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A SAD POEM FROM THE UPCOMING BOOK NITWITTLES

PLEASE CLICK ON POEM TO ENLARGE

I THINK IT IS IMPORTANT WHEN DISCUSSING STORIES AND POETRY THAT A YOUNGSTER UNDERSTANDS THAT A WRITER IS SIMPLY HUMAN AND DEALS WITH THE EMOTIONAL ASPECTS OF BEING ONE IN THE WAY WE KNOW BEST... WRITING IT OUT.

MOSTLY MY POEMS ARE SILLY, FUNNY OR WRITTEN TO CAUSE THOUGHT AND/OR DISCUSSION. THIS POEM IS DIFFERENT THAN ANY I HAVE WRITTEN BEFORE. THIS POEM WAS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT FOR ME TO WRITE BECAUSE IT WAS A PURGING OF DEEP, DEEP SORROW AND LOVE LOST. THIS POEM WAS WRITTEN ABOUT OUR BELOVED FAMILY DOG WHO RECENTLY LEFT OUR HOME TO GO TO DOG HEAVEN, BUT WRITING IT BROUGHT BACK MY BEST FRIEND FROM CHILDHOOD AND SOMEHOW SO MANY YEARS LATER ALLOWED ME TO SAY GOODBYE TO A PORTION OF THE SORROW THAT I HELD ON TO BECAUSE IT WAS JUST TOO HARD TO DEAL WITH IT ALL WHEN I LOST HIM AND HAS BEEN LODGED IN MY HEART FOR ALL THESE YEARS.

THE NIGHT I WROTE THE FIRST DRAFT OF THIS POEM I HAD A VERY VIVID DREAM ABOUT FRISKY, MY BEAGLE/HUSKY MIX WHO FILLED MUCH OF THE FIRST TWO DECADES OF MY LIFE WITH FRIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESS AND THEN THE ULTIMATE SORROW. IN THE DREAM HE FINALLY DID WHAT I TRIED TO GET HIM TO DO WHEN I WAS A BOY. HE SPOKE. HE SAID GOODBYE TO ME TOO. I WAS ALL AT ONCE UPON AWAKENING VERY HAPPY AND VERY, VERY SAD, KIND OF LIKE A HARD RAINSTORM WHERE THE SUN IS STILL BEAMING DOWN THROUGH THE DARK CLOUDS.

PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS IS MY ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOK THAT I FEEL THE DEEP LOSS OF MY CANINE FRIENDS.

IF YOU ARE A DOG LOVER YOU WILL APPRECIATE THIS POEM AND HOPEFULLY EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT.

THIS BULLY - A POEM

Another poem from the upcoming book NitWittles...

Click on the pic to enlarge

The Day I got my Super Powers!

I remember the day I got my super powers. I was riding the school bus
home when I found a record album. More of the Monkeys. The bus driver told me I could keep it, I think he said, "finders keepers...".
I went home and put it on my turntable. The song Stepping Stone came on and somehow imported power into my little soul and body.

Suddenly the refrain was meant for the bully at school who wouldn't
let me swing on the big swings at recess. I made a cape with a big star (I could make great stars, snowflakes and hearts at the time. The star seemed most "super powered", just to absorb power from. I was smart enough not to wear it to school (or the matching pair of tighty-whities I had cut a star for too).

On the radio came on Bad Bad Leroy Brown. Suddenly I had a powerful anger for the bully, a cape and a resolve to change my destiny at school. I even had curled fists and it was involuntary. I could feel the super powers surging through me. I imagined the words POW, ZAP, BOOM coming to life in the air in cartoon lettering like they did on one of my favorite television shows (Batman & Robin).

I set off for school and all the way on the school bus, I just knew I wasn't going to be a chicken that day on the playground. I wasn't going to be pushed around. I was going to swing for all I was worth until I was flying through the air in my super power way for all to see.

The bully was home sick. I think it was the best day of elementary school! But, I had mustered up all of my courage for that day and somehow my super powers seemed trickle down and dissipate, replaced with that ache in the gut fear feeling.

The next day I went to school fully armed with salted nut roll, which was a bribe that worked to keep her from punching me. So, I didn't swing that day or many days. I hovered over closer to the teeter totters where the teachers gathered to talk.

But years later I showed her. I got a little less geeky (at least she thought so) and turned her down for the Sadie Hawkins dance, I thought to leave a salted nut roll in front of her locker to remind her of a super hero from a time past...

Do you have a bullying story you would like to share? I am on an anti-bullying crusade in my school visits and will be using my own and other funny, interesting, scary bullying stories to demonstrate through storytelling how to combat the problem... and maybe even soften a few bully's hearts toward their intended victims!

