Sky over the Mountain

Mornings you burn away all my sins with pink and violet omnipresent fire.

Afternoons your storm clouds come and go like a million crows in synchronised painting.

It sometimes hurts to watch.

I don’t want to love you.

I don’t want to miss you.

You can rise up like a tempest god flipping a colossal kaleidoscope.

Your endless alien shapes beautifully barrage my crumbling consciousness.

I want to look away, but I know these holy windows are bordered by treacherous Time.

What if I never come back?

You will churn on.

Only I, this suffering Being, will miss.

I wish I could truly absorb your mammoth mystery, but you are like a woman only meant to be watched and never touched.

I should have said goodbye at the start.

Now it is torture to watch you roll, as if sculpting the mountain each time as your haunting wind howls my name.

Please let me be.

I don’t want to see you again.

My sky over the mountain.

JGC, 2024

Photo courtesy of Daoudi Aissa

When Winter …

When winter prods back in his long black Manhattan coat, don’t be afraid. Hold through his nippy nights and alarming last snow. Before long, your unabashed ubiquitous blooms will simply be too much for him to bear, and he’ll exile himself to Siberia to drink to Dostoyevsky. Or maybe he‘ll melt into Times Square, living off the cold bones of dim, forgotten theaters, until Central Park transforms itself into gossiping tree silhouettes and icy-blue blood begins to pump through his vengeful veins once again.

JGC

Photo by Kristine Cinate

Before May is Gone

Before May is gone—

let me swill its passing song—

before its greenest green is gone—

before this meteoric moment, 

scalding my veins, races on—

before my fragile self,

like a fainthearted, folding flower, 

thwarts the hot hate of the sun—

before the forceful face of fear,

conjures me bid farewell anew,

to that part of me that lives,

in the blinding bright of spring’s hue. 

-JGC, Songs for the Softhearted, ©2021

Never Enough — PhotoPoetry

Thank you, Find Your Voice, for developing my voice and for all your help with this recording! Never enough, everything flies fatefully through the apartment, more and more but it’s never enough. Search for meaning in the office from morning till night being great before the end of life but it’s never enough. Likes Followers […]

Never Enough — PhotoPoetry

Happy New Now

Don’t look back!
Those breaths of souls now gone—
each moment in our hearts beat on. 
 
Don’t look back!
Those wraiths of rustling wisdom—
whisper while we walk in waiting wild woods. 
 
Don’t look back! 
Let the specters of unsolicited sorrow—
slumber silently in unmarked, lonely graves. 
 
Don’t look back!
Time, who takes no notice of you and me—
would mouse our moments with vicious vanity. 
 
J.G.C., ©2020, NYE

Christmas Hope 
 
I used to write to you …
do you remember?
Before faith like melting snow—
waned to white. 
 
I used to peddle smiles …
do you remember?
Before chaos undressed me—
like winter shaking a tree.   
 
I used to visit friends …
do you remember?
Before pestilence swept the Earth—
with her ubiquitous insidious hand. 
 
I used to sing to you …
do you remember? 
Before my voice grew heavy—
and the stages grew bare. 
 
Now I rage restfully …
didn’t I tell you?
Christmas is sacred silent stone—
and hope a mountain under the sea.   
 
-J.G.C., ©2020
 

COVID Thanksgiving

Oh how I could hate you— 

and every day I want to—

cry a million times— 

for a million lives—

curse all those—  

who wage the world with lies—

even rage against the rules—

that rip our family ties. 

Or …

I could write words of Thanksgiving 

for all of those still living—

raise a grateful glass—

to those who face the wrath—

be joyful for the chance—

to embrace this fragile glance—

not at Nature’s scorn—

but at what we, ourselves, must learn. 

-JGC, from “Poems for a Pandemic,” ©2020

Numbers

1,213,224

ain’t nothin’ but a thing 

a vagrant vessel of strangers 

no souls like distant bells ring 

over 1,000 deaths a day

ain’t nothin’ but a lie

no sense staying home

or resistin’ the urge to fly

237,009 in my homeland

ain’t nothin’ but a number

nothin’ worse than the flu

caught us in ruthless slumber  

Mammoth wave ahead

ain’t nothin’ but a dream

maybe if we just close our eyes

we won’t hear our planet scream

-JGC, from “Poems for a Pandemic,” ©2020

When August Rolled

When August rolled, I waited for the heat, but it never came. I pressed my cheek against the sky and felt the cool commerce of change.

