One of the amazing and frankly surrealistic things about getting your work published is the length of time between finishing a piece of writing and getting it published. Case in point is this list poem, which I first put together after visiting the island of Phuket in the summer of 2007. Although I've been performing it at readings ever since, it took me five years to finally find it a home in a literary journal.
Some editors told me that they liked the poem but were afraid to publish it because of its irreverent attitude. While I agree that the piece is irreverent, its irreverence is not aimed towards the victims of a tragedy. Rather, it's aimed toward the attitude that we can somehow manage every crisis, no matter how severe.
I don't know whether this poem is sarcasm disguised as Eastern philosophy or Eastern philosophy disguised as sarcasm. My friend David Elsasser, the fabulous poet and open-mic host, called it an expression of human helplessness in the face of nature’s fury, and the foolishness of official attempts to create the impression of control. I think I'm going to hire him as my publicist.
Here's the link to the piece, published--quite appropriately--in the Nervous Breakdown:
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/cfishbane/2012/04/meditations-in-the-event-of-a-tsunami/
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