wood

Rust back into the earth

On the way to the airport.

New Poem: On How Things Change

I was looking out my window this evening just as the street lights were coming on.  Ironically, that instance inspired this poem.  Sometimes it seems like we don't change at all, but rather, that everything around us changes and we are made different because of it.  This may or may not be a keeper.  We shall see.

On How Things Change

Every evening in this cul-de-sac at six o’clock,

In the heart of winter,

As the Earth leans away from the sun,

The lamp posts chatter on

And cough their lamplight

On the same familiar street corners.

But six months from now,

Blooming on a timer

In what will have become late afternoon,

The yellow lamps will cast

Unnecessary light,

The streets still ripe with children

And the din of laughter.

Cleveland Rocks

This past weekend was awesome.  Nikki and I took a trip to Cleveland to see one of my favorite bands of all time, The Shins.  The concert was incredible, James Mercer certainly knows how to put on a show.  In addition to seeing The Shins, I also got exposed to another artist I liked, their opening act, Deep Sea Diver (i.e. Jessica Dobson and a bunch of other guys).  I haven't gotten a chance to listen to much since the concert, but she has a great voice and I liked her sound, so there's some definite potential there.

Some other things we did while in Cleveland included touring a WWII era submarine, enjoying (insert sarcasm) tons of public transportation, walking around the West Side Market, and visiting the Lake View Cemetery.  While I didn't get to do everything I wanted to, the most important thing (the concert) went off without a hitch and I can now cross one more thing off the bucket list.  Now it's back to the grind.  Here's to hoping this week goes by quick!

New Poem: Seizure

This poem was inspired by an incident involving my half-sister Alexandra.  She suffers from a disease called neurofibromatosis.  At the time, I was between ten and twelve years old.  Apologies for the depressing subject matter.

Seizure

                For A. R.

Your eyes looked at me

As if trapped within a jar,

Suspended in solution.

You choked on air

And writhed, half-naked

On the toilet,

A young woman

Well past puberty,

Stripped so mercilessly

Of simple dignity.

I folded your hands

And held you still,

Waiting for the shock to end.

In between the tremors

I remembered what once I read,

God does not leave us

Comfortless.

And true it is,

He blessed you with

A gentle heart,

Destined never to be broken

And a forgetful brain,

Forever 6-years-old.

New Poem: Thoughts

In 1997, my house burnt down and while it was being rebuilt, my father's insurance company rented a house for us in which to stay.  This poem was inspired by a memory of that time.

Thoughts

Many a vague, elusive roach I’ve often felt

Move unseen beneath the burners of the stove,

Scuttle clockwise down the kitchen sink

Over the places it had loosely dwelt,

Back to some damp, unreachable alcove.

And in so feeling, I would often think

Of how, being nearly at the end of wit

And tired of the quiet company I kept,

One night, resolved quite hastily to wrap

A two-by-four in duct tape and lay it

Purposely by my bedside as I slept.

The next morning I found alive, my trap

Teeming with the pulse of legs that once could

Creep from some dark crevice of cabinet wood

And, ingeniously I took with little skill,

The living board out back and beat it still.

New Poem: Catch and Release

Having been in a bit of a funk the past few days, I forgot to mention my Memorial Day weekend activities.  Before the customary barbecue and swimming on Monday, I took a trip up to see my family.  Friday night while sitting around the TV, my dad mentioned that he was going fishing with my uncle Dave the following morning and I decided to tag along.  I hadn't been fishing in nearly eight years and I didn't have a license, but that didn't matter.  I had a blast.

We woke up at five in the morning and went out to meet up with my uncle.  We trekked through the woods, found some baby toads, saw an abundance of wildlife, including deer and wild turkey's, AND I caught two fish.  But that's not all I caught.  While at one of my dad's usual fishing holes (one he and my uncle long ago dubbed, "Cold Ass Point") I got my line caught on what I thought was the bottom of the river.  When I gave it a tug, I felt the line loosen a bit.  I figured that what I had actually caught was a pile of sticks or something, so I began to reel in my line slowly.  As I grew closer to the end of my line I  began to see bubbles and realized that what I had caught was no bundle of sticks.  It was a snapping turtle.  A very BIG snapping turtle.  This was a first and an incredible site to see.  He (or she) was about the size of a computer tower and very angry.  Rather than risk getting a finger bitten off, we simply cut the line and let the turtle sink back into its hiding place at the bottom of the river.  Shortly after that, my dad and uncle began their tradition of singing about their exploits.  They made up a song called "Turtles and Toads" and sung it to the tune of Burl Ives' "Silver and Gold".  All-in-all, it was a very fun and memorable trip.  The only regret I have is that I didn't bring my phone along, so I didn't get any pictures.

Anyway, this poem was inspired by the aforementioned fishing trip.  Enjoy!

Catch and Release

Floundering in the shallow water’s bright,

As I worked to free a trout of fabled size

That to any would have made a handsome prize,

A thought turned in my head, catching the light.

I worried friends might think my story spoof,

Old anglers being prone to telling tales,

And considered mounting the beast with nails

On the wall above my mantle for proof.

I remembered though, as children we are taught

The real joy is in the running; the race

Is only truly won when done with silent grace.

Knowing this full well, I paused still and thought,

‘What good is a trophy when there’s no trace?’

And cut the line, leaving the hook in place.