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Poems 8-10 from Twelve Poems About Donald J Trump by Thomas L. Vaultonburg 

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Rockford Poet Publishes Second Children’s Book

Rockford poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg has published his second book for children, Atrocious Poems A To Z. It is a book of poems that deal with anxiety-provoking situations from a child’s point of view, and includes such atrocities as immunizations, monsters under the bed, and sharing. 

Many of the poems not only contain teachable moments but literary lessons in form, structure, and literary terms, such as this poem, which is an eye rhyme. 

Eye Rhyme

A 3d movie is hard to watch When you are a kid wearing an eye patch. It takes two eyes to see In three dimensions, But you only have one, Which means your depth perception is gone.

While everyone yells and jumps from their seat, You sit there and wonder what is so great About a movie where everything is flat.

An eye rhyme, also called a visual rhyme or a sight rhyme, is a rhyme in which two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently.

The book was illustrated by Jenny Mathews, one of the Midwest’s most sought after and respected illustrators, and the 26 panels from the book will be featured in a show at the Rockford Art Museum this summer. Both Mathews and Vaultonburg are Rockford, Illinois residents, and this is their second book together.

You can order Atrocious Poems A To Z here 

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Dipthongs, onomotapeias, paradoxes, and oxymorons. All lessons to be learned from Thomas L. Vaultonburg’s new book of children’s poetry Atrocious Poems A To Z. 

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Rockford poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg

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The Journal of Outsider Poetry, emanating from Rockford, Illinois

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Hugh Beaumont not portraying an outsider poet and not in the movie The Human Duplicators, which I am now watching.

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Up, up, and away in Jenny’s beautiful balloon

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New book of poetry by Michael Marrotti

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Rockford Pages Now Force In Outsider Poetry Slam League Western Division

Rockford poetry may never be the same with poet extraordinaire Josh Hamboney joining the Rockford Pages outsider poetry slam team. Already strong with Tom Stotman and Tim Bittenburger, the Pages will be a powerhouse on the Outsider Poetry Slam League of America western division.

But can anyone unseat the juggernaut Rancho Cucamonga Kookamungas team now that the citizens of Rancho Cucamonga have voted them a new stadium? 

Probably not, but the Pages do have a sporting chance to finish a strong second. 

Poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg at the Bristol Rennaissance Fair

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#participateparty #bicycle #valkyrie #rockford #jennymmathews #ink #acrylic #coloredpencil (at Rockford, Illinois)

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How Fruits and Vegetables Nearly Ruined My Aquatron VX-33

In this part of the world people grow things outdoors. Corn and beans and tomatoes and most things grows. But what grows especially is zucchini grows. And it grows. And it grows. Too much rain? It grows. Too little rain? It grows 

That’s nice. It’s nice that it grows. But what isn’t nice is that hardly anyone wants to eat it. So we get this super-abundance of zucchini that won’t quit coming and no one can get rid of. It’s not uncommon if you leave your doors open to come back from shopping and find someone has put a box of zucchini in your car. 

Now you got trouble, because even if you liked zucchini, it’s a lifetime supply, but if you are indifferent or don’t like it, it’s an eternal supply. Squirrels won’t eat it. Can’t give it to the homeless shelter. 

This is really a blog about how tomato juice nearly ruined the new Aquatron egg 8 Track player I just bought and am so happy with. My in laws have a great garden. Probably one of the best ones in this region. And whatever they plant grows. This year tomatoes grew. A truckload of them. I like tomatoes. I don’t have much use for unprocessed tomatoes at the apartment. Sometimes I will eat one with a dash of salt. A couple weeks ago I got a bag of tomatoes. Because there literally was no room left to put them anywhere it was decided they would be housed at my apartment.

Which would be fine, except for two things: tomatoes are perishable, and I’m not always at my apartment to monitor the freshness level of food stuffs. This morning I looked over at the basket the tomatoes were sitting in, which for some reason is perched precariously over the Aquatron 8 track player, and wondered to myself if those tomatoes were still good. 

Turns out they weren’t. tried to grasp the first one, and it all but disintegrated in my hand, sending a river of unprocessed tomato juice downward, as gravity often works. Disaster was avoided as I had cleverly anticipated my own feeble-mindedness and put a towel underneath the suction cup that anchors the Aquatron VX-33 to any smooth surface, so I simply brushed it aside. 

Disaster seemingly averted. But the ongoing nightmare of surplus zucchini is still being relived by countless people every day here in the Northern Hemisphere.

Will it ever end?

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Breaking news: Rockford poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg named MVP of Outsider Poetry Slam League of America for the 2016 season today. 

Even though the two teams he played for, The Rockford Pages, and the Chemung Shamans,  finished in last place, Rockford poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg was named the most valuable player of the Outsider Poetry Slam League of America Friday night in a press conference in Kokomo, Indiana. The announcement was made by league commissioner Dr. Millard Rausch. Vaultonburg, the founder and publisher of Zombie Logic Press, accepted the award with some surprise, noting that his teams were not about to win a single OPSLA match this season, but he was honored to be thought of in the voting, which is done by OPSLA poets and fans.

