Category Archives: determination

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16 November, 2012

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determination, poetry, writing

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Nomads for Change

Homeless Homonym
JCD Kerwin

My heart beats in another shade of red and
in some other dimension I think
I’m sipping coffee
as a blonde
with a grin as wide
and bottomless
as the mug I must be holding.

Music notes
make my eardrums explode
here.
Over there
maybe they make
me see
symphonies of color.

Over there maybe the mess of mush
slopping against the white hard clay
holding my eyes in place
is where I can become
a permanent fixture
in words I put to paper.

put
words
to
paper.

Magic marker paper maker.

I’m the Maker
of legends and dimensions and
somewhere else I think I might
be someone who is free.

I grow nauseous at the sight
of robots.
I’m not sure they know
they’re blinking just the same
as each other.

I want to vomit inside out
and disappear in music notes
made into
India Ink.

Story Time can become Reality TV
for me.
I’d like to be
that Reality TV star.

Nov., 2012

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12 November, 2012

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determination, poetry, spoken word, storyteller, writing

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Plastic Shields and Wooden Swords

On the Burning Away
JCD Kerwin

A siren screams and
radiates back the screen
of my black and white, black static
cellophane, underwater,
claustrophobic world.
I never see,
never see,
I never ever see kaleidoscope colors,
never a light-bright cornucopia of
my ten-year-old, happy-go-lucky dreams.
Those stupid fucking reveries
blew up in brimstone fire when
I learned there’s no such thing as Faraway
and you can’t sew stars into your pockets.

[The fruit of a thousand apple trees would
taste better if the snake would nicely mention
the seeds are made of cyanide.
Instead my eyes go wide
as I lean back and hack
for air while I wait to breathe again.]

It all fades together in the same old
coffee-drenched, psychotic robotic days.
The air smells like burning plastic and
we’re all electric blinking lights trying so damn hard
to make math problems into Green jobs because
no one gives a shit about paper anymore.

Libraries are just graveyards for all the little children’s dreams.

When I grow up I’ll keep a junkyard
so I can save out-of-date non-collectibles
that everyone’s forgotten and
everyone thinks are just myths
and legends of a time that never was.
(I’ll keep books in my basement and
become a relic just like them.)

I’ll wrap myself in armor
and scream stories at computer screens
and make-believe
the people of the world can hear me when I say
I’m saving them…
I’m saving them…
I just want to save you.

Oct., 2012

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18 September, 2012

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determination, poetry, spoken word, writing

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Bring a Jacket When You Leave

I’ve moved a lot of my stuff off this online art community. I do enjoy lots of the art and some rather cool people on there, but as a whole, I guess I never felt it was much of a “community” (more like a middle school). I really never thought it was very beneficial in terms of helping one grow as an artist, either. Hell, the best critiques I ever got weren’t even when I was in college, which is where I should have gotten them. I–

I digress.

Here’s a poem. But first, some background: M has blue eyes, thus the “Blue.” Also, I’m a painter. “Majored” in it as well as writing  in high school. There you go. Now go have fun. Remember to zip up your jacket. It’s cold outside.

Knickamickarickatee
J.C.D. Kerwin

[The artist hasn’t slept in days.]

I’m stuck inside my head again,
It’s nice to be back insane
and kicking.

I can’t escape the lyrics
I keep overplaying in my mind.
They keep the blood dripping from
my forehead and the acid from
burning down my spine.

[Keeps me on my toes, you know.]

I twitch explosions in my sleep
when the nightmares come calling
and my nails start clawing
at skin that sticks like film
to bone.

I’ve been smoking pencils
like they’ve got nicotine
but nothing’s really
like it seems.
(Just like these poems
I think are gold but
are really chicken shit on paper.)

I splutter, scribble
half-written pieces of
abstract paintings I can’t even get
myself to buck up and paint
anymore.
I stomp them to pieces
on the floor.

[They were fun, once upon a turpen-time.]

I got hiccups in my head,
so I cough blood onto paper
like Pollock stains
hoping the word ink pains
splatter something better
than these level five migraines
I can’t escape.

