WOW

I've counted 6 DRAFTS since September 2019! What would you call that?

On one hand, I feel crappy to have not published so much work, especially since I actually put some type of effort in to them. And even more crappy about who I am that I don't complete so many wonderful things or things potentially wonderful. Smh.

On the other hand I am happy that the me from the past did that work so the future me doesn't have to do much, just tie up the loose ends.

Now. The power of Now. Now.

A post to a YouTube video.

"Help!" is what I've been screaming inside. I have and I can. Now is the time for "I Will."

How to Build a Powerful Brand and Explode...

@ 5:34 Totally Me! Www.WarneBaileyBlogging.WordPress.com & www.IsThisRealLifeReally.blogspot.com Quickly became www.WayTooMuch.Podbean.com a Podcast that I paid to upgrade for monetization purposes and never posted another show after that. I am still getting $40 a Month taken from my account and it's been almost a year.

*Important Disclaimer: I have been working on the Warner Bailey Project since 2017 as a 4th year #HOMELESS #DRUG #ADDICT #ALCOHOLIC which made it very hard to stay consistent. As of 1 month and 2 weeks ago I have finally moved into my own apartment and am ready to launch into The Warner Bailey Project which will become a movement.

I have a wealth of knowledge, experience, talent, skill, training, education, and pure Love to utilize. I procrastinate, I am a workaholic, I am healing from numerous tragedies. I am strong willed, I am powerful, I have a connection with a great source of energy that is so strong it can be seen with the naked eye. I am passionate about helping others, showing the world my humanity, I am bold and daring while living in fear and anonymity.

Thank you all for your comments, thank you for this post. I have read many of the comments here and have joined some of you on your journeys. I look forward to hearing, seeing, and building with you all.

Peas and blessings,

"Life Sucks and is so Beautiful."
-Warner Bailey

Today is my Daughter Freedom's Birthday

Rip me open again, will you?

Let me breathe one more time in synchronicity with you,

my beloved.

I miss your tiny fingers clutching my breast while you fed.

Nails so thin and new, sharp, painful grasps, far from bothered because it was you.

This little light of mine.

She shines,

I,

Mother,

am blind.

With each new awakening, I remember vividly you saying, "Mommy, wake up. Wake up Mommy, it's time to wake up."

Your voice was so mature, I'd never heard you sound like that before, I left you, a baby, next phone conversation you had the voice I heard, mature.

Despite me, you thrive.

You saved my life.

Every day I die a little bit more.

My daughter, how strange still to say.

Still, I say it anyway.

Born on this very day, we waited patiently for you.

You tried to come too soon.

MIdwife says to be with Mommy a bit longer Dear.

Excited to meet you face to face,

I still wait.

Be still they say,

soon she'll be with you.

I miss your laughing face.

Your beauty is beyond me.

I still can't believe you call me Mommy.

Oh, Freedom, beloved blessing, your name says everything.

Be you always.

Mommy Loves you baby.

I've been struggling, in battle, fighting, for you for a decade, holding memories hostage, craving for how we used to be.

No longer 2 or 3, 12 now, wiser than me.

Never stop being you, don't be like me.

Be you always.

Free.

- Warner Bailey

Don't worry anymore. 

I was here the whole time too. 

I saw you even when I didn't want to. I knew you were there, I just didn't want to look at you. 

Thank you. 

I think my love was so overwhelming for myself I resisted the pull. 

I attended the fair and rode the rides before. Like

Fiona said,

"I sleep to dream.", I

live for life itself 

and 

now I'm ready to live with you and you too.

I love.

Me.

You, I thank. 

-Warner Bailey

National Poetry Month - Day 29

And now for our penultimate (optional) prompt! The poet William Wordsworth once said that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” For Wordsworth, a poem was the calm after the storm – an opportunity to remember and summon up emotion, but at a time and place that allowed the poet to calmly review, direct and control those feelings. A somewhat similar concept is expressed through the tradition of philosophically-inclined poems explicitly labeled as “meditations,” – like Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas,” the charming Frank O’Hara prose poem, “Meditations in an Emergency,” or Charles Baudelaire’s “Meditation.”
Today, I’d like to challenge you to blend these concepts into your own work, by producing a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully. You might try including a dramatic, declarative statement, like Hass’s “All the new thinking is about loss,” or O’Hara’s “It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.” Or, like, Baudelaire, you might try addressing your feeling directly, as if it were a person you could talk to. There are as many approaches to this as there are poets, and poems.
Happy writing!  I get my prompts HERE!

