I’m skeptical on my chances.

I’ve been sending out letters, from time to time, for ages.  Usually typed up, which does dampen the personality of the correspondence…  But there’s something about a letter in the mail that exceeds electronic correspondence – even if Email, instant messages, social network communication, and even a telephone call are more instantly gratifying.

You take the time, you take the effort, you take the energy to convey what you are thinking – maybe it’s business, maybe it’s personal… Heck, maybe it’s intimate (think about it, guys and girls).  It’s something we forget when we greedily rip open a letter and read it’s contents…  Unless the letter itself is long and winding.

But here’s another piece to think about with a letter: The actual journey.  Did you ever take the time to think about what your correspondence goes through, where it travels, on it’s way to its destination?

I’ve had envelopes sitting on my desk from time to time in the last few days and months…  They’ve looked rather monotonous with an address label and return address label stuck on them, the only distinguishing characteristic on them being a number I scrawled on the back of each.  I’ve had them all ready to go, and then it’s hit me: just what is in store for these things as they travel?  They weren’t just being sent locally or nationally, but overseas…

A little envelope, a folded and glued piece of paper, containing other pieces of paper,  due to travel some 5,000 miles or more.  How many lives touch it?  How many people see it?  What does it experience on it’s journey?  And just what does the recipient think or feel when it arrives?  How do they react?

This doesn’t tell the whole story of what I am thinking, but it does give some more of an idea what a letter in the mail goes through at sort facilities:

I’m busy more often than not, and no – the Stonegauge is not dead.  Just dormant.  When I have been writing lately, it’s been personal and it’s been in the mail (didn’t I once say that it’s great getting letters in the mail?)…  That or I am doing hockey stuff.

This off-season has afforded me more time for myself (which has been a good and bad thing).  I’ve found escape in writing, an ability to immerse myself in a thought or idea, or a feeling and a story.  It’s like a release, as it used to be when I would write a real good poem that conveyed something creatively.

Oh, I’m still doing poetry too.  Just not much of it, thanks.  That’s what this post is – a poem.  Something I wrote a few months ago for an absent face.

Waiting for Her Word

I’m self aware and insecure
I’m hanging by a thread
Alone with thoughts and falancies
I’m waiting for her word

The still between us, a sea of silence,
Leaves open too much wonderment
Just a whisper would assauge me so
I’m waiting for her word

The cozy bliss of an embrace
A sight-for-sore-eyes, a lovers gaze
What is missing? A brief exchange
I’m waiting for her word

To summarize her meandering prose,
Or describe her vibrant pose:
Zest for living, wherever she roams
I’m waiting for her word

©2011 John Fontana

Well, unless of course it’s trash tabloid-ism or an arrest warrant… But I’m not talking just-printed-on-paper but I mean a by-line of one sort or another. I can say that from experience as I’ve gotten that kick — seeing “John Fontana” linked to letters-to-the-editor, or being sourced/interviewed by USA Today, being quoted in The Hockey News, The New York Times Slap Shot blog and la-de-da.

But I can also say that wasn’t where I intended to go with writing when I started out as a kid.  My intention wasn’t to be a face-in-the-crowd (though no matter what you write or publish, you are another face in the crowd of literature) in the newspaper.  Not another source for magazines and what not.  Not a weblogger.  I planned on doing things creatively and having my own book.  Or books — plural.  Take your pick.

But that never happened.  See, when i was a teen I got away from story writing so much and was writing poetry most of the time…  a habit that’s followed me into adulthood.  Lyrical verse more-so than deep observations and perspectives…  Well, yeah they are perspectives but they are my perspectives.   Sometimes just pop, sometimes inspired by events or people or feelings  in my life.

Over the years, I’ve had some of them available to the masses through the web…  Certainly you can find a couple of them on this site and probably elsewhere on the web…  But they’ve never really been published in the sense of print.  Never published in the sense of being out there for any traditional form of mass consumption.  I haven’t bothered to take the time with sending out poems to magazines who have niches all of their own (and aren’t available unless you pay for a subscription or pay for a copy — while you’re not getting paid for your contribution).

