Rules of VNTY'SJNKYRD

[I'll never attempt writing the essay My Theory of Poetry]

I'll never attempt writing the essay My Theory of Poetry.
Writing in haiku for instance: why will remain unexamined. I
have no theories, no philosophies, the subject/object debate bores
me, convenient since my ineptitude spoiled all grad term papers.
I write like writers I can't stand read, Lispector, Proust, Beckett, Kafka,
interrogators of the minute and banal frame by frame by frame
examination of subject object subject colonoscopies
driving our tiny brains' blind quest for clarity and comprehension.
As for poetry, establishing a second tablet to talk back
to first and stretching haiku to seventeen beat lines is new gimmick.

The Deaf Vocation of a Troll

Forgive me, I admit I'm baiting my troll but my baiting serves a greater...

I hoped to show through gratuitous use of  twenty-four syllable lines how trolls can be baited

then remembered: never count beats for trolls....

My troll no longer thinks bloggers A, B, C, D are me, E, F & G my sockpuppets.

My troll no longer thinks I'm as smart as he once did.
(UPDATE! today, December 14, 2014, in a comment at Tarzie's,
my troll said that A, B, C, D, E, F, and G are me!
thank you, Doxtrot, what a wonderful compliment!)

My troll's reading comprehension inadequacies relate directly to the clarity of my writing.

My troll is small, insists I am smaller. OK. 

My troll embodies every trait he excoriates me owning.

We once disagreed whose team sucks power's faucet hardest
(to resort to my troll's preferred homoerotic imagery).

I've conceded my shitty team sucks more.

He disagrees with my agreeing with him whose team sucks power's faucet hardest,

re: my troll's reading comprehension inadequacies.

My troll says I rape my daughter.

My troll says I'm a federal agent.

I am not me but I am them and me, says my troll. My troll

is me. My troll hates me precisely how my troll

hates my troll, just me more for mock of it.

My troll is a didactic mynah bird.

I repeat myself post after post, poem after poem.

My asshole troll despises me my acts of kindness,

calls it (I paraphrase) passive-aggressive misdirectionary assholosity.

My troll thinks verbal abuse is pedagogically beneficial.

My troll attempts hiatuses but always fails.

I threaten hiatuses but never try.

My troll attempts hiatuses but always fails.

I mailed him Gaddis, Pynchon, Harington, Elkin, countless CDs I can't recall.

My troll wrote the nicest, kindest, incredibly heartfelt comments on my blog ever.

My troll forced me to write this poem to get it neutralized by timestamp and excised by baiting.

I have doxxed myself. He doxxes me anyway.

I could but haven't and won't dox my troll.

My troll calls me Jeffy Weffy. The derision, it burns.

My troll objects to my theory I'm a poet.
My troll reads every poem I post.

My troll asserts I fuck my daughter.

It -  me and my daughter - started as rape, is now dull and unforced.

My troll says I have no daughter, am gay, my not-daughter my beard.

My troll says I rape my beard.

My troll denies he exists when challenged.

My troll won't honor his pseudonyms.

My troll hides behind anonymity when mocking others their pseudonyms.

My troll thinks this brave. My troll is weird.

Forgive me, I wonder if my troll is a miserable asshole or plays a miserable asshole or,

most likely, is a miserable asshole playing a miserable asshole.

I assume this is all still true, his daily comments and emails more same spew.
(UPDATE! see update above: still true.)
I delete unread his daily comments and emails,
he may be seeking peace and reconciliation for all I know
these past two, three years I haven't read a word he's written.
My troll will never seek peace and reconciliation.

Here's bait: it disturbs me I feel sorry for the miserable motherfucker.

[My First Response Is....]

My first response is to determine the rules to prevent
me from writing a poem about anything other than determining rules.

So (I just began a stanza with so, a word my daughter often uses
in her essay I just edited, an undergraduate rhetorical stutter
to lead the reader to the author's conclusion), I amended current
rules and shuttered one place, froze another, so a poem.

My mother's insistence my father stole her drivers license
and now denies stealing it is the essential narrative
driving my mother's eighty years in her mind. Written. Published.

New rules then: I will write what I want and not what I don't.
Tablet must be displayed on every VNTY'SGRVYRD post
regardless of typos if rest of poem is published, but not every
post, not all edits, and what I write but don't post doesn't need posting.
All tablets will be this tablet and replacement tablets have been ordered.

