March 2024 Monthly Roundup
Waywards is falling by the wayside, and you won’t be reading my work ever again. April Fools, Waywards reader! I know, I know. March isn’t over just yet.
With respect to the month that’s mostly in our rearview mirror now, there’s no roundup to share. But that’s not to suggest I wasn’t getting after it the last 31 days.
I submitted a piece about a college pole vault squad in early March. It hasn’t been published yet.
I also revived a reported essay I wrote last year about Southern Illinois artists. Here’s the skinny on its trajectory: An editor at one outlet commissioned the piece in early 2023 and after I submitted asked me to prepare accompanying images, which I did. Then, later, I got an email—as did several contributors—notifying me the outlet didn’t receive some expected grant money, so the rate I was offered wouldn’t readily materialize. I nevertheless gave the outlet the green light to publish and pay later. That outlet let the piece sit for a while. Eventually, I submitted it on spec to editors elsewhere. I recently supplied those editors with a revised draft. The piece should be online soon, if all goes well, and I should get a bit of the compensation I initially anticipated.
I also crafted a pitch in late March for a piece about undergraduate student organizing. I’m waiting to see if it gets commissioned.
And I’m doing a little reading related to a chapter I’m supposed to contribute to a forthcoming edited book. I’m still brainstorming the essay I need to write for that, as it’s not due until later this summer. For their part, the editors who accepted my proposal are reportedly in advanced talks about having the would-be book featured in a new series.
In addition to the aforementioned, I’ve been teaching a spring semester mass communications course at the local community college since February.
The winter quarter Intro to Labor Studies course I had been teaching since January at UC Riverside ended this month, and I’ve been preparing to teach the same course during UCR’s spring quarter, which begins tomorrow. On top of all that, I had to submit materials for a lecturer reassessment during the short break between terms.
I’ll affirm that there’s no rest for the weary, Waywards reader.
Outside of work, I finished learning the Tai Chi Sun Style 73 forms last week. My instructor said I’m the first student he’s had who’s made it through all 73.
You may or may not care, but this past Thursday I attended an historic game between the Ontario Clippers and the G League Ignite at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California. It was the final Ontario Clippers game and also the last G League Ignite game. The Clips are leaving and moving to San Diego, and the NBA is ending the Ignite experiment, which focused on developing young talent.
Beneath the following photos of me and my friend Tyler at that last hurrah for both the Clips and the Ignite you can find two poems I wrote this month.
March Poems
Those Other Guys
Those other guys…
They only want to hit it
To do it and say they did it
For the special one truly interested in you
He doesn’t deny physical attraction or lust
Yet he doesn’t want to get with you just because
He digs your trim, toned torso and firm, tight butt
Some just like how you look and when they push, how you feel
You’re a bit hung up on being ephemerally filled up, but still
While girth feeds your self-worth, the deeper connection is nil
They leave and you want vengeance, like Thurman in Kill Bill
You fear you’re left like Sisyphus to eternally struggle up the hill
No shill, this gentleman proceeds to tell you in detail how he truly feels
Confessing that it’s like unbearable torture without your soft, caressing touch
That it’s like excruciating torment, lacking your tender, cherubic clutch
It’s hard, or tough, like the meat, when love isn’t both gentle and rough
Your being is euphoric; he’s drunk on it, like Homer Simpson on Duff
He needs to keep giving more; like Marge, however, you’re always enough
The off the cuff awkward stuff gives way to smooth, warm and gratifying muff
He came to give unconditionally, wanting to bestow and knowing that he must
Satiating an insatiable appetite to receive, she taught him to relax and to trust
Entreating him to excitedly do what upon her he grasped—what a marvelous bust
She’d forego the beguiling lottery pick for nicer undrafted triple entendre quality stuff
He helped you shake off the rust, and you moved and soothed like the wind does gust
We’ll give, live, laugh, and love, together, at last and at least, ‘til our bones turn to dust
Love and Absolution You and I, we never were ones for chicanery— Not like that spoiled brat from the class that’s ruling. No Entrapment, but I can be your mature Sean Connery. Claiming I’m able to resist. Ha. Who am I fooling? Dexterous and feline, like a young Zeta-Jones, The way you move has my better angels dueling. I can feel it in this beating chest and in these old bones. That’s my libido you’re fueling and heart you’re retooling. Just say the word and I’ll be by your side, like an iPhone. Unlike the rich, covert narcissist, you have virtues I extol. She ripped apart my heart leaving the hole you sutured. You professed kindness, and in that course I enrolled. I had a plan for suave seduction but then butchered it. It went wrong but you were turned on by the tenderness. I got my nerd on yet you nonetheless granted a wish. Lifting the curtain, you conferred supernal bliss with a kiss. I learned to let go. And I knew that night was going to be lit. Piercing superficiality’s mist, you noticed what she missed. All that potency and power, like the divine light you emit, Making seminal vesicles explode like shattered vessels; Seed released within your lower realm—sewn ejaculate. I'm no Cohen, but in The Future I think they'll ring bells. They'll toll for thee, little rabbit; no need for an Anthem. Earth moves beneath us, as in the story Hemingway tells. Within, spirit indwells, and you see what's handsome. We speak a universal grammar; shout out to Noam. You went between my legs; shout out to AND1. Working my dome, so to you I can dedicate this poem. Maybe there’s no real denouement, no final resolution. Remember, you gave me the strength to keep going. The least I can offer is the unvarnished truth without dilution. Together we’re more than the atomized self; that's an illusion. I was freed by our bond. Your love gave me absolution.
Well, that’s about it for now. This month might go out like a lamb, as they say, but permit me to leave you, Waywards reader, with a partial quote from Cesar Chavez, the labor activist commemorated today, who invoked our innate capacities for lionheartedness when he averred that to be “[hu]man is to suffer for others.” Let us be human.