A Thing for Words has moved ~ Please follow me to my new Home!

I have moved A Thing for Words to its new Wordpress home here: http://athingforwordsjahesch.wordpress.com/

I hope all of you followers of the old blog will follow me there. You've made Joe Hesch believe he's a poet. I'd like to show that you were right.

Our First Anniversary -- Hello, Goobye, and Hello Again

This weekend marks my one year anniversary as a blogger. More accurately, as a blogging poet and writer. It has been one of the most remarkable and personally fulfilling years of my life.

At the beginning of February, 2011, at the suggestion of a new online friend, the terrific German poet Claudia Schoenfeld, I built this blog -- A Thing for Words -- to share my poetry. One of the reasons I needed the blog was to join the fun and collegiality of Claudia's and her friends at the One Stop Poetry site. Because of One Stop's One Shot Wednesday feature, I was writing at least a poem a week to share with other poets around the world.

And I was making new friends, some of whom I will cherish for the rest of my days. You know who you are. I tell you that all the time.

With the unfortunate demise of One Stop, I was astonished when Claudia asked if I would be willing to become a staffer with a new online poetry site/community, dVerse Poets Pub. That honor brought even more of you to the blog, and I met more and more of you.

And now it's been a year of blogging my guts out and I am ready for the next moves -- hopefully finding a publisher interested in the poetic impressions of a reawakened man and artist (that's the hard one) and moving A Thing for Words to a new blog platform and design.

So here are two bits of news you might use. One, I never really expected to be a poet. In fact, I didn't want to be one. But once I began, I found poetry fulfilled my need to truly express myself as a man and artist, and it made me feel special. You made me feel special. I still write my short stories, as you have found on these pages, but sometimes it's not so easy. So I write poems, some good, some not so good. But I write them, which is the most important thing, right?

The other bit of news is that you can find A Thing for Words at its new Wordpress home here: http://athingforwordsjahesch.wordpress.com/

I hope all of you followers of the old blog will follow me there. You've made Joe Hesch believe he's a poet. I'd like to show that you were right. Thanks for a year of great thrills and friendship. Bless you all!

A Sweetheart of an Award

Depending on how deeply you drill into the definition in your German:English dictionary, the word liebster, means dearest  or sweetheart. Recently, my dear/dearer/dearest friend, the sweet-heart British poet Louise Hastings, presented me with a Liebster Blog Award.  Louise best fits that German translation among all the folks I’ve met in my one year out here in the digital wilderness. I unabashedly love this darling girl to bits!

In accepting this award, along with the new skill of gracious acceptance Louise is trying to teach me--rather than my native incredulity--I must agree to:

1. Show my thanks to the blogger who gave me the award by linking back to them. (Every day, and exponentially here.) Louise’s blog, Wings Over Waters, is must-read stuff each and every day if you wish to go places you’ve never been or places you forgot you had.

2. Reveal my top 5 picks for the award and let them know I have selected them as I have been selected. (Love these folks and their blogs. Sorted and complete.)

3. Post the award on my blog. (Obviously--you're reading this.)

4. According to Louise, bask in the love from the most supportive people in the Blogosphere. (Without you, there is no Poet Guy me!)

5. And, finally – have fun and spread the karma! (Cool, I'm a giver at heart. Hey! I am!)

Since I can’t pick Louise and Wings Over Waters, here are my five picks:

Beth Winter (Twitter handle: @beth_winter) has become a good friend and supporter of the Joe Hesch that pops up around the Web. Her blog, Eclipsing Winter, is where she posts her poetry, prose, and “anything else my itchy pen decides to scratch.” Beth also treats us to some cool photographs from not only her native fruited plains of Kansas but around the world at her blog, Eclipsing Winter. 

Ginny Brannan (@GinnyBrannan) is a lot like yours truly, a writer and poet who, as she says, “Came this dance a bit later than some.” But, as she also notes, on her her blog, Inside Out Poetry, the most important thing is that she came here. She is justifiably proud her inner poet and writer has finally emerged… the dreamer was always there! Plus, Ginny’s a homegirl from the chill of the Northeast. A prolific blogger, you can read Ginny’s verse and opinion at Inside Out Poetry. 

Anthony Desmond (@iamEPanthony) is a twenty year old Detroit born writer. Raised and homeschooled by his single mother, he first discovered his God-given gift for writing at the age of sixteen. His work is eccentric, abstract, and badass. He is intrigued by pain & sadness, and explores these emotions across a wide array of subject areas: politics, death, religion, and the struggles of everyday life. His poetry is honest, unadulterated and often breathtaking. You can be absorbed by the pen of this gifted young man at The Glass Staircase. 

