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Tag: amateur

I can see the shadows growing longer…

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As the sun sets back behind the row of old mangled spruce trees. They really haven’t been the same since that last wind storm. It just blew through here like a god damned menace. Took half the shingles off the west side of the fucking barn. It was absolutely mental. You really couldn’t even hear yourself think, for the howl of the wind and the screach of twisting fensing. God, what an awful mess the last few weeks have been.

The last few moments of mottled sunlight pierce my eyes like Knives. “You know, mum really loves this view because of those trees. You remember how fucking mad she was when dad tried his hand at pruning them…”. My younger brother is standing beside me, dressed in a drab grey suit, clinging to his coffee cup, like it’s a life raft in a raging river. It’s cold, icy black waters threatening to swallow him whole. Pull him underneath, drag him down in the fast flowing current. I turn away from the view, it’s the same stretch of lawn I’d known for as long as I can remember. Turning my back to my brother, I cross the room, it’s somber dressing a reminder that things have changed. Nothing is the same, even as everything here is the same. Stopping at the door I say “It was a nice service. Food was a bit shit, for what they charged us… Bastards”. Twirling around, as though jolted out of his revere, my brother quips ” And what’s up with the vicar, what a thick fuck he is. Got her bloody name wrong, twice!”.

The sun has totally disappeared behind the stand of trees, the farm is that strange mix of dark but also still light out. The carpet smells a bit musty. There is cigarette smoke lingering on the walls, embedded in the paint, like so many other things left unsaid.

“What are you doing, you’ve had that song on repeat for like…

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A full fucking hour.” She says, lifting the headphones up and off my ear. Just as suddenly, she falls backwards into her torn armchair, resuming reading her book. I sit forward in my seat, and put my pen down on my desk. It rolls away from my finger tips, falling down to the floor with a clatter. Angrily adjusting my head phones I turn towards her and say ” Jesus!, it’s so close, it’s right there, I just can’t figure out what that idea was. It was so vivid last night. I’m sure I was listening to this song when it came to me.” Clearly, I am irritable, and slightly disheveled, as I gesticulate wildly. The paper in front of me is blank, except for crossed out half thoughts and angry scribbles. Lowering her book down slightly, peering over the top she remarks. “Babe, you fell asleep on the couch last night. You didn’t even make it past Jeopardy.” Sitting stock still with my fingers pinching the bridge of my nose. “Well,… shit. I dreamt that?” Rocking back deeper into her arm chair, it’s hard stripes at odds with the growing shadows of the late afternoon, she laughs. A full throated bark. It echoes in our quiet mid town apartment. Softly, I can hear the neighbours dog yapping in reply. The old plaster walls really don’t dampen much between units here. Standing up from my chair, I grab the sheet of paper, cross the room, haphazardly covered with crumpled pieces of paper, I fold it a couple times and drop it into the recycling. I stop a moment to watch it float soundlessly into the bin. Car horns can be heard outside, a bird chirps and a siren screams in passing. The sun has begun to set, and along the sidewalk street lamps are starting to stir.

Very bad, no good, awful poetry : Series 3

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The best part about doing this series of early poetry written by myself as a teen, is that it has garnered exactly zero attention, and thus has gained no traction online, so while I have the catharsis of sharing it, I know deep down it will remain just as hidden to the outside world as it would had I left it untouched in my note book, on the shelf in my office, where it has sat since late 2009. Oh the unbridled joy of on line anonymity. Plus I’m a straight, white male, so not a whole lot of flack comes at me, unless I were to go out of my way to be a huge asshole. And I save that sort of thing for snide remarks at a movies expense while at the theater. So Boo.

If you’re just joining us now, or me, now, a few things you’ll come to understand. I’m not a professional writer, though at one point in my formative years I had ambitions for becoming a comic book creator / writer. I did give serious thought to Journalism school at Sheridan College, but did art instead. Probably money well spent given the caliber of the work if you look across the length and breadth of my old written pieces. Yikes. So feel free to curl up and have a good chuckle at my expense. From what I’m seeing as I revisit these old works, is they aren’t terribly offensive, except in that they are just awful. Low grade, faux depth, pretentious gobbledegook. Another three hot, steaming turds for your viewing delight.

1.) The sky at night Circa 1999

A lone ball of flame. Gas from an unknown region. Source of light in an uncaring life. A wonder. All ablaze, separated by nothingness and the cold distance between us. I can see you there, hovering, seemingly still, yet you twinkle. Do I dare dream on you tonight, what a wish, what wish, my wish, my right.

