Usually around April I make a joke about how T.S. Eliot was wrong, but I think this year amidst all the Coronavirus shutdown, it is actually the cruelest month for once. It’s hard to not be constantly worrying about it, and I’m certainly not immune (ha) having written up both a Coronavirus FAQ and Coronavirus and Chill humor column. Most recently, I got a little personal with a column on Following your dreams.

My dream*, of course, was to be a writer. And with April being National Poetry Month, I’ve been writing. Perhaps more relevantly to you, I took the first few months of the year to submit a lot of poetry, and so April saw a few of my poems appearing in Verse Virtual, Sparks of Calliope, Reapparition Journal, and Ponder Savant. It has been nice to see some of my poetry elsewhere, although I still miss reading for the small crowd at my local poetry mic every month before the pandemic hit.

So, monthly poetry and comedy nights on hold, and weekly boardgame nights on hold. But I’ve been playing lots of boardgames with my partner, which I recommend for those of you self-isolating with someone you like. For those of you who are not so fortunate, videogames are also a tremendous balm in these troubled times, and I will say that my two absolute favorites, Warframe and Path of Exile, are both 100% free** to download and play on PC. And if you do end up playing one of those on my recommendation, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll hook you up with some free stuff from my stash in-game.

After all, the month could use a little less cruelty.

*Well, my metaphorical dream. Literally, my recent dream involved me visiting the “Museum of Haste”, where a moving walkway zipped me past the exhibits at 20 mph before slamming me into a wall. But I don’t think that’s anyone’s lifelong goal.

**And like, actually free for all content, not like mobile game 5 minutes free and pay to keep playing or MMO first dungeon free pay for access to the good stuff.

All the stuff I was working on last post is now done. So that’s good. And now I have some inconvenient poetry for you. What does that mean? I’ll explain. Perhaps you’ve heard about the case at Cranston West, where a young student asked the school to take down a long-standing prayer banner, and a large kerfluffle ensued. Well, I wrote an epic limerick about this event, which was recently published in the Providence Journal. Unfortunately, Projo.com has recently removed their editorials from one-click access, so in order to read it you’ll need to go to the ProJo e-Edition, then go to the back issue for Sunday 2/12, and then jump to page B10.

If you like political poetry, I also wrote some sonnets about various pieces of legislation proposed in the past year. These are available in a single click at The Transcript, but will probably be taken down within a day or two, which is also inconvenient.*

Eventually I am going to do another boardgame review rap (which is a kind of poetry), but I have auctioned off the choice of next game, and the fellow who won chose some games I don’t have access to, so I am waiting for another friend who owns them to move back to town so playing said games will be convenient. In the meantime, I have put up a review of Homesteaders: Second Edition, which is a cool little auction game that avoids some common complaints/pitfalls of auction games.

And finally, it occurs to me that I have not written any new slam poetry in many months. Perhaps with my newfound free time, I should get around to finishing the poem I started a while ago. But I am no longer in the same mental space. How…inconvenient.

*If it’s any consolation, my more recent columns about Heroes and Valentine’s Day should be up for another week or two, respectively.

Last week I was a featured reader at a small poetry reading in Pittsfield called “Outspoken!”. They had asked me to come perform to help celebrate National Poetry Month, so I freestyled a few poems and read some of my own work. Some of my poems really work much better spoken than written, but in honor of National Poetry Month, I’d like to share one of my short poems here:

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“Land Shark”
by Seth Brown

There is a knock at the door
I look through the keyhole and see your
gleaming white teeth
so shiny and so numerous
“who is it” I ask
and you tell me that you are
an encyclopedia salesman
but
I do not believe you
because encyclopedia salesmen do not have
so many teeth, so pointy and sharp
and where are your encyclopedias
have you already sold them all
or are they held by the arm that I can see in your mouth
opening this door may be a bad idea
but you have offered me a discount encyclopedia
and I cannot resist

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In other news, my improv troupe has performances on April 24th and May 14th at Main Street Stage in North Adams, so please come see us if you’re in the area and looking for something fun. (Conversely, if you are not in the area and looking for something boring, I recommend this list of the rotation direction of airport luggage carousels around the world.)

So, for a long time — since I graduated from college — I’ve been working on this book. I’ve even mentioned it on the bottom of my Books page. And I finally finished it. But I haven’t managed to find a publisher yet. That’s why I decided to put it online. I’m posting one chapter a week at www.GodToVerse.com

Oh, and I should probably tell you what it is. I translated the entire Torah, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, line by line, into verse. (Given that I spent roughly five years or so doing that, it should perhaps be no surprise that I consider summarizing a presidential debate in rhyme a relatively lighter project.) Anyway, go take a look, check back every week for a new chapter (or subscribe to the RSS feed), and if you like it, tell a friend.

Especially if that friend owns a large publishing company.