A New Plan

Done in 2008, 'Poets in a Blues Mood', is an anthology I put together to advertise the Cruzio Cafe. Its purpose was to showcase the Cafe's production capabilities, artistic abilities and literary qualities. It was published to be distributed as a reward for people who would donate money to the Cafe. The eight poets showcased were selected from the more than 120 animations the Cafe made between the summer of 2002 and the summer of 2007.

At any rate, that was the plan. Instead, I retired. And now a new plan has surfaced. The new plan is to use 'Poets in a Blues Mood' as the first of four 20-30 minute DVDs. Animated anthologies selected from the pieces appearing at the Cafe.

I've started collecting the work for a second DVD, 'Love Stories'. And outlines for the last two, 'Old White Guys' and 'Lingerie Ladies and other Love Poems', have been drawn up.

Eventually, then, the anthologies will be offered as a boxed set of DVDs provided at the cost of producing them. How's that for a new plan? It is my belief that a market exists for poetry videos, featuring 8 to 10 poets performing for no more than 20 to 30 minutes, DVDs that could be distributed by small press publishers to the same retailers that market the small press publishers' books.

As far as 'Poets in a Blues Mood' is concerned, anyone who would like a signed DVD of the movie need only send an email to beaublue@cruziocafe.com with a request. In the email please include a snail mail address of where to send it, and a check for $2.50 (to cover the DVD production cost and postage). Oh wait, it's impossible to include a check in an email, isn't it? ... Well, you can send it to my Post Office Box. That's Beau Blue, PO Box 26303, San Jose, CA 95159-6303.

I think the time has come for a new small press poetry product. Maybe some of you might help me prove myself right? Thank you for any and all help you might give me on this project.

Beau Blue

no one wears pocket watches any more

Another new video for the you tube playlist

After All

A piece by Renay explaining why there's a single grave on the hillside on the other side of the valley. Some things never change.

for the Lingerie Ladies

Something a little different for Christmas! We should all have a merry, merry Christmas.

-blue

A Love Story

at the Oak Grove
____________________

Cookie
cooling begs
"eat me please!"

*

dad's plan

He lost his six-pointed hat
to blondie, little girl
and she won't give it back.
She took it
to her stuffed animal stack
and flipped it onto her humongous
lion 'Growlerjack',
the one she falls asleep on all the time.

* *
*

scrapbook construction

The spring's young plum leaves
draw the air slowly
through the afternoon.

A field of forget-me-nots with
a blackberry bush border,
brushes the east side of the cabin.

And a little girl so seriously four,
lecturing an old dog sternly,
on why he shouldn't lick the glue.

* *
*

February Journal - Page 23

My father taught me how to build a fire.
My mother, how to lift with sacred words.
He never let me forget what solid meant.
She saw to it my dreams held flights of birds.

My son and I today, planted redwood.
Told him we owed the forest a small tree.
I sang an Irish song with my daughter
and chanted, with my wife, love poetry.

* *
*

always with the giggles in the hot tub

one person kneels
in the tub, the other sits,
feet dangling and
oh, never mind,
tongues get involved,
the positioning of jets
is so important,
sometimes standing happens,
occasionally railings break,
every now and then
a rubber duck appears.

* *
*

summer Saturday night stories

Grandpa's gruesome ghosts
claw from the dying campfire,
spare scared little boys.

* *
*

preparations

At her father's bedside
Sarah's autumn ear, listening
for the northern windchime,
catches its first faint stirrings.
Turning to her eldest son,
this last summer thirty-one,
who does not hear the morning,
"Split and stack that far madrone
close to home ... I feel October's chill."

* *
*

no one wears pocket watches anymore

he always had his thumb
and index finger in his watch
pocket trying to hold time
still
it was his 'prize' possession
and he held it lovingly
stroked it constantly
chanting to ease its burden
of knowing the exact size
of tomorrow

* *
*

millennia - the responsibilities of rocks

amid the spits of zealots,
arguing exactly where
to park the sun,
and other equally obnoxious
screamers certain
the world will end
with the sputters of out-
witted silicon,
he holds her waist
and calms her children.
'look, the moon's
changing shape
and venus still
carries the night.'

-beau blue

A New Direction

For the last month I've been contemplating a new direction for Blue's Cruzio Cafe. The reason for this is the lack of growth in the audience for the videos. Let's face it, poetry has an extremely small audience. A couple of thousand people per year visit the Cafe and the growth at the site has flat-lined. The same people visit over and over, but very few new people. As well, it takes a monumental effort just to find poets who are willing to appear and another monumental effort to co-ordinate the production of a video. A lot of effort for so few eyeballs.

The only way to expand the audience for the Cafe is to request links at other sites. To date, every email request I've made has gone unanswered or refused. Mostly unanswered. I'm not a very popular fella with my contemporaries. Sad, but true.

Now, most of the refusals have come from portal managers who don't consider my site a poetry site. I assume the unanswered requests are not answered for the same reason.

But some of the refusals have come from sites that only list links to sites that link to their sites. It's called reciprocal linking. In order to obtain a link at those poetry websites the Cafe needs to be redesigned into a portal. I swear, I think eventually all poetry sites will be portal sites. No destination sites, just portals to other portals. [sigh]

But redesigning the Cafe into just another portal seems like a waste of time. There are so many portals already. So, exactly WHAT the Cafe will mutate into isn't clear to me yet. Maybe political satire? Jib-Jab seems to have a wide audience. Maybe short films of one act plays? I think it would be fun to make a cartoon of Albee's 'The Zoo Story' but I have no idea what kind of audience that type of artistic expression could draw. Besides, Albee's got a copyright and I don't write plays.

I'm sure something will occur to me in the coming months.

I have eight or so 'poetry' cartoons in the works right now. They'll be finished over the next few months. The front page will then be redesigned into a fancy Playbill page leading to the current stages and a new stage called 'The Patio'. I'll leave the site up for as long as it draws some attention, but its role as my main artistic endeavor ends this year.

Finally, it has become more and more apparent to me over the last three years that I don't do poetry. I haven't a clue what it is that I do - having thought for 40 years that I do poetry - but the REAL poets have convinced me that it isn't poetry. Poetry flows from MFA programs, college students, and professors, not from a retired engineer who writes in seclusion and draws with a computer. So I leave the field to the academicians. It's their playground and, small as it is, they guard it with passion. I have scars to prove it.

-blue

Now, for something completely different,

I thought I'd actually write something in my blog. I'm a bit down lately. I sent out 18 email requests to various editors and well known names in the academic and internet poetry worlds and only two people responded. Sixteen people too busy to respond, 1 negative response coupled with a broken URL for me to follow and 1 form letter, positive response, acknowledging my email. I suppose that's about right for busy people, concerned with the timeliness of their schedules and the loftiness of their endeavors, not to be interested in unsolicited requests on their attention.

The thing is tho', it seems that it's only the world of poetry that is so afflicted. In my more than 60 years of sending unsolicited mail to well known leaders in various fields, it is only the poetry world that holds itself so high to ignore common courtesy so universally. Poetry editors and educators really are narcissistic assholes. I wonder how it's taken me so long to realize that fact.

I'm reminded that this is the 'industry' that cries all the time about having no real audience. Their cries of how few people buy their books might fall off a bit if they weren't soooo busy. Maybe not.

-blue