What I think is going on here, is like a version of wish upon a star, but kind of mopey and murky. I don’t think I had started to work nights yet, as a high schooler. I did work one semester for a place called Norkim Distributions in Brampton, a job I got because of a former girlfriends parents. I was lucky enough that they drove me to work and picked me up for the 90% of the time I worked there for a semester out of high school. I remember not being able to talk to anyone for most of the day, then as I got home, tired, I’d just natter away until I made my parents angry and they told me to just shut up. I get it now. I’m not a big fan on inane nattering. It was more as a way of dealing with being virtually silent the whole day, and feeling like I might explode if I didn’t just get a days worth of talking out once I got home. It definitely felt solitary. Doesn’t make the poetry any better though now does it. And they say that pain and sorrow create great art, no!, Talent, talent creates great art. Not merely being a morose mother fucker.

2.) Gripe : Twice daily Circa 1999

Whatever I mean, whatever I’ve said, it won’t matter much if I can’t get out of bed. Whoever I am, whomsoever I was, it doesn’t mean anything, and it didn’t mean much. Wherever I was, wherever I go, I won’t do anything, if I go it alone. With, without, what can I say.

Some of these I remember writing, even if vaguely. But this one eludes me, almost completely. I think I am really absorbing a lot of Temple of the Dog at this point, and trying to skirt the notion of completely ripping of Chris Cornell and the Mother Love Bone guys. It doesn’t flow together at all. The rhythm is off, and it sort of just fades away. Like I was trying to be prophetic, and found pathetic instead. On a second reading I guess, I wanted to be told I had something to say, but there really is no “there” there. It’s just pure, unadulterated cheese, “Fromage” for the old school Much Music Ed the Sock crowd.

3.) The fix is in Circa 2000

Sure, I still feel miserable three months down that road. A long hard journey through the vast unknown. But what’s to worry, because when I’m dead and gone, all those years from then, what will it matter, if I was a little mixed up inside my head. Time off, time alone, time apart. It’s all a healing process taken for a broken heart.

Whoo, that ones a bit of a floater. But I will say this, it follows a through line, and doesn’t get too heady. No major calling cards of a bloated sense of writing skill. Fairly layman in execution. No changing places with the man in the mirror. A break up poem if ever I wrote one. That’s it for this installment of terrible, awful poetry. If this does anything at all for you, feel free to post any of your own, miserable teen angst prone writing. Be free of your poor choice of prose! let the wicked underbelly of flatulent poetry free. Blast it into the ether! Fill the void with your own stinky mass of blind ambition.

Let me off here, I’m good.

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I say quietly to the driver, he lets off the gas, eases the car out of traffic and pulls up to the curb. Looking over the head rest of the dirty, sweat stained cab, I can see the driver has a photo of two little children hanging from the meter. They’re young, smiling in a sun dappled park from some unknown portion of god knows where. They are wearing matching dresses, the kind that are ubiquitous at the Gap. It looks like there used to be a third person in the photo, an adult also wearing the same simple sun dress. But her face is obscured by dark tape, looks to have been scratched quite heavily where the face should have been. The driver turns to look at me, eyes turning up slowly. Notices I’m looking at his worn photograph and says “that’ll be $13.75.” He’s not exactly curt, but neither is he asking for any kind of rapport. Fumbling in my back pocket I open my wallet and hand him $15 bucks. “No change, thanks.” I spit out the words. The door locks pop, and I slide across the back seats and step out into a foggy night, it has begun to drizzle. Before I can turn to the driver and retch out another word, he pulls off, closing the door with a practiced impatience a cabbie learns after many years on the job. It slams, and the wheels screech, indistinct words tumble out of the cab. I didn’t even look to see his name. The cold chill of the drizzle has begun bleeding it’s way through my jacket. I turn from the street to realize I mistook the road sign in the loose fog, and am many, many blocks from home. “Fuck.” I say, as I’m pulling up my collar. Turning on my heels I begin sauntering up the tree lined street. The cool wind, and the harsh sounds of traffic fading behind me – FIN.

More Of That Terrible Poetry : Series 2

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Back faster than I initially imagined. I had a good talk with a friend, and we thought it was a good idea to revisit the terrible mush that we all produced as angsty teens. It’s all in good fun, and a hearty laugh at my own terrible ambitions to be a comic book creator/writer. Plus some of this tripe is absolute dog shit, so I need to loosen up and let the pretentious blatherings of my youth out into the great wide open for mockery. Can’t always post your best self. I also recollect that some of these were to be song lyrics, given how I have them laid out in my note book. But I’m not really able to replicate that here, so they instead read as longer form sentences, rather than curt sentence chunks. Anyway, on wards and upwards.

