—TEN STEPS JUST TO RUN A MILE

 

 

…What are you so afraid of?

 

--I’m thinking

--About what?

--Mistakes

 

…Today is tomorrow.

 

…It feels like it’s better than perfect, which must mean it’s a good day to be alive.

 

… To be alive with precision and clarity, I think, is the purpose of life. But it’s not always easy.

 

…Whether it’s true or not, I’ll never know.

 

…It’s official—I should never buy another pair of shoes before I die, and if I do, someone should slap me silly.

 

…“Why else would you write poems if you weren’t trying to get downstairs into the basement, where the sewage pipes are all covered with dust and mouse shit more ancient that death?” Greg Kosmicki

 

…I’ve been trying to get over my weird phobia about submitting, slowly sending stuff out here and there, though nothing like the early days, that’s for sure.

I sent two things I really like to a journal I really like that was having a contest and the entry date ended yesterday. They asked for a bio. I hadn’t included a bio with a submission in a long time. It seems a little strange and remarkable that I’ve somehow had six books published:

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of six books, most recently, THINGS I CAN’T EVEN TELL MYSELF, out from Ravenna Press. You can find more of his writing at https://lenkuntz.blogspot.com

 

…To tell the truth, I never had a clue.

 

 …This could be one of my favorite quotes and descriptions ever, because it totally captures him—

“He could be swamped by his feelings, like a kid wearing a shirt several sizes too big,”

--Jamie Fischer, speaking of Elliott Smith on the twenty-second anniversary of his death by suicide.

 

…Alert: Theft reported less than 0.5 miles from your home

 

…Alert: Shooting reported less than 5.6 miles from your home

 

…You appeared in 92 searches this week

 

…Maybe I should turn off some of the alerts I get. Maybe they’re the reason for my anxiety instead of Satan.

 

…Stupid is as stupid does.

 

--“Don’t be stupid.”

--“Too late.”

 

…I’m confident that I’m insecure.

 

…“My Irish mother used to say to me, ‘You’re a tinker. You make a mess and then you move on’.” Poet Fanny Howe who died last week at age 84

 

…“I always felt that if you haven’t experienced atheism fully, you can’t grasp the shock of believing anything.” Fanny Howe

 

…Doesn’t everybody second-guess themselves?

 

…This is a one-way conversation, same as always.

 

…“Open your mind. Get up off the couch. Move.” Anthony Bourdain

 

…Don’t everybody fall all over themselves.

 

…I keep thinking, if I don’t write it all down I’ll lose it, though I’ll lose it all anyway.

 

…About 8 in 10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now, down from 32% last year.

 

…Someone on Facebook posted a photo of her two beautiful kids, smiling on a lawn somewhere. Under the pic, she wrote: “To the guy who saw my kids and said, 'Andale! Andale! ICE!' go fucking fuck yourself.” That's just one of the reasons why I don’t love my country anymore.  

 

“Honey, come here—it’s a shipment of new adjectives to describe how messed up everything is!”

  …Recent headline: National Park Service tells its gift shops to remove anything that ‘disparages Americans’

…I think Christians are destroying Christianity. For me anyway.

 

…“Pressure is a privilege." Billie Jean King

 

…Too much fun is no fun at all.

 

…You never really know when the whistle’s going to blow.

 

…“She was living in another state of being, constantly scribbling things on napkins.” Senna Howe, on her mother, Fanny

 

…I think the thing is, you do something you’re proud of and if someone else is touched or impacted by it, that’s a bonus, but if nothing at all happens, that’s okay, too.

 

…“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Albert Einstein

 

…It’s always a bad time to lose your footing, but this late in the game? Probably not good.

 

…There’s something about the word geriatric that sounds offensive.

 

…I’ve been fooled a lot and I’m pretty sure that I will be again and again.

 

…Turns out you actually can have too many friends, if they’re really friends that matter to you.

 

…“Just Let Them” works when you’re confident the outcome isn’t going to destroy you. Otherwise, it sounds brilliant in practice.   

 

…In one morning, within an hour’s span, I saw two (!) eagles flying right outside the window as well as a gorgeous deer just ambling through the yard. And yet I somehow still find things to bitch about.

 

..."I don’t really know what makes a poem. Or why it’s a poem. Or why anyone would want to do it, write poems. But it feels good when you do.

 

To tell you the truth, the first ten or so years when I was writing, I never paid attention to line breaks at all. I’d just write a line and when I got to the end, I’d start another line.

 

After I got my first book published, I showed it to the boss I had where I worked at the time.  He opened it up to the middle, read, then handed it back to me saying, 'This isn’t poetry, it’s just prose with line breaks. Yours doesn’t rhyme.'

 

I often thing of what Mark Strand said, 'The reason poems have jagged lines is so you can tell it’s a poem.'

 

--You are a happy person to interview and your poems are mostly happy. Do you use poetry to stave off the pathos most poets write about?

--Well, I don’t know about that because I haven’t been very happy the last seven or so years with what’s happened in the political landscape.

--But you seem happy?

--Back when W was President, I thought, you know, I’m not going to allow him to occupy any space in my head, so I refused to write any poems about having to do with political stuff.

 

--So, do you think poetry is fading out, or do you think it has the same vitality as it did, maybe twenty or thirty years ago?

--I think it’s got a lot more. 

--You do? Really?

--Well, there’s spoken word now, and that’s inspired by rap music, which is a different kind of poetry than I write, but it’s popular now, and has excited a lot of people. From everything I can see, people have always been curious.

--That's an interesting take.

--There’s a million little magazines, I mean, they come up like mushrooms, and from what I can see poetry is doing better than ever.

 

Looking at the stars is one of those things you’ve got to do every once in a while, like looking at the ocean. Nobody out there, where the stars are now, knows how we’re dressed.

 

Maybe the body’s desire 

is just to have a memory and leave it at that,

not one that’s connected with any particular time 

or place, but just a memory, a sense of

belonging and loss, a sense of wholeness 

and separateness. A sense of completion

and doom.

 

Everybody hated everybody.

It made life more simple that way.

You didn’t have to decide whose side you were on."

 

--Greg Kosmicki