Response to a GIF prompt from Drew
I know words
No words leave me stumped
I need more words.
Twitter. Donald Trump.
Status quo towards cohorts
My behest
Potus faux words, oh Lord
I have the best
Language, I have it
Anguish, I banish
Managing image
Covfefe, Goddammit
Collateral damage
Strategic advantage
State of the Union:
Confusion is average
The road less traveled may make all the difference to Robert Frost, but to seasoned business people, it might be crappy advice to blaze your own trail. On Tuesday, April 16th at Iron Clad Brewery, a crowd of entrepreneurs and business owners gathered around brews to hear 3 panelists discuss the mentor mentality. The event was run by the Network for Entrepreneurs in Wilmington and hosted as always by its founder Jim Roberts. Roberts presented speakers with experience in mentoring and in mentoring programs to share much-needed insights with the audience.
The speakers on Tuesday night came from different successful backgrounds in engaging in mentorship in their industries. Dominic Taverniti was a mentoring founder, then a member, of CharGrow in Asheville. Hailing from Chicago Kevin Carson comes with several exits under his belt and runs AI BRIDGE. Finally, the Director of the UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), Diane Durance, introduced a new university mentor partner program. Each of the three provided a short presentation before a facilitated Q&A.
Wilmington’s entrepreneur ecosystem might struggle with being taken seriously in neighboring regions. In the last couple of years initiatives have been proposed to increase the number of startups generating revenue, startups with successful capital raises, and those with substantial exits. There
Diane Durance and Jim Roberts described an “ask-hole,” someone who asks for advice, doesn’t listen and wastes everyone’s time. Ask-holes in the ecosystem cause trouble, as they put a bad taste in mentors’ mouths and dissuade them from participating. This is a problem. As a precaution, the April 16th gathering was as much about training entrepreneurs what to expect from mentorship as much as it was about presenting new mentorship opportunities in the city.
In the context of the event, a mentor is an individual experienced in a specific aspect of business or entrepreneurship who volunteers their time to assist a less experienced entrepreneur through a confidential agreement. Generally speaking, a mentor will be an older individual that has seen a lot more of the ups and downs of scaling a business. He or she will have advice and direction that can be headlights on a dark road for a young startup.
Mentors are a sounding board for green entrepreneurs. The panel agreed that a good mentor listens more than speaks. As a mentor, Kevin Carlson wants to get into the entrepreneur’s head and understand their passion. This type of attention helps to align mentors with mentee goals. Dominic Taverniti recalled a situation in which he spotted a scaling opportunity for a mentee only to learn that it wasn’t the entrepreneur’s vision. These can be red-flags for poor fit or miscommunicated expectations.
What a mentor isn’t is a board member, an executive, or an employee. Further, a mentor isn’t there to tell the mentee entrepreneur what to do. They are there to provide insight and give options that the entrepreneur may consider and take. A mentor also is not a “Yes man” who simply agrees with everything they hear. A good mentor ought to provide a bit of “tough-love” since the market certainly won’t be any kinder.
To avoid earning the title of ask-hole, the mentee needs to be coachable. That is, they need to be willing to listen to advice and execute on it. If they disagree with a mentor’s suggestion, then they may respectfully prove them wrong by demonstrating it through data or execution. An entrepreneur should remember that their mentors are volunteers offering valuable time and pay respect to that by not giving too much pushback or being a pushover. Discourse and respect are key in the relationship. What this boils down to is that an entrepreneur mentee must be coachable. This involves being attentive and respectful, understanding the value of advice, and implementing the advice.
Under Diane Durance, the UNCW CIE began mobilizing a coalition to bolster local entrepreneurs. This organization includes several businesses in the Wilmington area. At the event Durance announced a new program to connect mentors to entrepreneurs through the university. She designed a methodology for getting talent together with entrepreneurs in which a team of mentors work with a venture. It is a peer learning group that helps the mentee move forward.
Why group mentoring? One-on-one mentor matching is hard to facilitate, especially when you’re new in town like Michigan transplant Durance. Further, skilled mentors are had to find. Teamwork helps to culture both mentors and entrepreneurs alike. The program, which involves a once a month mentor meeting, allows entrepreneurs to come to mentors and present their business. After being vetted and approved, a mentoring team is assigned to the startup, which doesn’t need to be CIE tenant but needs an active membership if matched.
To learn more about mentoring opportunities in Wilmington, contact the UNCW CIE for group mentoring, or for step-by-step startup mentorship contact Bill Warner at Entredot.
Response to a GIF prompt from Heather
A day reads as a passage read aloud
That more resembles hallways seen up close
And leads to tiny, cluttered chambers cramped
With verbose mind and punctuation thoughts.
Each moment is a paper thin event,
A single page that captures fractures of
A narrative alive as life itself
Dependent on, yet free of those before.
So often and so easy torn away
From memories, divorced from corridors
That both before and after led the way
And brought this character along this prose.