Life Sucks and is so beautiful

Life sucked so bad when all I wanted was a big brother. As an only child, I asked my Mother, begged and pleaded for a big brother. "That's not how that works." I remember her saying. Which ever way she responded each time I asked was the equivalent to "No."

How beautiful life is when I was United with a son my father had with another woman, not my Mother. He's older than me. We've grown to be very close. We get along famously. He is my big brother.

Life sucks and is so beautiful.

Life was beautiful in the beginning. Full of wonder, joy, peace, excitement, newness, comfort, Mommy, home, love, playing, learning, different, new, home, love, more, future, change, same, same home, same Mommy, same love. Striving for a plato of same while every now and then venturing off to new, to always come back to same.

Change.

Along the way I lost the will to wonder, I lost joy, peace, excitement, and comfort. Only newness was the same. I became uncomfortable, Mommy seemed so far away, home was far away until one day there was no home anywhere, anyway. Love felt lost, no more play. Still learning. Rapidly different, always new. No Mommy, no home, no love, no more, seemingly hopeless. Lost. Some unweighed portion of me still striving to come back, to what? I don't know, except the feeling of comfort, Mommy, Home.

Change.

Life sucks, I'm still not awake to be comfortable while Mommy still waits for me to come home.

EARTH DAY TODAY MONDAY

Good morning Party People! Another glorious Monday morning. Mondays have been looked at as the worst day of the week. 

• MONDAY IS THE MOST LIKELY DAY TO COMMIT SUICIDE: The Office for National Statistics in England found 16% of male suicides and 17% of female suicides occurred on Mondays, compared to 13% on the weekend days. Researchers said the trend was not solely a result of returning to work as it was also seen in retired people. source

• OR HAVING A HEART ATTACK: The British Medical Journal reported a 20% increase in heart attacks on Mondays as opposed to the other days of the week. The attacks may be caused by stress and high blood pressure caused by returning to work. source

• OVER 50% OF EMPLOYEES ARE LATE TO WORK: Comming up with a believable excuse to call out on a Monday is nearly impossible. Good luck with trying, being late is better than being absent.

Here are some positive Monday facts:

• MONDAY IS THE LEAST RAINY DAY OF THE WEEK: Some believe it's due to man-made pollution subsiding over the weekend. source

• MONDAY IS THE BEST DAY TO BUY A CAR: Believe it or not, there are positive things about Monday. For instance, when you're going to shop for a new car, do it on a Monday. Car salespeople make the bulk of their sales on the weekends. When Monday rolls around, there are usually few customers in sight, and the weekend is a long way off. That's why car salespeople are more desperate on Monday, and they'll be more willing to cut you a deal. source

Today, Monday, April 22, 2019, is EARTH DAY!

Earth Day is an annual event celebrated on April 22. Worldwide, various events are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection.

According to Gaylord Nelson, the moniker "Earth Day" was "an obvious and logical name" suggested by a lot of other people in the fall of 1969, including, he writes, both "a friend of mine who had been in the field of public relations" and "a New York advertising executive," Julian Koenig.^[25] Koenig, who had been on Nelson's organizing committee in 1969, has said that the idea came to him by the coincidence of his birthday with the day selected, April 22; "Earth Day" rhyming with "birthday," the connection seemed natural.^[26][27] 

For more extensive information on the history of Earth Day please click Here.

EARTH DAY FREEBIES & WAYS TO PARTICIPATE

Earth Day – Ride Transit Free

Ride Transit for FREE this Earth Day – April 22, 2019
No need to TAP your card at all! 
Free rides are offered on buses, trains, and bike share bikes. The free rides begin at 4 a.m. on April 22 and continue until 3 a.m. on Tuesday, April 23.
Participating agencies: 
Metro
LADOT (and LAnow – promo code: RIDELANOW)
Metrolink 
Metro Bike Share (use promo code: 4222019)
Pasadena Transit
Omnitrans (free mobile ticket)

Moovit will get you wherever you are going on Earth Day.
Here’s to a cleaner planet! 🌎
You ride, we guide. 

Celebrate Earth Day by planting a tree!

Come on down to Sun Valley Recreation Center and join Councilmember Nury Martinez, Cal Fire, the Department of Recreation and Parks, City Plants, and the Los Angeles Conservation Corps for a fun and family-friendly day of climate and community action!

