Mad Swirlin' it up.

So first of all, if you don't know what Mad Swirl is, I highly encourage you to check it out: http://www.madswirl.com/ It's a literary and art collective, both on and offline, as well as a monthly open mic at The Absinthe Lounge & Cigar Bar in Dallas. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Absinthe-Lounge-Cigar-Bar/128557773823616 I love it and go every month to see the feature, hear and read poetry, and get drunk if I have the money. It's a lot of great bohemian fun, and if you're in the big D, definitely check it out. I finally have video for you of myself at Mad Swirl. It's from last night. Warning, it's dark and shaky but YouTube is in the middle of working on stabilizing it as we speak, and I made it as bright as I could. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5cNNQfYr0 Enjoy. Here is a pic of me from last night, courtesy of Mad Swirl's photographer(s).


That mic is having a spiritual experience. And so was I. 

Mad Swirl be like church to me!

I'm doing pretty well, growing my hair out long, and as to why, well, that's another post. It's getting pretty shaggy. Also, Randy is still looking for work but has some great leads and guess what else? I may be getting myself a publicist! Nothing official yet, we still have to meet and chat details but a friend of mine wants to be my publicist, and isn't worried about the money. Hallelujah! I can't wait to talk about this with her and hammer out the details and whatnot. Anyway, I love yall. I'm trying to make money off this thing, but nothing yet. Any tips would be appreciated. Maybe I don't post enough. Later days! (And yes, I stole that from The Weekenders and yes, it's a kids cartoon.) Bye!

It's been a bit.

I know. It's been a bit since I blogged, and you miss me. I understand. Well I'm still working on the book, sort of. Procrastinating STILL and using my current lack of my favorite Swisher Sweets as an excuse not to edit. (Maybe in protest?) I'm used to having them when I edit. I'm broke, and my hubby's still looking for work. What else... A friend of mine has been sick but is getting better. I'm hoping another friend of mine is going to let me watch her son, who's a really sweet and awesome kid, for some much needed under-the-table money. (And I'm usually nervous around kids, but he's THAT good a kid!) Waiting on an answer and being patient. Can't rush this kind of thing. Speaking of money, I finally verified my husband's account so I could possibly make some money from this blog through AdSense. God do we need it. We did finances and most all of my SSI money coming in next month is all going out on bills, and paying back a good friend who helped us out mid-August when we were out of food. You know who you are. Thanks for saving the day again. Um...stuff to talk about, stuff to talk about. I just finished the sixth season of my absolute fave show Dexter, (LOVED IT!) and I'm getting caught up on True Blood. I'm in the beginning of its second season. I like it so far. Yes, I know, behind on the times, how dare you not have seen True Blood till now, yada yada fangbanger yada yada Sookie... And DAMN is Lafayette fine as hell! What else? Oh, I'm really getting good at drawing on my Nintendo DS Flipnote Studio. Was never really good before it, but I've made a good few flipbooks since I got it, and I've been doing more drawing on it lately, a lot of it blind contour like this: 

A pretty pretty dancer in her yard...or a man falling on spikes....or someone crowd surfing...

