When I run out of steam for material I can always fall back on an old reliable writing prompt: "The Unexpected Visitor." That little phrase opens all sorts of possibilities, doesn't it? The obvious metaphor is death. Death comes knocking, etc., etc.

But death isn't unexpected in the end, is it? Death is expected, of course. Death is usually surprising, but not unexpected. Death is truly "The Surprise Visitor."

Surprise! You're dead. 

Not funny. Right? Sort of. You can't say, "Oh, hi there...um, Death. I wasn't expecting you. Ever." You can say, "Oh, hi there, Death. You surprised me arriving so soon. Like today. Why can't you be fashionably late like my wife insists we be all the time. I know I prefer to be early usually..."

I doubt there's any use in having that conversation. There's probably no negotiation, though death is probably not pressed for time and could argue for as long as necessary. 

I do have a theory, however, why many of us writerly types are, in fact, writers in the first place, or, at least, what motivates us to keep on writing when writing is the last thing we want to do or seem to be figuring out. The next time someone asks you why you became a writer or why you write, tell them you're dying. That you have things to say before your last visitor. 

I doubt I'm leaving large accounts of cash to anyone. Besides, having been the victim several of the poor folks with lots of it, I don't think it's much of a blessing in the category of one's Karma. A big house that will saddle someone with a continuing mortgage? No thanks. A beat-up car? My last name in cheap plastic letters on a building (that was a tax-shelter to begin with) no one bothers to look up at when they enter? Again, no thanks. Some call that a "naming opportunity."

How about leaving what you thought about the world in words in thousands of books circulated in stores and libraries and home bookshelves? In the region of your hometown? Your home state? With friends and acquaintances across the world? That's a legacy, I think. When you're gone and someone misses you, but you've put every atom of your soul into your writing and they have it in their hand, you're there with them. Whether you've had that last unexpected visitor or not.

Let death be a friend to the energy of your writing. Not an anxiety.  

It's the end of March. I've been writing at least one poem a day (sometimes more), every day, for over half a year now. I started living in this little oasis of insanity on the 15th of September, 2016. 

I feel a little like a lone astronaut stranded in an orbiting craft, drifting to the dark side of a planet every day, losing contact, doing my thinking and writing in the dark (which I do a lot of in the early mornings and late night), until communication is restored with the light and I hear from my writing partner(s) before midnight with their daily poetry dispatch. 

Of course, along with that drifting existence is the regular flow of rejections (submissions are a regular part of life after all, right?). I liken these to failed communications back to the planet. Something I've sent, something important. Something that failed to be understood, that has fallen flat, been scrambled beyond sense of my original language.

​But then, occasionally, the math works out and someone returns the call: We hear you. We hear what you're saying. We will let them know you're message. 

So there's nothing new or crazy about doing the Poem-A-Day (POD) Challenge for a month. I've enjoyed this with writer friends on several occasions. What I realized some time ago, however, was how I often managed a poem every day normally and that I could learn something (and maybe others, too) over a more formalized timeline of that natural process.  

My admittedly crazy plan is to write at least a poem every day for a year and live to tell about it. 

I'm well down the road already. I've been exchanging a POD with a partner poet or two every month since September 15th, 2016. My first writing partner joined me up through the end of October. Two writers joined me for November. Another single writer joined the challenge in December. I had a few folks help me start the year off. Now we're here in the middle of January and my current partner and I are planning to write until at least the middle of February if not through the entire month. 

And just like that, the project is already closing in on half a year.  

I'm meeting new people through their work and getting to know people better. Exchanging with so many others over the months exposes me to their writing styles and voices. Believe me, I've been influenced by these good people. I'm learning better discipline in my writing routine. I'm learning to work with prompts whether I want to or not. I'm learning to write when I don't want to write. I'm learning a higher level of awareness since such a challenge requires constant streams of inspiration and / or material. Inspiration is never guaranteed when you need to work, is it? 

I'm having to prioritize my time since I have a regular life (though writing IS my life): I've actually started a fiction semester with my MFA program, so on top of having to have my poetry brain going, my fiction head is running full-bore as well. I have non-writing projects to keep up with. I paint, enjoy photography daily, and have other life obligations. 

I'll definitely be writing a book about this personal writing quest once it's over and I've had time to process how the experience turns out and leaves its mark in my life. That's a little over half a year from now, though. 

"And miles to go before I sleep." 

