Hey, gang! I’m honored today to see my poem “school shooter” published in the Peeking Cat Anthology 2018.
The book was released this morning and features work from 58 creators from around the world. Thank you, Editor Sam Rose, for allowing me to share my voice alongside so many talented writers, artists and photographers.
The anthology is available for purchase in both paperback and eBook format. (You can find purchasing information via the links.)
I hope that you all are having some fun on this cool and crisp October weekend.
This video happened across my Facebook newsfeed last night, and I just had to share it. (I am linking here to the AlltimeBestRockMusic Facebook page.) This is Hope Sandoval singing Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” live in California in 1994. I can’t think of a song that better reminds me of being 21 again.
So how about a poem about a windy, rainswept morning?
“This Windy Morning,” by Eric Robert Nolan
The gales cry,
their sounds rise,
so strangely like
the wailing of children.
The gales
have ripped a rift in purgatory.
Along the low hill’s haze
and indistinct palette of grays,
the thinning slate shapes
are either columns of rain,
or a quorum of waifish wraiths.
Condemned but inculpable
are those little figures —
long ago natives maybe — in an ironic,
insufficient sacrament:
this obscuring rain’s
parody of baptism.
If that faultless chorus
should never see heaven,
they will ever be wind without end
their lamentations ever
shrill within rare
arriving spring downpours.
Always will the squall
imprison their calls.
You and I should refrain
any temptation to breach
these palisades of rain —
lest we be greeted by each
iron-colored countenance:
the sorrowing slim nickel
of an infant’s visage,
little boys’ graying faces,
the silvering eyes of the girls.
Photo credit: By Rodrigo Paredes from Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina (Raindrops on the window) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
This is the 90’s-est song that ever 90’s-ed. Sure, a song by Ace of Base, Oasis or Right Said Fred will take you right back as well, but none of them had the staying power of Bush’s “Machinehead.”
The song is from the band’s “Sixteen Stone” album in December 1994, about seven months after I graduated from Mary Washington College. It it was all over the airwaves. I played the radio a lot, because buying a lot of CD’s was a pricey proposition for somebody just out of school. And, man, did I blast this.
Evening, grave, immense, and clear,
Overlooks our ship whose wake
Lingers undistorted on
Sea and silence; I look back
For the last time as the sun
Sets behind that island where
All our loves were altered: yes,
My prediction came to pass,
Yet I am not justified,
And I weep but not with pride.
Not in me the credit for
Words I uttered long ago
Whose glad meaning I betrayed;
Truths to-day admitted, owe
Nothing to the councilor
In whose booming eloquence
Honesty became untrue.
Am I not Gonzalo who
By his self-reflection made
Consolation an offence?
There was nothing to explain:
Had I trusted the Absurd
And straightforward note by note
Sung exactly what I heard,
Such immediate delight
Would have taken there and then
Our common welkin by surprise,
All would have begun to dance
Jigs of self-deliverance.
It was I prevented this,
Jealous of my native ear,
Mine the art which made the song
Sound ridiculous and wrong,
I whose interference broke
The gallop into jog-trot prose
And by speculation froze
Vision into an idea,
Irony into a joke,
Till I stood convicted of
Doubt and insufficient love.
Farewell, dear island of our wreck:
All have been restored to health,
All have seen the Commonwealth,
There is nothing to forgive.
Since a storm’s decision gave
His subjective passion back
To a meditative man,
Even reminiscence can
Comfort ambient troubles like
Some ruined tower by the sea
Whence boyhoods growing and afraid
Learn a formula they need
In solving their mortality,
Even rusting flesh can be
A simple locus now, a bell
The Already There can lay
Hands on if at any time
It should feel inclined to say
To the lonely – “Here I am,”
To the anxious – “All is well.”
I only saw one third of Roy Ward Baker’s “The Monster Club” (1981), when I was maybe in the third or fourth grade. It was a typical 80’s horror anthology movie, and I walked in when my older brother was watching the third and final segment on television. I’ll be damned if that segment alone didn’t creep me out, though. (And the reviews of the film that I’ve read indeed name “The Ghouls” as the scariest entry in the trio.)
It’s pretty tame by today’s standards, or at least to my adult sensibilities. It was definitely a lower-budget scary story, and probably pretty safe for television even back then. But I watched it again the other night, and it still retains its creepiness after … about 35 years, I guess. The titular monsters are indeed “ghouls” in the classical sense — they are human-looking fiends that are very much alive, but that feed on carrion (which actually makes them the reverse of zombies, I suppose.)
I can’t vouch for the rest of the movie, as I’ve only seen snippets, which seem pretty cheesy. The wraparound segments star none other than Vincent Price and John Carradine, which will of course appeal to fans of classic horror. (Carradine actually portrays a fictionalized version of R. Chetwynd – Hayes, the prominent British author who penned the stories on which the movie is based.)
If you saw this back in the day and “The Ghouls” got under your skin, then let me know. I’d get a kick out of knowing that I wasn’t the only one.
Probably. But these were too cool not to put up as soon as possible. As you might remember from last year, they’re handmade by a sublimely talented craftswoman I know who has a truly macabre touch. They’re much better than anything store-bought.
Care to hear the convoluted worldview of a pathological poet? Then be sure to stop by this site’s My musings page. I promise you that my random ravings are truly infused with strangeness. (Or you get your money back.)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 