I ought to put together a manuscript and do something with it.  But I’m hesistant.

Catherine Durkin Robinson, local blogger and Creative Loafing contributor, has written two book manuscripts.  Her first one is being published, chapter-by-chapter, on a blogspot site.  The other, a more recent work based on her life as a teacher in Hillsborough County, is being sent around to literary agents in hopes someone will pick up the work and mass-market it.  Sadly, that has not been the case and the rejections have been comical at best.

Their loss.  I’ve read the book and it’s not only a good read, it’s provocative and controversial enough to be read widely by those fearing school-district scandals.

I also have another friend, in the Pacific Northwest this time, who went out and self-published her first novel.  The book, Steel Goddesses, is currently available on Amazon.com for purchase.  It takes a lot of courage to go out on a limb like that and self-publish any work…  But it sort of cuts out the middle-man of having to appease literary agents who tell you what a proper market for your writing is-or-isn’t and tells you to change your work to fit that niche.  At least that’s what I’ve seen with rejections served up to Catherine.

So the idea I am kicking around is actually putting together a manuscript of poetry I’ve written over the past decade and self-publishing it.   I realize that poetry is not exactly a hot seller and not going to lead me to riches…  It’d cost me more to publish than the commissions I’d get in the long run from doing it…  But it does what I have long sought to do — take the writings jammed in Mead notebooks that I’ve carried around since High School and take some of those verses and show them to the masses.  Will people connect?  I have doubts.  Will strangers read what I’ve  written?  Even more doubts…  But it’s mine, and it’d be out there.  My claim.  My piece of literature.

My book.

It’s a thought, at least.

This Bitter Month

It’s been a month of absent faces
It’s been a month of anguish
Where years of truth were proven lies
Time wasted upon a gamble

It’s been a month of forlorn summer
Endless days and lingered mourning
Carelessness adorns the hollow coffin
A decorative symbol of triumphant malaise

It’s been a month of sight-for-sore-eyes
Her memory won’t leave my mind at peace
Her blue eyes pierce, they mock, they tease
Her smile’s warmth is now a killing symbol

It’s been a month of past reflection
Where anger burns and fires rage
Sentiment proves to be without merit
And devoted friends? Easily thrown away

It’s been a month devoid of remorse
For pity’s sake, I’ve been left alone
The long hard road, the one less traveled
Is a complication better to avoid

This bitter month shall endure onward
She dodges past and around the disrespected
Finding gratification in immediate surroundings
While sowing a bitter harvest she’ll soon have to reap.

© 2008 John Fontana

It’s odd, though, that Current Source has inspired almost nothing for me. Here and there? Yeah. But nothing profound… The only poem that I had written was months old.

While I like the rhyme and the declaration — which goes beyond the obvious call for someone to drop their emotional wall and let someone “in” — it was foreshadowing of sorts. A warning sign I kept ignoring.

Let Me In

Let me in
Let me in
I revel in your mysteries
But please, just let me in

I’m yours, I’m hooked, I’m stoned
But I’m on the outside, looking in
The door is locked and closed
Your heart’s a contest I’ve yet to win

But your love is all my answers,
Please, just let me in
Guide me inside, gently
Clue me in so I can enter

At a distance, in the shadows
I’d never hurt you, let me in
Let me love you and build you up,
Never gonna’ let you down

So, forever from your doorstep
Oh darlin’, let me in
I revel in your mysteries
And ache to make you mine

© John Fontana

I’m not talking about a bar, where the object tends to be to get smashed or deal with those who are smashed… I’m also not talking about a restaurant where it’s awkward to hang around, watching everyone else eat with nothing going on besides food…

It was a little earlier this week I had been conversing with my friend Bill about his need to get out to a neighborhood place on the norm just for the sake of meeting people… He’s isolated where he’s living now much like I’m isolated in my current situation. Yet I used to have a place to socialize every so often… It might have been a Thursday, Friday or Saturday Night… but it was my chance to go out and enjoy myself by just enjoying my surroundings.

