Microdosing Monday: Write On
Happy Monday. I’m so glad we’re all here together marching through another week in this glorious life.
Over the last days the mental health has been a wild rodeo and I’m no cowboy. Everything else is precarious at best, and like always, I continue to write. It’s the only thing I know to do.
I released a new chapbook to read from and help fund my late summer readings, and it’s actually a really sharp little book. The cover features a piece of collage art I made, and the local village library helped me print color covers on good stock paper. It has 16 poems and one additional poem insert, something else I haven’t done before. As a lifetime blue collar hourly wage worker it’s critically important to me that when anyone forks over some hard earned dollars to support me on these endeavors that they get their dollars worth.
The first copies are already out in the mail, and you can get one for just $10 (includes shipping.)
My first poetry collection, Fight Songs for the Underdogs, is inching closer to publication, and over the next couple of weeks I should know a release date.
And I’ve been writing writing and writing and writing some more. You’ll like the results. Just wait and see.
Have you ever attended one of my poetry readings? I really wish you would. Reading poems to people is one of my most favorite fucking things in the world, and you could come see me at the following places:
8/23 & 8/24 in Chicago!
9/27 in Portsmouth, OH
9/28 in Memphis at a 100,000 Poets for Change Event
11/7 & 11/8 in Toledo
Please tell your friends to come see me, too.
Wondering what I’ve been reading lately? Hell, this is one of the three best questions you could ever ask me if you wanted to get me talking. I actually love books and reading more than I love writing, and even now I consider myself a book man first, writer second.
I just finished A Boy Named Shel, the Shel Silverstein biography. I hadn’t read it in a decade, and after this read I’ve decided I need to own a copy eventually. You might not know all of this, but Silverstein wasn’t just a cartoonist and children’s poet. He was also an accomplished playwright, and a songwriter that wrote dozens of hits, won two Grammy Awards, was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe, and is enshrined in the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was the poet that got me to start writing as a kid, and as an adult he has always been one of my biggest heroes and artist inspirations. What I’m saying is, that I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s a should read for all artists.
I’m re-reading my buddy, the writer Westley Heine’s latest book, Cloud Watching in the Inferno, because I’m working on a review of sorts for it, and this is another you should read. A mix of poetry and short stories, some of which I believe are worthy of those best of the year anthologies. Stay tuned for the review later this week.
And holy fucking shit comrades. I found a used copy of Mary Karr’s award winning memoir, The Liars Club, and it’s flat out fucking brilliant. Mary Karr writes like I try to. Like I hope to. In a common language that flows like song and is so alive in its storytelling that a reader is forced to relive each scene as they’re recollected and written. No wonder that many believe Mary Karr to be the best memoirist of our generation. Fuck is this good.
Wonder yet what I’ve been smoking? I’m happy to tell you, because a prescription and access to regulated and legal weed has been a lifesaver for me. Especially in times right now when the panic attacks have returned and I spend half my days shaking crawling bugs off my skin that aren’t even there. That’s what anxiety sometimes feels like. Right now, the legal weed is the best and safest alternative for keeping me from coming out of my skin suit. Used to in times like now, I’d take Xanax every four hours and pray for daylight. The weed helps me breathe and unlike the Xany’s I can still function somewhat.
Right now we got some of one of my favorite strains, Dante’s Inferno. Of course it gets a leg up for having a literary name, but also, it’s a high level indica dominant hybrid that’s perfect for anxiety and pain. Its effects are relaxing with an extra boost of focus. It’s one of my favorites and the stuff we got from First Class Camden in Camden, MI tests at 28% THC. Oh yeah.
And in the tradition of ending these letters with positive hippie huggy affirmations, I’ve not got a lot to offer this week. Life is a struggling gauntlet right now. But I do know this, sometimes all you can do is hang on and hope it gets better soon. I’ve been thinking some about this church song I heard often in my youth. The chorus goes, “hang on a little longer, help is on the way…” and I don’t believe in any heavenly hosts and armies, or any god that’s going to come to my rescue, but I do know that if I hang on long enough my bipolar pendulum will swing again and I won’t be stuck in the darkness forever.
I guess that’s the happy hippie words for the week: just hang on. Look for the light. Observe the flowers that grow unattended by man and hang on a little longer. It gets different eventually.
Love,
Dan
I've loved Silverstein since receiving a copy of "A Light in the Attic" as a child. IMO "The Giving Tree" is one of the most moving short stories ever written. Thanks for the recommendation.