Poem from upcoming Nitwittles - SHADOWS

I WILL BE POSTING MY POETRY RANDOMLY OVER THE SUMMER TO INTRODUCE THE NEXT INSTALLMENT, TITLED 'NITWITTLES' WHICH IS BEING RECORDED, EBOOKED AND PUBLISHED.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ACTUALLY READ THE POEM. TECHNICALLY DEFICIENT AUTHOR AT WORK!

I answer ALL emails from kiddoes, teachers, classes, readers...

One of the greatest joys of putting my books out there in the world is the response I get from my readers. In about three out of four emails or letters, the reader asks in some way or another, "How much of this is ABOUT you?"

Dear Mr. Matott,

We have been reading all of your books. Our favorite books are about your dreams. We wonder, did you really do any of those things? If you did, which ones, and please tell us more about the time you had. We enjoyed reading about the clubhouses. Especially when it said, "No boys allowed" and "No Girls Allowed".

Your Fans,
Mrs. C______'s First Grade Class


Hello first graders and Mrs. C______! I am so happy you are reading my books.


I have done some of the things in the dream books:

From the boy book:
I practically lived in a tree house when I was a boy. I love to Scuba dive. I LOVE ice cream and wish there was a parlor that had any flavor you could think up. I tried to build a time machine many times when I was a boy and I always wanted a pet dragon. I honor and respect firefighters very much! I always imagined what it would be like to be an astronaut when I was a boy. My friends and I tried over and over to find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow after rain storms. I LOVE all things pirate and love to think about bullies walking the plank in their striped tighty whities...

From the girl book:

I love to visit Paris. I LOVE sports cars and the car that takes them to the club house is Da Bomb, except I might not want it in pink. I LOVE to take pictures underwater when I scuba dive! I wanted to be a vet when I was a boy. I want to win a big award for one of my books someday. I love pyramids and mummies. The Olympics are one of my favorite things and basketball is one of my favorite sports...

Last but not least, I had a sign on my tree house that said NO GIRLS ALLOWED until I was in about sixth grade and then I crossed out NO.

Thank you for writing to me and I hope you will enjoy MANY MANY books in your future. One of the books I would suggest is by a friend of mine, Laurie Keller. She has about five good books, but my FAVORITE is Arnie The Doughnut!

Cheers, Justin Matott

www.justinmatott.com

http://justinmatott-snickers.blogspot.com

Ocean, Ocean, Ocean...

There are things that touch the soul so deeply, that the heart longs for, that is a constant source of inspiration, a muse, passion and drive.



For me it has always been the ocean.


I am writing about the ocean, to share that passion with others who share it or haven't yet discovered it.


I am one day closer to waking up every morning within yards of the roaring surf.


Since I was eight years old, when I first met the sea, I have dreamed and thought about returning, not for a vacation or short time, but for good. Now my characters are experiencing the wonder of the ocean and in many ways I am rediscovering the wonders myself through that reflection.


What drives you? What makes you long for it when you are not near it? What are you doing to move toward it right now?

Childhood friends

Being an adopted person, I am always interested in those reunion stories where after many years of wondering and puzzling over the issues of adoption there is a coming together and I have had one myself. I know both my maternal and paternal origins. I have actually written a book, well a manuscript, about the journey and hope someday to go back through it enough editorially to get someone interested in it. Anyway, I just saw a story about how Facebook caused the reunion of a family after they had gone through various ways to try to find one another. Facebook has created some reunions for me as well and strangely enough I have been reunited with not one, not two, not three, but four of my boyhood friends named MIKE. The reunion with one particular Mike is the focus of this blog, but more than that, it is about going back in time and remembering those building blocks and people that contributed unknowingly to what one would eventually become. The point of my blog is to encourage you to think about reconnecting with someone that you are not sure how you disconnected with in the first place. Sometimes friends are for a moment in our lives and sometimes they are for the duration. Sometimes they are both.

I have always been accused of being the nostalgic one in my family. I'm not ashamed of it. I use it to write, so there... it is handy. This blog is a bit nostalgic.

Do you have someone in the past who periodically comes up because of a memory, a dream, a scent of simply just pops into your mind now and again and you wonder what they may be doing, why you lost touch or why at 3:00 A.M. are you thinking of something so long ago, so seemingly irrelevant to today's business? (Or do you simply wonder if I might have made that last sentence just a bit longer?) Just such a person over time popped in and out of my consciousness for no apparent reason. (I cannot believe I spelled consciousness right the first try!) A person who owns "real estate" in the deep inner reaches of my brain.

