Cleaning Up
A postal poem
Grime
clogs the pores
of the postal worker
after he and his partner
load 200,000 pieces of mail
over 3 tons of letters
in and out of the Optical Character Reader machine
(a “labor-saving device”)
each of them handling all that mail twice
by hand
in 8 hours.
Lies
of the millionaires
cavorting in the tired
election circus
cloud his mind
suggesting no exit
from hell on earth.
At home
he will clean up.
A shower,
soap,
the leaflet
in his pocket.
No problem. We'll get it together. Your health is ok? i've been ok, a few problems tho. But on other things I am having problems with the novel. I enrolled in a course to help me get an agent, which is a major problem for many writers. These people are really knowledgeable, really part of the publishing establishment, but I am forced to realize that my whole long novel is completely different from anything they will approve of and goes against all their publishing advice (not to mention against their entire political point of view, but I am not dealing that right now). They are entirely oriented to the current market (the last three years) of fiction, including historical fiction, which is what I have created. For one thing, they are against writing a series; according to them, you write one novel and see where it goes before writing another. I left that behind 1200 pages ago. They want us to expect, and agree to, having our book's title changed by an agent or publisher. They want us to have two "comp" (comparable) books that are debuts from the last three years, about which we can say, "I think my novel shares some of the ebullience (adjective to be selected) and sonority (ditto) of the dazzling work of Gordon G. Googlemonger." The idea is to convince the agent you are current (the past three years) and your book will sell in today's market. They are asking who your public will be. I have a very different idea of that. I finished writing mine in 2021 and at the time i thought of my public as the hundreds of thousands of people who marched in the George Floyd demos; today it would be the ralliers for No Kings. And so forth, back to the abolitionists of 1850. it's probably too late to get my money back, alas.
Enjoyed Tim.
Sorry we haven't been able to get together. Seems to be one thing after another and I have been doing some volunteering. Hopefully we will be able to make it happen soon!
Still enjoying your poems.