The Interview!

In all it's rambling glory: Here's that Interview with Paul Nelson. I'd take a second pass at a few of the more complex questions of faith and politics, but there ya go.

In specifics, w/regards to Bradley/Chelsea Manning (this was prior to the announcement, the interview) what I was trying to get at had more to do with the inequities in punishments for different types of crimes; I don't believe Manning is a traitor, but I'd admit I've not followed the case closely enough (nor do I know enough about Military Intelligence and procedures for reporting abuse) to wholeheartedly get on a Free Manning kick.
There's too much going on there.

Anyway, I was stoked to do the interview, which will be released to the world in a serialized five piece format.

Other news, last night's Claustrophobia went well, Raanan was a gracious host and good reader. There'll be stuff about that up at www.cozytownfrolics.wordpress.com soon.

Postcard View Dailies (draft)

This is what I read last night at Da'Daedal X in Everett. This is an initial stage, a bunch will change. Feel free to pop off with suggestions, love, or haterade.
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to work. To walk. To work. To walk to work.
Seventeen if I saunter, five if I run.
on the way, deconstructions:
neighborhood, city, country,

as if my pen would floatme above, ride a crane into new calamitous conclusions,
let me become the judgement I sit in, the crash I swing toward..

But better writers have tried to strike out against the gentrification that their
own romanticizing kicked into gear; spur, stronger activists, more upstanding pastors, etcetera.

I take streets that get me there quickest
and undetected, unreconstructed, unspied,
so I can grab the shakers slap my face into public form.

Kris tells me I have more Face than any other bartender he knows personally. The thick mask of unflappability. The workface.  Is this is a fakeness?  If I were a hunter, I’d become the bear. If I were a fisherman, I’d become the plankton. If I were an excorcist, I’d become the little girl.  If I walk too much, or not enough, my legs become
spokes. Shaking drinks and staring buildings and marking time, I become the salt on the rim,
the laugh at the jokes. My face sags and limbs crawl to a warning spot. Kris tells me that I didn’t recognize him when he showed up, that I and all my returns came back in manila envelopes, unmarked.

To past work. To memorial.
The postcards take three weeks,
two days on express,

Over the oceans where I became the Shark. Through the tubes where I became the
cracks, not recognizing the water leaking, the water, the water,
the darling struck soaked like standing by puddles meeting bikewheels.

To home, from work. To home. To back,
lets say we can’t call it a home, lets say
it’s a place where I sleep and cook eggs
and masturbate with the door closed
and window open because it doesn’t face anything.

Takes longer, to get there, get home
after work, after the face, after betraying
endless friends with professional nods,
 through the collapsing buildings and the deep built
pits, where the dog care was.

Now all the dogs are filthy and barking up park trees.
Now I no longer cut through the park,
Now I no longer think about meanings
Of signs with cartoon bycicles.

Every  3 a.m. couchflop a victory and surrender.

On leaving, Greg decided it was important we eat hilarious chips, almost blow ourselves up, hear some old Nick Cave songs. It was important. We talked about buildings in cities we will never live again and the holding belief people have that their friends will all one day live on the same block as them.,, and we didn’t dwell on leaving at all, as he walked back through a neighborhood, the same one, but through different eyes, when was the last time I made it to boston, street-statue performers and all, and I gravitate myself away from thinking too hard about the number of things that are ending in a promise of postcards.

Two weeks, three, a pit of faces. I become the mailman’s papercuts.

"are we all children of Roethke?"

Wednesday morning I had the honor of sitting across the table from Paul Nelson, who held a recorder and asked me questions about Filthy Jerry, faith, empire, and poetic form. It'll be up in about a week or so, and we'll see just how badly I butchered my thoughts on complex issues like the State of the Nation, my Personal Faith Journey and Poetry.
Nonetheless it was a good conversation, but I'm never quite confident in my ability to not come off like a jackass in these situations.

 Riding a bus north to Bellingham, where I'll say goodbye to David Ney who moves to Brooklyn. Oh hey, just passed through Everett, where monday's Da'Daedal will occur and I swear I'll have a new thing written for it. I swear.

A Weird Thing to Do to Your Brain:

Is fall asleep at 4am, wake up at 8:30am, head for breakfast with girlfriend and out-of-town visitor, load up on coffee and mimosas, come back to your place and fall asleep while this movie plays:

I'm not sure what was part of the movie and what parts my brain added, but truth is probably stranger than fiction.

Recap: PZS, PPS, Max ridin'

This weekend I bused south to Portland, Oregon to help Bryan table at the Portland Zine Symposium. He, I, and Rachel took turns browsing, explaining what a Babel/salvage is and trying to not spend all our money on art and zines. Though not trying that hard. I've got a nice little shelf's worth of art, politics, comics, and poetry zines I'll be working my way through over the next few weeks.
One of the recurring things you hear as a tabler is as follows:
"Oh wow, this is really cool. I mean, really cool. I don't have any money on me, though, will you be here tomorrow?"
Still, B/S was able to spread the good word through a few trades, card hand-offs, and even a purchase here and there.