Before Starbucks ever appeared in the greater Tampa Bay metro region, there was a little coffee shop just across the street from my place in Palm Harbor called Java Jungle. It’d been open a few years before I finally got the courage to go inside… I began my love for Espresso there as well. With nightly music and even the rumble of different drink-dispensing machinery against the bar where I normally sat, it was my little place of escape for a few hours a week where I could be me.

I met a bunch of interesting people during that itme, a lot of casual friends at that… I got to know the staff but not as well as I had liked. My hearing was so horrid at the time that being social was a pain in the ass… but it was also a necessity for my sanity.

And I spent many a night there simply scrawling in black-and-white Meade notebooks, writing down ambling verses of rhymes and poems — some of which are on this very website.

The problem is, the Jungle is gone. Long gone. And while I have no qualms about Starbucks (and rather enjoy their coffee), it’s not a neighborhood coffee shop when all of the closest locations are situated for mass appeal on US 19 with drive through windows (to get COFFEE??!?) and next to BBQ restaurants.

And so I get to reminisce about the days of yore and the evenings spent sipping coffee and musing with the guys and girls of the Jungle and what was… and what’s missing from my current day to day: a place of escape.

Being the busy bee that I am and having other things to do online, I decided instead of keeping the site up and running, I took it down. All while saving the files.

Well, in a limited case I’m putting a definitive writing section back online. You can access it directly and you can also access it from the above menu by clicking WRITING.

Oh, and for the moment you can jump to the poems directly on the sidebar here on der Stonegauge’s main site. Some were never part of my collection on the old writings site and some were.

Letter

I want to write you this letter
And
I want to spend time in thought and
Trying to figure out what I’d say to you
It’s great when you get a letter in the mail

And I’m thinking about writing a letter
And
It’s been a few weeks since we talked and
Right now you’re on my mind
Whether you like that idea or not

So it’s been a few weeks since we talked
And
The last time we did, we fought and
I let you walk all over me,
While you had good reason to be pissed

Yet I was all apologies
And
All in all is all we are
You never offered me the same
For you getting all angry and acting lame
I’d better not write you this letter after all

Why I better not write this letter
Is
Because you just don’t respect me and
You got me tied around your little finger
And just twist and twist me tighter than a knot

Knots can be so cruel
And
They can be like feeling locked inside
Yeah, feelings can be knots too
Cinching tighter and restraining things

So I’m writing you this letter
And
I’m just a piece of twine twisted around
Your pinkie is red from this yarn
That we’ve both been spinning for ages

And it’s great getting letters in the mail
And
Last one I sent you was years ago
And I tap-tapity-tapped it up on my keyboard
My handwriting is a horror unto itself

The horror of my day
Is
Realizing I still have feelings for you
And you’ve pretty clearly moved stage left
The lights are bright on Broadway
“The Producers” is better watched with an audience

And I don’t know if you care
About
Getting a letter in the mail from me
Letters in the mail are great but even better
When you don’t expect them
I’m the king of “don’t-expect’em”

And my wrist is getting
Cramped
Writing out this yarned ramble
Ramble – what we know so well
What we loved, what we lived, what we did for hours

And I watched this movie
Tonight
And it got me thinking that i ought to
Write you a letter
You could care less about the addressee
Your residence wasn’t hard to find

So I’m closing this letter off
And
Hoping to put things to rest even though it’s
Special to get a letter in the mail
And I want to share special with you again

All in all is all we are
And
Kurt Cobain is formally dead and
You can’t respect someone who kisses your ass
It just doesn’t work

So I watched this movie tonight
And
I wanted to write you a letter
I wanted to write you this letter
It’s great getting something in the mail
————

© John Fontana

But the one that always gets me is when I hear someone dreamed of me. Me! I was on someone’s thoughts enough that I ran through their mind… Even if I had nothing to do with the underlying fabric of what went on in the dream and the psychology of what happened (dreams have a great wide amount of meanings)… It’s just special to know that the thought was there.

So here’s my next one — yeah, a little verse on this St. Valentines Day… Inspired by the ones on our minds.

On Your Mind

When last was I
A Sight for sore eyes?
The last time you
Longed my hand?
When last was I your
Knight in shining armor,
Your prince,
Your noble man?