  

 

[A Blogfriend Tweetd]

A blogfriend tweetd:
his personal favorite blogpost?
a post minus close-reading sausage.
All he writes is close-reading sausage.
He makes better close-reading sausage than I could if I did.
I haven't made close-reading sausage since proctors demanded.
What I make is disqualified: I don't make close-reading sausage.
I just tweeted: Your Overlords have granted you
exceptional one day savings, you need eat cat food
if you fuck up Giftmas today. No response.
He may be better than me at not-sausage too.

I am working my way through this tray of pens

to cull the living from the dead.
I am stomping the dead pens' heads into paper to give the pen
one appeal for clemency. There will not be a second trial.
When ink this color survived I will not throw it out though I will not use it.
I would buy packages of Sarasa pens (you who knew I would use the phrase
Sarasa pens again because perennial biennial semiannual centennial)
when I had too many Sarasa pens. This dark green in a pack of multicolors:
blacks, grays, dark blues, blues, maroons, dark greens are harvested.
Here's a Pilot black pen, see, it's wetter, thicker,
I'm not surprised it survived.
(Here I need a font of fading to death blue ink....) This maroon
Sarasa, the color of VNTY'SGRVYRD in most posts but this one.
The hiring committee committed the predictable. Plus the maroon pen just died.
In a national search there was not one candidate I could imagine advocating for hire.
Six pens out of thirty still dispense ink. I will drain each of life before buying more.

I write about work very little at BLCKDGRD for the two primary reasons of self-protection and more self-protection. This is not to say I do not write about work. I am currently on a hiring committee for a senior executive position in the library I work in. I found myself writing in tablet about the candidates and the upcoming non-debate about the two - the people in general and the person in particular who decide have decided against one candidate if not for the other. I got 3/4ths way of a whole page of tablet writing about the process in a straightforward manner before the fuck this hit and I wrote what I wanted like I wanted to.

Caught myself writing
clear and concise and schtickless
sentences about work

as a creative
exercise, not, I tell me,
for publication.

Nothing demands pens'
tablets', counting to sevens'
return than writing

voluntarily
and for recreational
purposes re: work.

Clear, concise, schtickless
sentences, I am paid for
clear, concise, schtickless

sentences. I think
I can write better poetry
(excuse me the eight)

transliterating
workese into stanzas? Boss
talk into static?

Maybe. Tale to snail.
Rhyme cannot be far behind,
may never get here.

[Caught Myself Writing]

Caught myself writing
clear and concise and schtickless
sentences about work

as a creative
exercise, not, I tell me,
for publication.

Nothing demands pens'
tablets', counting to sevens'
return than writing

voluntarily
and for recreational
purposes re: work.

Clear, concise, schtickless
sentences, I am paid for
clear, concise, schtickless

sentences. I think
I can write better poetry
(excuse me the eight)

transliterating
workese into stanzas? Boss
talk into static?

Maybe. Tale to snail.
Rhyme cannot be far behind,
may never get here.

I am flattered a friend got the title existentially right when I didn't because of the limitations of anagrams on Blackdogred I blindly accepted as law.

Here: am I now obliged to fill out the entire whatever x whatever moleskin page not so much for photographing tablet (since all posts at LRDBGDCK must have a tablet stamp) but because the first two entries in the new moleskin were full page? But say a poem ends here, at a third of a page? This was not made clear in the previous issuance of LRDBGDCK rules.

This is true: LRDBGDCK, an anagram of Blackdogred, I named and stamped and posted posts on LRDBGDCK before I realized not everyone would remember much less process and insert in the proper order the missing vowels A, O, E. I considered Lordbagdeck but I wanted the lard over the title. I had just tweeted out my second and final ever tweet to LRDBGDCK directly or via BLCKDGRD and got Ed's reply, Lord Big Dick is a dandy website name.

It's perfect for fine metaphors abounding.

There are no good male names in English, but male names starting with L suck most. E's second worse.

It's example of how what first draft here need not be what tablet first draft needs to get its fucking ass written. It is not tablet's silence, it has been pen. LRDBGDCK is perfect for fine metaphors abounding.

My collected poems will be called Fine Metaphors Abounding: The Herding.

