SPELUNKING IN THE SPROCKET HOLES:

While you're waiting for me to finish one of the dozens of posts on this blog that lie in various states of composition, why not hop on over to Biocarbon Amalgamate, the film blog recently founded by widely-respected pop culture journalist and tireless freelancer Robert Ham (hmm?  Well, yes, now that you mention it, he does have the same last name as me.  What are the odds...?) and take a shufti at a few posts I've managed to complete under his tough-love tutelage and editorship.  So far, I've written about:

• The 78 Project Movie, a film following a pair of filmmakers as they criss-cross the country, recording musicians from John Doe to John C. Reilly on authentic vintage equipment;
• Razing the Bar, a documentary about the short but happy life of Seattle's most beloved punk club; and
• a short piece about the unpleasant intimations regarding the future of one of L.A.'s most beloved rep houses.

That all three of them have something to do with the struggle to keep a small part of the charmingly ramshackle side of America's not-so-distant cultural heritage alive in the face of technical obsolescence and/or gentrification and/or unmitigated avarice, we'll just chalk up to sheer coincidence.  Feel free to look over the entire blog - there's some fine writing throughout - and check back frequently, as I'm at work on several more pieces; now, if you'll excuse me, I need to consult with someone who knows a little bit about these magic computer boxes - apparently, one's not supposed to write on them using a quill.

IAMBIC, I SAIDIC:

Well, what the hell - while I'm reconstituting long-wilted word salad in lieu of producing fresh, um, prose produce, I may as well serve up some more recent cuts of lean (oh, Christ) Tweet meat.  Fuck, if Steve Martin can slap his Twitter feed between covers and charge people the same price they'd pay for an actual book for it (yes, yes, I know it was for charity - buzz off, I'm in the middle of a delicate rationalization here), then there's no reason I can't transport a few damp squibs of near-cleverness from one barely-noticed area of the Internet to another.  So here are some items I posted the other day on Twitter (@williamham) under the hashtag #NationalFirstDraftPoetryDay, plus a few bonus ones whose brilliance could not be contained in a mere 140 characters.  I just bet some of them may even push the 147-character envelope. I know. I can't be stopped.

how do you like your blueeyed boy
   Mister Death
regular
       or
           extracrispy 

*   *   *   * 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
But, whatevs.  Costco's hiring. 

*   *   *   * 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
No?
Well, how about a Summer's Eve, douchebag? 

*   *   *   *

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
And beat my brains in with a rock –
Because he's fucking DEATH. 

*   *   *   * 

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
won't you guyde my sleigh tonight? 

*   *   *   * 

How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
Three, tops.  Four if it's your birthday. 

*   *   *   *

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, "What the fuck kind of middle name is Bysshe, anyway?" 

*   *   *   *  

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox 

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast 

If you send
one more note
of mine
to Harper's

I will eat all
your peaches
and leave pits in
your slippers


*   *   *   *

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem for its microdermabrasion appointment?

MY FIRST PUBLISHED WRIT(H)ING, ANNOTATED (REVISITED):

In keeping with the newly-minted Twittition that is ThrowBackThursday and out of a desperate need to put something up here that doesn't apparently expire whilst still in "Draft" mode, I offer this - a five-year-old posting from the Forced Exposure Magazine Appreciation Society Facebook group about a twenty-one (!!) -year-old letter section of said magazine, in which, because of the increasingly gaping gap between issues culminating in what we can assume was the final issue of said uber-zine (I don't recall any official word that publication had ceased - maybe issue #19 is still being painstakingly grunted out), they published a letter I had written almost three years previous to that.  Which makes this a Triple Throwback.  Which sounds like an arcane dodgeball move.  Anyway, enjoy the following, whose resemblance to the dense, compressed scribe stylings of one Mr. Byron Coley (a writer every bit as seminal and inspirational to me as Saint Lester ever was) is purely and cravenly intentional.

(Pictured above: the cover of FE #18, the issue in question.  If the picture is a bit hazy, well, so are my memories.)