When I was a boy I developed a wonderful relationship with another kid in my sixth grade class. My most vivid memory of my early school days was on the very last day of sixth grade when Mike and I walked from our school to his house. It was a very hot day and Mike and I couldn't have been more excited to be out of school! We stopped at this wide ditch near Mike's house to wade and cool off in the shade of a giant cottonwood tree as the chocolate milk colored water flowed through our sleepy little college town. I remember pulling my shoes and socks off and hurling them down into the water as a way of saying, SUMMER is here! Let it begin! The time of being a little kid is over! It was my personal right of passage from school to summer, but more importantly it was a letting go of childhood and from elementary school to enter the big world of Junior High, the BIG TIME! I also remember wading in that ditch later when mom came to pick me up and demanded that I fetch my shoes from the deep. I just don't remember if I ever found them... Some things you just block out.

One of the things I liked and remember most about Mike is that when I got him laughing, which I did a lot, he smiled with his entire face. His eyes turned up as much as his mouth when he smiled and laughed. I've always enjoyed seeing someone's entire face get involved when I am being Mr. Funnyguy! Mike and I rode the ski bus together every weekend and cruised the slopes until the very last possible run every time and then we would tuck and cruise all the way past the lodge and down into the parking lot where inevitably we were the last to load our skiis under the bus and head for home.

When the weather was good we rode our bikes everywhere. We were "best friends", we had each other's backs. We were two mismatched peas in a pod and mostly we both had really cool long hippie hair that flowed behind us as we tooled with summer abandon through the town and country. We spent almost every day together that summer, meeting at one another's house to go on another fun adventure and share another carefree hot summer day.

I remember thinking Mike was one of the coolest dudes I had ever met. Mike was a gentle giant of a kid. He was easily my size and then again half. He had a sweet and gentle nature, yet he was tough, played football and wrestled with the best of them. He was my favorite bike and ski buddy and the dude could carry on a good conversation and challenge me in some of the grossest eating contests. I remember once he came to my house and we endeavored to try EVERYTHING in the kitchen. We did fine until we hit mom's spice rack and the dog food bag.

We had many sleepovers and mom let us stay up late into the night watching Creature Features then we'd sleep out in my backyard tent and gaze up at the stars and talk about aliens, girls (sometimes those conversations seemed identical back they) and wondered where life would take us. I thought then that Mike and I would be best friends for life. I simply couldn't imagine a better friend anywhere or anyone! At the heart of it, I always respected and liked Mike a lot. I always cherished that summer we had after sixth grade when Mike and Eddie and I would move like a herd from one to another's house and got into a little mischief together. Mostly it was my first band of brothers outside of my small country neighborhood and they meant the world to me.

Then we went to different Junior Highs and by the time we ended up in the same High School we were sadly kind of strangers. I would see Mike in the hall and we always nodded and acknowledged the bond we once had, but peers, circumstances and changing interests took us in different directions.

In my series (Go Ask Mom) Gabe, my protagonist has a very best friend named Andy. I have been asked if I ever had such a friend. Andy is a very cool kid. Andy in many ways embodies the Mike I knew when I was Gabe's age. So there you have it. Authors take what they know and knew and sometimes unknowingly import that into people and places that inhabit the world of fiction, at least this one does.

Now, many, many years after that sixth to seventh grade summer I am pleased that Facebook brought Mike back into my life because of the preparation for our high school reunion. Over the year or so that I have had a Facebook account Mike has sent me some very thoughtful messages, especially when my Dad died. His mom is a friend of mine on Facebook as well as his sisters. For years I wondered about them and what they were all doing and I am so pleased at how wonderfully life has turned out for a family that once accepted me as just another one of the kids underfoot.

The first time Mike and I talked prior to the reunion for about an hour on the phone he told me that his mom saw me on a national television show years ago promoting my first book. I think he said she was "proud that weird kid you used to hang around with turned out so well... WHEW!" Actually some of the nicest comment I have received on Facebook have been from Mike's mom, congratulating me on my career and family ( I think she is a bit surprised, ha ha). The world is so small.

Mike and I still share the passion we once had for biking, but now we both mountain bike. Perhaps some day Mike and I will bike together again. Though from the looks of his blog, I might not be able to keep up with him anymore (his blog is mostly about his mountain bike team, the races he competes in and some other pretty groovy stuff).

At the end of it all, it is friends and family that make this a richer world to travel through. I will always be glad about the place my friend Mike holds in my memories and thank him for being such a great friend back in the day when I really, really needed a buddy I could hang with and depend on. Mike was one of my mom's very favorites of my friends and my mom had very good taste!

