Trying Not To Blink: A Poetry Collection Read online

Trying Not To Blink

  A Poetry Collection

  by

  Eric Nixon

  Cover image and design by Eric Nixon.

  © 2013 by Eric Nixon

  ISBN: 9781301466221

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any process without first obtaining written permission from the author; the exception being a reviewer who may quote brief passages with appropriate credit.

  That being said, I’m pretty flexible with fully credited adaptations. Please contact me if you are considering adapting or remixing any works contained within this book.

  All situations depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination and may not match any reality known to otherwise exist elsewhere.

  Published by Eric Nixon.

  [email protected]

  EricNixon.net

  Dedication

  This collection is dedicated to my mother, Sharon Jandrow, who is awesomely awesome.

  Thank you! I love and appreciate you.

  Author’s Forward

  Earlier in my life (mostly in the early-to-mid 2000s), I wrote a lot of poetry. I even published a collection of my favorites called Anything but Dreams. In 2005 I found my poetry levels exhausted, and turned my attention to writing novels. Whenever I thought about my poetry, I mentally shrugged and thought, “It was just something I did at one point in my life. It got me through a tough spot, I’m thankful for it, but I’m past that now.”

  In early August of 2011, I received an email from the nice folks at Prairie Home Productions saying that Garrison Keillor wanted to read my poem, “Riding The Red Line,” on his public radio program, The Writer’s Almanac. All they needed was my permission, my social security number, and an address to send a check to.

  I read that email, and re-read it (a few times). My first thought was, “No way. This is a total scam from some scammy scammer trying to get my social security number.” I did some research online and later thought, “Hm. Their story seems to check out.”

  I also realized that the chances a scammy scammer-type person would know the name of a specific poem from my collection, Anything but Dreams was infinitesimally small. That’s when it hit me, “Oh my God, Garrison Keillor wants to read my poem on the radio!” I quickly wrote back and gave them my information and approval to use the poem.

  It aired a few weeks later on my wife’s birthday, which was an extra special treat. Hearing Garrison’s distinctive voice read something I wrote (on public radio with millions of people listening) impacted me greatly forced me to question why I stopped writing poetry so many years before.

  A month or so later, I was at the Emily Dickinson Museum doing research and getting inspiration for my novel, Emily Dickinson, Superhero – Vol. 1. While standing in Emily’s room, I stared at the little corner where she wrote the majority of her poetry and ended up reflecting again on my own. On the way home, I made the decision to start poeting again.

  What you are holding is the summation of my poetic observances for 2012. It includes all 160 poems, presented in the order in which they were written. They cover a little bit of everything from huge happiness to a near-death experience, and everything in-between.

  Thank you for choosing to spend time with my words. I greatly appreciate it.