Come for the tree planting, stay for the environmental education resource fair and free yard tree give-away.

Family Earth Day (Del Amo)

Del Amo Fashion Center celebrates Earth Week with crafts, face-painting, balloon twisting, snacks, and more. The first 50 children at the event take home a copy of The Earth Book by Todd Parr.

Activities are located in the Play Area (located in front of JoAnn's Fabrics),

Space is limited; RSVP online. 

Many More Activity Ideas For EARTH DAY Can be found

HERE

or

HERE

"Life Sucks and is so Beautiful."  

- Warner Bailey 

National Poetry Month - Day 20

And now for our optional prompt! Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that “talks.” What does that mean? Well, take a look at this poem by Diane Seuss. While it isn’t a monologue, it’s largely based in spoken language, interspersed with the speaker/narrator’s own responses and thoughts. Try to write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken – not necessarily the grand, dramatic speech of a monologue or play, but the messy, fractured, slangy way people speak in real life. You might incorporate overheard speech or a turn of phrase you heard once that stood out to you – the idea here is to get away from formally “poetic” speech and into the way language tends to work out loud.

Happy writing!

I get my prompts here!

Bits and Peices of Streets and People

Hey soul sista,

I overheard you say there's a party going on over there.

I almost wore my house slippers to the store, making it impossible to cut a rug. I can rip it up now, my favorite flats used to have thin straps across the top, I broke one then cut the other off, the shoes feel better now. 

I wanna dance to loud music all night long.

He is just a baby but he could feel the tension between Mommy and Daddy. I hope we eat soon, he thought.

Best friends laugh together so loud and hard. Faces red. Bellies aching. The laughter lasted a long time. Both friends have forgotten what was so funny in the first place. They laugh another few minutes anyway.

Laughter is contagious.

The man asking passerbys for money smelled of raw onions, rotten fish, burnt plastic, and Toe jam. He began to laugh too. Belly empty, feet blistered and bloody. Hair matted. Black dirt from head to toe.

What does the beggar have to laugh about?

Laughter was the last sound before falling into a deep sleep.

Nights like this I wish you were here with me to hold me close and discuss religion.

God bless us all.

"Life Sucks and is so Beautiful." - Warner Bailey

HORIZON

"The true horizon is actually a theoretical line, which can only be observed when it lies on the sea surface. "

Prospective is a mutha fucka

See through my eyes you can't.

Let me describe it to you best way I know how.

Listen to the words and the rhythm in which they're said. Hear the emphasis, the staccato, lulls, breaks, and bridges. Join me in my head through every sight, sound, taste, and smell, I express with passion and conviction, sentiment and feeling.

Still you may hear it different.

It may not be bass and treble, it can be as simple as cases being upper and lower, we will both recite that "W" is the letter.

What I see is real, I see something. I see the horizon when they say it's coming, until I scew my focus and the line becomes blurry and my surroundings become clear and far too close to me.

The scene is the same. I change.

I can look at anything in anyway.

"Perspective is something else." I shake my head and say.

Twisted in the worst and the best way.

"Life Sucks and is so Beautiful."  -Warner Bailey

National Poetry Month Day 9

Our (optional) prompt for the day asks you to engage in another kind of cross-cultural exercise, as it is inspired by the work of Sei Shonagon, a Japanese writer who lived more than 1000 years ago. She wrote a journal that came to be known as The Pillow Book. In it she recorded daily observations, court gossip, poems, aphorisms, and musings, including lists with titles like “Things That Have Lost Their Power,” “Adorable Things,” and “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own Sei Shonagon-style list of “things.” What things? Well, that’s for you to decide!

Happy writing!

I Get My Prompts Here!

Neighborhood Streets and Things I See

Scanning the world around me

The Ugly Beautiful Things

People

Places

Situations

On a side street somewhere in between the hustle and bustle of city boulevards, An old woman, broom in hand, argues heatedly with a young man. Indistinct words exchanged publicly on this little side street for me to see.

Early one Monday morning on the way to work I rode my bicycle for the better part of a mile. On my usual route, there's a hill I don't like to ride up. The hill makes me tired, bones and muscles ache. Sometimes I think it best to surrender to the land and walk this stretch of earth. 

Early one Monday morning on the way to work I made a left turn on to Pierce, I made a left turn on to the same street I always do riding my bike on the way to work.