It's perfect for reminder of vanity of projects.

In thinking of the name, I considered reinventing VNTY'SGRVYRD. If I do - and I might, not because of Lord Big Dick but because enough with the fucking anagram of Blackdogred and because it gives me a new set of rules to anguish, and if I do go the to VNTY'SGRVYRD, and I might, I promise that I will create a permanent linkgadget hosting this post and add it to the bottom on the blog below my name, I will make the subtitle on blog header LRDBGDCK, and will keep the URL, the last not noble, just wtf. Oh look, I just did.

Of course it's about Lord Big Dick.

In fact, I suspect it already happened.

When it happens, do the rules transfer or do I have to type them out again on VNTY'SGRVYRD's letterhead and watermark?

I put this website up on my current personal email while BLCKDGRD is up on a different google account. The only reason I have the other account is BLCKDGRD. As of Saturday evening 11/15/14 I have no desire to BLCKDGRD.

This is a digital first.

I have every confidence this may or not pass but I will BLCKDGRD because what else?

This is two days in a row in tablet. It's been months, a year. I haven't wrote this way since....

THE RULES OF LRDBGDCK

(Imminently Amendable)

1. It is pronounced lard-BOG-deck.
2. All posts are never dead, are constantly and perpetually editable.
3. Edits on the same day do not need date updating but any edit of subsequent days need be dated at bottom of post (not the time-stamp).
4. I have no idea how to archive prior editions of post without choking on an endless feedback loop I daydream of fulfilling so I won't.
5. This is an attempt at a poem - I will be - be warned - sometimes explaining what I mean when not explaining what I mean, so all attempts this sentence attempts to get into poem I will try to avoid.
6. This is an attempt to force me back to tablets - all posts MUST begin in tablet.
7. All posts must be based on a tablet start.
8. All posts will be anchored by a photo of the tablet start.
9. Everything here must have started in tablet but not everything in tablet ends up here.
10. What I do if people start reading this is TBD.
11. If people do start reading this and want to comment they know where to find me elsewhere.
12. There will be no stat-counters.
13. Posts here are transferable elsewhere. Posts elsewhere are not transferable here.
14. I will keep blogspot in URL and not fuck with paid domain names.
15. This is not a diary, as in daily.
16. Rules are amendable. New rules - which is what I love to do best - always.
17. This is a mine. My name is Jeff Popovich.
18. It's pronounced lard-BOG-deck.

I am still afraid to write in tablet what I know no one will read unless I die suddenly, mysteriously, family members if not police scanning notebooks for clues. He disappeared? Why? His car, in perfect working condition on a beautiful sunny day in on dry roads spun out and plunged off the Maryland 17 bridge over the Potomac? Why? The distraught few who wonder if I'd wrote in my many notebooks what they didn't see coming, who wonder if they'd only read what I am afraid to write in the notebooks they are reading for clues they think could have prevented the sudden end they think they should have seen coming. Nothing I won't write in tablets has anything to do with dying, what I won't write about in tablets, let me repeat, has nothing to do with dying, at least by my deliberate hands. It's because I think I'm invincible that I know I will die when I least expect too and am least prepared for, files meant to be erased unerased, notebooks meant to be burned unburnt. The issue is when I can no longer edit when I would wish to still be editing. Rather than decide whether I will write what I am still afraid to write, now, in this new tablet, I am instead thinking about all that I have written that needs to be deleted and/or burned in the event of my sudden, mysterious, disappearance and/or death.

*

What compulsion requires me to see in as false a published format as here the published sentences I won't post there? Will it be required I write anything typed here in tablet first? Will it be mandated that first drafts in tablet be typed first time here if first draft in tablet's typos? Failure already. United the past two years I always wrote first in tablet, now I write - until the new moleskin for this new blog tablet - exclusively by keyboard. Will I edit only by keyboard? If I edit by keyboard will I only edit by keyboard, never transferring content back to paper once typed and - I'm editing as I go - edited? If I do edit do I ever abandon editing? What if there is a line, a passage, a set piece I want to remove but not delete, where do I house it? If I place the displaced into the moleskin and edit must I keyboard each new edit, especially if the edit is to remove what I am afraid to write in tablet, and if I am afraid to write it in tablet why do I type it here where the chance of being read is, by technology alone, more likely. Why did I delete the previous sentence then insist on my need to publish it before hiding it?

