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 Sig
ht
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,