As poets, it's probably our common denominator. What do you think? The bitter fuel that drives the angry heart in the night? That sudden mortal topic that can halt our steps. That haunts the pen and keys? Well, don't let me speak for you, but it's a hunch I'll speculate upon for a moment. 
     It's enough of a hunch, at least, to title this blog series by in my case: Death and A Writer. It's what I believe drives most of my writing. Not always a fear of death, though fear fits as much as the next person, but enough of a morbid curiosity of its mechanics so that I'm stuffing my finite-ness full of what I love and admire in the world the most - writing and more specifically, poetry. 
     We recently found a cozy little spot within walking distance of old downtown here in Johnson City. I was gleeful to find that the city's original cemetery was a block or so away and on the meandering route to where I often write. If you've never written in a cemetery I suggest you try it. Write a poem near someone you used to know, or better yet, while sitting on a rectangle plot of soil already purchased as your grave. See what boils up from you psyche from that. 
     There comes a tipping point each day, a sort of epiphany, when I feel like, OK, there it is, the day's accomplishment, getting up was worth it, going to bed tonight is well earned, I will not have cheated this day. Nothing will cause me much alarm when I rest my head and whisper, I'm Grateful around 2 AM in the morning when I usually get to bed. 
     That poem, or poems, are good to leave behind for the day.
     That painting says something. It's a good statement. 
     That story brought to life was worth the toil. 
     I'm glad I read that author's book today and extended their legacy into my life and broadened who they were a little deeper into the human experience. 
     Even though I wanted to rage out and say ten negative things about Trump today, I managed to hold myself to only one and it was only slightly sarcastic. That's progress! 
     And if I die before I wake... 
    

The old adage Be Careful What You Wish For is a wise piece of advice we'd all agree should be taken seriously. It applies to writers and poets, fighter pilots and zoo keepers, but for our present moment let's concentrate on aspiring full-time, Kamikaze poets who would, at some level, rather experience poetry at some elemental state than eat or sleep.
     But with such obsession comes with it the responsibility of a hopeful epiphany, of some clarity in what's happening around you in life so that the writing is a reflection of something purposeful. At least all that's possible. And with such eventual clarity can come a resonance of purposelessness in routine and the old way. A painful skin-shedding. 
     If you've been blessed by how the bricks of life fell on you to try writing full-time for a while (that's code in this case for not having a job that would interfere with writing) which placed you fully where you dreamed of being all along, what you might find is that with this dreamy happiness comes the bliss of FINALLY seeing your priorities acted upon rather than the priorities of others running your life. This is an extremely rare occurrence and should be acted upon. In my case, I immediately enrolled in a MFA program in poetry, something I believe would round out a calling of purpose since I'd been meandering in writing for a few years half on my own as it was but needing true full-time instruction and mentoring. 
     When you're regular job becomes the awareness of surroundings, both the inner and outer worlds, in order to gestate poetry, you see a different realm after a while. Hopefully you're not just occasionally seeing poetry-inspiring glimpses in the world anymore since your cast-off mundane veil is raised, revealing what truly lives, or lurks, or both, out on and behind the stage for romantic pen-fodder.
     But how are you supposed to digest all of this? Especially when so much of the "regular" world quickly begins to pale in comparison. You do realize, of course, that the color hues of the poet are both darker and brighter all at once? What words suffice in normal conversation about everyday weather after a while? How does one speak of politics, on a monster oddities such as Trump and Cruz within a normal lexicon when you've spent the day swimming the mind isles with Heaney?
     And what if you find yourself in need of a part-time job, even to kill a bit of time, stretch the back a bit, give yourself some schedule, and you peruse the ads looking for such an opportunity, inspired like a good Bukowski job-masochist, and you page, and page, and page, and page, but even then everything you see makes you want to go run in traffic? Just remember: Be careful what you wish for. 

I've been keeping a personal tradition for a few years now. I write at least one poem every birthday season about having that birthday. I title them by their simple, sobering, and gently encouraging number. For this year, may I present this afternoon's sudden inspiration, #47:

#47
 
Yard work this afternoon for a gathering
tonight. My wife has planned something
for my forty-seventh birthday. I’m a few
pounds heavier than last year, resenting
the trend of a little breathlessness with work,
but balancing in early spring’s amazement,  
of that late March warmth that never fails us.  
I lean on the rake, lift my eyes to the sun.
It is the middle time. Bookended between blood
and glory. Yesterday, the best of Fridays.  
Tomorrow. The inevitable, even for stones.
A crow calls up past my closed lids.
And another. I look to search them out,
up in the yet sprung greens, in the dark
streaks yet on the day’s cloudless word.
They hop and float, intersecting the sun
and my view, two flashes rapturing through
the glide of feathers, shadowing over my face.
I’d never seen this shade of red,
I’ve never seen such shades of red.  

