In the midst of arranging Feebles for print, I stumbled upon an author and “book designer” engaged in launching a community for self-published, independent writers. I'm not going to specify names because I have no interest in shitting on his company, nor “what it stands for.” I don't want to shit for you at all, actually, just note a few still-underrealized realities about the sheer ludicrousness of the word business as it stands. Let's say you've got some manuscripts you've been sitting on for a few years, and you're introduced to the concept of self-publishing by an evermore earnestly-curious man on the radio named Audie one day. He and his interviewee (the owner of a self-publishing service) seem to say, curiously, that because an author's profit-per-unit can potentially be “four to five times more” than if he/she is published traditionally, self-publishing has now shed completely its aura of desperate amateurism.
eighteen dollars will buy you an hour's passage on the worn & weary Mark Twain
the same stretch under Lover's Leap,
an idle paddle wheel dragged cyclically, on and on
by her diesels
costumed so long,
moored not far from horrid wax figures,
similarly fated
who bare old Sam's names with the rest of them,
the Hannibilians assuredly assuaged by their sounds,
so heard
the ambiance of the little town,
shrill with tourists' wonder,
depression of the damned,
envisaged waterborne toxins
despite it all,
I departed her as a newfound touchstone,
knowing she's just up twenty four,
eighteen dollars away,
no time soon to break her jaded rhythm
as a forgotten timepiece,
buried in a rank cellar
supposing she'd ease most crisis that could ever befall me
she and her unsalted captain,
who has not aged (truthfully, I do remember.)
to new meanings
to the feeling I've only been able to find
on one short strip
just East of Kansas City
that I am small in a
dirty daunting
to coverage of
the Be Beat
to frontiers of periphery
and the Knowns we never see
the wicker bowler atop the landscaper
who's trimmed every week,
the yard across the street
which I've canvased in every imaginable state
which's
since Mrs. Tanzay's first grade,
Remained.
clever in sharp
through it all
my holy communion
my reference tradition
now sometimes witnessed
and lamented
if only all these had been told
shut out! shut up!
just listen
my companion met me two nights in a row in front of the Heidelberg and said twice
she loves me
and of course it's like me to begin to read in but
when nobody else does, she loves me
I don't quite note his particular personification
more impressively trained, definitively
with a stack of charts – some his – on his noggin
but when he'd finally play, I'd pity
because he must ask first
and his fingers are well-read
but they must ask first
and every little passerby
draws away his eye
so delicate,
his attention for she that loves him
I am as far away as one can get from seabreeze and sun in between greencliff and saltwater
and cycling sound,
regular
static but brushed by a flag of soft curls
I am so long from brief downtime moments of contented overwatching of the familial you only know, then
Perhaps I've even permanently shunned myself from smelling comfort in a study haven, occasionally pinning silly smiles to friend or lover
Certainly, I am now to be given up on and delegatorly relegated to Strangest Smuck of Locale
As to the girls, I am either blowing or falling away from any expectation of reciprocity, perhaps
its only remarkable because of the contact my body is detecting deficit of with the mess of Her-related sensory input my brain continues to withdraw from without healing,
like a standing retreat
or defiant creed that I can still convince most of us of enough
that they fall in love with me
and realize that It is for Her
and are broken by it
to varying degrees
while I watch and know that I would be disgusted
wth myself utterly,
if I could feel anything
But when I do,
it is GAPING wide
for some reason always dramatized as a vacant bar graph in my mind
I am as far away as one can get from seabreeze and sun in between greencliff and saltwater
and cycling sound,
regular
static but brushed by a flag of soft curls