Research Paper Blooz

(A relic of a bygone era, in many ways…)

Don’t want me no Shakespeare,
Don’t want to do Hemingway,
Just gimme a six-pack of beer,
Watch the Sox at Fenway!

Oh yeah, my mind is strained and so confused.
No matter what topic I choose
I lose!
I got those Research Paper Blooz!

I got cigarette burns on my keyboard,
Stretch marks in my mind.
That paper’s due tomorrow lord,
I got three more sources to find!

Oh yeah!
Write it bit by bit.
Oh Lord,
Twenty pages of bullshit!
I got those Research Paper Blooz!

Aw man gimme that White Out!
(Instrumental…)
Gimme that good paper baby,
None of that funky onion skin…
(More Instrumental…)
Pica and double-space baby,
Use up a whole page that way!

Gotta check my MLA,
Study Strunk & White.
Paper’s due yesterday,
Gonna start the work tonight!

Oh yeah,
Fill it up with quotes,
Oh God
Gimme my Cliff’s Notes!
‘Cause I got the Research Paper Blooz!

(03/28/1988)

Lovemaking

I wrote this twenty-one years ago today, so says the date on the yellowed page. I was at Keene State on that Saturday–not exactly sure why, but I wrote this thinking about my friend from High School I was going to see that night, and the through-line of our relationship.

I never would have used a term like “through-line” back then. I was simply in love with her and didn’t know quite what to do with that. I still am in love with her. Universal truth, simple as that. Anyway, Happy birthday to you.

We lay there
Groping
And fumbling at each other.
We hunt for the spots,
The points of interest,
each striving to please
The other,
Never successful.
We each try
To impress
The other
With our experience
And prowess,
Though our hands
Are shaking
Uncontrollably,
Bumbling, fumbling,
Uneasy lovemaking
In the backseat last Saturday night.

We sit
Talking
And laughing at ourselves
With each other.
We interplay
And interchange;
Converse, joke
And bullshit,
Sitting
At a table the following Monday morning.
“I was wrong,” we state in unison
To each other.
We smile, uneasiness passes,
Conversation continues,
Seamless.
Informing, joking,
Easy lovemaking
Using words full of feeling,
No push, no hurry,
Without intercourse of flesh,
Our friendship preserved.

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Senses (Sight)

Here is another part of Senses...
Sight, Day Suite

Bright sun,
Azure open sky.
Flaunting, flamboyant flowers
Entice circling bees,
Offering offspring
As sustenance
Hoping
A bumbling
Accident
Will guarantee
Their
Future.

=-=-=-=-=*<%{@}%>*=-=-=-=-=

Sight, Night Suite

Bright moon,
Black velvet sky
Encircling,
All is dark
Save for
The contrived light
Of the masses huddled,
Safe in numbers,
Calling themselves a “city.”
A proud name
To hide their fear behind.

History Books (1984)

From the original batch. As before, punctuation and line breaks are as on the original page.

The General leads the nameless
soldiers into combat,
and I watch as they go to death.

I see them in the pages
of a tattered narrative.

They march across the pages,
the strategies outlined on
charts in red and blue on the
pages.

I see the outcome before
the outbreak, and know who
dies beforehand.

It’s strange, though.
Real people bleed red,
while the nameless of
history bleed black
and white.

How Many Friends (1984)

This is one of the earliest poems I have of mine. One of the ones from the project I mentioned in my last post. I’ve preserved the line breaks and punctuation from the original text.

The head cheerleader walks
down the hall with her head
held high.
She is beautiful, and she
knows it. She’s popular,
and she knows it.

But how many friends
Will she have in 20 years,
when her looks fade, when
her figure becomes dumpy,
not sleek as it is, and when
she’s a waitress at a diner?

How many?
Not a lot.

People are strange, you know?
When you’re on top, they love you,
but when lady luck run from
you they do too.

Treasure Trove (a short interlude)

There is this small pile of papers, maybe three inches thick, that I’ve been hauling around since, well, 1984. That’s when I took the creative writing class with Cindy Smith at ConVal. We had to write some number of pages of material, like 24 or 30 pages. Some had to be stories (no problem there). I wrote two of them now pretty much lost to history, one a retelling of a story Ray Bradbury did much better, the other a piece called the Universal Soldier (nothing to do with the Van Damme movie).

Some fraction had to be poems. Well! I’d never written a poem in my frickin’ life. Ever. I remember being panicky about it, and one night I sat up all night watching MTV for inspiration. Not direct inspiration, but more like forcing my mind to wander and describing what I saw. What I wrote was useless, I didn’t use any of it directly, but it did get me to start crystallizing ideas. That much I realize now.