Joanna Lee (@la_poetessa) is one of those Renaissance people who can do it all, but you like them anyway because they’re so damn sweet and cool. An M.D. in Richmond, Virginia, Joanna’s acaemic and professional journey was not creatively barren, however; an entire section of her first book, the somersaults I did as I fell, was inspired by the intimate experiences she had with life and death while on clinical rotations. A hardworking promoter of poetry events in the Richmond area, Joanna’s own beautiful writing and photography can be found on her blog The Tenth Muse.

My other Renaissance woman named Lee selection, Diana Lee (@Diana605) is a terrific supporter of this old poet guy, but is, most importantly, a brilliant poet and photographer. Her poetry can be found at Diana’s Words and her verse-illuminated photgraphy (21st Century haiga, anyone?) is hung at Life Through Blue Eyes. Diana is one of the greatest supporters of art and poetry in the Twitterverse.

There are many other people I wish I could have chosen to give this award, but according to its rules, I could only pick five. I hope they will pick up some I couldn’t. I appreciate you all as friends and straight up commentators and all readers should take a look at your blogs/sites. They’ll enrich your life. I guarantee it. I love all of them! 

L'azul

By Joseph Hesch


There are days when I emerge
from this thicket of self-doubt,
scratched and bleeding from
my mad-eyed crashing about,
searching not for you, but for
the me our story has written I am.
It's a dark hollow into which,
limping, mahogany-eyed and
lashed by the old demons behind me,
I think I see my fate carved into
the walls of this mile-long grave of 
my better judgment and best intentions.
But then I see your smiling face,
like dawn above me,
the lips that mend this broken soul.
And I feel it coming back,
that everyday love
of towering dimension, perhaps
a mountain too high
for this small man to climb.
But you, my spirit guide, turn to me
capturing an image in your polished lapis eyes,
mirrors with which you see me.
"Isn't he grand?" you say.
And I climb.

The Taste of Truth

By Joseph Hesch

I didn't know I needed you
even when I saw you everywhere.
We'd never met, but I was sure
you existed, I'd see you
in the faces of the grocery checkout girl,
that nurse in the ER,
this television newswoman.
They all look, sound like you, yet nothing
like you. They are your pale echoes.

You'd sensed me, too. That breeze
that woke you was my breath
on your cheek, that chill at your neck
my fingertips. That sound, my whistle,
that hum of words harmonizing
with your heartbeat, my hymn in
your angel soul. That's what drew
you toward our inevitable collision
in the cave of the forgotten.

And now we reach for one another
in the dark, beneath a duvet of stars,
upon a mattress of space and time.
And it's real. It's your face, crowned
in gold, I gaze at. As no one has before,
it's me touching you, my Diogenesean tongue
seeking truth in your darkest places,
and finding it wrapped around yours.
You taste of it as we untie our bindings.

Lines of Demarcation

By Joseph Hesch

Surrounding us in every direction, limned
in every possible form, these boundaries
and borders, these lines of demarcation.
We can barely step away from them,
they’ve  so entrapped and squeezed our lives.
Do we draw them to keep others away
or to keep our respective enclaves
of body, mind and soul within?

Strokes of natural and man-made
geography, you mountains, oceans,
rivers, borders, colors, words on a page,
the signatures conscribing them against us,
are constructs that have lost their
constricting hold on this lacerated heart,
this freed mind, this scarred but open soul.

Each day, I look into blazing dawn’s

bright smile blurring and erasing
so many margins long marking my reserve,
my captivity. I know I can cross them now,
like they’re maps strewn across the floor,
mere cursive Ts in my notebook.
This syllogism may be false, but I’m a man
of many faults on the run to the next dawn.


We're linking this poem up to dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night, hosted by the incomparable Joy Ann Jones (You may know her as @Hedge_witch). Stop by and let Hedge pour you a tall one and mingle with some of the poetic clientele.

Senseless

By Joseph Hesch

The Nun said
I'd said none
Of what she called
Good sense.
"Good sense?" said I,
"you wish me to spout
your sense, Nun.
Nun sense!"
"Perhaps you will speak
such sense anon,"
said Nun. Said I,
"Nun sense anon, nun?
Nonsense!"

