THE WRITER'S CORNER

On this day in History:
Henry James was born in 1843.
President Lincoln died.
It was also a bad day for composers; at least 14 of them died on this day throughout history.
Greta Garbo died.
The Titanic sunk.
The bottle opener was invented 1738.
The first McDonald's opened in Chicago in 1952.
The Garbini Sisters were born in 1984 and immediately became tramps and have continued their wild-lifestyle ever since.
This is African Freedom Day
In Bangladesh it is the New Year

Now you know more than you did when you woke up this morning and so do I.

FYI - I'm working on my latest novel for my agent - a book I promised to have to him last September. It's not easy writing a book, but then it is not easy flipping burgers or slapping tar on roofs or working in an auto plant or being laid-off from an auto plant with a wife and kids to feed, or working the graveyard shift at a Stop & Go knowing any minute some crazy bastard might walk in with a gun and take your life for fifteen bucks. So for all those whiny-assed writers and artists out there who complain how hard they have it - get a clue!

I bitch all the time about not getting my due recognition - as do most writers - about how everything is easier and pays better. Ha! I've worked some of those crappy jobs - selling shoes at a discount store, pumping gas back in the days when that's what they did and it was only .25 cents a gallon, working in the shipyards in Toledo when it was 22 below zero, working in a punch press factory with a bunch of lunatics. I laugh when I hear writers, aspiring or the other kind bitch about how tough it is. You want tough, go 12 rounds with Lennox Lewis - even though he is retired. Hell, go 1 round with him.

Okay, the nurse says my medicine is ready so I'll leave you with today's poem.

How To Make a Poet

What makes a poet? I asked the poet
After he finished his reading.
Hell if I know, said the poet as he
Smiled up at the women who came
To listen to him and later stood around
Staring at him with their hunger as if
He was a movable Feast.

It’s something either you have
Or you don’t, said the poet.
How do you know if you have
It? I asked. Hell if I know,
The poet said and smiled and
Showed his teeth to one of
The women. She was a tall thin
Brunette with small breasts the
Size of fresh Florida oranges. She
Wore a flimsy sun dress and white
Sandals on her pretty tan feet and
Every toenail was painted blood red.

The way she stood, with the light
Showing through her dress,
It was plain to see she wasn’t
Wearing much underneath.
She had come prepared to meet the poet.

Why did you become a poet?
I finally said. Hell if I know,
Said the poet. And the woman
In the summer dress leaned over
And whispered something in
The poet’s ear and he said excuse
Me and got up and the two of
Them left the bookstore.

And I could see he was about
To write another sonnet, or 2
Probably about love with strangers
But not about the sea or wars or
Christ or plums in the fridge.
-Bill Brooks (Sometime this century)


http://www.authorbillbrooks.com