So anyway, I enjoy it and I'm getting better. But I can't put them directly on Facebook from my DS, (it can't connect to WiFi for some reason I can't figure out...) so I have to snap a cellphone pic of each one, upload it to facebook through my phone, save the image to my comp, delete the photo from Facebook and re-upload it in an album I made for these ON Facebook. For such good artwork, (for a beginner,) it sure is a pain in the ass. But it's fun. You can check the rest of them out on my Facebook. I'm sitting here at 1:34 am beating myself up for being so gung-ho about the book editing in my last post, and then having really nothing done. I have deduced through the little bit I did do, that my updated list of my best poetry going in Strangely Wonderful is 235, (YIKES! There is no way they're reading through all of that and giving me anything,) and that I have to whittle that list down to 120 at the most. 115 will not make the cut. This is....American Poet! (Cue music, Ryan Seacrest steps out,) "Hello folks and welcome to American Poet! 235 brilliant works of poetry are waiting anxiously in the wings to find out which 120 will go on to publication, and a chance at the prestigious Walt Whitman Award, and which 115 will stay on Bear's computer and Facebook profile, doomed to a life of mediocrity and sub-par note commenting." You get the point. 16 days from now is the new deadline if I want to get it in early. I don't think I can do 16, but the real deadline is when it ends: November 15. A month from then. I just said Sept 15 because I wanted to get it in early. And I still do. But even the gods need help sometimes getting me off of my ass and going for it. (Oooh he's referencing the last blog post!) So give me some motivation! As of yet, there is nothing of the sort on my wall. Do it! Not a friend? Send a request! Anyway this is all for not if I don't actually do the thing I set out to do. I need a Red Bull. I need an investor. I need MY CIGARS!!! No, what I really need, (not holding my breath for an investor for real,) is motivation. And that Red Bull wouldn't hurt. Cigars wouldn't either... Dammit stop it Bear. You know what I really need? A room. To sequester myself, which means changing my sleep schedule so I can go in my room mate's room during the day to work on it, as we are in the living room on an airbed. No complaints. But that's what I have to do. So I've been trying to straighten it out but to no avail. Still gonna keep trying. I know you're rooting for me. I know you believe in me. I know you have a dollar. Ahem. Cough Cough. Ceremony fund. http://www.gofundme.com/11d478 Yes I'm still plugging. And I'm still writing. A lot of stuff I still haven't posted because it's so long in my notebook, and I'm still not sure I'm done with one of them. Anyway, that's the update. I'm headed to bed. I know this isn't the most interesting blog and I didn't really put a lot of pics in it:

THERE! YOU HAPPY? Yes, I drew that, and NO, I'm not ashamed! My art has MEANING! It's a penisface!!! 

See this is what happens when a guy like me stays up too late on these things. I tend to do...weird stuff...for fun. What can I say, I'm a weird guy. Who really needs those goddamn Swisher Sweets little peach cigars that for the life of me, I can't find in Dallas! Oh, one more thing, did I mention this same weirdo is going to be a greeter at his church, and be in the theater ministry as well as provide his editing and proofreading services to them? (That's right, I'll edit your shit for free to procrastinate from doing mine for possible money. Crazy!) Yeah, church is gonna love me...until they see this blog. Take it easy folks! 

Ok, what the hell? It's me and...a bunch of...mutant...me's??? What a weirdo...

The gods tell me to get off my ass and go for it.

Well apparently all of my procrastination and tomfoolery has made the gods decide to give me some incentive. So yesterday I was on Duotrope, which I'm new to and still figuring out. Some months ago I used it to submit 5 pieces to the Black Warrior Review, and never heard back from them. Not even a rejection letter. Whatever. So I decide to snoop around for things that will actually pay me and I came across the awards section. Now I'm the paranoid type, with no copyright, (yes I know about the poor man's copyright, I have TOO MUCH STUFF and the all-knowing Wikipedia doubts it'll hold up in court, which adds to my paranoidiness. Yes I made it up on purpose,) geez where was I? Oh yeah, so I've never been the type to submit to poetry contests and shit. Madswirl, http://madswirl.com/ is as far as my work has gotten pretty much. Anyway there it was, the Walt Whitman Award, (https://duotrope.com/market_5311.aspx,) by the Academy of American Poets!  Now, as you know, Walt is my guy. I studied Leaves of Grass exclusively for six months in 09, and not for a college or something, although back in college I did some kind of literary theory gazetteer on him. He and Bukowski are now at a tie for my all-time favorite poet. Today on the phone with a friend who recently left Alabama, our home state, for Maryland to do grad school, where she'll do fabulously, (https://twitter.com/readallthepoems,) she was telling me just how much she couldn't go anywhere in D.C. without bumping into something Whitman. My jealousy was at 115 on the 1 to 10 scale, especially considering all the other museums and literary things she got to do over there. Anyway, stupid story short, the Walt Whitman Award is given to honor a poet's first book. You must be previously unpublished. Why, that's me! All of my failure to get published, procrastination and paranoia might have finally paid off! In their words, it "will be open to submissions from Saturday, September 15, 2012 (23.1 days from now) through Friday, November 30, 2012." 23.1 days! I still have to choose the new stuff that I wanna put in the old Inverted Reflection manuscript, throw out some of the worse poetry, change dedications, (2 are out, 2 are in,) change acknowledgements and bio, and write a little intro about the dead dream that was IR, and how it came back to life in Strangely Wonderful. So, in other words, I have to go from 0 to 60 in 23.1 days, and finish, edit, and re-edit the new manuscript! And feeling so positive and somewhat productive lately, (hey I didn't start on the book today, though I said I would, but I'm still writing this blog!) I decided to go for it. So go get on my Facebook, write on my wall, and give me some uplifting words to be motivated by, (like, "hey you lazy bum, i'm glad you're getting off your ass to complete your book! here's to hoping you win, but at the very least, you'll have it done, and can put it on amazon!) Yeah, we'll see. I have so much good stuff to put in the book! I hope they like it!