A bit of nonsense poetry, of a figurative and literal ...um...sense, prompted by my friend Laurie Kolp. http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2012/01/word-with-laurie-nonsense.html

Aether

By Joseph Hesch

You spied the light of me across Plato’s dark aether--
a comet you said, omen of a coming--
where others rubbed it away as an eye-corner flicker.

My Fire drew in your Air, consuming that breath
with which you make being of sparkle, songs of soul.
This drab Earth resisted the quenching rain,

until Life’s plow broke me and your Water
entered my forgotten softness beneath the crust
others had tread to adamant armor.

We burn brightly now, pushing up flaming blooms,
embracing ivy of connection, the sweetest fruit
of seeds cast from the stars in their aether,

where I sensed a heart-tripped something
between Universe and the Sphere and wondered...
Perhaps?

Doll

By Joseph Hesch

Sophie lies there, her face shining
from moisturizer Nurse just applied.
From above, her Sid thinks she looks
like a little doll, eyes closed, like they're
painted on. Sophie’s younger sister, Judy,
born during the Hoover administration,
is led to her bedside and
carries on the one-way conversation,
she always has, mostly about Judy.
Nearby, Nurse thinks Judy's buying in
to a Beatitude, hoping to win valuable prizes
in the hereafter. Sid knows she’s not making up
for lost years when she didn't speak to Sophie.

In twilight haze, Sophie wonders when she can go home.

Nurse half-listens to a story she has heard
so many times before. Who has had it worse,
better, smarter, richer, holier,prettier than anyone else.
"You've got the right idea, honey,"Nurse thinks.
"Go to sleep."
Sophie curls a tiny smile where before was
a tight dash, making all around her happy.
She barely listens to Judy, as if she is one
of these blinking sonorous machines that have
been her cold companions for the past months.
Sophie knows it's only for a little while more.
And now she hears them singing.
In the darkness Sophie sees her Sid's face,
and feels the bright joy of release.
“Hi, doll. Been waiting for you,” he says.

And Sophie, her face radiant, knows she’s home.


Your crabby poet guy Joe tells a semi-true story of very-true love. This was going to be part of a short story. It probably still will. (That's often how it works for me: a poem begets a story.) In this story-poem (or is it a poem-story?), loved ones get together after a long absence from one another. One reunion is not so good, the other is rapturous.

Rivertown Rapture

By Joseph Hesch

With January's ice-scrim mist,

this riverside neighborhood

turns back to photo proof

black, white and gauzy gray.
Holiday colors have faded

like mid-September memories.

Tinder-dry evergreens,

erstwhile harlequin-lit window beacons

for passing ice-breakers,
now lay prostrate on streetside,
snow-dusted Christmas gravestones,

waiting for the herald crash

of the trash collecting Rapture.

And the perennial trees
standing sentinel nearby

at snow-footed attention,

look like lean black guardsmen,

their uniforms on backorder

until a too faraway Spring.

This week I wrote a poem that came from my walks and runs along the Hudson shore over the past 20 years. During the holidays, you could see the gumdrop-lit Christmas trees in windows over in Rensselaer. By early January, they were gone, the snow had come and the ice had choked the river. "Rivertown Rapture" is what I recall and imagine of those days. I've linked it up to dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night, where you'll find scores of other such imaginings and remembrances.

My Tiny Terror

By Joseph Hesch

The skittering chill up my spine

doesn’t come from hoodoos, bogeymen,
bugbears or the night bumpers anymore.
I enjoy the company of darkness
in my bed at night,
and I walk these cracked sidewalks,
head held high, as I pass by 
their cracked denizens daily.
Expressing myself to others,
tens or thousands, no longer shakes me.
I’ve stared down disease, criminal intent,
the uncertainty of parenthood
and the whoosh-by of swift death.
But not much scares me so these days
as sitting with a frozen mind
in front of a snowy-white page.

The Eve, the Day, the Joy

By Joseph Hesch

On the Eve and Day of Joy,
the presents were covered
in their smooth and sparkling raiment,
as were the trees and roads
in their fresh-snow greeting card grandeur.
Come the gathering, all those wrappings,
of packages and countryside,
were torn by child and adult,
each in their own way—
hand, scissor, sled, SUV. 
The magic was so quickly broken,
And what was smooth wonder
and sparkling mystery
the night before and at dawn,
had been torn, crumpled, stained
and rendered debris and nuisance
to everyone’s continued joy.
Moms and Dads near-curse the mess
of late-day. Kids ignore or revel in its chaos.
On Boxing Day the broken ugliness
of cold fact will be exposed.
Yet all will be forgotten with the advent
of a new year, a new hope,
a new anticipation
for the sleek magic of the Eve and
the Day we came together
and were joyously unbroken.

