Tuesday Guest Spot #1 She writes

After being interviewed by Nadja I was told by Christopher that it would be good practice to do the same for others…and I liked that Idea. Those of you I would like to interview will be hearing from me…I have been so fricking busy that I spaced to send out the requests. I’m thinking about having a weekly post called Tuesday Guest Spot (Sorry Brian that is my only fairly open spot…ONL will have to get day old bread from me ;-)

Please bear with me, this is my first time doing this and I hope to improve.

Wander

My first guest is Amy from SheWrites:

What was the first book you remember reading, and why do you remember that particular one?

The first book I recall reading was Raggedy Ann Stories, by Johnny Gruelle. There was a whole series I collected in my childhood of these books. The stories were about Raggedy Ann sneaking out of the playroom of the little girl who owned her. She would sneak out at night and visit these magical woods filled with fairies and witches and silly creatures—all components that fueled my little girl imagination to want to run away and discover something magical outside my own window.  Raggedy Ann was both smart and sweet.

I read profusely as a child and couldn’t begin to recall all the books that moved me, but Raggedy Ann remains on my shelves to this day.

Why writing?

There is a freedom in writing that is probably similar to what one experiences with too much alcohol J. It is easy to say almost anything, invent words and stories where inhibition need not be practiced. Of course, there is the inevitable rewrite after rewrite where words get removed, tamed, and added, but still, freedom is a huge draw in writing. Often what I can never express in life, or don’t even think can find its way onto a page and be perfectly acceptable. It’s fun.

If you had your way, what writer would you have a shoot the shit session with, past or present?

Hmmm, this is a really tough one. I am not sure, but Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes comes to mind. Maybe because he was a teacher which means he liked imparting knowledge, or maybe because he was incredibly vulnerable in that memoir and I am always moved by vulnerable people. I want to know how writers come up with their ideas and so anyone currently published would be a welcomed shoot the shit session.

Tell us about the first time you had an idea while writing a piece that made you react out loud...

I wrote about a dog I once loved in a memoir piece that left me in tears. http://shewritesherenow.blogspot.com/2010/01/trees.html

If you could take the place of a fictional iconic villain, who would it be, why, and what would you do differently?

I would never take the place of a villain, I hate meanness. But if I could steal someone’s villain to write as my very own, I’d have to take Annie from Stephen King’s Misery.

Cathy Bates as Annie

Tell us one of your pet peeves

This is easy; I detest writing advice generously doused out by people who cannot write! Drives me crazy

Were you a natural writer, or have you crafted yourself into a writer?

Hah! Though I have been told my work is very publishable, because I have not yet been published (nor submitted work for publishing), I am reluctant to call myself a “natural writer.” Writing comes naturally some days and not so much at others. I work very hard at rewriting everything I write. My style has changed over time. I hope I am honing my craft or crafting myself into a writer. But a publisher will be the final one to answer that question!

Without necessarily saying where you live tell us what attracted you to that place…

I am not drawn to where I live. I am living in a way that is practical for my current lifestyle. Sun draws me. Creative, open people draw me. Accessibility to organic food and great little restaurants draw me. The 1940s bones of my little place draws me.

Thanks, Wander! It’s always an honor to be interviewed. I appreciate the invitation very much.

Amy

http://shewritesherenow.blogspot.com/

     

       Into/one

             Your you

           And

       My me

Joined together would make

         A fine we

     Your me My you

    Those four syllables

     Into/one someday

       Sounds good

      I’d have to say

Chris McQueeney    6/22/12    9:27 P.M.

image courtesy of bing image

just another Day he says

We have to destroy

Blowing the lid off

The hole

In your soul

We have to destroy

Your cover

To make you whole

Cringing and crying

And flinching

Bemoaning it all

Blown is the lid

Off the

Hole in my soul

We had to destroy

My cover

To make me whole

Chris McQueeney    6/23/12   10:56 P.M.

Images courtesy of bing images 

Last time

From that distant shore

One day may I

Walk the shores

Of that distant sea

And gaze in wonder

While seagulls fly

And waves break

Millions of shimmering

Ripples flowing out

One day may the light

From that distant shore

Warm me and offer

Comfort and safety

And peace, yes peace

Full days and nights release

While I wait for that day

I will live and love

Laugh and cry

And you will forever

Hear me say

I am grateful

Chris McQueeney    6/23/12    11:28   P.M

Where the fuck are you?