How can they say no to that face?

Anyway, you're probably wondering what happened with that Inverted Reflection thing I keep mentioning. In a nutshell, a hopeful naive poet, who was friends with another poet on Yahoo and Facebook, made a deal with her to publish a book of his best poetry, 100 of his best to be specific, through her self-made "publishing company." I'm really trying not to name it or her right now. But I am a bad bad man and have no principles. (Truly Poetic Publishing, ahem cough cough...) She'd get 60% and he'd get 40% after the book was selling exclusively on Amazon.com. He'd get a copyright and ISBN, and could do all the self-promotion for it leading up to that day. Which he did in excess with Facebook posts, Animoto promo videos, and all manner of pictures and shit. 

Pictures like, oh I don't know, THE FUCKING COVER???

She was lazy and didn't do shit in the end, except pump out the shittiest proof book known to man, with spacing errors as if a brain dead so-called "publisher" sat down to my carefully edited and perfected manuscript, and just began pounding on the spacebar like it would make her brain cells come on back home to mama...I'm sorry, where are we? The rage was setting in... Oh yeah, and the back cover which had quotes from a book review that a busy and well-respected co-editor of Madswirl.com did for his friend's book, was thoughtlessly done in such a manner that the quotes were cut off. 

Exhibit A. The proof book. The only "proof" the bitch did anything at all.

I'm at least glad she never screwed me out of my money, which undoubtedly, she would have. Remember, if a publisher wants money to publish your poetry, it's a scam. Wish I'd known that then. Anyway, I put that review in the back of IR, and it'll be in the back of SW simply because he worked hard on it, and I'll explain what happened to the dream of the first book, the one he reviewed, in the intro. It's still gonna be the same poetry for the most part, (at least the individual poems he reviewed will still be in SW,) and the same poet, obviously. And yet not. I've evolved quite a good deal. So has my work, and my philosophy. So there you have it, I'm still chasing the dream. And yes, I'm going for it. No negativity, no siking myself out or doubting myself like I usually do, (thank you newest poem for helping me with that,) I am staying positive and have a good to decent feeling about it. Strangely Wonderful has an AMAZING cover photo, a portrait of yours truly done by the UNBELIEVABLY TALENTED Christian Millet of Denton, Tx. Meeting him was quite the experience. The man reminds me of Picasso, my fav artist. Check him out: http://christianmillet.carbonmade.com/ and by the way, this is it: 

Amazing, right??? I did the text. The rest is just God flowing through this man onto a canvas.

