OTI:one poem and notes:9/19/16

Open To Interpretation

Neat

There are no traffic lights
In the air,
The birds fly everywhere.
We roll and skid
In the churning grid.

Organized?
Organized, me?
I can't imagine.

Recognition?
Recognition
Can happen
In a moment.
Change?
Change takes awhile.

I'm a mess?
I'm a mess,
You're right.
No way
I could ever win
A custom car trophy,
Even if our lives depended on it,
And they do.

Proficient?
Proficient
I'm not.
I can't
Balance
Precariously
For long.
With practice,
Maybe long enough.

I'm not the only one who's a mess,
And that's not an excuse,
Rather an observation.
Just look at the laundry mat I go to.
It's a mess in a messed up corner strip mall,
And the pool hall next door,
Where I practice pool while the clothes wash,
Is old, beat up, run down--a dive--
Perfect.
Someday, with my once a week practice,
I'll run the table,
Neatly,
Like I fold my cloths
Washed and dried.

You don't want to look inside my car,
Give me a chance.
I'll put the passenger seat back in,
There's still room for Maya, my dog,
In back with the back seats gone.

DolphinWords

Notes: Being observed you're not neat is a bit like being told you got some tummy flab...one wants to strike back, I'm not, I'm not...but there it is, there or there...and one never wears it, or it, well...and they're related, being overweight, not being neat...anyway, 'neat' covers a lot of things...I've been practicing writing with a speed ball metal nib pen, the small one...steel pens are like the old quill pens I imagine...my handwriting isn't very neat...neatness is 'fractal'...just how neat one is kind of permeates every thing one does...and it's a struggle to write out four lines of poetry with the steel pen and India ink...when I get one copy right, I'll post a pic...but the little pen's scratches are very pretty, each letter, each part of a letter, distinctive...with a ball point pen, or felt, or fine tip, there's a loss of the expression in the steel pen's writing...and, of course, typing, using the computer, there's none at all...I'm trying to figure out how to make an autograph, in both those senses I mentioned...one, an author's work in their own handwriting, and two, their signature...there's a real contrast between  handwritten books done with quill, steel pen, brush, and such, and mass produced mechanical printed books...and, I'm trying to make a Creative Press Publisher book...these are those books you make online through amazon...I'm using the play, Zeus, for it...I'm finding it very hard to do!...the biggest problem now is that the text I wrote it in, on the iphone, sent to Yahoo mail, copied to blogger, and copied from blogger to Creative's template, runs into the different text format problems...I almost got there, but it's like there are hidden 'artifacts' in blogger's text format, which I would think is just the old ASCII, and Creative's, which is Microsoft Word based...I didn't have Word, but I downloaded that last night, late...and copy/pasted Zeus into rich text Word, which I think, gets made into pdf format...from pdf,  Creative can make the books they make...thought here is, to have a 'pdf' word processor, and a pdf template all at Creative, and you just go to that and write and edit on line...but they don't let you write from scratch online...???...so, if I can get the rich text using word into good shape, they will accept it...the copy I sent up last night, got partially accepted...it just didn't get turned away like when I upload blogger's text format...but I'm waiting for full acceptance, and then I can maybe edit in their program...one can't do anything simply with computers...the evolution of word processing has been cobbled together...I haven't messed with Word for a long time...I get along fine with blogger's tools...but with Word, I can't even find line spacing...and the spacing is getting thrown off by the formatting by blogger...I think...even blogger's spacing goes awry when I post from editor to the blog!...no wonder I'm a mess, being surrounded by one!

:)

DavidDavid