I got my squirt guns blazing,
so I sit here waiting
for the inkblooddrops to start forming
words to make sense of worlds
I’m avoiding
with coffee cups and headphones
every bullshit droning day.

Time to give it a rest with the bullshit,
fairytalehero reason that’s not pleasing
to anyone, no one,
anymore.

Maybe these dirty ketchup stains
only look good on broken refrigerators
with crying compressors
after all.

[I spell sauve moi in the tomato sludge.]

Nov., 2011
Revised September 2015

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24 June, 2012

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determination, poetry, spoken word, writing

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JUNK-A-TRUNK

JUNK-A-TRUNK
J.C.D. Kerwin

Now there I go again
falling over my toes and
make-believing like I’m dreaming
I’m not really staring at the carpet.
I’ve got a smug little smile on my face
like I’m someone different than
who I see in mirrors.
(I look a little thinner but
I’m still the asshole who can’t
turn pencil sticks to cigarettes.)

I hold out my finger and pretend to pull the trigger.

Got headphones on my ears because
when I got the swagger
I think I’m something better, as if
the pen flicks I carve in paper
will stick around like cave paintings.

I watch them fade like electrical storms in the desert.

I got a twinkle in my eye
like I can see through walls but
I’m no superman and kryptonite
is my breakfast of champs.
(Can’t even spread my cape and fly right;
I just fall like a frown.)

[I dream the dreamy hero tales but
each time I’m named the winner,
the big bad wolf comes howling through the picture,
and my world comes crashing down like I’m bad
and Little Red’s got a shotgun full of tacks.]

Skip-trip over my shoelaces
and suck down runny eggs
while I contemplate my fate today.
Another hardcore meeting while I discover
which way I’ll fade away and how
I’ll kick my feet to keep my head above the water.

In my younger days I ran with Mario and Link.

I drink black coffee from my irises
‘cause I stay up late and walk, slow-motion
through the places I created in my mind.
(I’d lay out the welcome mat but
you wouldn’t find the way through jungles
without a machete and a map.)

I’m shooting for the Somewhereland I won’t ever find…

Now there I go again
falling over my toes and
make-believing, make-believing, make-believing
like I’m dreaming that I’m dreaming—

PS, post this:
I imagine I crush the world
when I clench my fists;
I set the world on fire
when I recite this script.

May, 2012

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20 June, 2012

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determination, fiction, writing

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Head, Meet Wall.

If you’re new here, I want to be a fiction novelist. To get my “foot in the door,” I’ve been submitting short stories and prose to magazines and journals while I’m finishing up my current mss.

I recently sent one to a “big name” sci-fi mags on my list and my story just got rejected. (Whatever. Try another one.) But the way it was rejected is probably one of my top favorites. It just tickles my funny bone! …So much that I want to scream and punch a clown.

The mag lost the response email to me. I knew they had responded because I checked their URL for the status of my story. And it said they had responded. So I had to go ask them for my response. And they were all nice about it. So of course that little annoying voice Hope (that asshole) said “See? They wouldn’t be that nice if you just got rejected…”

But I got the letter anyway and I felt stupid for getting all hopeful because I’m so damn used to rejection letters that I should have just seen it coming. (But the funny thing is, no matter how much you see them coming, rejection letters never get easier to receive…)

Let me recap that whole thing for you: I had to ask for my rejection letter.

It doesn’t get any more stab-you-in-the-heart-kick-you-when-you’re-down than that. Well, yeah it does, but I’ll just wait to write about that one. ‘Cause I’m sure that’s coming. Ha.

Keep on the sunny side, kids. Taste the rainbow. And all that crap. The end.

EDIT:

AND I just got a brand new rejection letter. (I can’t even keep count anymore!)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

This is awesome.

No it’s not.

But if I don’t keep laughing, I might start screaming. Or crying. Or punching cute, fuzzy things.

…Well, no, I wouldn’t, really. I’d probably hug them in a corner while listening to Fair to Midland on repeat. Yeah.