This Silent Night

By Joseph Hesch

Standing on the back porch,
11:39 PM on the 24th.
I’m cold and the chill air frosts
my nose and glasses. 
This is nothing new 
for a late December night,
but something’s different.
The wind chimes dingle-ding
just as they do in August. 
The trees sway and creak
as they did last month
and the months before that.
Perception stretching beyond
fading frame of consciousness,
maybe to snare hoped-for revelation,
I realize it isn't what I’m sensing
that's off. It’s what I’m not.

Over behind the big trees,
and the red-brick suburban bedsteads
lightly snoring smoke into the sky,
the normal hum and howl of
late-night on the Interstate
is absent.
I realize it’s because this is
That Night and travelers are safe
with their own, I hope.
And I want to stay here,
not travel another step,
to breathe in all this cold and quiet,
and breathe out crystaline clouds,
silent hymns of joy.
To be one with
this Silent Night.


Here's a little Christmas Eve poem that was inspired by standing on the same back step as my summer poem, "Illuminati." It's a true response I had to standing there waiting for my golden-haired semi-muse Mollie to do her thing (What else is new?) the late evening of December 24, 2009. Consider it my Christmas card to you, in thanks for the support you've given me in this first year of blogging poetry. I've linked "This Silent Night" up to dVerse Poets Pub for the crew's Open Link Night.

Empties

By Joseph Hesch

Walking through the old neighborhood,
full of derelict buildings and derelict souls, 
my head down against the December wind, 
I spied the shiny bit of sidewalk flotsam,
an empty bottle whose ice-blue label read
Crystal Palace Vodka.
Diamonds of ice sparkled within,
survivors of this vessel’s manifest

before it ended up on the rocks

or straight to the bottom.

It reminded me of finding such empties 

of temporary anesthesia in my youth.

More often than not, they were green bottles 
the abandoned shells of Thunderbird wine.

These days it seems even the street alkies,

have gone big time, drinking the same hooch

as higher class drunks, only with no olive.

I kicked the bottle from my path, and found

even more change to these tippling times-- 

the Palace empty wasn’t crystal.

Rather, it was made of plastic.

Of course it was. 
As I and my reverie 
stalked further up the street,

we came upon another empty,

green like those old bottles of T-bird.

This one was a child’s mitten

perched on a snowpile.

I wasn’t sure if it was waving

hello to the new world

or goodbye to the old, 
so I put it in my pocket and 
together we escaped this one.

The Trip In

By Joseph Hesch

In winter, the commute’s the same,
but the trip is so different.
I drive these glazed donut highways,
clogged commuter arteries
that would give me a heart attack
if I let them, or if I had the heart
for all this anymore.
Headed east to work yesterday I could
barely make out the stop-and-go
chain gang of prisoners in our
four-wheel jail cells because of
the low aspect of Warden Winter's
bloodshot eye, with which I played
the staredown game.
blink
Lost again. I always lose.

I could put the car in neutral
and still make it a couple of miles
before I would have to touch the wheel,
change my course from the
unnatural migration of which I am part.
Some birds are just like me,
they don’t migrate from this chill either.
I see them out my driver’s side window,
chains of starlings, shivering wing-to-wing,
stretching pole-to-pole --
roadside rosaries praying
for bread and a compass
that points south.

And now the final snowy flair
to a winter commute begins.
Flakes so big I can hear them
hit the window and so heavy
the trees will bow to their gravity,
their serious intent to remind me
who's really boss on my trip in.
This snow-light December
will turn into a bully soon enough,
snapping me awake to its will
with all the comfort of a white,
wet blanket whipped towel-like
to my bucket-seated backside.


If you know anything about me--real me and poet me--you know I have this love/hate relationship with winter and my workday world. Put them together and you come up with "The Trip In," this week's effort for dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night.

A Twelvemonth's Tears

By Joseph Hesch

The December weather has edges
and sharp points, like a star 
atop the Christmas tree. 
When I inhale, the air feels 
of peppermint but the flavor
favors woodsmoke from
my neighbor's fireplace.
It's during these nights, 
under a stardust canopy 
and a searchlight moon,
my eyes sting and water a bit. 
Not sure if it's from the the cold, 
the smoke, or the need to 
sweep the cinders
of another year from them.
Or perhaps this year
it's to wipe the spillings
of an old year away to prepare
for a brighter new one.
Perhaps.