I know right??? Buy his work, he's so money! The back cover will be an image of my own doing, through an online editing site. But I'm still holding out hope I can get another artist of a completely different style to do a portrait of me in his or her style, and let that be the back cover. Right now, I really don't have the cash but OH MY GOD the front cover was so worth the money. Anyway, (he writes for the 15th time,) I'm going for it, and nothing but the best will do. Still going with 100, or at the most, 120. Keep your tentacles and testicles crossed for me, folks. I need this. Did I mention the prize is a $2000 advance??? And a hell of a lot of respect and prestige for a poet's first book of poetry. What an entrance to the poetry world this could make!!! Don't forget to read my shit so you can love me like the rest of the world will one day. Keep an eye on the kid, honey. I'm fit to take over where the Buk left off, and then some. Told ya. Egotist. I know I'm the shit. Go read ten pieces of mine and tell me I'm not. But make sure you have taste first. Otherwise you'll hate me without realizing what you're saying. If you honestly don't like it, it's not your thing, then you can't be faulted for that. No accounting for personal taste. But I'm here to change lives and raise the dead. You just watch. This generation has no idea what hit it yet, but it will. I gotta hit the sack if I'm gonna get at it tomorrow. Don't forget, I have a facebook, I have a twitter, I have a girl tied up in my basement----DAMN YOU STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SHUT UP!!! Yall don't need to know about that part! And neither does my husband. It puts the anthology in the basket!!! I'd publish me. I'd publish me so harrrd....

Oh, NO, nothing like that!!! I, I don't have a dog... 

A shameless plug in the name of love.

Taken immediately after we were pronounced husband and flamer. I love him!

So in the last post, I mentioned briefly the fact that I got married this past February. Randy is the best. We have been together a year and almost six months, (24th will be six months,) and we got married a year to the day of when we first started dating. Early, I know, but I'll explain that later. We went up to D.C. and had a great adventure trying to survive traffic and make sure that marriage date happened, (it almost didn't,) but we really didn't ever get to have a ceremony. When we moved to Dallas and began attending the amazing Cathedral of Hope, we found out about the beautiful Interfaith Peace Chapel: http://interfaithpeacechapel.org/ and the fact that they do wedding ceremonies. They have a discount for members, which soon we'll be, but the price is still about $1,400. So I started a gofundme account, http://www.gofundme.com/11d478 and already, a friend of ours donated $5.00. I understand you don't know us from adam, so feel free to get to know us via facebook and this growing blog, but even a dollar helps. If you're anti-gay marriage, I know I'll probably lose some readers saying this, and I'm glad, but please fuck off. I don't want to hear it. Randy, (and I promise to do a whole blog about this man,) is amazing and the first person to ever love me completely and wholly in a romantic way. He accepts every weird and twisted thing about me, and I love him for it. He's still looking for work out here, and we came out on a wing and a prayer. I'll discuss that whole situation in the Randy post. Look at me, already two posts in and both of them so full of promise and procrastination! And yet I'm posting again! We'll get there, eventually. What else? Umm, twitter. I post enough on there but don't really get on it very heavily. Here's the link: https://twitter.com/bearthepoet. Anyway, I got up writing when I finally woke up. Last night I stayed up til 6 in the morning talking to someone on Facebook. The piece turned out good. The link is below. I hope you understand this donation thing really isn't about money, and yes, all the money is going to exactly that. Everyone who donates gets an invitation out of courtesy. No money? No worries. I know how that is, as I am there a LOT. Go do something you love. Have fun. Learn something new. Cheesy inspirational quote here: "Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray." --- Rumi. But in all seriousness, Rumi is the shit, and I encourage you to check him out. He'll surprise you for a guy who lived 1400 years ago. Wow I didn't even mean to do that, but there's that number again! Whoa! Now that's just plain freaky.                                                                                     

Anyway, I hope you check out the new piece, (and all of my work,) as it turned out very positive and self-affirming: https://www.facebook.com/notes/bear-poet/the-charge-of-the-lighthouse/10151016680835848 Have a good one folks. We're on our way. Peace out.
---Bear

Here we go again.

Me with my beloved books.