It's fully confessional. I was working outside, etc, etc,. My wife is throwing me a "Party Like It's 1969" costume party tonight. We're all supposed to inhabit the soul of some famous person of that era, preferably of that lovely and chaotic year. 
     I've lived - since I could own an opinion on such mystical things - under the impression that we bring with us certain aspects of the times under which we were produced. The DNA of the culture, not just our physical make-up. A lot was happening in 1969 that I've leaned back on. I'm an Aries. I've adopted the Ram's stubbornness. The astrological sign's make-up. I've grown into a Mar's fetish in my writing. Red is a major color hue in my art work when painting. I've always had a fascination with the Vietnam War and my father's involvement there during his deployment in 67 and 68, right before I was born. In grade school, as I got ready for catching the bus every morning, he fed us a steady stream of Hendrix, The Beatles, George Benson, and BB King. If, then, we're time capsules of preferred years of concentration, I cannot deny the year I was born, though I can claim very little of having lived in it in the traditional ways, though I feel as if I can think back to it as if being there. 
     Going back a year to #46, this is where my head was then: 

#46  
 
A year now, on with the forty-sixth,
                                                            bolstered by the Ides,
embattled lately and wrestling the physics of the inevitable,
another damn birthday, fully visible in its approach,
 
bolder than usual, though, but
                                                 just as threatening
                                                 and potentially deadly.
 
Jonquil winter rolling in from the north,
                                                                  spring hasn’t won
 
quiet yet, but it tries. Crocuses come and gone,
their purples and yellows gone to sleep
                                                               two weeks hence.
                             
            The Resurrection right around the corner. 


     Again with spring it seems, again with Easter threaded in, am I predictable or the season? I feel more positive this year. And I am. Good things have happened. A little heavier? True. Heavier with possibility. And though that's an overdone metaphor, it works for me. Besides, tonight I'm sort of an semi-overweight pre-overdosed and deceased Jim Morrison poet/rocker. Perfect. I'll have pictures, don't worry.
     Happy Birthday to us all.  

During the first two weeks of July 2015, I attended my first MFA residency at West Virginia Wesleyan College. I'm studying Poetry. Finally doing this is probably in the top best decisions I've ever made in my life - no exaggeration. It's up there with marrying my wife, serving my country, attending undergraduate college in the first place way back when there were lots of reasons not to.

2015, my 46th year, ranks for a few reasons as one of my worst and absolute best years of my life all at once. It's been a lovely go. 

Committing to the MFA was not something I would have done had a life changing disappointment not been dumped into my world. We're often given 180-degree opportunities when life's brakes screech us to a halt and things break. So I took advantage of the panic and did what I'd been fantasizing about for years - acted on my passion. That was something I'd preached to many people for years. I believed it and thought I was walking the talk, as they say. But I wasn't. I was settling on working a job that let me writing some of the time. 

But suddenly WITHOUT A JOB, the time had come to really act. Hey let's go do what we really want to do! Get that MFA and go write ALL THE DAMN TIME!

Luckily I have a wife who supports such a hair-brained idea and who believes in every word I tap out at three in the morning. 

Since the endeavor began I've attended yet another residency during the first two weeks of January 2016, and survived. I've written and read more than at any time in my life. I'm understanding the craft of writing and poetry better with each week. I'm meeting and learning from mentors. I'm networking. Meeting friends in the field of my continuing passion. Most of all, I feel as if I've found a tribe I've sought out for years. I'm who I should have been a long time ago.  

So three of us will begin exchanging a poem a day starting tomorrow, April 1st. The month will be an honoring of National Poetry Month, a means of stretching our skills, of taking on the challenge of writing on demand, of being constantly aware and ready to "see" the world around us for invitations to speak as poets. 

I once thought poetry - good poetry - might only be written when perfect timing and inspiration presented themselves. I was wrong and naive about that. That was only my fear and emotions speaking. While I don't have a specific time to force myself to sit and produce, I have better learned to take advantage of unexpected moments of opportunity, whether I'm in the mood to write or not. This is essential for accumulating your material. As you know, one poem can become two, two can be split into three, one poem can become a short story, a paragraph from a novel might be a poem. Without sufficient material from which to draw, this exploratory birth of revision might not unfold. 

Participating in writing months - whether NaNoWriMo or NPM (US or UK versions) - teach us to grow more comfortable with not knowing where the words are taking us. To listen carefully - to everything - realizing, hopefully, that inspiration is constant with a focused mind and eye.