Stray Poetry

I have been thinking of someday starting a literary/action magazine, and though it has been on the back burner for so many years, I have finally started the ball rolling.

The venture will be called: “Lucidity Magazine” It will work in concert with the online site: www.luciditymagazine.com as well as have unique articles not found online.

The publication will start 1 January 2009, and will begin as a quarterly magazine, but with the hope that it will someday grow to monthly. The unique nature of this magazine from all others, is in the way it is written and compiled. Feeler letters will go out to all of the major colleges and universities all over the world with a call for submissions.

I hope to interest the thinkers of the world, and thereby to establish a global forum for the discussion of issues that have both global import, and those that are of such delicate nature that they can be aired no where else.

The site is now offline while I iron out some design issues, but please check back often.

-Ezra

I don’t do well with little sleep. My brain starts to shut systems down, and I become little more than a Zombie.

I am finding that even if my sleep cycle is disrupted for a half-hour during the night, that it has the same effect as if I missed half the nights sleep. Last night Scarlette woke up about 2am, and even though we were only up for twenty minutes or so, I feel this morning as though I haven’t slept at all.

When I first woke up, Ami asked me to hand her the Pacifier on the nightstand. She might as well have been speaking French for all the sense that it made to me. I looked at her in a complete daze, and wondered what she just said. I had to mull it over, to figure out what she had meant.

When you are that tired, even your native language doesn’t make sense.

-Ezra

Posted to: - http://www.straypoetry.com

It is the season for Political Signs. There are hundreds of them sticking up like uninspired flowers, all over the hillsides, and lawns of this town. They are for republicans, democrats, and for independents.

For national races, and for local ones. The names blend into each other, and the slogans blazoned on each sound like cheap fortune cookie messages.

They crowd out one another for space, as if vying for a better vantage point to shout their messages to passing traffic.

The colors are always dull reds, blues, and whites. I realize that those are the national colors, but when every candidate tries to paint themselves with these colors to try and prove that they are somehow ‘All American’ it loses something in the wash. Are they all afraid to break out, and to use other- more eye-catching colors?

If I were running for office I would look to make my signs as bright and bold as possible. Red and blues would be out, I would use colors that would draw the eye, and separate myself from the pack.

I am sure that there would be those who would see my lack of interest in the ‘traditional colors’ a red flag, but I would bet that there would be a balancing number who would mark my name on the ballot simply because I have the guts to push away from the political surface and take flight with my own wings.

-Ezra Hilyer -http://www.straypoetry.com

posted to http://www.straypoetry.com 

On a whim, I went searching for traces of my old website ‘The Amateur Writers Guild’.

Keep in mind, that is has been about 8 years since I last visited the site, and I assumed that it was long gone. But thanks to the Internet archive site archive.org I was able to go back in time and see some of it as it was in 1999, and 2000 (the height of its popularity) and was even able to find an old logo from that era (not my final revision to be sure) I put it at the top of this post.

This was at a special time in the history of the Internet, (when I started the site in 1996) where it seemed that users were starved for content, and there really were not that many sites online. I had tons of interest, and had submissions all the time. I should have been better at keeping up the site over the years, but after about 3 or 4 years, I let it die, and everyone just faded away.

I went to the URL (it was hosted on a free host, as I was a poor kid) and it is still there. There is really nothing other than the entrance page left, but oddly it is at the top of the Google search for the title of the site (even though there are others with the same name)

This makes me desire to re-start the venture, and get it back on its feet again. I have the experience, and the knowhow, I just don’t know if I have the time..

-Ezra Hilyer - posted to http://www.straypoetry.com 

Posted to http://www.straypoetry.com

I put a small changing slideshow on the left, that will show various photos from my work on a rotating basis. I just added like 3 or 4 photos to it for now, but I will be updating it as time goes on. 

I rode down the hill again this morning; it is just over 3 miles one-way, and though it is down hill in the mornings, (most of the way) the way back is nearly all steep uphill. Which I would rather were the other way round. As it would be much better to climb the hill in the morning when I am quite rested, and then after a long day I would breeze down the hill, and home.

Our new house sits on a hill also, and though it is on the other side of warren, ( and about 7 miles from here) the hill is not as steep, or as long, so I don’t expect the ride to be as rigorous on the way back home.  Though it will take about twice as long to get here in the mornings.

I am at work now getting ready to start the day, and wow, it looks great out there!!

-Ezra Hilyer - www.straypoetry.com

Posted to www.straypoetry.com 

I am the Writer who does not write, and the poet with few poems.

I see myself as a writer, that is my self identity. When i see myself in my minds-eye, I am a writer pure and simple. I relate to the world as a writer, I refer to myself as a writer… Yet I do not write.

Oh sure, I pen a few sentences once in a while, and often I will dive whole-heartedly back into a novel or article i have been writing for a while, but in the long run, I haven’t really written all that much. A few short stories,  thirty or so poems, and five or six novels in various stages of completion…

Pitiful I think. Though I know this, it seems that the pressing moments of my life  take precedence over that which I really desire to do. Yes, that desire is to write.

So I come to the crux of the issue: I must simply steal the time to write from other interests. I must be a miser when it comes to my free time, and devote myself to the task as though I were a Buddhist Monk in meditation.

I know that to resolve to do this is no small thing, and would be easy to just forget and eventually just lost interest completly. Yet, if I do, I shall live my life in regret. I am now 25, and have known I am to be a writer for a full ten years. What others have accomplished in ten years leaves me to shame.

From this day forth I shall devote some time each day to my pen. EVERY DAY.

-Ezra Hilyer - www.straypoetry.com

I always listen to ‘This American Life’ from Chicago Public Radio. I truly enjoy listening to the program, and look forward to it each week. I don’t always like, or agree with the subjects that the host; Ira Glass, announces, but even then I admire the quality of the show.

This is poetry without the rhyme, or art without the visual. I can’t really put my finger on it, but listening to this show is one of the highlights of my weekend. I get it also via thier website: http://www.thislife.org.
-ezra

Sleeping on the sofa.

Here is a snapshot done today.