Vogons Be Damned!

I didn't try to write poetry until I hit 70. Not mph, but years-old. Consider that, if you will. Just when I feared 70 was the new 69, and not much enthusiasm therein, I started my serious poetry "journey."

I love the term, "journey." It means you're pursuing something you probably won't finish, albeit some rite of passage you seize as your new raison d'étre. Consider:

• The weight-loss journey
• The hair re-growth journey
• The fitness journey
• The follow-your-dream journey

How 'bout the survive-past-70 journey. That's my "journey," now. But I'm lucky, 'cause the deck is stacked my way. Don't smoke (bonus points!), have never been considered for My 600-pound Life, and I look both ways before crossing the street. I don't race motorcycles, don't go flying in anything with less than 4 engines, don't use any drugs I know have killed people smarter than me, and am careful not to offend mobs of any kind. I've never had an "incident" with an elephant and don't plan to. When I drink, I don't become aware of how much stronger I am than before I drink, spurning physical fights of any kind. (Although I do get much better-looking after a few.) I've never pushed my body with with wear-and-tear, and I fully expect the best price when I sell my body to science because, as the advert will read, "HARDLY BEEN USED."

And while, yes, I have "kind of" tried poetry before, my knowledge base for it didn't go beyond rhymes, e.g., ABAB. It was much like me and opera, my feeling that I was way beneath "real" poetry; after all, there were too many people smarter than me who dug it (and loved opera).

And then writing challenges kicked me in the ass and I took another crack at it. Right here.

This time was different. For one thing, I had extra decades under my belt and, with a well-seasoned perspective that only an epiphany of one's mortality can engender, I wanted to say things. Important things. Things everyone needed to hear. Despite that poetry is lyrical, making it beautiful; despite that poetry is concise, making it accuratep; and despite the fact that poetry is musical, making it rise above prose in such a miraculous way.

Miracles are for magicians. I had to ask, "Am I a magician?"

Yet, these things I wanted to say — I did. S0metimes my poetry rhymed, sometimes not. Sometimes it could have been more concise, and sometimes it was a stretch to call it musical. In fact, it happens that I became haunted by the Vogons.

According to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

“Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe ... During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain."

Was my poetry Vogon? Para-Vogon? Sub-Vogon? I looked at the things I had written and feared I might have Imposter Syndrome, i.e., feeling anxious because of internal doubts of the possibility of one's success. (And as we know now, internal doubts come right before internal hemorrhaging.)

True to the syndrome, I felt like a fraud and condemned the "poet" in me as a wannabe artist whose, as they say, "shit didn't stink," which is pretty poetic when you think about it.

Here at Vocal.Media, I've now contributed several dozens of poems, structured and free-verse, rhyming and not. Serious and not so. And whether fraudulent or not, I continue to do so simply because, after 70 years, I've found I enjoy writing poetry tremendously.

I have fantasies that, like Emily Dickinson, involve being discovered posthumously, with an army of salivating archivists finding scraps of paper with my scribblings in an old desk draw.

O.K., I ain't no Emily Dickinson. But if Stephen Seagal can make it as a movie star, there's hope. And if the only person I please is myself, then I'm way ahead of, say, van Gogh, because I am not self-tortured, ears notwithstanding. I can only hope no one will have to gnaw off one of their legs for my "journey."

So, now it's 2024, and here are my aspirations for what I want to accomplish here on Vocal.Media:

• I want to generate enough poetry volume to e-publish my first poetry book, tentatively titled, "The Vogon Laureate That Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
• I want what I produce to be lyrical, concise, and musical, or— at least — not suck.
• I want to transcribe my soon-to-be published e-book onto little scraps of paper and stuff them in my old desk draw for when Kim Jong Un sets off that electromagnetic pulse weapon that wipes out all the data on the Internet and we're forced to live off the grid. Let the archivists have a field day!
• I want to get to 80 so I can begin my serious drama "journey," my last shot at the only remaining genre I haven't violated shamelessly.

And if I can't get to 80 in years, at least I can try on I-95, pending traffic. Or my hearse can.