“In the summer we’ll swim in the ocean the way we used to.”

“But it is summer, silly,” a ghost of a moon said.

I nosed along the shore looking for pieces to our past. “Not the summer I remember.”

“Stop living in yesterday.”

“I’m not afraid of the moment, I’m afraid of the sky.”

That sky rumbled with no good reason. “He hears you.”

“I wrote a song about my suffering but not enough people have voted for it.”

“What a beautiful artist you are in your naked hope and lugubrious naiveté. You are Blowing Away because you are waiting for the world to change … for August to roll.”

I grew tired of talking and hummed a melody from yesterday.

“You’re still looking for recognition and validation,” the moon went on. “Apparently you haven’t learned the lesson August means to teach you.”

“Please, Moon, I am very tired.”

“Lost sleep from a lost you.”

“Your riddles are burdensome.”

The moon laughed and it was like the dawn yawned inside the approaching waves. “August will roll when you let it roll.”

I stopped and looked out to sea.

How I miss these simple lines, the utter ease of letting nouns, verbs, and adjectives billow the sail of one’s soul. How I miss August, too. I want the sea to carry me to yesterday. 

“Okay, I give up. How do I let August roll?”

“August rolls when you roll.”

“Oh, you are clever, Moon.”

“I know.”

“But must you leave so soon? I can barely see you anymore.”

“I leave once the lesson is learned.”

“Wait! I’m not sure I understand it all!”

“Sorry, I must go now.”

“Wait, I think I get it! Only we can recognize ourselves. Only we can validate ourselves. Only we can say no or yes to ourselves. We are always the ones that rolled, never August.”

“Just as you are the one that always rode the horizon, never me,” the moon said faintly.

“And if we all roll together, then we won’t blow away anymore. Moon? Are you still there?”

And summer came.

 

Yours in literature,

J.G.C.

 

 

 

This Author has not Disappeared, Only Changed his Strategy

Captain Shelby is still alive. I saw him a few days ago in Heiligenhafen (Holy Harbor). As I helped him hold his tried but stoic rope, it occurred to me that he still had some things to say. Currently working on a Titanic-based historical thriller in my peaceful artist studio in Luneburg, Germany, I have not disappeared, only changed my publishing strategy.

After I finished the Captain Shelby Trilogy, I just could not do it anymore. I just could not keep ebbing out my life like some doe-eyed donor volunteering his rare type O Negative blood until he collapsed. I have great respect for authors who choose to frequently publish novels, whether they be self-published or through non-traditional publishers. However, after yet another novel that failed to fully reach its readers, I realized that my publishing strategy was in need of major overhaul.

Sometimes I wish I wrote cozy mysteries or other commercial series books,  or was able to write non-fiction and still have energy for my own novels. I really do. Sometimes I wish I could perform some kind of literary lobotomy and cleanse Captain Shelby’s curse from my veins. But, just as Captain Shelby can never cease being Captain Shelby, I can never remove the literary soul from my voice. And, even if I could, insincerity simply would not sell, or be good enough for you; I could never let down those few of you who are reading this … who have read and enjoyed my books. After all, this blog is for you, first and foremost. It always has been.

Life is simply too short to accumulate more regrets; we all have enough of them already. In short, I realized that the traditional publishing route, though a long, winding road with no end in sight, is the only road for me. Shrouded in the beautiful tragedy of a literary voice, my only hope to find my readers is through the Gatekeepers (established literary agents and large publishers). Only they possess the ability to put wings on my novels and send them out to more readers like you everywhere. In short, I have learned that the Internet, while it may give launch wings to some writers, it will never give launch wings to me.

My current novel in progress, an historical thriller about an aspect of the Titanic tragedy upon which I deeply feel the world needs to be more educated, may come out by 2017-2018.

Here is where I ask for the greatest things a writer can ask of his readers: faith and patience. Faith, that I am doing the best thing for you and other readers like you, and patience, that when another novel comes out, whether it be my current one, or another one in future years, that something else will be published by me … something real and uncompromising.

For those of you who have supported my songwriting (I was a songwriter long before I wrote my first novel), I want you to know how deeply grateful I am that you are willing to support other canvasses by the same artist (e.g., your votes for the song, “Blowing Away” are moving it to the top ten in the World Wide Music Contest) as I write this.

Yours in future novels,

J.G.C.