Glyphic (the Animated Psychedelic Mayan Cool Vomit Poetry as Nourishment Video featuring music from Native American Phenom Rapper Supaman and animation from elpix.com.mx)

The Video Speaks for Itself, but if you want to read what inspired the project please check out Poetry as Nourishment: Glyphic

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This project was started by Ralph and Dacio (from elpix.com.mx). The idea was to bring the nourishment of poetry to a different format.

Supaman was kind enough to lend his music to the project. Once the beat was going and the three Maya were walking with maracas in hand, the animated video started to take form climaxing in the final psychedelic frames. When Part 7 of Glyphic was first written in the late 90s on a little table in a burger joint in Guatemala it was all about the process of vomit and then nourishment. It also turned into a story about how big business is out of control and taking advantage of indigenous peoples and their lands. It became a battle cry!

Ralph let the book sit for over 10 years and then thought that he had to publish it because the situation hadn't gotten any better. In fact, the southern part of Mexico was in worse shape than it was in the late 90s when he lived there.

This book was released to help tell people of both the beauty and culture of the area and also alert people to the very immediate need for political and economic change. It's the same old struggle. The world powers still haven't learned.

The Glyphic Animated Music Video (on YouTube):

The Book:
Poetry as Nourishment and Latin American Battle Cry: Glyphic

Ode to the Pillow (from Ten Poems about East Asia and Kitsch Nebula Ampe...

Just messing around and the table with Louis Armstrong playing in the background. I have to get a better camera angle and read better but this is the basic idea and first draft.

IS LITERARY FICTION DYING?

There is this feeling among non-fiction writers that what they do is real and pertains to real life whereas what we do as fiction writers is just play around in a world without consequences or real meaning. I beg to differ. I notice most of the biggest pundits about real life are in the finance or politics sector. I'm a big fan of economics. Part of me wishes I had become the Wolf Of Wall Street -- I also grew up in that area. I spend hours a day researching, watching, and ultimately trading options. For me it's a job that allows me to make money to support my family while I don't compromise my art. My writing can be pure because I have another stream of finance. Now that I've sold my bar, this is necessary. Anyway, back to these non-fiction nazis, the ones that yell at me when I send a personalized email that asks for a review and says no hard feelings if you don't respond and ignore. These guys believe that they are messing around with real world stuff. Politics. Governments. Countries. Presidents and Prime Ministers. They somehow think, or try to make you believe that they think, that fiction is frivolous. Yet most of what transpires in politics is absolute fiction. The difference is one of my books or stories uses fiction to hit a higher emotional truth while not destroying someone's real life by libel. Some of these politicians use fiction as a rhetorical device meant to trick and enslave the masses. Perhaps, that's why I tend to rub these types the wrong way. I'm also a Master Fictionist. As such, I can see through their smoke screen and see into the truth of the matter. They are trying to hide that. I am the enemy. They are my enemy. 

This thought came as I try to scratch and claw to start a writing career. I feel like I'm begging to get a few reviews to my books. Every time I do this one of these types berates me for not knowing them well, or for--how dare I?--presenting them with fiction when everyone damn well knows they don't read fiction. Are they proud of their ignorance? their myopia? their lack of anger management? 

I knew poetry was dying, but is literary fiction also on the way out? I'm sure paranormal fiction and mysteries and zombies are taking over Amazon's kindles but does that have to be the death of literary fiction? Can't we have a little niche somewhere? Is the whole fucking world our enemy now?

For Monks Only Got a New Cover

Purchase For Monks Only

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About the Author

Ralph-Michael Chiaia became a full-time writer in 2017. Until then he messed around running his pub and drugs and playing pool, smoking over a pack a day of Marlboro Mediums. Chiaiate la Boca is his next work: a 129-act play optioned to Peter Jackson. He is coming to a theatre near you.  

Before that, Chiaia popped out in NYC in 1975. He grew up in Montclair, NJ. He currently lives in Seoul where he owns and operates RAndy's Bar. Come in and say hello if you're in the neighborhood. He has previously published some books of poems:Ten Poems Ampersands And, Glyphic, I, Orange Girls, and the Sacred Calendar. Glyphic was a finalist and runner-up for both the Elixir Press Poetry Award and the Cervena Barva Press Award. 

