Redesigned a million times before.

So between poeming, storying, laptop-not-having, and delaying inevitable "here's what's going on in my life I know I've neglected the blog but trust me you don't really want inside this head right now oh no that sounded way more ominous than I meant it to" post(s?) not much has gone on here in the last few months.

I've got plenty of things I want to write about for the Trains and Tall Buildings series, some of the aforementioned life updates, and a few more drafts of poems to throw at the wall and see if they stick. But the perfect is perpetually the enemy of the good, so here's a couple quickies--

I'm writing music reviews again.

I sent out the proofs to Alice Blue, and will have a new chapbook as part of the Shotgun Wedding Imprint of Alice Blue. It's called The Third Best of Possible Outcomes. I'm also re-drafting one I wrote last year (mainly in post-work whiskey-fueled sessions when my laptop worked) and trying to polish it up.

I'm ZAPPing again.

This all will be easier once I re-laptop, but as is, the gentle scent of metal, stale beer(!) and humanness surrounds me in the Seattle Public Library.

Some productivity jams:



later, but not much.

2 of 4.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Listen to this Irish Music:

here's some new stuff, with the addendums to follow:

Lord and Savor

Tell me about this weird moment, he said, chewing an elongated piece of intestine. He gnawed and gnawed. Tell me about this epiphaaaneeeee smack smack smack smack gulp, this new revelation that you—spit—know. I love beef jerky. I love it. I suspect, however, that much of it is actually pork.
The ceiling fan continued its one-per-minute rotation.
But tell me, young sir, young miss, youngling, what is this thing that happened in a second and is now gone but has changed the way you feel about everything? Tell me, and talk into this tape recorder, then we will let your parents go. It is the plan.

The sun was grey and dusty and the two stared out the county courthouse windows for a long time. The child also chewed a stick of jerky, and eventually said that it was when he saw the ponys, he knew he wanted to be a cowboy, and the man knew that this meant absolutely nothing, and that he was not, in fact “the one” by any stretch, the prophecy would have none of him, just some fucking kid, and his parents had been beheaded for nothing.

Sword and Labor

We unfolded the sign over the bridge over the freeway near the university and the residentials. “FUCK YOUR WAR” it said. The anticipated military parade didn’t arrive. The city council members who’d voted to fire on Everett did not pass by. They were in a hotel talking tunnels.

But everyone has their war. We hadn’t taken into account the use of metaphor in self help books. The passing subarus became alcoholics, the passing jeeps filled with self doubt. At some point a Dairigold tanker crashed into the Betty Paige house and everyone fighting a war against sexual repression just lost, all at once. We were trying to roll the sign up again once we saw what was happening but it turned out that our war was with prudent withdrawal, which was also why the walls of so many vaginas collapsed and we had nothing warm to soften us. Also, the bridge. They warned us this could happen.