Tag Archives: Annual

Happy Martian New Year

01 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by in quarterly report

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Today, the first of January 2023, is the final day when you can pick up for absolutely free any of the seventeen ebooks I have available on Smashwords. It’s a giveaway I do twice a year, because who doesn’t love free books?

We have a perfectly nice city. Let’s set it on fire!

You can also download or listen to in your browser the final 2022 broadcast of the Puma Broadcasting Network from this link, and see the playlist at this link. It’s two hours of the awesomest metal/punk/funk/psychedelia to say farewell to the old year and rock in the new, with a theme of starting over. 2022 wasn’t the worst year of my life, but it wasn’t the best, either. I’m just glad it ended on a good note. Anyway, one of the songs on the playlist is Scratch, by Morphine, about starting over from scratch.

I’m not quite starting over from scratch this time, thanks to the wonderful support from my mother and sister in making this move, and the awesome network of authors I’ve had the good fortune to connect with in the past decade. But a large portion of my slate has been wiped clean, and at the close of 2022 I look forward to getting on with the next chapter of my life.

We have a perfectly nice city. Let’s blow it up!

I didn’t write a poem for this new year, but the one I composed for 2017 still seems to apply. It’s called Annual, and I borrowed its title for the final PBN playlist of 2022. Go check it out. It appears in my short poetry book Inner Planets, which I recently re-designed before leaving Tucson.

And that’s all the free musical and literary entertainment I have for you today. We’re just a few weeks away from this blog’s twelfth anniversary and my fiftieth birthday, so stay tuned for the next decade of decadence.

To a merry life.

2022 Postcard Design.

annual

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in poetry

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art generated by Midjourney

Annual

Tonight you will take time to remember
why you could not tell her everything:

why galaxies weep and clovers sing
why each raindrop forgets its name
before it strikes the ground.

Tonight Venus the evening star
will shine brightly enough to inspire myth
but not illuminate a forest.

You will notice a shade of green in the sunset
unlike anything which came before.

You will remember how to dance
but forget how to walk.

No consolation awaits you in the
brick broken alleys between here
and home.

Nothing heals a hopeless heart like the dawn
and mockingbird song strewn across playgrounds
and parking lots in random perfection.

But that must wait until tomorrow.
Your name means nothing to you now
but you will choose one that does.

Think of the animals whose lives you stole
and the ones you cared for. Then ask yourself
how they are any different.

Think of the exceptions to every rule
then realize they are the norm.
Consider why we began breaking laws
in the first place.

Recall Pluto has not completed
a single solar orbit since we discovered it
then stripped it of its planetary status.

Our new year does not belong to the outer planets.
They have their own sense of scale and scope.

If you ever wonder if something as small
as a bee or an ant can feel love
then you don’t understand yourself at all.

Remember this tonight when you stumble home
at 3 a.m. clutching the walls and
groping the empty city.

Remember this when you
break your resolutions tomorrow but hold on
to promises you never intend to abandon.

Tattoo your body with stars
and understand it means
we could never leave each other.

Where could we possibly go that we could not
be together? What canvas in all of history
could have been painted, if not by us?

Our hands held the brushes
as they hold each other now.
We could not let go without
taking all of geology with us
like continents.

This poem appears in the collection Inner Planets: 50 Poems by Matthew Howard. Available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.