QuestionAbel Parenting

My Exercise Poem

Sweat drips as my legs pump
slowly as I run.
Legs ache, burn with
lactic acid.
My lungs burn
with lack or air
as I keep going,
running,
moving.

From Poetic Asides:

The End

And when the end rolls around
We shall be found ready.
It will surprise us
but not frighten us
for we shall look back
on life
well spent.
Every door opened
at least looked into,
every ring grabbed
every life touched
and we will be happy
with life.

The prompt was a finish.  The idea now is to finally edit these poems.  But do I want to?  I really don’t.  I did this mainly to exercise my creativity everyday.  What this challenge has done is more than that.  I have written far more this April than I have for a long time.  I have worked on different projects.  So often, I wrap myself up in one thing and then forget.  I am now working on four different projects, all of which I feel have legs.

At least, that’s what my scientific polls tell me.  They consist of Christofski or Sam hearing my idea.  They usually say “that’s cool.”  It’s very scientific.

What I have also done is update this website everyday.  Most of the days consist of my silly poems, but others – oh others are so much more.  I am reaching a point where I am constructing essays for people to read.  I am wondering how to improve them.  Things are being done that are realizing my writing dream.

And that is pretty damn cool.

Here’s to April.  I hope the flowers of May are just as sweet.

The other night, I bought a root beer.  This is a simple act for many, but I try not to drink a lot of soda.  It makes it far more special when I finally drink it.  My taste buds were close to overpowered by the sweetness.  Ordinary root beer was not on the menu, I wanted something special.  Real sugar was what I wanted, not high-fructose corn syrup.

If you have been living in a hole, this stuff is bad for you!  Worse than actual sugar.

This is not a rant on the evils of HFCS, but a thought on my family’s root beer habits.

It amazed me how sweet the root beer was.  The past few times I’ve had one, it has seemed somewhat off.  As a child, I drank root beer as if it were water.  My mother could not keep it long in the house as I would guzzle it quickly.  The drinking habit slowed down later in life.  What I discovered a few months ago was the love my brother and I share for this beverage.  It is also matched by my nephew.

My brother is my half-brother.  My mother is his step-mother.  From what I reckon, she was the opposite of an “evil” step-mother.  She was very loving toward my brother, supplying him with root beer.  When my nephew visits, he is given this same drink as well.

I thought of all this as I left Food Pyramid the other night with my root beer.  I also had six kinds of ginger ale for Sam.  She has been throwing up lately and wanted ginger ale, but I wasn’t sure what kind to get her.  She has yet to drink any – soda is something she doesn’t like.  Including root beer.

Which makes me wonder – a rather silly wonder – if my children will share my love for root beer when they are young.  Will this root beer cycle begin anew?  It is a mystery to me.

When I was growing up, root beer seemed to be the main beverage for my friends and me.  We all drank it.  These days, many kids I meet do not even like it.  I am not shocked or appalled, but it is surprising.  The younger youth today are very different from my younger youth and friends.  Everyone seems to be allergic to peanuts and hates root beer.

I wish I had a point to all this, but I don’t.  I just found it to be an interesting memory.  Sitting around on a hot day drinking ice cold root beer.  My feet were filthy, and I didn’t have a shirt on.  I miss those easy breezy days.  And I’m really not that old.

This is a short post on a topic that drives me crazy.  There are many social networking sites on the web.  Two I use.  MySpace and Facebook.  I prefer Facebook.  There is a reason for this.  I despise MySpace.  There is a reason for this, as well.

When the web was just forming, there was also an explosion of website sites.  There was Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, and scores of others.  I had one.  I think you can still find it by doing a search for my name.  Most were tawdry affairs, thrown together with the building software with no thought of design.  The results were not pretty.  Backgrounds prevented you from reading the text.  Terrible MIDI renditions of popular songs scared you to death as they danced along with animated GIFs.  Dear God – animated GIFs!

This is why I hate MySpace.  It’s taken the horrible websites of yesteryear and ramped them up tenfold.  Instead of MIDIs there are mp3s that play without warning.  Instead of GIFs there are actual videos.  Sometimes competing for soundwaves with the mp3s.  Thanks to the marvel of the Internet I am already listening to my own music.

Despite the heavy introduction of applications, Facebook still remains fairly clean to look at.  There are plenty of other annoyances about both reflecting the failur of some individuals to unplug, but I can forgive them.

The man called himself a poet
And most were happy to know it.
He’d bust out a ryhme,
that scanned most of the time,
and free-formed when lines wouldn’t fit.

Exile ends in one week.  Sam and I will pile up the dogs in the Corolla and roll on out of Oklahoma.  Our destination?  The Homeland.  Michigan.  Truly, there is not a more beautiful state.  I have been hard pressed to find my niche in the outdoors of Oklahoma.  They are not the same as the outdoors of Michigan.  There are no untamed woods.  No freshwater seas.  It is not home.