Grab a drink, and a warm blanket and get ready to retch:

1.) Thirst Circa 1995

I’m so thirsty that if i drink in your love I just might drown. Pulled down into the icy bleakness of your heart, so cold it fills up my head. Breathless voices, dance at the edge of my vision, like heavenly bodies glimpsed in the inky night sky. I’m just so thirsty. I want to drown in it. I want to breath it all in, cold choking my lungs. Pulled to the center of the void, where I’ll find you. I’m so thirsty, I’ll lay myself down. I want the darkness to expand into my everything, explore the corners of nothingness that I have never seen before. You’ve leached into my every pore, weighing me down, thirsting for my touch. To you, thirst is life, now I’m soaking wet and the waters all around me, pulling me down.

This one is a tad more cohesive, but still not exactly stellar. But I think I was trying to get over a breakup at this point, if my memory of the time is right, or maybe not. I thought the first big break up was around or some where near 1998. Not sure, could have been the medication I was on making me feel a bit, tweaked. On the bright side, it all seems to work as far as using drowning as a metaphor. Also that it feels like some one else’s personal darkness was having both an inward and outward effect on me. I will state, clearly, that in 1995 “Thirsty” did not mean horny, sexually affected, or have any kind of romantic connotations.

2.) You can’t call home? Circa 1995

Times a wasting, I’m heading home, late for dinner and I didn’t phone. Can’t call now, eleven’s long gone. I’ll say ciao and be home before long. Light of dawn is breaking, chills of the night, suns coming up as I run, temperature rising and I’m just too tired to fight. Last night was a blur, but now that I’m home I’m sure I’ll never go out again, not while I’m so immature.

A quick little ditty about how I usually ended up getting grounded in my teens. Staying out far too late, and not calling. But in my defense, we weren’t drinking, or smoking or doing drugs, and at that age I sure as hell wasn’t having sex. So being tardy (late) and not bothering to call home, was sort of my jam as a teen. Disrespectful, sure, but odds are we were playing our instruments, jamming and having Street fighter tournaments with Zero chance any girls were present, unless one friend or another had a younger sister.

I’m not sure why, but there is a significant time jump in my notes, as though I didn’t write anything down here between the tail end of 1994 and some time in 1998. Maybe the notebook got misplaced or packed away during a move or a bedroom remodel.

3.) When death had eyes Circa 1998

Stand back and watch the parade of clowns walk by. Teary eyed and wavy haired, marching single file in despair. For a candle has gone out and we’ve laid you down to rest. High above the clouds, the empty earth your bed, you will rest for eternity. When we call, if we call at all, I’ll name you – beautiful. You cannot turn back the hands of time, for they’ve been set, not to be touched – cold. The flame has flickered out, and we had to put you down to rest. With you, our hearts got buried in the ground. Sending up your soul, so high, drifting on the sound of our lonely weeping. A string of silly shoes, marching in single file, sad eyed clowns, calling out your name, songs for the void on their lips.

I can’t honestly tell if I wrote this after the passing of a family friend, of if I had just gotten into Temple of the Dog, and was trying to be deep, where I have no depth to speak of. At least by eighteen. Nothing much of anything had happened. I have such a bad memory, I can’t tell if a grand parent had died that year, or what. Certainly had a thing for death or dying. Makes all those “wish I were dead” memes you see on Imgur make far more sense, in context of having been a moody teen myself. Here I was thinking I was actually a pretty chipper fellow. I’ll have to ask some childhood friends what their honest opinion of me at the time was. I distinctly remember my favourite pass time being adding dirty lyrics to songs on the radio, as they came on, like an impromptu improve session with friends when driving anywhere.

Either way, this was series two of terrible, bad, awful poetry from my youth.

The time is now for some terrible poetry

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I’ll take the lead here and showcase various terrible poems that I’ve written since 1994. Expect some lazy tropes, teenage angst, lots of crossed analogies that don’t really add anything substantive to the narrative. I will do my best to publish them as is without any major edits. I will correct spelling if I stumble across anything really egregious. Prepare yourselves for a round of terrible poetry.

Actually now that I think of it, this could be a monthly serial of all of my needless poetry. I’m dead certain I have enough for a few lengthy entries here. I should place a caveat here, that in my hey day, my hand writing was minuscule and sort of atrocious. So I can not guarantee that the original thought or intent will remain intact. Might have to guess at a word or two, seeing as I’m now twenty five almost twenty six years older than when I wrote these “poems“.