The Candidate for AUL for RICD

The candidate
for Associate
University
Librarian
for Research,
Instruction, &
Collection
Development,
has such a pig nose,
dramatic
autistic
twitches,
no one listens to
her
insightfully
concise
presentation
on consortia,
the sticky minuses
but ultimate pluses,
their
long-term
positive
budgetary
impacts.
The woman
on my right
sneaks glances
at my tablet
as I write this poem.
She's
wondering
if I'm writing:
the candidate
has a pig nose
& dramatic
autistic
twitches
because the candidate does, look.
The woman on my right
stares
at the candidate's
pig nose
& dramatic
autistic
twitches,
cocks her eyebrow
at the tablet
and smiles at me.
She will advocate
against this
candidate,
making claims
the presentation
she didn't hear
was absolutely
inadequate.

Started November 1, 2014 Through November 4, 2014, an Unabandoned Poem (Though I'll Not Date the Entries)

My tongue never runs out of ink.
My ideas have run out of tablet.

I knock on doors
knowing no one's home
I walk by houses
with porch lights on.

[The Committee]

The Committee
to End
Committees can't

make Saturday's
meeting
with Committee

to End Meetings.
Suggest
rescheduling

keeping in mind
the new
agenda can't

suggest ending
meetings
or committees.

[I Think I Will Be]

I think I will be
fired tomorrow. Wire's
Agfers of Kodeck.

My daughter and I
agreed on humanity's
clusterfuckedness

over fresh walleye
in Delaware Ohio
to Earthgirl's horror,

clusterfuckedness,
not fresh walleye. XTC's
One of the Millions.

I won't be fired
tomorrow. My boss insists
she will nominate

my competent ass
for staff recognition
despite my protests.

My daughter and I
agreed on humanity's
clusterfuckedness

to Earthgirl's horror
in Delaware Ohio
over fresh deep-fried

walleye, and my world
chimed in time like a hand-pulled
church's bell at three

in the morning, like
a last song in a sequence,
like The Morning Fog.

[I Thought a Poem Title: The Nowherer]

I thought a poem title: The Nowherer
Who Was Everywhere but Not Anywhere,
The Everywherer Who was Anywhere but Not Nowhere, 
The Nowherer Who Was Anywhere but Not Everywhere,
The Everywherer Who Was Nowhere but Never Anywhere, 
The Anywherer  Who Was Everywhere and Nowhere without Me
but Can Never Be Anywhere, Everywhere, Even Nowhere with Me,
then didn't need write the poem.

What I Am Thinking While Being Berated By a Grad Student Outraged There Is a Block on His Record for Willfully Not Returning a Recalled Book, and All Analogous Situations

Kill me. Sharpen
plastic Diet
Pepsi bottle
caps, octopus
sucker to hands
and fingers, slap
me - face, arms, throat -
cumulative
death by trickles,
minutes, hours,
semesters, years.

[I Daydream I Am]

I daydream I am
who I didn't when I could.

Backpacker,
digital mute,

knows different thistles
medicinal properties,

tells time
by fists and sun.

Finishes novels.
Dinners with family.

Unpublished
self-published

poet, not too
high a credit

score
not me.

[The List of Motherfuckers]

The list of motherfuckers
(note: don't blurt
motherfucking cops
in a small car
fat with loved ones)
cubes each heartbeat
farts and ends with me.

[The Cost of Almost Apprehending Anything]

The cost of almost apprehending anything
is ignoring almost everything else
and misapprehending the gibberish
that seeps in. John

Ashbery's birthday in a month, first
sentence a pedant's
prescription
for how not to read Ashbery

when plasma raindrops
the size of Ireland
thunder the sun. The world,
plagued by John Ashbery wannabes.

[Needs Saying]

Needs saying
these moods
scare me,
happen
more frequently,
longer wider deeper.
I
see dogs
beaten
cowering
in shelters
at
adopters,
assholes
gloating
over
lion
corpses,
motherfucking
me
buying
new digital camera
shooting
mountain laurels
I drove
new
Subaru
to shoot,
cops
clubbing heads
for
boss
secure
his cops
club heads
boss wants,
lets
cops
bash
any
head
as reward,
see
boss's
rival's
cops
retaliate
in kind
on same
orders
same
rewards,
these
moods
scare me,
I





know
condiment
is not cause.

