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

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)