Buckle up folks, an auteur I am not:

1.) Soulless Man Circa 1994

Standing all alone, sits a man on his throne, gazing at a town he once called his home. Never to return to his village of peace, destined to roam, for fear this soul shall cease. Once he was a boy of paradise and joy. Gone, stripped of his city of love. He is led to destroy on the wings of a dove. Cold windy nights spent with heavenly lights, teary eyed fights with only blood in sight, stood he, all alone. Frozen tears are his throne, his old home, now ashes and blackened stone. Shadows cast down, pale whispers, no sound. An empty man, blood of a boy, stains of a memory torn, a life destroyed. Cold and barren is this man, as he stands all alone.

Oh boy, that is some dog shit right there. This is tough. May not have been as good an idea for a writing prompt as I originally thought. This is well before Game of Thrones, or anything of that sort coming into my life, so I guess I was trying to be brooding and moody? On to the next few then, with haste my friends…

2.) None too clear Circa 1994

I looked into the mirror the other day and what I saw shocked me. My reflection pointed to me and said ” You’re skinny, weak and would be better off dead.” I didn’t take too well to my reflection so I pulled the mirror down off the wall, broke off all of the pieces of frame, and shattered the silver backed glass. The next morning I awoke to find the old mirror back upon the wall as if nothing had happened. I stood before my mirror, and starred deeply into my reflection. Our eyes met, but I noticed something strange, for the world was turned around and it wasn’t me but my reflection starring back.

I get what I was going for here, like the old switch aroo, between the real me and the reflection all of a sudden passing through into this plane, and me drawn into the other, but it’s kind of hazy, and not well executed. I have a feeling with the more of these I read, the more certain it will become that I was depressed, or at least morose as an early teen. let’s dig in for another one or two, and then we’ll call it a day for the first of what could be many trips into terrible poetry territory. And no, I am not posting all of them, same are just too awful to share. So think about how bad these are and imagine something either too bizarre, saccharine or melancholy even for me to post twenty fives years later.

3.) Shattered Circa 1994

Shatter the mirrors that look back with distaste. Close up their shutters, so they no longer expose our inner horrors. Nail shut the eyes that glisten, wet and painful. Feel these fragments scatter, lost to the wind, mixed with the clouds, and buried by the dust. See your faces gazing back, held between the mirrors cracks, the glass will shower your soul with tiny pieces of memory, like sand kicked up by a storm. I’m not ready for you to expose me as only a shattered mirror could.

Looks as though I had a thing going regarding mirrors at this point. May’haps it was due to being six feet tall and something like one hundred and ten pounds. Lank greasy hair, and sore limbs. Could be an educated guess, but I’d have to see some photos from that time to really know. Oh, we had also moved that year from a medium town to a small village in rural Ontario, and I’d lost all of my friends to distance and lack of mobility between destinations.

Good God there are a whole lot more terrible poems waiting in my archives, so I can always revisit this again another time sooner or later. I don’t have a schedule for writing topics, I’m just trying to keep things fresh and interesting, and to stay off Facebook® more and more.

Writing the second draft of my short children’s story

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Here’s a wee bit of a conundrum for you. As I sit here writing the second draft of my short children’s story, I’m struck by who my audience is. Do I write it so that two to six year olds enjoy the story, the written portion, or do I make it so that a parent would enjoy reading it? I know that in most cases, the children will look at the pictures more so than the written text, so it seems I’d be more likely to read books to my kids that I enjoy reading myself. Not that it would need to rhyme or have some sort of gimmick to it, but just that the characters seems to be multi dimensional, or show signs of using their imaginations in a positive manner. I should really come back and map out what I want to say here. Perhaps some point form notes will help.

• Multi dimensional characters  • Fun for adults to read, but with subject matter that means something to both parents and children  • Showing that girls can have mechanical engineering leanings, and like working with their hands, and doing all sorts of tasks • Showing empathy for animals  • Being a leader, but also a functional part of a team  • Using their imaginations, unlimited by gender stereotypes • Bright colourful drawings and illustrations (more of a personal preference, again, and a high bar for my later steps of actually drawing the spreads)

I’d love to see that my own kids like the story, and the characters, but I’d also love to see if it was something that other parents could get behind. Also, if I put multiple adventures in one story, is there a call to put out more, where only one adventure happens per story? It’s for kids, so maybe that’ll never be a real concern.

Who knows how many drafts I’ll end up doing. I keep vacillating between deepening the story and expanding it, and cutting out extraneous portions, as at this point, the focus would likely be on the drawings and the written stuff is just there to augment that. Questions, questions. So many questions I need to keep asking and answering at each bench mark throughout this process. Although when I get it all done once, I can use what I’ve learned from it to adjust how I would possible do another at a later date.