[My Clock's]

My clock's
annual
rewind
this year's
intern
stethoscoped,
close eyes?
she asked.
I saw Fallsburg Pizza,
corner
79 & 586,
closed
just April
before
I had
the chance
to never
eat there.

[Nineteen Photos]

Nineteen photos
today's Sugarloaf
hike. I love hiking
alone, I missed my wife.
Nineteen photos,
it takes 38 seconds.
Were you taught
to alphabetically
type one through twenty,
Roman Numeral
21 up? Photos fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen,
rock pile & cairn
top of the mountain:
I drank water
shared yap & gorp
with husband and wife
combined age 167,
hike together
every weekend
60 years.
I love hiking alone.
I missed my wife.

[Knowing]

Knowing
everything’s
collapsed
diminishes
none of
my
collapse’s
consequences.
I brine
yesterday
in juice
of sneakers
just turned
putrid.

So

done
I screenshot
last word

[My Goal Is to Be]

My goal is to be

a too creepily wiry

seventy year old

healthy unto death

like the twenty-five year old

I pretend I am

[Of Course I Want Praise]

Of course I want praise
as weathervane Cassandra priest canary.
I think people want to hear what I think.
I am a normal monster.
Poets fish,
I chum maze carpets and labyrinth drywall.
That sentence reminds me edit.
There can be a second draft that doesn't obliterate the poem
Cassandra canary priest weathervane
fool say, my heresies guaranteed
by persistent flickerings.
Fishing, my lips have decades of scars.

[Loggers Trail to Pine Knob Trail to Browning]

Loggers Trail to Pine Knob Trail to Browning
Run Trail to Purdum Trail to Hard Cider
Trail Friday, Pine Grove Trail to West Piedmont
Trail to Browning Run Trail (a different
section than Friday) to Tobacco Farm
Trail to Timber Ridge Trail to car today.

Pines were dark green as they always are, bright
green popped on awakened oaks on ridge lines
like slopes of mountains in Bob Ross paintings,
and my first thought is a cartographer's.
I'm also trying to lose a quarter
of body mass, so poetry is third.

[Yesterday's Tsunami]

Yesterday's tsunami
billed as
worse since ever

Every day
taxes, clothes
donated estimated

Horned at stoplight
don't give
that addict quarters

Despite delete
commands
my cache saves

[It's Important]

It's important
I disclaim
I cannot write
how I write.

I write about
how I cannot
write how I
would write. This missed

rhyme: my subject
object subject
conceits, I don't
object subject

object, object
to being told
I should though my
object subject

object is suspect
at best, inconsistent always,
organized for incoherence,
susceptible to self-idolatry,
dress uniforms, broken
game plans, stanzas

as cairns to my
ability
to stack stones I
wish I wasn't,

pretending I
wish I wasn't,
fucking object
subject object.

[What Enemies Say Picking]

What enemies say picking
up plotting revenge

s'what winners're thinking
after victory, "orange"

rhyme reviewed in referees
hooded booths. While I'm inured

to your fetish for gotcha allusions
did you see what I just obscured?

[I've Never]

I've never a moving
damnation,
my cowardice not dependent
on locomotion.
Roads curve where they curved
before my incarceration
yards lots woods fields
altered on both sides.
Since I sing every
thing keyless
don't access
my word files
thumb drives
notebooks
when I'm dead.

[[I] [Lied] [Dog] [Died] [Sword] [Profess] [Thimbles] [No]]

I                 Lied              Dog             Sword           Profess             Thimbles           No
read           chords           brays            wound          clotting             sirens                song
high           sighed           clog              wound          watches            duet                   saves
dead          hordes           clays             cord              sparking           faucets              though

words         crows            kiln              red                traintracks        filter                  rare
rhymes       gulped           bakes           reed              marshes            solo                   few
birds           nose              film              read              deadlines          conquests         salve
lines           whelped        breaks          read              novels               empty               heart

beats           beats             beats            skies             beating              beating             beats
counts         whipped       framed         tear               splashing           shotclocks        stop
meets          sheets           cheats          eyes              bleating             fleeting             drown
mount         clipped         blamed         tear               fabric                escapes             save

choose         use               fuse              ruse              refuse                excuse              muse
lose              clues            lose              rues              refuse                profuse             lose

[It Comes Back to Where It Comes]

It comes back to where it comes
back. We are fenceless
dogs in shock collars
barking at shadows
on curbs. We have Gortex
shoes, salted meat, Coleman
stoves. Taught to pout
as tot, shout as teen, grumble
but never dissent
as adult. Trained to bless
griefs, doubt joys, trained
to work fields then leave fields
fallow, not fields fallow, me
fallow. Trained to think
my training my own idea.