I am somewhat dismayed by the trip.  Sam is having illness day upon day and has showed a prediliction for car-sickness.  Dramamin will be in order.  Not to mention the inclusion of two St. Bernard’s, a Labrador, and a kitty-cat.  This will surely be an adventure.  There will be sandwiches.  With horseradish.

Upon arrival we will drop the largest of the beasts off at Sam’s mother’s house.  It is an aging farmhouse that has seen better days.  I believe there are bodies buried in the basement.  After a short stay we will return to my hometown:  Muskegon.  Grendel will accompany us.  And that is where my summer begins.

It will consist of geocaching, summer camp, and movie making.  The first item to be taken care of will be the hiding of a river cache on the White River.  Paul and I will canoe from one point to the Bridge (it’s a bridge) hiding caches along the way.  None-cachers (muggles) will find this boring.  I find it squeallably exciting.

I bring up movie-making and Camp as they will no doubt become the centerpiece of W&D (my shorthand for the blog – because I find “blog” a cacophonic term).  Camp will control my life most of the summer both during my awake hours and my slumbering.  Gone will be the time I have now to concoct hastily written poetry and silly pictures.  I will be entertaining children.

Movies will be filmed on the weekends, with still shots posted as speedily as I feel they should be.  Blood will be spilled.  Heads will seem to be off their bodies.  Nerds will fall in love.  This could be camp, too, come to think of it.

Camp is a great passion of mine.  I enjoy it.  It lets me plan things, which I love to do.  It gives me openings for big surprises.  My favorite of all things is to subvert.  I do not have a need to spray grafitti or pull elected official’s pants down.  My appetite for mischeif is fullfilled with simple things like singing English songs in Spanish without warning and wearing a sombrero when you least expect it.  Life can be so boring and little things like this can help.

I do not know what other adventures may transpire.  I will continue my current habit of exercising.  My metabolism will shoot higher.  I keep getting hungry these days, as if my body is reverting to post-alcohol form.  Beer is a Hyde-like potion, I suppose.  It will be consumed as well.  Christofski and I will get up to things.

In One Week, this starts.  I am very excited.

Hello?

Hello?
This is he.
I suppose I would.
That much?
Mm-hm.
Mm-hm.
I would have to talk to my wife.
I guess so.
No.
No I don’t want to give you that.
No, I won’t.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
Well, then we are at an impasse.
You, too.
Good bye.

I Am So Over Oklahoma

Hills of polystyrene
across the windswept plain
float on muddied water
that doesn’t belong there.
Cowboys walk everywhere
or drive in their trucks
always sucking fuel
burning wood
consuming.

I talked long on the phone with Christofski and Eric last night.  Two friends from Michigan I am very excited to see upon return from exile.  The reason was the babyname “Lando,” which Sam detests.  If given the opening, would I really name my child Lando?  I really can’t answer that.  Anakin?  Probably.  But she didn’t think Christofski’s opinion meant much.  His wife’s (Amanda) does, since she agreed with Sam.

Well, bah, I say.

We did talk extensively about making our bloody movies.  I don’t mean bloody as the British do.  I mean there is a lot of blood in the movies.  Eric is the go-to guy on these things.  Chris and I have shot parts of at least two movies which remain unfinished.  It is somewhat frustrating, because together the three of us make some good stuff.

Christofski plays the role of effects in this triumvirate.  He is excellent at make-up and coming up with ways to do effects.  He’s good with ideas and getting a basic idea.  I am good at fleshing those ideas up, coming up with realistic dialogue and scripting.  Eric is good at filming the things and getting them edited.  But we never do things this way.  It just never happens.  We are hoping it will this summer.

What is frustrating for me is that Eric doesn’t get anywhere with his movies.  The very frustrating thing is it is not really his fault.  He takes the movies he makes seriously – despite the somewhat silly nature of them.  He wants them to work.  Many of the people around him do not take them as seriously.  Often, things come together.  More often, they do not.

He has put his Spring Lake Slasher movies up on You Tube, and they are ridiculous.  I’m in one, and it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.  They are ridiculous in that good way.  If one doesn’t enjoy horror or slasher flicks, they won’t like these.

This summer, we will no doubt work on something.  What it is is unknown.  But I would like it to be something a little less silly.  We might shoot part of one of my scripts or we may come up with an improv style road adventure.  I don’t know.  I just want to see things get done.

It Shines

The smell of urine,
vomit,
it falls before my
mighty sponge,
replaced with pine
scent
blue water.
The toilet gleams
as I swirl the concoction
within it’s bowl.
I scrub the floor
the grime released
defeated by me
and my brethren.