An existential panic leads to dread
Considering the way that we are thrown
By chapters of the past into a fray
And left here in this paragraph alone.
Response to a GIF prompt by Sparks
Here comes Greg.
Heard his wife left him? Yep. Just over the weekend.
It went over the deep end. Yeah, on Monday,
He went all to shit and called in sick.
It’s a shame, too. Look at him. He
He’s got shoddy health, his body dealt him a few blows.
Not like his wife, though.
She left him a Dear John letter and –
Hey, Greg, how about this weather?
What’s good? Did you watch that game? What a comeback, right?
You can’t keep a good winner down. Yep. Catch ya’ later!
Poor Greg.
Hard worker, too. Yeah, not like Jerry.
He’s very…? Lazy’s not the word. Yes, worthless.
No work ethic. Works less than the maintenance guy.
Speaking of, you know he slept with Greg’s wife?
We all come here to earn our bread
But really, it’s a rumor mill instead
Grinding grains of truth into flowery
Half baked stories, assuring
That everyone knows more about you
Hey, what’s going on with Jane?
She hasn’t been the same lately
Cocaine maybe?
I blame Stacy. Since those two became friends
She’s been insane daily
We air our stink when we shoot the shit
To be a fly on the wall
Would be to hear us swat at your shadow
We’re simply
Shallow,
No secret is safe from sharing
If they are secrets worth hearing
Speaking of…
Remember the Christmas party
And how the boss introduced his daughter
Yeah, well, we kinda got to talking
While the boss was outside smoking
I met with her the week after the party
To help her move a mattress into her new apartment
And let’s just say
We took it for a test drive
Hahaha, wait I got a message from my wife
Cool, picking up parmesan tonight
Okay, anyway best lay of my life
Secret’s safe with you, right?
Or when my back is turned
Will I be the last to learn
That gossip gushes down
All tributaries
You can attribute any collapse
Of social integrity
To whispers in hushed rooms
And negative narratives behind closed doors
Should throw no stones
Or better yet, let’s build stone homes
That provide shade that we don’t throw
And we don’t say what we don’t know
And what we do know we don’t share
And if it’s being said, we don’t care
But
If you have anything positive to tell me
Trust, I’m all ears.
Response to a GIF prompt from Angela
Bitch, I am fabulous
You may need to call an ambulance for the awesomeness avalanche.
It would be to your advantage to advance with caution
Bitch, I am fabulous
In a way that is anomalous, manifest miraculous is actually accurate.
Academic rhetoric couldn’t get it, culture can’t tell of it, my elegance,
Science couldn’t identify the relevant elements.
Bitch, I am fabulous
And if you harbor any animus that is absolutely scandalous.
A damn shame that you simply can’t handle it. Analysts value this fab as valorous.
In other words, it’s not undeserved, I don’t underserve.
Bitch, I am fabulous
To a depth that is fathomless, only understood analogous to
A
I just want this to be clear, my fantastic vantage is three-tiered.
Bitch, I am fabulous
Pythagoras’s abacus couldn’t calculate my accolades. I’m better than A-plus.
I’m at an academic grade that the alphabet betrayed.
I’m infinitely paid the graces of the day.
Bitch, I am fabulous
You may even feel amorous with ravenous avarice. If you had a wish,
You might admit and invite a kiss, so in light of this
The insight is I’m a heartbreaker, you might cry a bit.
Bitch, I am fabulous
Which I state with a garrulous adamance. Not arrogant, I speak with evidence.
Any steady sense is well convinced by my look and charm and eminence.
That my winning friends is always imminent.
Bitch, I am so fabulous
My existence is a catalyst for prayer like the angelus in vigils candle-lit.
Like Helen of Troy or Heaven or Never-never-land who could ever stand to deny?
That I
Am So
Fabulous.
Response to a GIF prompt from Aneesa
Excuse me, can I help you?
Am I the card that life has dealt you?
If so you can shuffle again
There’s been enough of you men
And your solicitation
Sole recitations
Like your soul resonating to some
Pitch or some brand
I understand; you need to pay bills
But I’m a hard sell
And don’t have time to monkey around
With some
Like some knives
Or a cause I, frankly,
Don’t have the bandwidth to help a hand with
So you might as well be a bandit
Cause you won’t get my cash willingly.
What’s that? Oh, silly me.
You’re not looking for money?
So tell me,
Which church are you pitching me?
Because if you’re wishing we can listen
To some scriptures and you’ll be switching me
To worship a difference scene, you best believe
You should just up leave, turn the ignition key
And pick a different street.
Oh, not that then?
What could you possibly be at my door knocking —
Wait, I know
I should have recognized you when we began talking
Normally I can tell you when you walk in
And I ought to have known then
Cause I’ve brought your ass home
More than enough times
I’ve grown to be cynical
And here you come to my doorstep
Though normally, you look like Pinnacle
Or a fight after I’ve been ridiculed
Or something I catch that’s clinical
Or a red flag that looks too good to say no to
So it’s clear I was having far too good a time
Minding my own damn business
With my shit together
Well, our get together has come to a close
So turn your hiney around and march off on the double
I don’t hate to burst your bubble
But I’m fine without you
Cause I know your face and
You
Are
Trouble.
