Book Manuscript

What the hell? A barista-poet friend of mine is moving. She said we should swap poems. I went to put together some of my best stuff. Then, somehow, instead of compiling a brief best-of I ended up compiling a cohesive book-length manuscript of poems. Why not? I know I should get off my don't-feed-the-ego/fear-of-accomplishment ass & send some poems to magazines. I won't ever publish this without a track record. I have the deadlines all written out for publications I've researched, each little journal has poems carefully chosen for their style. For one so seemingly listless I have a lot of lists. The places that take simultaneous submissions are noted with overlapping submissions all written out & planned. The favorite publishers that are exclusive about their submissions have some of my stronger pieces set to go only to them, those journals I love, where I think they'd fit. I can walk the precipice-brink till doomsday but somehow that doesn't sound a life of mountain-fresh air.

In retrospect, counter to a previous statement, some of the stronger poems do end up on this blog. Hard to tell the gold from the dirt without a little bit of sifting. A few even had there genesis without the favored method, handwritten in a journal, instead getting typed with open-minded freedom here. Mind you, some of my better poems were omitted from the following order because they didn't fit the flow of themes threaded throughout. Whatever. Here's the titles in the tentative order:

Garden Remains
Babies
Her...
On an Afternoon of Indulgence
Castle
Referencing Silence: Three Buddhist Poems
Sitting Cross-legged Before Jackson Pollack's Guardians of the Secret
Liturgy of Murderous Suicide
Forgettable
Lost
War
Fragrant Zone
Energy Strings
The Chord
Sleeping Alone, Reprise
Perimysium Arborealis
Friendly Monk
My Man Near the Park
Love in the Time of Doggerel
At Least We Carpool for Truth
Breakfast in Port Gamble
Clear View
Acceptance
The Tug
Sacred Dance: the King is Dead
Break Bread
What the Farmer Said to Me Near His Homestead
Dirge
Beyond Bosch's Borders
Waking Isn't So
Journey to the Interior
Tracks Under the Stone
Farther to Go
Backtracking
Hidden Waterfall is a Sanctuary
From Hibernation
Another Break from Too Much Fasting
Rainshadows
Give Something Back
Warped Woodgrains Split
Prayer for the Grandmas
Subnotes for the Golden Age
Spitting in the Camel's Eye
White Clouds, White Sheets, White Sails
Lucky Goddess
The Day John Ashcroft Left Town
Tom Fox
Touching
Stolen Cabbage
Let the Feral Keep
Luxurious Squalor
The Far Away Mountaintops of Forgiveness
The Magician Pulls Nothing Out of the Hat
Putting No Fingers On the Source
The Silence Around Owls has Much to Teach You
Drum
I Would You Lay On Many Flowers
Boathouse Run Aground
Indifference
The Found Window
Intangibles
(following one poem)
Tapas: the Blue Shadow with Ash-covered Skin Thinks & Opens as He Listens to One of His Saddest Favorite Albums (Blood On the Tracks) in Preparation for Another Final Transcendence
(preceding one poem)
Oversimplification
Choice Words
Dark Matter Revisioned
Quintessence
This Hand Touches World Tree
Let's Grit Up & Save the Mind(s) One at a Time
A Rest in the Field
Ignorance Means Extinction