No nap, today, fought against pull and push to do so. Thanksgiving over, wife out shopping at one of those shopping special eve whatever’s. Me, home. Wine. Just finished glass of Claret. The night passed with such cruel progression. Indifference. Babies asleep upstairs. What movie do I watch, my dilemma. My life’s trouble. Think of how fortunate I am with my family and to have such family, to be sitting where I am, here on this we seek to shed, new one one the way… Day of giving thanks, I need to show more giving of thanks, being thankful.

Tonight, I do intend exploring more wine. No aim to wake at 4am or 4:10 like this day. No. I may actually just sleep in. I will. What do I mean, “may”? May have to punch out. Take the night as it approaches me, describe and translate it, or in such order reversed… then wake tomorrow with more thought. More story. More ME. Tired now, forgetting I’ve been up since 4-something. Think 4:10. Has it been that long? Yes. It has. Me, that writer. Now. Time to Self and I sip wine and be here, writing. A writer.

Does the writer want apple pie or Chardonnay? Both sound like they sound, their own precise appeal and connection. I’m not torn between both but urge to be curved by both, somehow. 9:08. Feel like bed but I won’t. I can’t. But more, I refuse. Why can’t I be a human, just have dessert or drink wine. Is it that complicated? Are my thoughts the hinderance, the block and or impediment? I think it may be just that. Not in any kind of a writing swoop, and I can’t figure anything of it out. How does pine figure. What type a figure be me, I, this writer.

I feel like I’m not doing a thing, while doing too much. A mess. Should have taken a nap.

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Short fiction, me now. 

One of my characters littering his studio floor with sheets of short verses and poems, some haiku streams and anti-form pieces.  He gathers whatever he randomly picks up from the floor.  He reads them lightly, not wanting to find any errors as he knows he’ll be tempted to re-write or somehow correct.  Each poem should be a snapshot and taste of the Now, he says to himself.  Right at 5pm, he pours himself a white blend, something from Anderson Valley, and reads some more from the past 8+ hours of scribbling.  He has something, something to sell, just from a day.  Pours another glass, writes another page.

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Writing tracks.

Photo on 5-27-18 at 8.51 AM #2

Be back…

First verse done.  In the mood to only free write and compose more verses, something to read, and I need to read, I know.  Collect the tracks, all my poems and record them, read wherever I can.  Why did I come to the coffee shop?  Why did I decide to write here in the corner?  A man and what I believe to be his son, at left, son writing or doing some writing or math exercises in some workbook and the dad either critiquing or coaching, can’t tell and don’t want to know.  Don’t want to focus on them who why am I?

The wine industry— could be at my end.  What else is there for me, here?  Should only write, and I will.  Last night opening something from my “cellar”, or the shelf that I only have reserved for those bottles I’m to “lay down” or set aside for some occasion or dinner, having whomever over for dinner but then I thought, “No.. now’s fine… now is perfect for a writer to open something he ‘shouldn’t’.” In the wine industry, no one wants to pay, few offer any kind of benefits arrangement.  Granted, the company I currently work with is nearly obnoxious in their generosity, so don’t think I’m citing them in this citation.  No… talking about so many others.  This one winery that has expressed an interest in my work telling me just last night that they wouldn’t match what I now earn, nor would they provide benefits or any 401k anything.  This is my gripe, this is my ticket, my citation.  Why I’m freewriting this morning and writing verse, poetry, being as anti-form as I can, battle any norm or pattern’d pattern and template for what should be done.

Today’s tracks, all about the moment, about me, what I want and what I’m thinking, now, in MY story.  The only way I’m going to travel and see the world, read my work and taste wines from places I otherwise wouldn’t is if I completely break from this industry mold and circular cyclical cycle.  Off to verse 2 in a bit.. what a poet does— the man and his son leave.  Whole corner to self, but now I notice the air conditioning blowing directly down on this agitated poet.  So, write about the cold… cold states, both Dakotas, Montana, parts of Oregon that I have seen completely under snow.  What this reminds me of, what I hope to feel writing at some lodge overlooking a snow-doused field.

More poetry than wine today, in the tasting room, do know.  More work on my pieces than that place, the tasting room which I so eager seek to escape.  I want more, like anyone else, as I’ve told so many people.  So what’s keeping me, I wonder.  Is it the pay and benefits thing?  Probably.  Well, yes.  But what if I could get it on my own?  What if I didn’t need these favors, this “compensation”? What if I could just get it all myself?  Through poetry, through music… through thought, seeing my life differently, my role in the game and the theatre of wine country with a different lens and leap?  Oui…

7/20/18

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a thousand wines project

5

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Demanding presence of a wine, I don’t know how many times over. From the deeply intended notes and dotes of the fruit and smoke assembly to the atmospheric propulsion and general narration of this bottle, I’m in my seat.. speaking to the bottle and what’s in my glass. More than appreciation of the moment and the intersection of her, me… wildly mad in our respective talk, words and songs, scene–

I’m taken back and forth into Washington’s wine Wonderland… wondering if I ever want to get out.  Why would I with an offering and narrative with a tasty tryst like this.  She knows what I think when sipping, and how I react to interpretations comme ça.  So, onward my notes go, in her shapely and syllabic sense-throws…

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a thousand wines project

3

A more fun and universal style and shape, step of SB that I’ve met of late. She delivers her tone quickly, with sped seduction, but not with tangential code– Loud letter of love. Bright and crisp tropical spins, but nothing expected or simplistic. Voracious and versatile in each pour and roar… Hovering around my senses like a cantaloupe and apricot frenzy climate. Playful and passionate, real and told avec chirping truths.

Her steps are soft but pronounced, ballet-esque and animated in delivered wildly in her self-sense. Victorian mode, kissed–

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Fawn Not

Start then pause, what for a— new talk, or tick

Tock from a biased clock?  Poetry not coming to a writer

Easily this morning but that’s the game, I’m being toyed with,

same, annoyed my veins, so I avoid the train of pattern

And uniform, I assume no form, adorned in new theses from

A singular species, me, expediently…. I stop again, and send self

A new note, one a true cloak, invisible to bruise those that only

gawk, too afraid to roll down their window and ought— they

Say nothing and just keep driving, while I’m journalistically

thriving, further into the meditation, writhing.  Ten minutes,

My pen fidgets, ask, ‘When give it?’ How ‘bout now, recite

Proud and stand firm in the dirt, soldier trenchant in his senses.

Thinking about my next letter and how to make it better, not

Necessarily more clever but … with more measure, more un-

tethered.  My language, riddled in odd axiom and tone, from

the finest molecules of artist bones.

Sit in the forest and jot every sound, scene, color and beam—

Crawl into a ravine, finish the book there, no stares, no impaired

chair—  begin again with another attitude bend, pretend there is

No end, only a consistency of my orated fervency.

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To the natural beat of it–

Stay tilted in my anything but wilted spill, it’s…

Just me again reading to self some cliffside poetry…

Not a doctor or lawyer or professor or even gas station manager…

I planned it for.. my daughter, son, not till the book

is done… pardon the pun but I’m sentencing myself

to hard time with rimed verse… I’m the judge that’ll 

Be sure I hurt… my attitude curt, and I’ve caught flack 

for that…  no notice, just walk out, lust brought loud… reading 4 Hemingway novels in a day..

Break for a bottle of Zin, to my destiny oddly pinned, talk foggy from a wobbly

page binge..  like Doc Holiday, “say when”, if you want a tussle–

be smoked out of your self indulgent bubble…

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