Before coming to South Korea he was a staff reporter in Oaxaca, Oaxaca for "The Grasshopper" -- English-language section of Noticias -- featuring travel articles roving and roaming Latin America. He didn't earn much money there, but he ate well (Mole de Oaxaca is one of the best foods you can ever taste!) and drank well. Las Cremas de Mezcal should be imported to a deli near you. He was sure to eat many grasshoppers so that, according to local legend, he will die face up. 

Jina's Photography at Instagram

Some of you may know that my better half, Jina, is an incredible photographer. She finally started a social media account (instagram) to showcase some of these photos.

GIF Images from the Glyphic Video (coming out soon!)

Glyphic (Coatlism Press 2014)
BUY HERE

Para mi gente que lee in espanol

I have three reviews now under one review box in Solo Para Monjes done by Coatlism Press in Spanish:

Me encanta la autenticidad de la historia de amor. Pero yo anhelaba más....quería saber qué iba a pasar. (Read More) 

I'm compiling the Sacred Calendar (which is currently for sale at Smashwords) for a print book and a Kindle Book. Below you will find the mock up of the cover which I posted at Pinterest. What do you think?

Bestseller in some strange (but acceptable) categories

For Monks Only has done some weird things. It has dropped to below 1,000,000 in sales rank and then also been on the bestseller lists three or four times now. It has been as high as #2 on the bestseller list for Travel / USA / Brooklyn. The funny thing is the main character, "you", starts the story in Brooklyn and then travels to Southeast Asia where the remainder of the long short story (the novelette) takes place. What does it take to get to be ranked high in fiction? in literature? I think it's a fuckload of sales. Anyway, I haven't been there yet.

Good Etiquette -- a poem published in the QLRS in 2007

I have been writing for a long time now. Here's a poem I just stumbled on under my nomme de plume, Ra Gabriel (which became Gabriel Ra in Singapore):

Good Etiquette

keep it short and neat,
like rows of Japanese lettuce
like a schoolgirl's
— Did you know they shorten uniforms
by rolling skirts at the waist? — hairstyle,
eat with the mouth closed like it matters
like we're not barbarians clawing crab flesh
on our first date
after a quick kiss by the steps - you have
to take the train - I see the gangster
tattoo on the back of your soft hand.

You see I see it.
We say nothing

never speak again.

By Gabriel Ra

QLRS Vol. 6 No. 2 Jan 2007

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Find the original here: Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS) -- http://www.qlrs.com/poem.asp?id=576

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Warning: Your Anger Could Make Other People Very Uncomfortable While Causing You to Live Longer

I was talking to my friend Moody yesterday and he told me my poems (from I, Orange Girls, paperback, free pirated PDF) were very angry about Korea. He said he liked them but did say they were angry. I wonder if I'm coming off too angry. I don't hate Korea by any means. I'm living here for years. I love that it's safe. I love that without working too hard my bar makes money and does well (like Juan Ladron in a hammer fight) against its competition. I like that some things are so easy and personally I don't like living in NY/NJ where I'm from so it's all good for me. Still, I find this culture incredibly ass-backwards sometimes. 

I was in the taxi with Jina today watching the driver take the oddest route to Nowon from Imundong (the Korean ghetto I call home) and marveling at how she isn't paying attention and just doesn't give a fuck. I think that's cool that Koreans put their full trust in authority and then don't have to think another thought about it. I'm pretty laid back but I have to think, shit, this way is slower and more expensive and get annoyed by the fact that the majority of drivers in Seoul don't know the streets. They'd be eaten fucking alive in NYC. 

Still I find Moody's comment worth thinking about. I mean he is this solid Saudi Arabian guy who is super fucking nice. But with that beard and caramel skin has surely been repeatedly anally probed by Airport Security. He would be marked the angry one normally cause of total racial mistrust yet he finds my poems angry. I love it. I think maybe that's because living in a country where people either find you to be a rock star, in which case the young girls throw the pink at you and the men mistrust you for it, or find you invisible, in which case the jam carts through your ankles, bash tins of sesame oil through your balls to get a seat in the subway, cut in front of you in line at the cafe, and knock over your two-year-old son while you're putting him into a shopping cart, it makes you as an expat a little nuts and then all of us living here commiserate. 