Response to a GIF prompt from Lara
It can take less than a minute for a fire to take your life
As it swallows the oxygen from the air around you
When you are near me
Is this how you take my breath away?
Why I lie in unconscious shock
As your tongue like flame laps at my skin?
Are you merely too hot for my senses
That you burn away my nerve
To escape what I know could be agonizing?
I said
It took less than a minute for you to take my life
Or did I offer it to you?
I’m choked up,
Clean fires burn without smoke
So I am grateful our passion is impure
Because I am the smoke to your blaze
I cannot exist without you, it feels
It’s been too long now
We’re like an ever burning coal mine
Want you to be the one I call mine
And if you left me to smolder
I would cling to the last ember I remember
Until I grew cold and died
But where there’s smoke there’s you
So you are never far from my billowing step
Or my pillow; we slept only an hour that night
But it felt like the light and warmth of day
Or a twilight bonfire
Or my heart combusting
It makes me want to stop, drop, and propose
Ashes to ashes
dust to dust
Til death do us part
Response to a GIF prompt from Michael
The sleepy sun releases her grip from
Where she hangs in the sky
Floating slowly and gently to the ground
Like a child-
Made of match flame and filled with joyful breath
She settles on the horizon, softly pops
Flooding open roads
And overflows into the city streets
Her golden glow quickens into life
And ignites each building
In the chilly heat of the Burning Bush
The vault opens into blackness
Celestial wheels turn and push
Swinging open heaven’s gates
Starlight peaks down into the illumined roads
Struggling to compete, breaching sky
To dissolve on asphalt
Like autumn snowflakes
The town sparkles and citizens dance in the bath of night-sun
Keeping twilight at bay as they
Lengthen the day carrying torches of solar shards
And celebrate the melting of daylight
Cosmic existential woes
Pour with the torrential flow
Venture toward the center
And I enter elemental glow
Space and time are bent and go
Ancient lights are sent to show
Lost potential all eventual
Tell me what I’m meant to know
Quintessential densities
Pull me toward my destiny
All intentions ever mentioned
Now I know what’s meant to be
Insubstantial entities
Man and his amenities
Was lent plenty, still all empty
Lost in the immensity
Earth and all her citizens
Measure insignificance
Meaning mythic, monolithic
Crumbling is imminent
Extinct over six events
Infinitesimal incidents
Every epoch is specific
Lacking in magnificence
Innocent antipathy
From the cosmic symphony
Ever vast an epitaph
Floating in infinity
Written in a litany
Author anonymity
All that’s past prologues last
This is my epiphany
I suppose nothing exists a priori. As romantic as it would be to say I was destined to write, or writing chose me, both are a bit far-fetched. My name Devon means both “poet” and “word-bringer,” but it’s really by an incident that I decided to write. I grew up a bit of a bookworm and read at a slightly advanced level. So it makes sense I had many opportunities to be inspired by some work to do as authors do, but it took one specific work. It began while I was reading a classic book as a young child one afternoon. “Ah, distinctly I remember.”
It was a children’s collection of the works of Edgar Allen Poe. I loved the short stories, and have been writing my own in kind sporadically over my life. But it wasn’t Mask of the Red Death or Cask of Amontillado that lit a fire in me. It was the definitive popular poem The Raven. After reading it once I knew I wanted to memorize it. Then an intoxicating thought hit me. Could I write narrative poems that other people wanted to memorize? I wanted to write stories and verse others yearned to come out of their mouths. I wanted to capture scenes and feelings in still ink that lay dormant in wait for an unsuspecting reader to become their new host.
Part of me feels so very very cliche admitting such a popular poem encouraged me to write. Another part of me gives fewer damns than a crippled beaver. To me back then, and even now, The Raven is like a meal that’s easy to chew, tough to digest, and hard to pass. There’s something about writing in clean, structured verse that feels almost holy. The body of a compelling and cohesive narrative brings me a satisfied joy every time. Meanwhile, there’s a melancholy in the accessible elements of fear, loss, frustration, and despair that sit so neatly and understandably in the words, the work itself could almost be a human being.
In the end, this is what I want to produce through my own talents and skill. I want to write the type of work I would consume. Honestly, I’m not there yet, which saddens me as much as it emboldens me. It’s been my ambition lately to be at least a decent writer, so I’ve been taking workshops in writing so I can improve. My hope, I guess my dream, is to write something that survives me. That persists simply because after my tongue has grown fat then shriveled in my corpse’s jaw, someone else sees it fit to read and repeat my words. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish, so I won’t get my hopes up, but I won’t put my dreams down either. Never, nevermore.