Because I rattle as drone
louder than castanet I
imagine I have an audience.
Chase! Don’t
slobber. Slobber has never
been more cholera but
in every other narrative.
Babel can be [metaphor
smashed,type out and flash
publish first drafts, don't
worrying confounding
half-assed babble into
coherance] nothing
to do with slobber but everything.

[I Liked the Look of the Last One]

I liked the look of the last one
as I was writing it. It's exhibition
not regular season. The new
camera angles, insect-
eyed replays relay
memory, imprint
memory. It's the color
of the t-shirt, watermark
of logo. We're not wrong
in eating more, hating faster.
Slap-single switch-hitter helmet,
brand of ownership mendacity. Sniff.
We didn't kill them when we had the chance
and for that we will never forgive them.

[I Am Tablet-Blocked and My Pens Can Ink but Cannot Write]

I am tablet-blocked. My pens can ink but can't write.
I tried composing a poem in Word. Why I am tablet-blocked
and my pens ink but can't write is another poem.

I learned to not to compose in Word and cut/paste to Blogger.
Cut/pasting Word into Blogger fucks up the poem's
display. Line breaks are lost, stanzas collapse then reform

into (sometimes better poetry - which I can't use by the same
moral self-strictures that've tablet-blocked me, made my pens
ink but not write, though particulars vary) deformed

blocks and jagged single lines. The HTML coding is forty times
longer than the poem before the poem starts. Each line of the poem
has five times as much coding as line. If I remove one <br/ >

to delete a line or add one  <div /> to separate stanzas
Blogger's pink banner of Fuck You, You Idiot!
mocks me when I try to save the clusterfuck. But typing

versus calligraphy as salve? Workaround? Unfaithfulness?
Salvation? When I'm tablet-blocked and my pens can ink
but I can't write? Is working. I'm happier with what's typed

the past few months than what was scribbled in tablet the three
months preceding (though I know how much I adore
redefining old rules: it's how I invigorate my product line).

[No One Would Have Noticed Had I Not Showed Up]

No one would have noticed had I not showed up.
People were surprised and seemed pleased to see me.

Nods from heads swiveling in pre-service
reconnaissance, shouldered neighbors

heads turning, faces smiling, in recognition: I
don’t socialize with my co-workers, go to staff

meetings, holiday parties, though I’m cordial
when necessary and always friendly with many.

I rarely, as in today makes the fourth time
in twenty-five years, am in a room

with co-workers when we are not working.
The hired string quartet stopped, a priest

walked to the altar, the service started.
I was unashamedly tearful

when and where I’m trained to be tearful.
The chapel was beautiful, small and large

with stain-glassed sunlight. My friend helped me
when I needed him, I think he needed me
   

when I helped him. At the reception
people I haven’t seen in years,  people

I see every workday, sought me out,
me, I know it might not sound sincere,

I never imagined any of them seeking me out
as more than a colleague, me, dope, 
  
at a memorial service for a co-worker
who helped save my life, and me his.

[On the Road in Bad Weather Conditions]

On the road, in bad weather conditions,
team behind, a young quarterback panics
mouths the washed-up running-back
on the ESPN deaf scroll. I'm Martian in these places.
I have friends but I don't know citizens,
this woman telling strangers
about her husband, two lovers, six
kids. Guys suck she tells a table of guys.
There is truth in loathing benefactors'
questionable motives. Why should
we help the help, though if that's
the max consider the pits. Which
is to say I wouldn't be eating
the best pizza of my life
at dark dingy wainscotted Shamrocks
on Wisconsin 35, Superior,Wisconsin,
but for the recommendation
by the minimum-waged desk clerk
with meth-addict's acne
of the Duluth Minnesota Holiday Inn.