Surely, the Koreans must be as baffled by some of our foreign behavior as we are of theirs. I think the difference lies in the fact that most people are aware that their education was skewed by years of bad education and government propaganda, whereas our Hanguk counterparts don't see that. They had blinders attached at birth and -- although plastic surgery for the eyes, nose, and breasts is quite popular -- very few had them surgically removed. Fuck it's a bitch to do (link to surgically removing of blinders). I want to capture some of these cultural difficulties in my newest book which I'm writing now: Pamphlet on Starting a Bar Business in Korea. I'm planning to release it as a beta thing in 3 parts. Stay tuned for the first installment

And if you're reading this, Moody. Thanks for reading. Thanks for the comments. And thanks for taking a year off my life with the most stressful IPL pool game of my life. And, if you're ass still is raw: 

OMPHALOS DADA YOW: The Kirkus Review of Glyphic by Ralph-Michael Chia...

Lead Dadaist of 2014 Justynn Tyme is so awesome that he made a cool, pragmatic layout for the Kirkus Review of my book Glyphic and posted it on his blog. Here is the link:

OMPHALOS DADA YOW: The Kirkus Review of Glyphic by Ralph-Michael Chia...



With its emails exchanged before leaving (which if you don't understand shit about the Maya you need to read before the poems), dictionary, interwoven poems, use of K'iche', and thrown in prose, Glyphic is still in the dadaist/experimental spirit.

I was featured on as the first poet for Mad Swirl this issue which is pretty cool (the main page of the Poetry Forum constantly updates so I'm providing a link to my page at the swirliness. They run a great site over there. It's awesome that they support me from this many miles away. Thanks to Johnny and to MH!

I've sold more books than I ever have in the past two months. It's mostly Glyphic, with a few For Monks Only on the side. I'm working on getting the Sacred Calendar out on Kindle. It's out at Smashwords [thus iBooks, Kobo (which I'm thinking of submitting to manually since they seem to be pretty fucking awesome!), Sony, B&N, etc] and it has been pirated so you can find it at most torrent sites. Amazon seems to be the most proficient book universe. There's a huge upside to having some presence there even though in general it's not the best dashboard and not the most personal site.

The big thing that I've been reading and thinking about is that you here all this stuff about Author Platforms and other bullshit. The more I write and get stuff out there I'm thinking that it's more about just being yourself. For me, a writer of contemporary literature and some pretty esoteric books, it makes more sense to not follow the normal protocol that works for writers of vampire romances.

Those are my thoughts for the week. I'm curious what other writers think and do. Feel free to comment.

A New Book Review (by an awesome source, the Kirkus Review)

My book Glyphic has been called "A psychedelic, verse picaresque in the vein of Carlos Castañeda" --@KirkusReviews (http://t.co/9dBxrrn4wg)
— Ralph Michael Chiaia (@RMChiaia) January 11, 2014

2.5 Reasons Nobody Reads This Blog

1. Very few people read and the people that do mostly read non-fiction, self-help books, or if they do read fiction they read fiction about vampires, women with vibrating toys and leather fetishes, and I don't write any of that. 
2. I have no knack for marketing anything. I run a bar which I get away with because alcohol sells itself but books don't seem to sell themselves. I don't know any bookaholics who will drink up as many of my books as I allow. 
3. (2.5) I have no idea, guess my blog sucks

An interesting observation

my son knows "i love u", "我爱你", "te amo" but not "사랑해" #koreaisweird #hiseoulkkk
— Ralph Michael Chiaia (@RMChiaia) January 8, 2014

First Poem from book I just started

Difference between me and her

I’m American

She’s Korean

I pour a glass of water with ice cubes

gulp it down then pour milk into the same glass

She pours one glass of water 

and one glass of milk and sets the two on the table demurely

—•----•—

I think this idea of picking up little cultural differences could make a full book (something like the poetry version of ROKetship). If you have any ideas you'd like written, tell me.