Night Vision

By Joseph Hesch 

I sat up in bed last night,

drawing darkness around me

like a comforter.

It's okay, we've been sleeping together

for quite a while now.

There are times it sustained me,

as I pulled ever more of it

over my shoulders, or

greedily spooned it into me

until all of life’s color disappeared.

I wonder if you ever saw

my moon face gazing down on you

from the dark firmament

of your bedroom ceiling,

or maybe from your desk,

burning through your clouds

of doubt and fear. I see

your eyes from these perches,

sometimes fierce, sometimes sad,

always shining, either with spirit

or tears.

But this isn’t my light shining on you.

It’s your light and that of all the others

that I reflect back from a

miraculously polished sense of self.

And when, finally, I fully open my eyes, 

and pronounce myself present here,  

I expect your lights to nourish

this once-dark soul, for good and all.

Posting this poem for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub. This week it's being presented by my lovely friend, Natasha Head. Why don't you check out some of the other folks who have come to hear Tasha sing behind the bar tonight?

Hiding in Plain Sight II

By Joseph Hesch

I have reached a point at the final crest
of this autobiographic thrill ride,
before the long slow descent to its end,
where I can look back and see
how much of it I’ve missed
by being the close-eyed loner in this seat,
the dust-shrouded outsider,
the look-no-hands clown,
the genderless confidant. 
I realize my pioneering work in camouflaged,
hide-in-plain-sight isolationism
is today’s normal.
And all the other seats appear empty.

These new virtual hermits  
live in their in their cars and cubicles,
behind desks and counters,
and under the covers in thrall of TVs,
computers and smartphones. 
They hide behind avatars, masks and
sullen defenses so the real them
is kept undiscovered –-
a secret for their eyes only. 
If they even open them.

Now on my downhill glide, I’ve started to knock
some of those defenses down – my own and others.
Even if I never make that ultimate connection,
warm form to warm form,
I think the ride will be pretty splendid
in its own right, the bandwidth wind in my hair.
Of course, my greatest fear in this quest
is that I really am alone in this world
of click-to-connect friendships. 
Or worse, I’m just naïve enough
to think I'm not.

Escapees from the Heart

By Joseph Hesch

Why I locked down my emotions
for most of my life, I didn’t know.
Was it because they’re messy beasts
with poor hygiene, splattering
their flammable, caustic juices all over me
and those in my proximity?
These scars and this stiff, charred heart
are forever reminders
of their misadventures.

Or maybe I was just afraid of them

because they look so much
like the guy I once was,
for so short a time.
A time when they ran free,
and I was an abetting joy-rider.
Life got dark when I put them away.
My recent fitting for a grave convinced me
to spring them before it was too late.

It was you saw me trying to dig them out
with a teaspoon and recognized that desperate
mission. You pressed your key into my hand.
Funny, these emotions have gotten older, too.
Their eyes watered in this bright new light.

Nightfall, Another November

By Joseph Hesch

I stepped outside at 5:00 and another November struck me

like a black bolt of ash -- the darkness of early sundown,

the steely chill of snow-threatening clouds,

and a near-deafening din that drowned out the wind.

The colors of October long ago disappeared, 

fallen to the ankles of once brightly outfitted trees

that stood as beacons for weekend leaf peepers.

They now reached skyward in scraggly stick-'em-up 

posture, robbed of their raiment

by frost and frigid currents. Shivering sentinels, 
the skeleton maples, hickories and oaks,

found their bony limbs decorated by hundreds of 
nattering neighbors in jet, keeping with
the dark end of the month’s gray-scale color scheme.

Advent ornaments, lit by sundown, shiny and black,
adorned the branches. Ebony leaves full of cawing cacophony. 

At dawn, these gravity-defying decorations disappear,

falling up and away, shed in an anti-autumn explosion

of feathers, noise, and bad intent,

onyx scavengers crowing their ascendancy

over a napping Nature.

And I feel the bones of another of my years
about to be picked clean.


As I walked from my office to the parking lot the other night, I heard the racket from hundreds of crows festooning the trees surrounding the campus where I work. They are a foul nuisance, but one heck of an inspiration...if I'm mindful enough to use them. They stirred up "Nightfall, Another November."  Linking this poem up to dVerse Poets Pub for its Open Link Night.