Ok so, here I am again, internet. I have tried and failed so many times to create a blog, and keep it up. They never last a week. I am undependable, which is sad because I have so much to say. I'll put a bio in here for those of you who don't know me. I'm resisting the urge to share this to my facebook once I'm done with the first post, because if once again, I don't stick with it, I'll look stupid. This time I'll really try to focus on substance more than style. I'll probably just copy-paste a lot of basic info about me from my facebook wall because, dammit, I'm lazy. Just call me Bear, or Bear the Poet, let's start there. Let's see, um, I'm 29 and don't look it, I just moved to Dallas from Alabama with my husband. Yep, newly married as of February 24th this year. Thank you. I am a poet, love art, love creative people and the whole art scene. Amazing poet, yadda yadda yadda bisexual blah blah blah. I promise I'll try harder this time at keeping this thing up. Last time, and the one before that it was WordPress. Ok, bio, here we are, and yes, of course, I wrote it. I'm a hopeless egotist, did I mention that? 

A very happy egotist nowadays.

Bio: James Rodehaver is a happily married 29-year-old bisexual poet living in Dallas, Texas, whose difficult yet amazing life is shown to us in his poetry. Despite being disabled, going through seven surgeries, two foster homes, and a lifetime of being poor and living in constant pain, he still rises above it all with the power of his poetry. He is one of the bravest and most prolific writers of his generation. His poetry changes styles, subjects, and lives. He has been writing poetry since the age of seven, and is consistently bringing it to new levels. He turns his many life struggles, and those of his past, into the most soul-searching, heart-rending, censor-defying, and citizen out-crying poetry since Bukowski or Whitman. He is always reading and learning from the great poets, and always striving to show people that poetry is alive, and writhing on the page before us, ready to change us forever. Known onstage as "Bear The Poet," he has done slam poetry in the past, and continues to frequent the slam scene. Come join this amazing writer as he soars to new heights of creativity, and brilliance! Hell yeah!

See what I mean? The ego! The audacity! The BALLS! What a dick! 
Sigh. I need help...
I digress. You know what I just realized? That entire bio is right there on the left sidebar. Oh, well, I'm not changing anything. Did I mention I have a lazy streak???

Anyway, these are a few of my favorite things:

This picture is here because my FAVORITE thing is, of course, me!!! 

Favorite (currently) book: American Gods. Favorite singer: Freddie Mercury. Favorite (currently) band: The Black Keys. Favorite movie: Victor Victoria. Favorite TV show: Dexter. Favorite animated TV show: The Venture Bros. Favorite song: Love Reign O'er Me by The Who. Favorite poet: Tie between Walt Whitman and Charles Bukowski. Favorite artist: Pablo Picasso. Favorite fiction writer: Neil Gaiman. Favorite music genre: Classic Rock. Favorite food: Seafood. Favorite game: Gta: Sa. Favorite musical: Rent. Favorite alcoholic drink: Smirnoff Ice. Favorite type of dog: Pug. Favorite YouTuber: Jack Douglass of Jacksfilms.

So yeah, like I said, I didn't feel like rewriting this. If you have a question, ask. I'll be posting, knock on wood, stuff about my take on things, poetry, and my rants I suppose. It's 1:37 am and I'm not tired, but I am feeling wistful about a dead pet right now. Sad face, violin, everybody cries. I'm trying to cheer myself up, or at the very least occupy myself. It's August 21, 2012. I may treat this as the journal I already abandoned after two days of writing in a new notebook. What can I say, most of my creative energy is spent doing the poetry thing, or thinking about weird things. My facebook, ok. Facebook.com/bearthepoet read up, kids. See what I like and save us both some time. You'll also get that from this if we're lucky. Strangely Wonderful is the title of a book of poetry I'm putting off working on. Last thing I did was decide a new name, cover, and how many poems will be in it, versus what was in my aborted dream, Inverted Reflection. More on that later but not tonight. Facebook it. Anyway, that'll do for now. I may get on here tomorrow, maybe not. I'll probably stay up for some time after this, editing page design and putting pretty pretty pictures of my bad self on here. Night yall.
---Bear.