  Eric

  January, 2013

  Table of Contents

  January

  December 31

  Craving Communication

  From Me To You

  Lottery

  Natural Pointillism

  Trying Not To Blink

  A Word Of Advice

  Exception To The Rule

  Big Beautiful Flakes Falling

  Perpetual March

  February

  Negativity

  It’s Sorted Sometime Later

  Buddy

  Everything Grows

  Followers

  Microscope

  Small Talk

  Literary Inadequacy

  Returning To The Past

  Chained Down

  Too Many Twos

  March

  Slips Like Socks

  A Night Brighter With Snow

  Better In Here Than Out There

  When I Was Younger

  The Edge Of Mean

  Have A Great Day

  Actually, Roman

  Focused

  Mid-Morning On A Sunday

  Killed Him With Kindness

  April

  Thanks To Facebook

  Ranting Old Man

  Spending Time

  Break

  Whimmy

  Assumptions of Belief

  Comments Section

  Members Only

  Released From the Cerebral

  The Dachshund Emerged

  Lack of Permanence

  Subpar

  Hypocriting

  Lazy Tumble

  Shoe-Deep In A Puddle

  May

  Someone Else’s Desk

  Photo From The Future

  Whose Benefit

  Five Years

  940 Saturdays

  Lacquered Dreams

  Words Overheard

  Welcoming

  June

  Ethan Allen Express

  Reel Mower

  Toys On A String

  July

  Night Lights

  The Morning Ritual

  Softer and Prettier

  Caught In The Middle

  Drowned

  Night-Lights

  I’m Sitting A Little Higher In My Seat This Morning

  I Killed Emily Dickinson

  Sunkist Sun

  August

  Shoulder The Stream

  Whoopie Pie

  Toast Ghost

  That Is Enough

  Sleep Please Take

  Wading Through The Nonsense

  Flip The Switch Of Autumn

  The Unkind Of Person

  Defined By The Decade

  Watched A Windy Gust

  September

  Enlightenment

  Cool, Green, And Blue

  Polarized

  Jump In A Lake

  Who We Are

  Pulled Into Infinity

  Doodles And The Everworse

  Our Emotional Selves

  Meaning Beyond The Mundane

  Rural Ballet

  Old Man With A Time Machine

  Throwing Godrays

  Seismograph

  Tail Up With Swagger

  Before Shot

  Schism

  After Dinner Walk

  Saved And Exited

  October

  Glom

  Off The Desk Entirely

  The Bridge In My Wake

  Value Tradeoff

  Haunted Hayride

  Scientists Call It Instinct

  One Letter

  Through The Vent

  The Changing Face Of Friendship

  Seasonal Exposure

  A Pointed Reminder

  Releasing Emily

  What Fear Wrought

  Devolving Culture

  Crinkly Sweep Sweep

  November

  The Wind Raged On

  Letting The Outsider In

  First Night Of Standard Time

  Living Between The Xs

  Factories

  Consumption Is A Hungry Thing

  Notion In Mind

  The Problem

  Disasters Are Wonderful

  Consumer

  There Will Be Duplicates

  The Futuristic S
ight

  Getting The Word Out

  Reading Someone Else’s Poetry

  Aquatic Intentions

  White Jeep

  The Connection

  Corn Snow

  An Inattentive Oncomer

  The Bulk Of Humanity’s Preoccupations

  Contradictions

  Lazy Flakes

  Content Crazy

  Up Down

  Forget Them Entirely

  A Delayed Present

  December

  Center Illumination

  Don A Softer Pant

  A Branch Apart

  Momentum

  Certain Keys Are Cleaner

  Keeps Us In

  Post Office Parking Lot

  Beauty

  Spaces

  Trying To Type Quickly, Quietly

  Peaking In The Distance

  All You Have Is Now

  First On The Scene

  That Same Song Finds Me

  The Poet King Of Amherst

  So Essential

  Let Down By Something, By Nothing

  Revive My Interest

  The Smell Of Tradition

  One Side Knows

  Dead-Ends And Other Places

  Light Fluff

  Swirly Blur

  Re-Living The Moment

  Ending It

  JANUARY

  December 31

  Today is

  The last, final, day

  Nothing left to do

  Nowhere else to go

  For the year ends here

  Starting tomorrow

  2011 will seem old and dated

  But when I think of tomorrow

  January is

  Open, white, and wide

  Like a winter’s field

  Spreading beyond the hills of February

  Into the warmer days beyond

  This year’s calendar is used up

  Dark and ending

  If I look, think, back

  It’s brighter behind

  But I never look that way

  Only down at the square

  I’m standing on today

  And the sidewalk-like cubes

  Spreading ahead of me

  In the bright light

  Of all of the tomorrows

  Making up my future

  January 1, 2012

  Benson, Vermont

  Craving Communication

  I check and refresh

  My thumbs hovering

  Ready to strike

  The spinny stops

  The thumbs relax

  I have nothing

  No emails

  No texts

  No tweets

  No likes

  Nothing.

  I’m at work and bored

  Craving communication

  Social media’s the placenta

  With the Wi-Fi umbilical

  And I’m starving by the minute

  Minutes pass

  The screen dims

  A finger flicks out

  And refreshes again

  Maybe there’s something now…

  January 3, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  From Me To You

  At first I thought

  All poetry had to

  Conform to

  A certain length

  A certain rhyme

  A certain scheme

  A certain style

  But now I know

  That’s not true

  Sometimes it’s just

  A free-flow of ideas

  From me to you

  January 3, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  Lottery

  The right place

  At the right time

  One hundred million for me

  The wrong place

  The right time

  One hundred million

  For someone else

  I look at the results and frown

  In my heart I know I’m the true winner

  I watch as they walk away,

  The winner with the crown

  Maybe soon

  I’ll finally know

  What it’s like

  To stand upon that stage

  January 3, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  Natural Pointillism

  Opposite of ink

  The white dots fall

  And dot the ground

  Invisible at first

  Give it time and watch

  Dots join dots

  And begin to build

  What started as

  Natural pointillism

  Dots on a brown canvas

  Has lovingly layered

  As the clouds tries their best

  To cover the ugliness

  We’ve strewn carelessly

  Across the land

  January 12, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  Watching the first snowfall of 2012 as it covers up the crap out my window at work.

