Build (A Poem)

find yourself
a country, find yourself a house
to grow your trees around, to shade
from summer heat and showers, to keep
cool and still;

then grow
your flowers and gardens, nurse their seeds
until to your horizons stretch
your colors, your fruits, and pick them
gently, into vases and bowls,
enjoy what you've mothered
while you can;

then fill
your house, build it again from the inside
out, blossoming with the tables you built
from your trees (you choose what goes on them),
the chairs you made with your hands (who sits in them),
the air you've breathed from the flowers you picked
and tended (what is spoken, what is sung), fill your house
with family, and yourself, keep the windows open and fill it
with the breeze and the rain, heat and frost,
take it all, fill
yourself,

the sky, the seas,
silence and noise, color and darkness, your lover
in bed, naked and soft, your lost ones buried beneath
dirt and time;

open your eyes; find
yourself a world;
make you a home

-- Matthew Stalbaum, 8/24/11
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This is my most recent poem, and probably one of my favorites among the recent ones I've been writing. Which isn't to say it's perfect. Reading over it again, it could possibly use more of something, though what and where I'm not sure yet. Qualms aside, I like this one because it starts off simple and concrete, and builds to something more abstract. I'm curious as to how people read the final stanza, if it comes off awkward or not. I worded it that way specifically with a certain intention in mind, but it is a bit of an obscure intention I fear. One thought is it needs more of a transition from the concrete to the abstract. But enough self-deprecation, it is what it is, and at the least it was a pleasure to write. Hopefully it's at least an interesting read too.

Waking and Walking (A Poem)

it is hard, rising again
to your feet where you left them
shrouded in the grass still and sinking
inch by inch in the dirt,

slower still finding your footprints, the one
& the other trailing before you
browned & flattened, before the wind
wipes clear the field, and you are lost.

it is hard to again find your step,
the left & the right, the forward
motion uncertain of the falling & rising
and how it never stops,

slower still knowing
your way (blind and silent once the step
after last is taken) how steps come
to steps, to field's edge, into

the town where you are unknown, the people
watching you, walking too;

you each offer your bread, your bodies,
your hurt and your love, until you have nothing left

to give except hands to carry each other
into the wild, to build again, free

-- Matthew Stalbaum, 7/15/11
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Here's my usual bitching - I'm not that happy with this one. The ending stanzas are still off to me, and though I like the idea of them, I feel like they need to be thought over more. I mostly wanted to post this one because it's the first poem I wrote in months, so it kind of speaks to me on that level - this is me finding my own steps again, recovering from graduation and saying goodbye to all my friends, feeling burnt out from reading and writing. This is my recovery poem. Maybe the last stanzas don't fit because they go somewhere else, I'm not sure yet. Thought and criticisms would be helpful to any and all who have any.

Love and Lost (A Poem)

Love and Lost
by Matthew Stalbaum

you have lost
again. it was dear
this time (it always was), you won't
be the same (you never

are, you
are gray and blue, are sorrow
for a time, shaped
by the loss, a void, and

alive, still - there is more

to lose (it will all be
dear, time knows how much
we'll have to lose, how much

left to love) still, when all
is lost, more to lose
and love, still

-7/18/11
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I stopped giving some commentary on these poems, but I kind of miss that, so I'll say a few words after each one.

I've been trying to edge away from really general, abstract poems like this one, but something about this one works for me for some reason. It came out of this idea I've always had, that mankind ultimately has the capacity for an endless reserve of hope, that we could continue on against even the bleakest circumstances. People always talk about how much we have to lose, or what a man would do when he's lost everything. But I choose to think of it as, even if someone has lost everything, there are still things left to love. I tried to weave and tangle up the pessimism and optimism in this poem so people could have differing interpretations - even after reading my background commentary, hopefully you can still read darker tones in it.

Deadlines Deadlines Deadlines

I feel like every few months I come back to this blog with more promises that I'm probably going to wind up breaking. Well, now I don't have pesky school as an excuse for not living up to said promises! If only that were a blessing.

As a fresh college graduate who aspires to be a published writer and novelist someday, it would do me good if I actually bothered getting my works out there in the world. Here's where that's going to start, hopefully. My biggest problem with writing is speed - I go slowly, or sometimes not at all. I'm very good at tricking myself into thinking that a paragraph is a hearty day's work, which would maybe be more forgivable if the next day wasn't just a re-tooling of that same paragraph. It takes me weeks to get our 10-15 pages of a 1st draft, and I won't even be revising and editing anything else. As you can see, this production line has some quirks in the system.

So now I'm doing something that no sane person would ever do to him/herself: deadlines. Not just with blogging, but in general with my writing. For instance, the short story I'm working on now must be completed by tomorrow, at any point before going to bed. Will the story be good? Probably not. But it'll be a completed 1st draft, which is really what I need right now. Here's my general schedule of deadlines:

• Every Friday: something creative to blog, be it poetry, short stories, scripts, etc. My expectation is that it'll vary between poetry and fiction on a bi-weekly basis. So poetry today (at least 3, any less requires a longer poem to be involved), fiction next Friday, then poetry again, etc. till the end of time.
• Every Friday: a Nobody's Rambler blogpost.
• Every Other Saturday: a completed 1st draft of a short story. 

It's complicated, but it works out nicely. Today, I post 3 poems and a post on Nobody's Rambler. Tomorrow, I finish a short story. Next week I split my time between starting a new story and editing a story to be ready to post on Friday. That gives me one week to be heavy on writing, then the next week to be heavy on editing. 

Of course, all of this works out perfectly while I'm jobless and have nothing to fill my days except writing, reading, and applying to jobs, but if I come into roadblocks when I do find a job, I'll either adjust accordingly or kick my ass into gear. Either way, shit will get done! 

So that's my typical back-on-track blogpost. Let's see if I have a need to make another post like this in a few months like usual!