Plus I came up with this idea when I only had the one child, now that I have two, I will need to work in a third character, or else things could get heated for me here at home! Ha. It sort of surprises me just how long I’ve been thinking of doing this one specific project. I remember I was pruning some hedges out back, while my eldest and our dog were playing in the yard with me, and I thought about all the silly things I could imagine her imagining them both doing. The Zoom Zoom Zoom song had just been taught to us at her play group, so walking on the moon was a big thing that couple of weeks. Funny how those little moments can bring something about.

Hopefully I don’t talk this up too much, and then when it drops be a total misfire/flop. But realistically if my kids like it, who TF cares what anyone else thinks of it.

Maintaining a love for the arts

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Yes, so here I am back again after a brief respite. I have been having a bit of an issue with all things art, and I have been trying desperately to rekindle a lost sense of joy and wonder with art in general. Not to say that i will not continue to draw and paint (I have a few items in the works for my wife and my nephews for the new year). But I have been trying to combat a sense of ennui that I couldn’t seem to shake. It isn’t full scale depression, nothing that serious. I think my main issue was that rather than doing something for the sheer joy of it I was always concerned about the final product, was it going to be awful, would it be a waste of time or a half hearted effort if it didn’t immediately click or work as an art piece. Recently I’ve really had to push myself to just do something, anything, to get back into the swing of things. Perhaps because my day job is producing commercial art for other people, based on their wants and needs rather than as my own artful expression (sounds artsy fartsy I know). This fear of doing something crappy, or not “up-to snuff” has left in its wake a fair few projects over the last year or two ( too many to mention) although my awesome room is littered with half started, partially finished items in a wide range of mediums. Pencils, inks, acrylics, pastels the list goes on.

However, during the summer I stumbled across this website called “Side Show Collectibles” and all of the amazing items on their just got me so excited, but they are also not cheap, so how do you get all of those fantastic items, without paying the $$$$$$? Easy, teach yourself to sculpt free standing figures, and make your own custom version of the pieces you just can’t get out of your head. Sounds like fun, and IT IS!, Although I am so not a sculptor by trade, training or inclination. But I just love the feeling of getting my hands dirty, and working with the clay in my hands. I like this because I work in a digital medium all week long, and as much fun as I have putting together very colourful 2D and even 3D displays, print ads and apparel, it is really something to see a creation come together in real time, in real space, with the work of your own two hands. Not that Graphic Design isn’t a major love in my life, believe it is. I wouldn’t do it 40 hours a week, plus evenings and weekends, reading and researching and refining my technique constantly. I’m far from finished learning about the many facets of digital & print design.

But with private art works i can really open up and tackle things I wouldn’t normally do at work, and that can be very freeing, and invigorating. Which is the point! To be inspired, and excited and to really get zoned in and not realize how many hours are just whizzing by. That is a tremendous feeling, and one that I have been trying to recapture since my days of drawing comic books and when I really got hooked on Photoshop compositing.

A really great sculptor at Stand Winston Studios named Steve Wang said “Art is a lonely life, so if you don’t love it, why would you spend you life doing it?”. I may have paraphrased that a little bit, but it is true. Art, whether digital or hand crafted usually isn’t a team activity, it is just you and the project for hours on end. If you don’t love it, why spend your life alone doing it? So there I was, working day in and day out, being very technically proficient, but not getting that rush, or feeling a zeal for it. You know what makes art more fresh and appealing, tackling new art in a format you are super unfamiliar with, that pushes you to try new things and get out of your comfort zone or “rut”. Now the lessons I am learning about proportion, and posing, and light and shape and form is really adding a new dimension to my design work. All I had to do was reawaken that love & lust for life that had been slowly leaking out of the every day experience. Does that make sense?

So the first three items that I tackled were : a generic super cop (sans head and hands), a Tinkerbell inspired fairy for my wife, and an as of yet uncompleted Ariel from the Little Mermaid®

They are far from perfect, and in most cases they are about capturing the essence of a personality and the pose rather than being show pieces with crazy detail. I only started doing these about 3 weeks ago, so I hope that in another 3 week I will progress a bit more, and maybe just maybe i’ll get to the point where I will use super sculpey and then bake & carve out a finished piece that I can sand & paint and display. Until then i will just continue to indulge my artsy side, and continue to hope that my zest for art will work its way further into my daily projects.

If anyone has any sculpting tips or tricks they’d like to fill me in on then just leave a comment.

Cheers!

-M