Novel Update

As I previously wrote, November is National Novel Month.

I have been working on my first novel, Stiletto, and am proud to say that I surpassed the 50k word contest requirements for ‘winning’ NaNoWriMo.

I wish I could say that I’m done with it, but I feel I have at least 20k words left.  Plus furious editing throughout December.  I will, I hope, be finished by the New Year.

I can’t really say anything that hasn’t been said about writing—the challenges, the rewards, etc—but writing my own book has always been a dream of mine.

Alright enough of the gooey sh—showing of emotion.

Update: I also was lucky enough to get a cool endorsement.  More later.

No Furnace Winter: a contest

So I’m going to do my best to not use my heater this winter thus, No Furnace Winter.

The rules are simple.  Don’t turn on your furnace unless there is a chance of pipes freezing and you’ve done everything in your power to keep that from happening which includes, but is not limited too:

• burning firewood strategically
• mooching off neighbor’s residual heat (apartments only)
• opening ovens after baking
• wearing extra layers
• windows uncovered during the day, covered at night
• keeping chimney flue closed
• not running exhaust fan when cooking
• drinking lots of coffee

My first goal is to get to January 1 without turning on the heat.  My Obama goal is to not turn it on until Groundhog Day, Feb 2. According to the average, this will save me nearly $1000.  Who’s with me?

Current apartment temp? 58 F.

Indian Summer

When popes canonize saints they
first require a miracle like a
corpse in a crypt that does not
rot, and believers buy relics

I had believers once, though
no saint, pupils, maligned
by most, I advised, in some way
but I left the lectern today

and some took pity, felt loss, others delight
as I darkened the room, and vanished from sight

Coming in December: 25 Sonnets

From December 1 – Christmas Day, I will be posting one sonnet a day. Topics will run the gamut but I hope they will be a decent read and beneficial exercise for me.  Feel free to contribute, I’d love to post any sonnet you might have written.

Many contemporary poets tend to shun the form but I find that it requires a certain discipline and, if manipulated well, can have redeeming qualities even for the modern reader.

If you’re interested, email me. ctbeggs@gmail.com

When I died, you whispered

When I died, you whispered to me a
lullaby that I told you once, quite a time ago,
and yet you recited it, even the pauses
I think you even breathed as I did though
your lips weren’t as sore, your skin
much more fair, like the morning, untouched
I lied there, something came, and pressed
on my chest, it smiled, and I expired

When I died, you whispered to me
and said I was peaceful

National Novel Writing Month

It’s National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo.

Everyone is encouraged to write their first or subsequent novel in November.  You can learn more here.  Minimum contest length is 50k words, which averages to just a little over 1,600 words a day.

My novel is called Stiletto and it is not about shoes.  Anyways, I will be focusing much of my attention on that work for the month of November.  I’m sure there will be poems here and there.

Write with me.

Thoughts on Poetry and its Lack of Popularity and Why People Should Learn to Read It

Some say there is no audience
for poetry but I contend
that if they were taught to read
their enlightenment would lend
a desire to dance with the form
and the problems we raise
to prominent heights by means
of language, where reality grays
and flies in the face of its owners
when an image emerges from every line
more kaleido- less, tele- in scope
we paint the problem in your mind

This Town

is an inferior town of broken
people with sunken faces
and perforated dreams that they
pawned for love or what they presumed
to be that damned thing. When lights,
like a municipal galaxy, ellipse the
river-rutted city, ladies and gents
shuffle like cattle through corporate
slaughterhouses and sip their appletinis
as the blade severs their heads that roll
down the expressway like tumbleweed
towards their suburban safe houses as if
they were drawn by magnets, like the strip
on their third Visa, do you have this
in another color? I can order it, it’s no
bother. If pills didn’t keep us alive we
would not have survived the Cold War
or y2K, such bitter disasters of yesterday

To Arms

In churches we hear men wail,
when the banks fail,

or icons crumble like the Sphinx, we burn effigies
of our enemies,

and the ash swirls skyward, like prayers and the sparks
flare like young love before a draft, you
were selected to serve, by providence
It seems, and the reverend agrees,
fall into formation and sail the seas.
and when you die, commend your spirit
to the sky, as you fall like revenue.

Another Nosferatu

Vampires, the zeitgeist of our undying age
we drain veins to see the inhuman stage

romance with the living, at least, an  attempt
to assimilate, intolerant, we hold in contempt

strange men with fangs, dripping like stalactites
plunged through necklines, broads read their Last Rites

under pestilent moon, yellow like plasma or urine
the waste of a wary, unfortunate constellation

no longer a spectacle to the American eye
when Edward and Eric relentlessly vie

for our numbered days, a vapor some say
unless we join the immortal in some evil way