I also featured at the Portland Poetry Slam at Backspace Coffee right in down/old town Portland. It's a great reading, energetic room, and the all-ages factor gives an urgency and life to the proceedings that helps the time pass quickly. That said, I felt a bit ambivalent about my own performance; I feel I've definitely done better readings for matching the mood/emotions of the crowd and connecting with folks.
Set: filthy jerry gets paid/ sharis parking lot/ little fear of drowning/ GRIFOLS-Biomat parking lot/ northward/ charity pledge drive/ foxes of bainbridge/ story problem.
Part of the issue, I think lies with the fact that both 'gets paid' and 'sharis' actually read a bit better in my head than they do on stage. About halfway through either of them I've already collected half a page of self notes on how to tighten them/perform them better. Leads to an editing-on-the-fly sitch that probably would have been better not to, you know, start with.
LEARNING!
Still, the crowd was generous, talked to some folks afterwards, saw old friends, and caught a bus with Rachel back to NEPO, where the bar was closed but the pizza place was open. The time not at PZS or the Slam is documented below:



One thing I find interesting when I'm in Portland is the constant overhearing of Cliche Conversations about Portland.
"Yeah, like, coming from L.A. I expected it to be way smaller, actually. But it's pretty big. . . but not that big. Like, it's a town that pretends to be a city."

Yeah, take a swig every time you hear one of those and you'll be drunk in ten minutes. But PDX actually strikes me as the opposite: it's a Big City (in general, american terms) that pretends to be a town, not the other way around. The gardens, the farmers markets, the single family homes and general lack of tall buildings outside of Downtown and the Rose Quarter give it a towny feel. But the infrastructure, the neighborhood-focused walkability, the mass transit, these are all city ammenities, but dressed down. How long that dressing down remains, who's to see. But Portland feels like a town, works like a city.

Seattle, on the other hand, has many ways in which it's a (huge) town still growing into it's practical cityhood; we're behind on transit and infrastructure, which is one of greatest indicators (in my mind) of urban living. That said, there's more of an outward-looking mindset in Seattle, where as Portland seems to be more localized, to both its benefit and detriment.

I write this on a bus, and have just entered Centralia.

Soft Limits

“Okay, what the HELL?”
He jumped backwards, knocked the knife out of her hand. “I gotta go. Call you later.”
Crunching through leaves to his apartment, he held his bloodied arm, kneaded his
windpipe, reflecting that the smartest thing he’d learned those months in Corvallis was
that there comes a time where it is neither fun, nor sexy, and knowing when to say so.

It was a tepid autumn and his ears itched and scratched up shoulders chafed against
his sweater and he decided to call her back; he was a romantic at heart and all the renewed
tensions between the U.S. and Russia had him cataloguing the best spots to lie naked, bruised,
to watch ash hit the clouds with force.

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This is a riff on a couple of pieces I wrote in high school (!) that for whatever reason, sauntered into my head today. The original piece was a bait and switch (I wrote a lot of those for a while) and the "what the HELL" signaled the switch. there's a oblique reference  to "Time to Destroy" in the last lines, but I fear it'll never be as awesome without lines like "I know that you like it when my troops are deployed. . . "

Artist CV

Did some stuff. wrote some things. got other people to do stuff in co-operation. let me come over and read for you. that sort of thing.

self promotion comes too easy for some, not enough for others. i feel like i've got both those people in me, fighting for control; days and weeks of self deprecation followed by shotgun blasts of "getting myself out there." slowly gaining balance.

in trying to get my shit together pro-style, I found this video, which I dunno if I posted here before, but I'm posting now. It's one of my favorite performances I've done, of the piece "Foxes of Bainbridge."




Feel free, obviously, to repost this video, or blog post, so that if nothing else, it's easier to find something I wrote and performed within the last three years.

Sometimes the full link is prettier. Like a half-eaten train.

So, let's be generous with our linkage. I recently got four of my pieces posted up at Wonder And Risk:
http://wonderandrisk.com/where-it-really-feels-like-a-city-and-three-more-poems-by-graham-isaac/

I really like what that they're doing over at WAR; bridging coverage of comedy, performance art, poetry, indie sports (pencil fighting? bike polo? what-have-you. there's a "poetry and sports" section), and theatre in a way that makes a lot of intuitive sense, but doesn't get done that often. at least not around here.

Also! Stoked to have received a Director's Scholarship to this year's Litfuse: http://www.litfuse.us/
Now I just have to figure out how to get there, where to stay in Tieton, stuff like that.

Likewise, in case you missed it, you can still listen to an interview that Steve Barker did with Bryan Edenfield and I at OM: http://ordinarymadness.org/?p=442
We were fascinating.

And as always, support Babel Salvage or buy Filthy Jerry's Guide to Parking Lots here: http://babelsalvage.com/