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All about ken2shoes

Joined:	Apr 09, 2006
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Location:	Grafton, MA
Last visit:	Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (11:05:05)
My Occupation:	IT Consultant for Sepracor
Interests:	Other than poetry - scrabble, collage, walks for exercise - for more about me read my blog 'About Ken2Shoes'
Signature:	Be kind Let the universe do the rest
Biography:	I have updated my avatar to show my wedding picture, with my lovely wife Jan. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, graduated from the University of Dayton. I worked most of my life in IT, with Oracle databases. (Exciting, huh!). I will say that it has been both rewarding and very stressful! I have two children and five grandkids, all in Cincinnati.

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Main	Ken2shoes's Blog	Displaying 5 results per page
The following is a list of Ken2shoes's blog entries, in reverse order

Tuesday, May 03, 2011 (11:33:00) - The Death of bin Laden
Remembering September 11 After it happened, I attended a church service where sisters and brothers I had never met wrapped the sermon in a blanket of ‘amens’. We all joined hands and sang different races different faiths, singing...we shall overcome some day. In war rooms and inside caves A different song was being sung - the beating of the drums all the music of all the earth silenced by a single note - the endless beating of the drums.
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Friday, April 22, 2011 (16:17:36) - The Crash
There is a cat on the other side of this door. I cannot hear her, but I know she is there. I need to go upstairs, to the bathroom, and I do not want this cat in the basement. Yesterday, she slithered into a storage area, and it took forever to get her out. Then she pried open the folding doors to where the heater is, and I was afraid she would get burned in there, or maybe cause a fire. Then she scooted behind the reclining couch, and I have read that cats can get squashed inside these things. I’m done with this. Her mission is to get into the basement, mine is to keep her out. My wife is shouting instructions at me, “Open the door, ever so slightly, then use your knee to keep the cat out. That should give you just enough time to close the door. Don’t worry,” she laughs, “Persian cats aren’t very bright.” Ha, ha, I am thinking. This not-so-bright cat has gotten the better of me two other times. It’s not going to happen today, I vow, as I open the door just enough to watch her fly through my legs, into the basement. “It didn’t work,” I shout upstairs. “You have to block it with your knee!” she shouts, laughing. “I did that…whatever…never mind.” Fortunately I have been proactive, and closed the doors to the storage area, to the heater room, and to everywhere else in the basement that animal could go. Upstairs, now, I am reassuring my wife “What possible harm can that cat do now?” That’s when I hear it, I think. Right then.
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Thursday, April 14, 2011 (19:27:00) - Publishing Your Poetry
You are a poet, you want to have your work published, right? Well, I don’t and I will now try to explain why. First of all, I confess that I have never been paid a dime for any of my work. I had one haiku published in a journal 20 years ago – that’s it. I know some of you have been published, some in prestigious journals. I applaud you. In several cases, though, I have seen excellent poets stop posting their poems here. My suspicion is that they want to publish their poetry somewhere that they can be paid for it, rather than here. I have no argument with that, except that it deprives me of the opportunity to read their work - and really doesn’t make a lot of sense. If that’s the way you are thinking, please stick with me and read on. No poet is ever going to make enough money to pay the bills by writing poetry. Only a very few poets are able to do that, and they are all famous. So forget about money, unless it turns you on to get a small check now and then. Some people think that if they are not paid for their work, it has no value. I can’t reach those people, so if you are in that camp, you may as well stop reading this now. As a poet, what I need and desire are readers, people to appreciate and comment on my work. Most of the readers of poetry today are poets themselves. That is the reality. The average non-poet could care less about poetry. Whether you publish in a journal, in a book, or at GotPoetry.com, your audience is other poets. Like me, you may have a circle of friends and family who enjoy your poetry. Perhaps you go to poetry readings, or give readings yourself. I wonder, though, if there is any way to reach a larger audience of readers than to post your poetry right here, on GotPoetry. If you publish a poem in a journal or even in a book, you will never know who reads it. Here at GotPoetry, you have instant access to thousands of readers, who can and do give you feedback. To me, that is an ideal situation for any poet to be in. So, think about it, that’s all I would like to say.
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Monday, April 11, 2011 (12:59:53) - Project Bread - Hunger Walk
Each year my wife and I participate in this hunger walk: Hunger Walk Please consider contributing, if so moved. thanks.
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Sunday, December 26, 2010 (16:22:00) - NYC subway service ads replace poetry, literature
The photo in today's paper shows a woman reading "Ode to Autumn" while riding in a New York City subway car. The caption says "The MTA is replacing its literary placards - quotes from thinkers such as Kafka, Keats, Dante and Galileo - with MTA promos." The program was called Train of Thought, and was one of the truly inspired ideas I have ever heard of. Why is it being cancelled? According to the article, the agency that runs city subways and public buses "needs to communicate with our customers about what we've done in the past year to improve the system." Propaganda, in other words. Here are just a couple of lines from a poem that will be removed: Within me, the heart has taken fire like a candle My body, whirling, is a lighthouse illuminated by your image This will be replaced by something like: "The MTA, improving Nonstop." And we wonder what is wrong with us.
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Poetry

If Prufrock were a Poet

I have measured my words
measured them all
made a thousand visions and revisions
and worn new metaphors old

so how could I begin
to open what I sent
all the works and days of my hands
and all my hopes

promptly returned
in a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Was it worth it, after all,
after searching the depths of silent seas
for an idea or an image that would please
someone, anyone, save you and me,
after clawing the barren ocean floor

- I should have been a pair of ragged claws
that cannot hold a pen -

Was it then worth it, after all,
after the lived-for letter I just now read
the form letter that, in essence, said,
“That wasn’t what we meant at all. That wasn’t it,
at all.”

Now as I sit here scratching my head,
( we may yet be published -
when we’re dead)
ever the fool, I pick up my pen
and continue writing, with a sigh,
poems that no one may ever read,
no one, that is, except you and I.

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ken2shoes's Last 12 Poems [ All \| Favorites ]
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