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Rockford Poet Named To Poetry All Star Team

Outlaw poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg was named to the Outsider Poetry Slam League of America All Star team on Friday afternoon. Vaultonburg also made news earlier in the week when he became the first poet in OPSLA history to be traded, when he was dealt from the Rockford Pages to the Chemung Shamans.

The Outsider Poetry Slam League of America is a new poetry slam league with eight teams in two divisions that are competing for the Nelson Cup, a reference to the sock monkey that is the mascot of Rockford, Illinois. 

Vaultonburg, the author of four books of Outlaw and Outsider poetry, and the editor of Zombie Logic Press, which publishes the Rock River Literary Series, showcasing writers from Rockford, Illinois, has mixed feelings about leaving Rockford. “In one sense, I’m leaving the third most dangerous city in America,: he said in an interview, “but in another sense, I’m not sure if Chemung actually exists.”

Chemung does exist. I confirmed this with Google maps, and the Chemung Shamans are a real team in the Outsider Poetry Slam League of America. And Thomas L. Vaultonburg is now a member of that squad.

We wish Thomas Vaultonburg good luck in his new position. he will be difficult to replace here in Rockford, but we have gotten used to the good ones leaving.

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Poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg celebrates being traded from the Rockford Pages to the Chemung Shamans

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Outlaw Poetry Operation The Fugs Broke All the Rules

Led Zeppelin found not liable of ripping off the riff from Stairway To Heaven Today. I’m sorry if you’re reading this. You really don’t have to. Mostly not quite blank is an inter-office memorandum service for me and an interchange for several publications that may or may not have actual content. I felt a little bit like posting some pictures today, but I’m not sure from what. Maybe I’ll try one and then say something about it.

This is my Fugs album that showed up a few weeks ago. It’s probably the last interesting thing I’ve added to any of my collections. I still don’t have a turntable to play vinyl records, but within thirty seconds I could be listening to The Fugs online, so I don’t miss it. All I remember is somehow Log Cabin syrup always manages to get on an album. How does that happen? 

not quite blank is also like living in a house that has had previous owners.  I bought this blog and presumably whatever juice it used to have in terms of Google rankings, although it bobs more in the rankings than a lure in a pirranha frenzy. Apparently I don’t know how to spell pirranha, and I’m not looking it up.

Perfectly beautiful day here in Downtown Rockford, and because I was diligent yesterday I have almost nothing to do this entire day except update these blogs with whatever offhand observations come to mind, throw in a few keywords, and move on to the next one. 

The Fugs were a dissident band of Outlaw Poets that broke all the rules. I always feel like poets are at their best when they are doing anything but poetry. They almost always make interesting music, films, and visual art, but why does poetry remain so damn boring? I don’t know.

The pen you see to the left of the Fugs album was purchased almost twenty-five years ago, and was the official Marshall Field’s Watermen pen. It had the Marshall Field’s logo on the endcap, but I scraped it off because it didn’t fit for me. I suppose this pen is one of the oldest possessions I have that haven’t escaped me. I have no idea of knowing which of my poems I have written with which pen, and frankly, I never thought about it before and probably won’t again after this sentence. 

See you tomorrow.

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Zombie Logic Press Never Quit Rockford Poetry

Zombie Logic Press Never Quit Rockford Poetr About five years ago I was called to the house of the publisher of one of the region’s largest independent newspapers to talk about poetry. The publisher is a poet, and he had a project he wanted to talk about. It turns out he wanted me to write a history of poetry and literary figures along the Rock River in Wisconsin and Illinois. It was sort of an ambitious project, and I said it might be easier to start with a history of Rockford poetry. He agreed, and I set out to research the story.

As with many things in Rockford, problems arose immediately, the greatest of which was blatantly obvious: there is no real literary history in Rockford, and there certainly wasn’t any current scene when I set out to write that piece.

For a few weeks I did my best to pursue leads, sending out a survey to local literary figures asking them what poets, venues, and publications they recalled being significant in the Rockford literary scene. And to be fair, there were a few flashes, a few false starts, and a couple of brief moments when it seemed like something might happen. But it never did. Everyone knows scenes fall apart faster than the Hindenburg, but in a city of 150,000, why wasn’t there even one success story? I shelved the story. The publisher never asked again, and when I see him now we never talk about it.

Then in 2013 I had emergency heart surgery. And while in the hospital bed it occurred to me one of the things I’d like to do with whatever time I have left on planet Earth is to publish and promote the best writers I can find in my hometown. The first book, Iced Cream, by my friend Jesus Correa, appeared the next summer after we returned from a vacation in the Gulf Shores. Early the next year The Zen of Beard Trimming by C.J. Campbell appeared, and a couple of weeks ago our third book in The Rock River Literary Series, The Blood Dark Sea by Outlaw Poet Dennis Gulling, was released. For a while every time I left the house someone was pitching a book idea to me, and the next two books in the series are already planned.

Sometimes I wish the media, civic groups, and some of the champions of the city who complain about negative press from the national media would give us a shout out once in a while to help us promote our books to a national audience, but they almost never do. 

Nonetheless, Zombie Logic Press never quit Rockford Poetry.