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A word about my host — NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

brian hefele — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:41:11 +0000

It’s mentioned on my about page, but I host this site, brainaxle.com, and the sites of several clients through NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. I also use their domain registration services. This is all partly due to price, but also due to their policies, which are very much pro-web. SOPA is very much anti-web. Another great thing about NFSN is their honest, direct communication with regard to technical issues, outages (rare!), and beliefs and policy. Their recent, level-headed blog post about SOPA is no exception. It’s a great read, especially for people hunting for a web host who will actually work for them.

Hopefully it’s obvious, but I’m not being compensated in any way for recommending NFSN. I’m their customer for the reasons I outlined above — not for any hidden incentive. But well thought-out customer communication like the aforelinked blog post really makes me want to help get the word out about their service.

(if it turns you on)

brian hefele — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:00:12 +0000

if it turns you on
one final time
i will recite this poem
in semaphore
as you drift away
forever,
slip off to become
just the subject of some
vers libre
from an occasional lover,
with words, always quick
to turn you on.

this one is untitled, which is astoundingly rare to me and suggests i never actually got it to a point where i considered it finished, or finished enough to be canonical. it’s got a couple of things going for it – it’s a metapoem, which definitely became a big part of my writing around this time. or, at the very least, a thing that i was very willing to play with. it’s also a love poem, a sickeningly sweet vomit of my emotional immaturity cum hopeless romanticism. it’s short, it’s untitled, and for whatever reason, i still think it’s worth clinging to.

poetry is love.

brian hefele — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 05:00:55 +0000

cigarette flicked in his beer
like in some silly sitcom

that couplet has ended
in ten quick words, ten quick
minutes for that couple to end,
he tested her humor with some
one-liner crack like i’m not one
to be coy are you one
to be easy? her cigarette flicked
in his beer and she
stormed out, her stamping
stampamplified,
like in some silly sitcom
and the laughtrack reel
rolled what a silly ending
to a silly metaphor,
poetry is love.

this piece i still rather enjoy. it’s quick. not just short, it has a fast pace to it, and i’m happy that i was able to control that. it’s just kind of silly and playful, in contrast to a lot of my work. but it’s also rather cynical, i suppose, and that’s very much me. it’s sort of about love, but not in my typical grasping, emotionally immature voice. i guess because it’s about failure. and to me, finding success in love is rather unrealistic, and my more ‘romantic’ pieces are thus quite fantasies. this is also a metapoem, although that’s less the point of it than many of my pieces from the time. but it is unavoidably aware of itself, wrapped up nicely at the end. though it’s more playful than i can imagine myself being right now, i’m still pleased with this older piece.

titles are simple.

brian hefele — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 05:00:00 +0000

tonight i must be a poet.
i must squeeeze out
images,
suckle the newborn page
from the generous breast
that is my soul.
images are difficult;
they come to me
as naturally as
the gazelle
eating
the lion.

tonight i must be a poet.
i must bleeed out
images,
slit and drain with golden nib
the tender wrists
that are my soul.
images are dangerous;
they come to me
as peacefully as
the man
in the dark
with the knife.

but endings are the hardest.
they come to me
like death.

this is another old piece that hasn’t aged particularly well in my mind, but one that i’m still mostly comfortable hanging on to. the gimmick of the words elongated by the triple ‘e’s shows an embarrassing immaturity and lack of restraint. the images make no sense together. but it was well received by my peers at the time, for whatever reason, and i think it probably marks the start of a few recurring themes for me&hellips; it’s not confessional per se, but it is approaching that more than my previous work had. it’s also one of my first metapoems, a theme that continues to play out at times when writing occupies my mind more than most things, and therefore starts to also occupy my writing more than&hellips; well, more than makes sense. it’s also one of my earlier pieces to really play with the title instead of just slapping something on.