When last did I
Paint a picture
That made you melt because
You were my muse?
When last did I
Earn your undivided attention
While we discussed the
Front page news?

When last did my thought
Earn your affection
Because of the joy
That I bring?
When last did we
Fly through the heavens,
Together –
In the night
While you slept,
And you dreamed?

© 2007 John Fontana

I also blog elsewhere… And tonight I figured I would blog on DFA-link int he Pinellas County DFA group about my fondness for Al Gore and how I am holding out for him to enter the 2008 Presidential primaries.

The only thing I didn’t expect when I blogged this was the fact the post was going to get wider exposure than what I was aiming for. Much wider. Hugely wider.

Blog for America front-paged wider.

More than three years ago, I never would have dreamed in my wildest imagination that I would be featured on the front page of Blog for America — the then-It blog of the Howard Dean for President campaign. Dean failed in his attempts, but he founded Democracy for America in an effort to organize Democratic support better. Blog for America lived on and is still highly thought of on the liberal/progressive blogosphere.

And at 11:45 PM ET, on February 12th 2007 — yours truly has made it to the front page. Whodathunkit?

So one good thing came from my sap act:

Dance of the Ages

Dancing barefoot in the grass
Gypsy woman reflects the ages
Curly hair tied back with rags
The melody makes love to her

Fabric waving through the air
Her dress flaps loose, without a care
Playing on the tamborine
And watchers heeding her every move

Gypsy woman lives on the road
No roots or ties, she knows no home
Her band of gypsies come and go
Strangers eyes are her closest friend

Night falls and the music ends
She washes, naked, at the rivers edge
Pale moonlight bathes her in a glow
She longs for the throes of passion

Day comes and the troop pushes forth
On their course, their road heads north
Gypsy woman heeds that cry
Somewhere new, there’s a strangers eye —

To captivate and to alure
A lovers gaze, a young man’s urge
To tease and taunt through her dance of ages
She lures them to her like cats to string

© 2007 John Fontana

Moral Suicide

What is a standard worth
When you are
Unhappy in life under it?

What is a principle worth
If it keeps you alone
Day-dreaming of a bliss that
Isn’t real?

The rules and laws
You set for yourself
Are made to be broken –
–unless you dread where
Life will lead
Without them

Unhappiness is a constant,
When longing an unattained goal
Which amounts to the
Standard practice
Of my life

© 2007 John Fontana

All I can do is watch you from
Afar
Your blonde hair
Shifting with the breeze -
Willow branches taunted by the
Throes of air as it bows and
Sways where and when
The hidden forces will it

All I do is admire you from
Afar
Smile darting and mischievous
Gleeful
Youth and happiness
Escaping into a
Cynical world
Anarchy and confusions
Life as we both know it

All I can do is endeavor into your
World
Mysteries of your being –
Auroras in the heavens
Blazing and dancing
Wonderment, allure,
Compelling me to try,
Try,
Try again

All I can do know you through my
Reverie
Out of reach, out of knowing
Out of a solution to the confusions
That find me enamored by you
Knowing nothing is a bliss
Having nothing — torture
Yet having this dream spoiled
Having the answers
May just extinguish the
Artistic maelstrom
Your palette paints into my
Soul

Lost inside the secret you
What am I supposed to do
Girl, you are my majesty
I’ll worship you forever

Only known I’ve lost my mind
Oh, why worry? Never mind
Everything that I do crave
Is lost inside your being

Now to find you,
Majesty,
I need to be your everything,
Fit the bill and fly the path,
Our equation, do the math,
Add us two and then subtract -
The worries and the hardships

Seen my feelings inside you, girl
Oh my, honey, what a world
What am I supposed to do?
I’ve stayed lost inside the secret you

And inside, I’ve lost my mind
Oh, why worry? Never mind
Everything I’ll always crave
Is lost inside the secret you

©1998 John P. Fontana

That’s a pretty old poem of mine that I love and can recite from heart most times. I don’t know if the poem reeks of insecurity as the writer seems to be willing to put the object of his affections on a pedestal… But I think what I meant at the time is devotion. Being devoted to someone but that someone doesn’t know how devoted to them you are.