Early this Monday morning as I made a left turn on to Pierce I noticed a dog running behind me as I pedaled toward the hill I thought better to walk up. I pedaled faster, dog ran faster. Approaching Glen Oaks I was made aware of several other dogs who had joined in on chasing me as I pedaled faster getting closer to the hill, the hill I thought better to walk up.

Dogs barking.

Pedaling.

Faster.

Faster.

Harder.

Chasing me.

Barking and growling,

this started to feel like an attack, not a friendly game between man's best friend and my bicycle and me.

Growing scared.

Frightened.

Confused.

The streets were bare, cars passing occasionally, nobody walking or riding a bicycle like me.

All alone with canine creatures chasing behind me. Barking, growling, running fast enough to catch up to me.

Hill approaching, I felt forced to push and pedal, fighting against gravity.

Tired bones, muscles aching. One dog had grown into many. I feared I would be bitten early on a Monday morning on my way to work by a pack of neighborhood dogs who no longer or never even have seemed friendly.

Make it up the Hill Bailey. Make it up the hill and reach the top where the land becomes flat again and the scary barking, growling, snarling dogs will lose their gain on me and I can once again ride my bicycle to work freely, enjoying the early Monday morning breeze like never before because now I would have survived the most unusual and unexpected attack on an early Monday morning, riding my bicycle on my way to work.

-Warner Bailey

Written to the sounds of John Coltrane and his My Favorite Things

National Poetry Month Day 2

Photo by
jaymantri

Today’s prompt (optional, as always) is based on this poem by Claire Wahmanholm, which transforms the natural world into an unsettled dream-place. One way it does this is by asking questions – literally. The poem not only contains questions, but ends on a question. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that similarly resists closure by ending on a question, inviting the reader to continue the process of reading (and, in some ways, writing) the poem even after the poem ends.

Happy writing!

I get my prompts here!

National Poetry Month Day 1

Hello, everyone! Happy April, and happy first day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month!

(I totally spaced and now I'm 5 days behind. Lol! Classic Warner Bailey.)

If you’re just joining us, Na/GloPoWriMo is an annual challenge in which participants write a poem a day during the month of April. What do you need to do to participate? Just write a poem each day! If you fall behind, try to catch up, but don’t be too hard on yourself – the idea here is to expand your writing practice and engage with new ideas, not to stress yourself out. All too many poets, regardless of their level of experience, get blocked in their writing because they start editing even before they have written anything at all. Let’s leave the editing, criticizing, and stressing out for May and beyond! This month, the idea is just to get something on the page.

If you’ll be posting your efforts to a blog or other website, you can provide us with the link using our “Submit Your Site” form, and it will show up on our “Participants’ Sites” page. But if you’re not going to be posting your work, no worries! It’s not a requirement at all – again, all we’re really trying to do is encourage people to write.

To help with that, we’ll be providing some daily inspiration. Each day, we’ll be featuring a participant, providing you with an optional prompt, and giving you an extra poetry resource. This year, those resources will take the form of poetry-related videos.

And now, without further ado – let’s get to it!

Our first featured participant is Miss Ella’s House of Sleep, whose poem “Annie Edson Taylor’s Birthday Plunge,” used our early-bird prompt to explore a fascinating and little-known historical figure.

Our resource for the day is a short film of January Gill O’Neil reading (and acting out!) her poem “How to Make a Crab Cake.” If you’d like to read the poem itself as you follow along, you can find it here.

For our first (optional) prompt, let’s take our cue from O’Neil’s poem, and write poems that provide the reader with instructions on how to do something. It can be a sort of recipe, like O’Neil’s poem. Or you could try to play on the notorious unreliability of instructional manuals (if you’ve ever tried to put IKEA furniture together, you know what I mean). You could even write a dis-instruction poem, that tells the reader how not to do something. This well-known poem by John Ashbery may provide you with some additional inspiration.

Happy writing!

I get my prompts from here!

---

1+1 Doesn't Always Equal 2

Family.

Family is what you make it.

2 people who never knew each other

Meet.

A union is born and soon after so are children.

Bloods mix.

A line of heritage.

Relations.

Labels are assigned.

Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Sister, Bother, Cousin, Uncle, Aunt, Greats, and Grands.

A Family, created from scratch, homegrown, stranger turned friend turned Husband and Wife, Parents and Kids.

What makes a family member more important than a friend?

What makes a Family in the first place then?

- Warner Bailey

"Life Sucks and is so Beautiful."