If you had a friend like this that you have wondered about over the years, reach out and find them. It really is pretty easy now with this wonderful world of web. If you find a person of great character and when they laugh you basically still hear that kid you hung out with, you will be a richer person for it! And if you don't and there is no happily ever after, at least your curiosity will be sated. Thanks Mike for being my buddy back in the day and now! By the way Dude, you STILL smile with your entire face!

What a difference ONE DAY makes!

I am waiting for something big. Over the past few weeks I have had some MAJOR disappointments and rejections (agent, book related stuff). Everyone goes through this in some form or fashion in life. Sometimes it is hard to wait, to learn, to grow and sometimes simply accept...

My Dad used to remind me when I was a kid that "one day can make all the difference." He would also say; "tomorrow's another day" when the day we were in was at a close and wasn't the best.

The iris is a lot like the caterpillar. It doesn't really look like much until it spreads its "wings" and takes flight. So along that line my manuscripts don't look like much, just paper and words, until they take flight in the mind of a reader... I just need those manuscripts to transform into books... oh the waiting, the waiting...

The bud all wrapped up out there has all the potential to become the flower, you just have to wait until it's ready. Did Dad say that? No, I did.

DAD

This year, this time of year is particularly bittersweet for me. I have grown used to not talking to Dad every Saturday morning since he died last fall, but I haven't and likely never will grow used to not sharing the wonders of our world with him.
My Dad's favorite day was the day of Winter equinox, because it meant the days would grow longer and the sun would burn brighter. His mood lifted on December 21 and joy, as it was interpreted by him, would begin to creep back in and melt the ice around his heart (truth is he got pretty grumpy on cold, dreary, cloudy winter days) the way the sun begins to do on permafrost and regular above ground frost.

I have always LOVED spring the most of all of the seasons. It is something I learned from Dad. He loved Spring so much. He loved to talk about the emerging garden, the animals awakening, the new babies in his barnyard, the poems and stories written in tribute to spring. He would sometimes just launch into a poem he had long before had committed to memory. No matter what he was, he was always the English teacher with a PhD and depth of understanding about language which he loved as much as his simple iris.

My flower gardens are sprinkled with Dad's Iris. That man could grow iris like no one I have ever seen. His house was on a busy corner in my hometown and was surrounded by gardens and in those gardens literally thousands of iris blooming at once at the onset of Spring, scenting the air and bringing a cornucopia of color to the world that passed by.

Often when Dad was weeding or tending someone would just stop to compliment his artistry. He would lean on his spade, share a class or ice water and on a few occasions a shared ice cold beer and soak in the praise, then promising the admirers that on a weekend coming soon, they could come and get some of the iris for their own yards. Cars pulled over daily when the iris were in bloom to take lover's photographs amongst the tall beauty he cultivated and more than once photographers came with tripods and cameras to tour his gardens.

Once a high school senior had her photos taken in his lovely front border garden (he was so proud of that). He would tell me in detail, usually several times the specific quotes he heard about how his handiwork brightened what according to the woman would have been an otherwise fairly bleak day (for her, he cut some of the beauty to take with her, my Dad was often a very thoughtful man).

When the iris flowers were spent and needed to be separated he would set the rhizomes out along the sidewalk with labels of what color the lucky recipient would be receiving. Within hours every iris start was gone. Often people would ask my Dad if they could pay him but he always refused, just reveling in the idea that he had spread something beautiful that day. My favorite thank you story, one he told me during one of our Saturday morning talks, was about an anonymous someone who had come and gotten some of dad's iris and in the place in the garden that held a rare empty spot had left a six pack of premium, expensive signature brewed beer and a note thanking him.

Dad shared his art this way every Spring season and I know this Spring people are saddened that Dad's once rich and beautiful border garden is no longer. Some people when they buy a house, don't understand the treasure that is just under the soil and cover it over with rocks to park on (though this crafty son saw it coming and when the house was selling went up and helped myself to a pick-up truck load of Dad's rhizomes which are now in various gardens in my neck of the woods). But it sure makes it easier to drive by his old house not to see the gardens that only Dad could tend the way he did.

The beauty is that now Dad's iris are in border gardens all over my old, beloved hometown and beyond. My personal gardens are beautified by them and they are just now beginning to bloom. Perhaps someday in the not too distant future I will set some rhizomes out on my curb with a note to denote the color and Dad's legacy will spread just that much further.
Now Dad is gone. The flowering spring trees and my tiny plants pushing there way up through the sleepy winter-kissed soil in my vegetable garden are reminders of dad's passion for soil. He gave me the gift of loving the earth and toiling in it through the seasons. I miss my Dad!