Those five words changed my life. Those five words showed up on my phone at four in the morning June twenty fourth two thousand nine. Today I have three years clean and sober. I was going to write what lead up to that text, but I changed my mind. Instead I will tell you some of the things that have happened since.

First thing was that I had a friend drag my ass around for a week solid making decisions for me because I was unable to make them on my own. One of the things He wanted me to do was to write out an inventory, an accounting of all the twists of thinking and character that compelled me to get fucked up and destroy my life. At first I told him no problem, and that I would write it that night. My agreeing to that ate at me for over an hour. Finally I took him aside and told him something I had never told another soul.

“I am not going to be able to write the inventory”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t write”

Those four words changed my life. I read very well. And I speak very well. I cultivated those things so that no one would know one of my shames. To put pen to paper is not something I can do. I was so ashamed of that fact, and the result was that I was dying of a disease and a major part of the treatment plan was to write. For fifteen years I had struggled in and out of sobriety and not told a soul that I couldn’t write, not one. I have no idea why I told him. A friend of mine would say that I was cracked just enough that god had room to slip in and speak through me…I can’t take it that deep so I will let you be the judge of that. “Why don’t I write it for you?” And that is exactly what he did, and I have been sober ever since.

After that week he cut me loose, to sink or swim. Every step of the way I have had people to help me swim. At just over a year sober I went to Idaho to make some amends to people that I loved dearly. I disappeared for over ten years. Also to go back to all those places that haunted me, were killing me. I did that and for almost a month after I couldn’t function. I had a break down because I didn’t have alcohol or drugs to survive the torture and abuse I experienced.

One month after my trip I went back to school. The world works at times in ways that open vistas never before available, and this was one of them. While asking at the front desk what I would have to do to get in school the woman behind the desk got on the phone and got one of the school consolers to come talk to me. Out of all the consolers he was the one who I needed the most. He told me the name of the condition that I suffer from, “that sounds like dysgraphia,” and what to do. I have been writing ever since.

I reached a point where I was finally able to write out that inventory, and I did. I chose a man I had known for twenty plus years to walk the path with me, and I told him all of my baggage. I told him how angry I was at my father for dying, how angry I was that he didn’t save me from the damage being done, and how much I missed him. I cried, and he cried because he was a friend of my fathers as well. He heard all of the broken in me that day…and I was broken, there is no doubt about that. How could anyone live through what I did and not be broken. Telling him those things broke me again, but a good break; Like when the doctor has to re-brake the bone to set it properly so it has a chance to heal.

One day a friend mentioned his blog and I decided to take a look. That friend Is Christopher from  View From The Northern Wall. Growing up I was never exposed to poetry, and the impression that I got about it was that it was something to be avoided because if anyone found out that you read poetry they would gang up on you and pummel you half to death. For some reason I wrote a poem in response to one of his poems, I was expecting him to tell me what crap it was, but he didn’t, he told me to keep writing. I have been writing poetry ever since.

The last three years have been terribly hard to survive, but I have been given a gift that I have been searching for the last thirty years…freedom from the demons driving me. I have only written a little about the last three years here. I have been blessed with a family I didn’t deserve, and friends I haven’t earned. I am a different man than I was a thousand and ninety five days ago, and I am grateful.

Chris McQueeney    6/24/12    12:03 A.M

This post has now been linked to Open link night over at dVerse poets pub...give them a look see!

Ghost Pains

Goodbye to you my dear

You have been gone

For most of a year

Ghost pains

From a limb taken away

Remind me how I could say

For you

I would burn the motherfucker

Down

It's true

But that would be

Just for the ghost

Of you and me

On Monday I'm on my way

To sign the papers

That say

The ghosts of me and you

Have gone, their separate,

Away

Chris McQueeney    6/22/12    9:31 P.M.

My first

Sharpness of it all

Again

I find my world is

A little thin

Not so tough

As it use ta be

Those crisp clean lines

Blurred by use

And time

And finding my world

A bit thin

Feeling the blunted edges

I find pleasure

Not in the sharpness of it all

But rather in the

Softer landing

Chris McQueeney    6/19/12    11:59 P.M.

Below is the piece of mine that was published this week. This is an example of flash fiction, and the Idea of flash fiction is to tell a story in using very few words...this one is only 55 words, not counting the title. below the piece you will find the link to the original post this was pulled from. also all the credits for the image. 

This asshole in Jackson

I’m so fucking tired!

This asshole in Jackson stole my horse; bute named Burt, not the horse, the asshole! Got the drop on me, on account of me being in the jug. Won’t happen again! For one thing, I got my piece skinned, back to the wall. For another, I aint got no fucking horse!

