You can't always get what you want
I used to be a pretty prolific poet back in the day. I seem to have let the poetic muse slip away a bit in favour of prose, It's just how the cards have fallen.
What I would like to be able to do is update my myriad of blog pages that a few years ago I had intended to update far more regularly than i currently do. A lot of my projects are big novels though that i'm not ready to share, as far as that goes, and I have been slack with writing other things.
Recently though I have decided once again that i want to try and figure out how to make my sidelines become more robust and maybe even be able to pay the odd bill with them.
This year I have made almost 200 dollars from my paintings and photographs. Not very much right? but I never painted before this year, or tried to sell a photo. But it is encouragement. I was a bit down putting out my last poetry book - "The Wickedness of Flowers" , but first as Josie, and not old sad Joe. And for a myriad of reasons my chutzpah was non existent. I didn't have half the hustle I put into my first two books, "Like Bukowski In Drag," and "A Cure For Mirrors". both of which 'made money' as in, I got back in sales just slightly more than it cost me to print and ship the books. "Like Buk..." in fact had three printings and was a best seller at one bookstore in Kits in 2001.
I have always let myself down doing these projects by letting whatever job I was in, or personal stress I was dealing with, get in the way of selling my books. But to be fair, it's not like very many poets make a living from poetry, unless they are putting it to music, and even then.
Okay not to turn this into a therapy session, I recently also realized that I have tons of content, in these poems (that coincidentally are in the books I have for sale. The first two books i have only a couple of personal copies, but i can order more, or you could, at the links, I pay shipping, you pay shipping, we all pay shipping. Anyhoo, here are a couple of short poems from my first book, "Like Bukowski In Drag"
So what I am doing here is not necessarily asking anyone to buy my books, but just trying to get my blogs (though of course that is awesome if people do) more hits by putting out more content as often as possible, in order to get those elusive sales to total strangers. feel free to share any of my blogs you want to, or my bookstore links. this particular blog only has 9 posts, I won't get noticed until I buff that up pretty heavy. so expect lots of old poems, with some new stuff here and there. Look out for my Transition Blog, my media review blog, and my gaming blog, all of which are hopefully going to get busier. I gotta muster the effort now.
More from my other books, soon, and other kinds of writing too for all you poemphobes. :P
What I would like to be able to do is update my myriad of blog pages that a few years ago I had intended to update far more regularly than i currently do. A lot of my projects are big novels though that i'm not ready to share, as far as that goes, and I have been slack with writing other things.
Recently though I have decided once again that i want to try and figure out how to make my sidelines become more robust and maybe even be able to pay the odd bill with them.
This year I have made almost 200 dollars from my paintings and photographs. Not very much right? but I never painted before this year, or tried to sell a photo. But it is encouragement. I was a bit down putting out my last poetry book - "The Wickedness of Flowers" , but first as Josie, and not old sad Joe. And for a myriad of reasons my chutzpah was non existent. I didn't have half the hustle I put into my first two books, "Like Bukowski In Drag," and "A Cure For Mirrors". both of which 'made money' as in, I got back in sales just slightly more than it cost me to print and ship the books. "Like Buk..." in fact had three printings and was a best seller at one bookstore in Kits in 2001.
I have always let myself down doing these projects by letting whatever job I was in, or personal stress I was dealing with, get in the way of selling my books. But to be fair, it's not like very many poets make a living from poetry, unless they are putting it to music, and even then.
Okay not to turn this into a therapy session, I recently also realized that I have tons of content, in these poems (that coincidentally are in the books I have for sale. The first two books i have only a couple of personal copies, but i can order more, or you could, at the links, I pay shipping, you pay shipping, we all pay shipping. Anyhoo, here are a couple of short poems from my first book, "Like Bukowski In Drag"
So what I am doing here is not necessarily asking anyone to buy my books, but just trying to get my blogs (though of course that is awesome if people do) more hits by putting out more content as often as possible, in order to get those elusive sales to total strangers. feel free to share any of my blogs you want to, or my bookstore links. this particular blog only has 9 posts, I won't get noticed until I buff that up pretty heavy. so expect lots of old poems, with some new stuff here and there. Look out for my Transition Blog, my media review blog, and my gaming blog, all of which are hopefully going to get busier. I gotta muster the effort now.
More from my other books, soon, and other kinds of writing too for all you poemphobes. :P
On Christina's Birthday
I sit in joe's lost in
the rainheaded voices that
cut
through dripping sunlight
and
i drink half
smiling a taste
of coffee breath
and i sense
another black hair being
shaved from my yellow
heart
© 2014 Josie Boyce (published under the name Joe Boyce Burgess) in Like Bukowski in Drag (2000, 2008)
she - part 1
well .
she has a small back this willing shadow
that
clings to me in dressesthatflower
easy
as smoke blown across a mirror .
she’s this gingerbread discrepancy
i call upon my flesh
as if
i am forever being etched .
she’s this
burning wiresspun crutch these these
coppersilver
neurons these these
these frenchkissing hormones
these blue truthes that hide my hairy body
from my frilly mind .
she’s tightly threading her steps
over/and/or
around my pale eunuch mechanisms
as her
pink dreams clothe
my bronze aged soul
in cottony cloudbursts of
candysex .
she has me tasting
a mess of bloodfilled
ribbons - false gods of a dangling
coppergreen intangibility .
she has me cut from my mother tongue
and made me
a willing orphan from my sex.
she is the most precious blindness i have known .
© 2014 Josie Boyce (published under the name Joe Boyce Burgess) in Like Bukowski in Drag (2000, 2008)
as i walk in the begin to snow
I sing
accidents of harmony
walk across glass cut
from dreams
i tremble
through water drops
upon my ruby lips
I kiss myself think
i am unique
crash
in razor thin flakes
the snow begins
hurtles itself
pinches
flickers
into my awkwardly painted
face i
walk backward into
explosions of
white blanket
suddenly drifting
she is me
cracked windows
of light
illuminate our
snugly cut
skirt tightened
instinctively
shaping
my hips into how she
had imagined
my body's choreography
becoming hers
entrances us cleverly
dashes over ice in spike heels
and frozen toes
leaves
me outside to wait cold
as she scampers
up creaky stairs
hopeful of being
able to walk
amidst the waltz of dangerous men
a blush of clay ready
to be
sculpted into
a dream
as i walk in the begin to snow
© 2014 Josie Boyce (published under the name Joe Boyce Burgess) in Like Bukowski in Drag (2000, 2008)
tear well to think of those carefree smoke filled days....tears well
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