Teased

By Bud Koenemund

For Lindsay

"Let me cum," she begged.

And, I, being mean, teased her

a little bit more.

All

By Bud Koenemund

For Lindsay

My flesh craves your touch.

My tongue desires your taste.

But, my soul wants all.

Two More Haiku for Lindsay

By Bud Koenemund

For Lindsay

Creation

Your inspiration

drives my imagination

to create this art.

Repentance

My sin lies in thee:

concupiscent desire;

which I repent not.

War

By Bud Koenemund

A Haiku

For Lindsay

Impure thoughts flourish,

even as fantasy wars

'gainst reality.

Two Haiku for a Girl with Green Eyes

By Bud Koenemund

For Lindsay

I

My words, which delight,

take their birth in your eyes; thus

you spark your own joy.

II

Is't lust or madness -

blind chance or fate - that my words

dwell in your green eyes?

A Plethora of Haiku to End the Year On

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Microfiction Combo Pack

  Here are three microfiction (100 words, or less) stories written over the last two weeks (OK, I wrote two of them, and came up with the third by re-working an older story). They were written for a contest run by a friend on The Facebook.

  I don't usually write this kind of stuff, and wasn't going to enter the contest, but a few ideas popped into my head (you never know when, where, or how inspiration will strike). Each story had to contain the words "rattling" and "wall."

  Enjoy.

- Bud

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To Be, Or Not To Be

  Every day, for as long as he could remember, Bartleby awoke with the same questions rattling against the walls of his weary brain: Would a person be considered suicidal if he simply didn't care if he woke up in the morning? If he were disappointed by the realization he had to struggle through at least one more day before he could finally lie down and die, ending the spiral of pain and confusion life had become? If he sometimes contemplated an act he knew himself too chickenshit to actually commit?

  Grudgingly, he rose to endure yet another day of emptiness.

Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

                                                 

  The insatiate gathered above Wall Street, on gilded balconies overlooking the rabble – the indebted; those without jobs; those left homeless when the housing bubble burst, and so many banks collapsed, rattling the economic security of the middle-class – the self-proclaimed 99 percent. They laughed, took pictures, and mocked the people; toasting the disaffected with champagne sipped from crystal flutes. They were among the elite in a world of margins and algorithms; puts and calls; dollars and cents. But, insular, and blinded by their greed, they could not feel the heat of a fire whose glow already lit the horizon.

Fallback Guy

  "Please," she cried, grabbing him.

  He avoided her gaze as her fingers sank into the fabric of his jacket.

  "Please, kiss me," she pleaded. "I know I hurt you. But, I love you. And, if you kiss me right now everything will be OK."

  He looked into her eyes. Everything he'd wanted stood before the wall he'd built; the words he'd desired to hear rang in his ears. And, the memories of every time she'd hurt him; of every time she'd disappeared; when she'd chosen someone else, rattling his sanity, flowed through his brain.

  "I can't," he said, turning away.

Confession, Memo, or Mission Statement?

Special thanks to Ian Blake Newhem, Cliff Garner, Dan Masterson, Nancy Hazelton, Travis Smith, Kristen Brownell, Annie McDermott, and "Her."


A poet should tell the world how he feels, not tell the world how to feel. – John Lennon


Recently, a friend of mine – a wonderful writer on the verge of publishing her first novel – revealed that she was, “sitting outside her writing instructor’s office, eavesdropping on a conference he’s having with a grad student. The grad student insists that she doesn’t care if readers understand her book or not – she’s going to do it her way no matter what.”

My friend’s tone made it clear that she disagreed with the unfortunate grad student’s approach, and several of her other friends proceeded to agree with her judgment. One commented that, “great books depend on a finely calibrated balance between commercial appeal and literary merit. If you’re trying for one extreme, better off choosing the former over the latter.”

Although I have, from time to time, been known to disagree with a professor’s evaluation of work, in this case – 3,000 miles away, having not read the manuscript in question, and without the benefit of hearing the entire conversation – my first instinct is to agree with the instructor who probably has much more education and experience than the grad student.

In the days preceding this exchange, however, I had been considering my writing; specifically why, what, and how I write. I’d recently watched a video presentation concerning nurturing creativity given by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love (ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html). In the video, Gilbert gives – among other things – examples of how and why she and several other writers create, and it started the wheels in my head turning.

My friend’s comment – and the responses from her other friends – served to crystallize some beliefs in my mind. As I said, my first instinct is to agree with the instructor over the grad student. But, as I thought more about it – and placed myself in the position of the grad student…or tried to – I knew that, if I believed in my work that profoundly, I would fight for it too.

This is, of course, a very slippery slope. Without knowing the quality of the grad student’s work, and with – I’m sure – a far too lofty opinion of my own, any argument is certainly flawed. In addition, in such a defense, one must be prepared to accept judgment, either in the form of a low grade from a professor, or in the form of rejection of one’s work by the public.

Although I am no longer in school, and therefore don’t have to worry about a low grade, I am a writer...and a human being. It is only natural to crave recognition for one’s literary endeavours. So, I – or any writer – must balance “doing it my way” against how much acceptance I seek/rejection I can bear.

Over the last five years, I’ve had to decide how much of my soul (“literary merit”) I’m willing to trade for economic success (“commercial appeal”). To date, I’ve turned down four opportunities to write for daily or weekly newspapers, including one Gannett paper. Please understand, I didn’t turn them down because I think my literary talent is too great to be wasted writing 100-word, back-page human interest pieces about Peggy Petunia’s prize-winning purple pumpkin, but because writing articles like that would hollow out my soul and make writing a job instead of a passion.