Chris McQueeney    1/6/12

Here is the link to this piece and also a link from there to the site that put together the book

Chris McQueeney 6/20/12

I posted the poem at top on dVerse Poets for open link night

Ben Ditty from Old Spice is Nice has asked me to guest host his blog The Raving Moonbat...
I was more than happy to and here is a link to my post, Pixie Dust.

Give it a look see, and try to keep as close-minded as you can...wouldn't want to have our views changed, now would we?

Wander

In that echo

One day I heard myself let go

And from that hear

I will forever live

And breathe

And walk

In that

Echo

Chris McQueeney

6/12/2012

10:20

P.M.

     

     I sat at the park that day so full of fear. The weather was fine, but the grass was damp. Across the picnic table from me was a man I very much admired, and I was telling him all of my faults and flaws and failings. Lighting up the dark recesses of my thinking and living.

     There is this moment before the first drink that to some is called the jumping off place. It is that moment where the drug is calling to you like a lost child in the woods, “I’m here…over here.” While at the same time a quiet part of the mind is wailing “for the love of god don’t, the child will kill you.” Glass in hand the argument is almost always won by the child; the drink is consumed, along with a part of your soul. That internal battle can seem to take millennia as all life tilts on its axis…then fuck it and leap.

     I sat across from that man. I had told him of my anger. I exposed my hurt. I offered to him my guilt. And I stood on that jumping off place, for in my mind, positioned in its throne that rested firmly on my soul sat my shame. The same struggle ensued in my mind as if I was about to take a drink. Only this time the boy was shouting “Please no, if he hears he will never look you in the eye again, will revile and shun you”. This time the quiet voice stayed silent, for I think it had been offered the only answer, and from my mouth I heard myself utter my shame for the man and god to hear.

     I sat on that picnic table in terror of what would happen. He looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I had just told him that. And I was given a gift I can never repay; his response to me was “that was not something I ever did, but if the right circumstance had presented itself I would have.”

Thank You Man

Chris Mcqueeney    6/12/12

this post has been linked to the open link night over at dVerse Poets

Two countries east

And a Halliburton dream

The lies they told

The lives they sold

For a baseball team

And a Halliburton dream

They took the least of

Two countries east

And gave them a ream

Chris McQueeney    3/25/12    3:58 P.M.

Images courtesy of bing images   

Chris McQueeney yeneeuQcM sirhC

I got an email from Nadja a few days ago with forwarded emails asking if it was I that sent them, No, but twas my doppelganger. At first in the conversation between Nadja and my dop she was playing around thinking it was me. But then the realization that she was joking around with a total stranger kicked in.

This has sparked some amusing emails between her and I. Needless to say she now knows her folly, and her family knows, and her blog followers know.

My dop contacted her because of the interview she did with me (my first and to date only interview). That Chris McQueeney Googled his name and ran across the interview. Turns out he also writes and wanted to give her his material to read. At one point he says something like “I want to be the best Chris McQueeney at writing” Ok, the gauntlet has been thrown down; bring it on Chris McQueeney join me in the battle of words!

In all seriousness I am inviting Chris to contact me, comment, or write something that I can post on my site. I may even start a regular segment entitled “just the two of me, pros and mo from the two Chris’s”

Thanks Nadja

On A completely separate subject I opened my dashboard today and there were a whole slew of posts from poets writing in response to a post on the mag. Every Sunday Tess posts an image for poets and pros writers to work with and this week the image was a photog’s (Klaus Enrique Gerdes) remake of  Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s painting Vertumnus, a portrait of today.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Italian pronunciation: [dʒuˈzɛppe artʃimˈbɔldo]; also spelled Arcimboldi) (1527 – July 11, 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books – that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject.

Seeing the image brought me straight back to walking through the Louvre Museum trying to find the Mona Lisa. Just before the Mona room Two or three of Giuseppe’s paintings were hung on the wall. Never before in my life had I seen anything so creative, a Man brought to life from roots and branches, and another from vegetables.

Having seen those amazing works of art I was very disappointed by the Mona Lisa…some other time I will go more in-depth about why, let’s just say total let down!

Of things that could never be

Voices from afar

Singing of peace and love

And harmony

Speaking in eulogy

Of things that never could be

Voices from afar

The screams tearing through me

Of my brothers

Whose voices are stilled

Chris Mcqueeney    6/3/12    1:18 P.M.

the mag 120

Nadja Notarini