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I cannot promise you I’ll write about this
I cannot promise you I won’t
Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost
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Category: Writing
26/Aug/2017
12/Jun/2017
Another Villanelle
It’s fair to say I know a thing or two
about the art of leaving something good.
However, I would like to stay with you.
I may not be deserving, sweet, or true
but with me you’d be unmisunderstood.
It’s fair to say I know a thing or two
about the bitten hand. And I may woo —
I too have stooped to doing what I could,
however I would like, to stay with you.
It won’t redeem my soul, that benthic blue
ifreet, for never knowing what it should.
It’s fair to say. I know a thing or two
about the wish economy though, too;
I’ll spend the night that I saved up. I would,
however, I would. Like, to stay with you
is sweeter than a world-engirdled view.
So of this hollowness, pariahhood,
it’s fair to say I know a thing or two.
However, I would like to stay with you.
~
Another exercise in making the same words mean different things. With the help of Richard Kirby on the refrain.
27/May/2017
Abscission
A haiku for the wrong season.
~
If you need somewhere
safe to come down, I wrote my
address in your phone.
29/Mar/2017
Two of Them
You left your pills on the counter like
you meant to take them.
20/Feb/2017
Interview with Yours Truly
Dear All,
Reckoning editor Michael J. DeLuca interviewed me about bees, and also about that story I wrote for Reckoning 1. In case you’re wondering, who’s that mysterious figure behind the mask? you should click the following link to enlighten yourself: reckoning.press/johannes-punkt-interview-the-bumblebee-makers-kiss/
Over on the site, you will also find the story to read so that you can know what we’re talking about. As I said back in December, when Reckoning 1 came out and you had to pay money to read it, I’m really very proud of this story. I hope you will like the story and the interview. I say things like “The bees are still here, being shipped about in big trucks all over your continent, dying, surviving, amnesiac and medicated” and “lofty basement mimeograph pipe dreams” in the interview, if that’s any carrot.
8/Feb/2017
08-feb-2017
The brightness of the music: she was almost blinded
while playing the flute, absent-minded.
Rob Mitchelmore (of jamesjoycewaskorean.com) and I wrote a poem. I furnished him with the punchline and he delivered the context, proving once again that even sophisticated-seeming poetry is just dirty jokes all the way down. I’m amazed at the result and very proud of our creation, and I hope you’re proud of us too.
28/Jan/2017
Introducing: Request-a-Couplet
Faithful readers few,
Back in the long-ago, in those distant foggy times when I had a Twitter account, I used to tell people to give me a topic, any topic, and I would produce for them a rhyming couplet about that. That was fun. Since I no longer have that avenue for boring and political reasons, let us say that you can email me at johannes.punkt @ gmail . com, and politely request a poem. Then, as if by magic, one will appear. I reserve the right to make it a bad poem and also to change the rules. This offer is open indefinitely. Do let your poetry- or weirdness-loving friends know. I need things to do in idle times.
Here are a few examples of such poetry, from those dark days long past:
Sometimes your thoughts are gold and you feel wise
and other times it’s like “…view 18 more replies.”
— On “The Missing Link in the Otherwise Perfect Chain of Thought”
You wear long dark gloves alone
in solidarity with stone.
— On “Statues Missing Limbs”
They rub their hands together not
for God but cuz they hatched a plot.
— On “Just How Athetistic Praying Mantises Really Are”
One pill, two pill, red pill, blue pill;
I’m a bit uncomfortoobill.
— On “Medication”
23/Dec/2016
NEW STORY: The Bumblebee-Maker’s Kiss
Dear All,
I have a new story out, called The Bumblebee-Maker’s Kiss. You can buy the journal it’s in, Reckoning, for five dollars here: weightlessbooks.com/authors/benjamin-parzybok-authors/reckoning-1/
The Reckoning cover.
Out of things I have written, this is one of those I’m the most proud of. It feels a bit silly to write more than that but if you’re looking for me to convince you to buy this, consider: not only is my story really cool, the whole journal is cool. The stories and poems inside it all bear themes of environmental justice.
I don’t want to tell you what my story is about but I should tell you some of what’s in it.
The first time your worlds crossed paths you felt your fate short-circuiting.
I wrote a story where there are no bees anymore, and I know what happened but you don’t. Humans started creating mechanical or electrical bees to fertilise flowers. One of them devoted her life to it; it seems to be all she does. But her kiss is eponymous, so something must disrupt her routine. The story is about slipping, falling in love with this bumblebee-maker. This person who makes the bees that fertilise the flowers in the city.
If you like my writing — and your reading my blog seems to suggest that you do, thank you — you will like this story. If you like eco-punk or solarpunk or environmental speculative sci-fi, if you want your prose and poetry to acknowledge global warming and maybe give you an estimate of how fucked we are, you will like this journal. Will it unfuck us? No, the unfucking is a huge undertaking. But maybe it can unfuck your heart a bit and give you release, hope, all that good stuff. It is the first issue of Reckoning, hopefully the first of many.
Peace,
Johannes
Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost 