WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

August 2008

August 4, 2008

An Olfactory Meditation

The current prompt from ReadWritePoem is: Walk around this week with your sniffer in high gear. Or take a moment right now to conjure up your favorite sense memories: Movie popcorn, gasoline, firewood, bed linens hung out on a washing line to dry – what is it that the sense of smell evokes for you?… Continue reading

Poems

olfactory, poem, readwritepoem, smell
August 3, 2008

Other People’s Children

I’ve never regretted my decision to not have children. I made that decision quite young, and possibly for the wrong reasons; but it was the right decision for me nonetheless. The problem is not some grief for an imaginary child, but rather, for real children. The problem with other people’s children is that they… Continue reading

Personal

childless, children, Family, friend, photo, photograph

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is how I think, and I prefer to do it myself. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

August 2008

An Olfactory Meditation

Other People’s Children