I had never read poetry. I had no idea what I was doing, but I proceeded with this method of writing pretty much to the present day.

I have the ditto sheet from that project in front of me. I got a 94 on the project and the following critique:

“You are probably the most unpoetic poet I know John. Somehow you manage to put a poem across beautifully without any of the typical poetic devices. Your work doesn’t have rhyme, rhythm, imagery, word play, figurative language, etc., but it stands on the strength of your ideas. I recommend you focus your talents in the future on essays, commentary and prose fiction. You are a fine mind and a clear thinker and writer.”

She was being charitable. Hoo! You’ll see what I mean when you read them. These ones with (1984) beside them are from that project, and they were the ones good enough to hand in.

Overture to Roadside Truckstop

To describe Roadside Truckstop as my magnum opus should cause everyone to say “settle down.” To be certain though, it was a story that I wanted to tell but couldn’t properly. The original vision was musical. Sort of a concept album from someone who could hear the music but never play or compose it.

Ten years later I realized I’d been unconsciously assembling the bits of Roadside Truckstop in the other poems I wrote. There wasn’t a plot but there was an overarching theme. That version of Roadside Truckstop was on my old website turboblues dot com for a long time starting in 1998 as a collection of pieces hypertexted together. The website is long gone but it lives on in the Internet Archive and on the computer on which these words are being tappity-tapped.

The pieces of that version are now scattered between Turboblues and the new Roadside Truckstop. The journey motif is not something I write much about anymore…

So strap in kiddies, the following was meant to be rapped (ohhhh yes), kind of like what Pete Townshend did in the song “Face the Face.” Hand to heart, swear to god.

Black Saturday night
Out on Highway nine,
Pull in the truckstop
By the roadside

The stench of diesel
Hanging in the air,
The guttural roar
Of the trucks parked there.

Most of the people,
The ones who pass through,
Have places to go,
Better things to do.

But the ones who work there,
The permanent crew,
Have no other life
But the work they do.

Now at the first glance
It may look that way,
But with half a chance
They could change their fate.

But until the time
Their chance comes along
They’ll live the same life
And they’ll sing the same song.

( 10-15-88 )

Please Don’t Fight

In October, 1988, my parents separated. About damn time if you knew the whole story. Well, at the time a lot of shit was bubbling up. To the outside world, we were a quirky but happy family but then it all just exploded.

This is not entirely autobiographical because the only beatings were the psychological kind. They last longer, y’see (buh-dum bum. Gotta million of ‘em). No comment about the pills part, but suffice to say dramatic license, mmmkeh?

It’s all me.

It’s all me.

Please Mommy
Please Daddy
Don’t hurt each other.
Don’t yell at me,
Don’t beat me,
For crying out loud
When you hit my mother.
Don’t yell at me,
Don’t beat me,
For screaming
When you throw things at my daddy
DON’T FIGHT!

It’s all me.

It’s all me.
I can’t understand
Why you wanted to raise me.

It’s all me

It’s all me.
If I weren’t born,
You’d be better off without me.

You married young,
You married ‘cos you had me.

Now your life is tough,
Your jobs are beneath you.
Every night you get drunk
And you end up hitting Mama
DON’T FIGHT!

It’s all me.

It’s all me.
If I weren’t born,
You’d be happier without me.

If I weren’t around,
You’d have a second chance.
You could learn to love Mom,
You could learn to love Dad.
If I weren’t around,
You could have your lives back.
You could live your life, Mom.
You could love your life, Dad.

I’ll be leaving soon,
I’ll be off your backs.
These pills take time,
My regrets for the delay.

It’s all me.
It’s all me.
It’s all me.
It’s all….

( 10-5-88 )

Such Saturdays

A warm summer afternoon.
The electric hum and buzz
Of a thousand insects
Fills the air
Outside.
The smell of pine is there,
The air is thick, tangible.
I wonder
How many such Saturdays
This old house has seen.

A cool liberating breeze
Passes through the room
From one open window
To the other,
Casually moving the curtains aside.
I feel the sweat on my body
cool, evaporate,
Your taste still apparent
On my tongue.
The pacific numb
Of an afternoon well spent
Coats my mind.

A second breeze,
Sporadic,
Announces itself
On my chest.
A warm hand slides across my stomach,
Fingers splayed,
Covering the widest expanse of skin
As it passes.
I feel heat
At every point we touch
As it radiates from you
As you pull close to me.

The day is losing its luster,
Afternoon segues into night.
All is peaceful
And we’re not going anywhere.
I wonder
How many such Saturdays
This old house has seen.

( 1-12-88 )