The larger problem is that many writers suffer from the same diseases: vanity and doubt. Both can be deadly for a writer, and it’s difficult to find a safe balancing point in between the two. I don’t mean vanity to the point that we think that every piece we create is a work of pure genius destined to supplant William Shakespeare at the top of the canon of Western literature. I mean taking great pride in our work and hoping that others, especially our peers, will like it.

If they don’t like it – hey, it’s mostly subjective – it can be merely painful. If they criticize it, however, it can seem as if they’re attacking your child. You could, of course, attempt to cater to the literary whims of others, but you’d be better off selling your soul to the devil rather than trying to write to please critics.

Doubt is, I think, more dangerous for many writers. It was for me. Doubt kills many poems, songs, essays, novels…and even writers. So, a writer needs either a thick skin or an abundance of perseverance…or both.

“How does a writer avoid being overwhelmed by vanity and doubt,” you ask? Well, I certainly can’t answer for every writer, but I’ve discovered what works for me. Truthfully, vanity about my writing is rarely a problem for me. While I believe I’ve written a few really good pieces – maybe even one or two great pieces – out of the hundreds of pieces I’ve created, I’ve always been my own harshest critic. And, I know that I have a few friends who are much better writers than I’ll ever be.

If, however, you find yourself getting a little too big for your literary britches, my suggestion is this: go back and read some of the stuff you wrote five years ago, or 10. Or, page through that Shakespeare research paper you handed in during your college years; you know, the one that you were sure would garner a Nobel Prize for Literature. Few things will humble you more than reading your old work. Just try to avoid burning down the house when you destroy the evidence!

For me, overcoming doubt took time and experience. I needed to realize that I don’t really write because I want to, I write because I have to. Words bang around in my head all day; they swirl around, clang together and bounce off the inside of my skull; eventually they begin to form a rhythm – usually it’s iambic pentameter – and until I put them down on paper I won’t have a moment of peace.

I once told a young writer enduring an attack of doubt, “We’re writers. The stuff that most people keep buried deep down inside for their entire lives…we throw it out there for everyone to see and criticize. And, very often – probably more often than we’d like to admit – we live and die by their reaction.” The thing is, if someone criticizing your work – telling you what you did wrong, or how they would have done this or that differently – is going to crush your soul, then you may want to look for another way to spend your time.

Long ago, I realized that the vast majority of writers were not “the cool kids;” the kids who had “it” all figured out in high school. They’re the ones that see a different path and are compelled to follow it. I quote Philip Seymour Hoffman (as Lester Bangs in the movie Almost Famous): “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.” Maybe, just maybe, it is their uncoolness – their willingness to not follow the crowd – that makes writers cool.

Unfortunately, I never know when or how inspiration will strike. Far too often, my Muse pokes me in the middle of the night. I’m asleep and I don’t want to wake up, but she persists. She shakes my shoulder until I murmur and roll over. She asks, “Are you awake?” And I say, “I am now.”

Awake or asleep, I’ve found that inspiration is a funny thing. There’s no telling what’s going to knock something loose – it’s not always the depth of “Her” eyes, the slope of “Her” nose, or the soft curve of “Her” lips that inspires a sonnet. Sometimes it’s something as simple as a dandelion. Often, an idea falls out of a book, a magazine, a song, another poem, a photograph, or even something someone says. Other times, a single word – even entire lines – have appeared out of thin air.

You know that moment right after someone wearing the same perfume as the girl that broke your heart walks by, and you close your eyes, breathe in the scent, and she’s standing right next to you again? She seems so close, so very real, that you could just reach out and take her hand. But then someone bumps into you, or a bus drives by, or a taxi driver blows his horn to get you out of the middle of the crosswalk…and she’s gone. That, that powerful evanescent memory is what I try to capture with mere words. It doesn’t always work. But, sometimes, once in a blue moon, during a leap year, on the last Tuesday of a month – if it falls on an even numbered day – something incredible might happen, and I’m left with a little piece of that memory scratched out on a piece of paper. The only word I can use to describe it is magic!

Perhaps it is the mark of an immature or naïve writer, but I write what I want to write, what I believe, and what I have to say. I write what I write, the way I write it. If you don’t like it, read someone else, or pick up a pen and tell your own story. My work isn’t driven by “commercial appeal,” rather by my heart and my imagination.

Now, I don’t mean to sound like a petulant kid who thinks he knows everything and can accomplish anything by himself. I most certainly do not know everything, and – to paraphrase a true linguistic master – “I know what I don’t know.” I believe that the best way to become a better writer is to read other writers, and talk to teachers – old and new – to learn more about the craft. “You have to learn the rules before you can break them,” as a friend and professor once told me after a particularly ugly split infinitive incident. The simple truth is, like anything else, you have to work to become a better writer.

Again, being human, I desire acceptance and praise for my work. I’ve never tried cocaine or heroin, but I can’t imagine a higher high than the times that someone has complimented my work; telling me they enjoyed my article, or they love my sonnet, or that my essay really touched them. But, I don’t live for that anymore; I can’t. As terrific as that feeling is – and as much as I appreciate it – striving for that would only drive me crazy…OK, crazier.

So, for myself, I choose “literary merit” over “commercial appeal.” If that means that my work isn’t “popular,” and I don’t become famous, I’m OK with that. At the end of the day, it’s my work, my poem, my story. It is, in a very real sense, my life bled out on the page in black ink. And, even if no one reads it…I’m going to write it anyway.