  Trying Not To Blink

  The last twenty years have zipped by

  Quicker than the blink of an eye

  When I think of how fast it’s gone

  And how much more I want to get done

  I’ve made up my mind

  I’m trying not to blink

  In an effort to grab ahold of the seconds

  In an experiment that won’t succeed

  Locked in a staring contest with time

  Time’s got all the time it needs

  January 12, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  Thinking about how time slips by quicker than anything else I can think of.

  A Word of Advice

  The once hardy

  And plentiful

  New Englander

  Has been replaced

  By a thin-skinned sort

  Who complains about the weather

  A half-inch of snow falls down

  My social media feeds fill up

  With the angry rants

  Critical complaints

  And those who bemoan

  The terrible conditions

  They are forced to endure

  No matter the weather

  They’re out en mass

  Letting you know they’re

  Unhappy, miserable, and suffering

  As for me, I appreciate the variation

  That each day brings

  To the constant complainers

  I offer this single word of advice:

  Move.

  January 12, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  It seems like every single time it snows, rains, is sunny, chilly, windy, pleasant, or whatever, someone on Facebook or Twitter is complaining about the weather.

  Exception To The Rule

  It seems today

  No mater what the reason

  No matter the situation

  Each and every person

  Is an exception

  It’s like they think

  “Hours, rules, policies –

  None of that applies to me!”

  Decades of selfishness

  And self-entitlement

  Have left a stain

  That will take

  Generations to wash away

  January 12, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  It doesn’t matter if my window at work is closed, people still pound on it, half an hour after closing time, demanding service. It’s merely annoying now, but it was nearly unbearable when I used to be a hotel manager. For most people it’s like, no rule applies to anyone, ever.

  Big Beautiful Flakes Falling

  At my office window

  Standing, staring, wanting

  To be out there among the

  Big beautiful flakes falling

  Face up, feeling the gentle sting

  Of the snow as the complexly-shaped

  Ice crystals hit
my skin and melt

  Arms outstretched, watching the

  Buildup of snow extend along the length

  The phone rings and returns my mind inside

  Reluctantly, I turn my back on nature

  Calling to me from out there

  January 12, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  Me. Today. At work.

  Perpetual March

  Deep in the midst of January

  Steeped in another winter that wasn’t

  Looking out of the window

  At the sporadic patches of ice

  Interspersed with grass and dirt

  Wondering where’s the snow

  As I swap my winter coat

  For a lighter one

  Feeling the 50

  Of the thermometer

  Annoyed at the

  Perpetual March

  That has usurped the season

  January 31, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  FEBRUARY

  Negativity

  Familiarity breeds contempt

  Negativity is content

  Being created by you

  Repetition strengthens

  And cements the foundation

  You mind’s focus

  Makes it grow

  To the point where

  It’s all you know

  February 1, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  I used to live in a small city where there was an overwhelming oppressive negativity that hung thick in the air like a choking humidity. Every once in a while I go to that area’s newspaper’s website, where negativity and hatred flow like words in the comment section, and it makes me thankful I left it behind.

  It’s Sorted Sometime Later

  At work and watching

  The custodian emptying

  Trash and recycling

  Into the same bag

  Do we recycle or don’t we?

  I always assumed we did

  I secretly suspect

  It’s sorted sometime later

  But I kinda doubt it

  Maybe they’re lazy

  Maybe it’s intentional

  Making us all into liars

  When it comes to our

  Environmental claims

  Boasted on our website

  I think

  “It’s not my problem,”

  Shrug,

  And get back to work

  February 3, 2012

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  Observances at work and I can’t remain silent any longer.

  Buddy

  The people you don’t,