21/30: #Targets

A poem about Class in Seattle,
Class in myself, the idea of Taste as
Class signifier, of Class as Taste
signifier, of Education as Class
and Taste signifier, as how despite my
love for both the band and radio station,
I couldn't help but define the
New Pornographers as
KEXP the band.

this is not a compliment.

A poem about Subarus.
A poem about people who
pay so much money for durable
flip flops  and then eat such expensive food
in those durable flip flops and
a poem about people, these
same ones, who think that
we relate to eachother because
we've both read Bolano.

A poem about self-isolation
and a poem about self immolation
in the need to fit in. The gatekeepers
still exist, despite the thinkpieces
gatekeepers share on their facebook
about how the internet
has rid us
of gatekeepers.

This is not a complaint.

A poem about what sorts of
buildings the suburbs meant
growing up, and what they mean
now, and a poem about

the assholes who live in my building
who let their friends steal flat
screened TVs and a poem about
the whole of recorded history
as seen through subsidized housing.

I am also an asshole in my building
but none of my friends have done the sort of damage
that leads to long term policy or rental changes.

A poem about "mindfulness."
A poem about "following your dreams" or about "hard work" or about Nice Things and why we can have them, actually, if we change our attitudes.
A poem about your favorite yoga place.
A poem about my favorite sandwich shop.
A poem about the way the moderately wealthy
do more to shame to poor than the extremely wealthy do
90% of the time, their smirks and their aphorisms.

A poem about the friends I used to have,
who hover like vultures in comment sections and
wider gatherings, whose lives of relative wit
and misanthropy sour like milk and burn like
spilt coffee.

This is not a high ground, but it's the only ground I've got.

19/30: In Which I Summon the Ghosts of Still Living Scribes

Ten oil paint woodland water scenes
in this room where two men in
turbans compare data over a
laptop and the guy who works at
the gyro place where they recognize
my nephew sits in a chair with
an embroidered cushion while
songs with echo-ey lady vocals
drift over the sound of espresso
machines, and I believe that if
there is a problem in this room
I am part of it.

This is the second poem I've written
in A Muddy Cup in my life time and the
more-than-second poem I've written
during this arbitrary daily-poem-calendar
-time about the coffee shop that I'm writing
in and if every poem is a little bit
about poetry, then all of mine are a lot
about poetry, but this is the second one
that I consciously chose to write this month
and I will finish my taxes a little  later
than I planned.

Now this is like a Shane Guthrie poem
or Ryan Johnson poem, they are also both
writing poems every day or almost
every day, because it is important and we
know we are important because we
choose to do this, and they also both
have written about the act of writing and
I'm not sure if they'll be flattered or offended

that I sat in a room with it's own library
that is in the business of giving people a
place to sit and not be terrified of the world
but ostensibly it's just coffee and now
this piece is much much longer than either
Ryan or Shane usually write, even longer
than a poem by Jake Tucker, who was the
most enthused about the 30/30s, but has
written the least, so I assume he has broken
fingers by a Moose in Canada, but yes,
mush longer of a poem than any
of theirs, unless
it's an epic diatribe,
surrealist or
political, respectively,
God
I could use
one of those

right now.

18/30: TFW: TBT/FBF

Never underestimate your capacity for:

                                           creative cosplay

                                           the duckface you mock in others

                                           hair so bad you swore never again until today,

                                           then, the mirror, the howcomenoonetoldme?

Never overestimate the social market for:

                                          creative duckface

                                          the cosplay you mock in others

                                          eyehangs so bad you swear next time will be sun

                                          glasses, or more water, or sleep, or no allergies.

Okay, fine.

It was the summer of pastel sweaters, went so

far to flirt with polos, didn't like yacht rock but

wanted invites to the parties. didn't have a 401K

but could agree about Murakami and headfake through

a conversation about Rose. far less responses to 

this post from when, but you were less connected then/

whatever

happened to that scarf?

Never underestimate your capacity for:

                                               nostalgia for coping-benders

                                               nostalgia for drunk poetry readings and the afterlaughs

                                               nostalgia for inadequate grocery stores

                                               nostalgia for the people with the droning speech and 

                                               single college anecdote 

soyoungthen.

Never overestimate your tendency to:

                                              overfilter photographs of milk/ cookies.

                                              self-congratulate for reality television

                                              idle judgement on a brew of coffee as your frozen

                                              pizza burns.

but at least I--

It was the winter of mixed drinks. like most winters,

punctuated by January's forced moderation and the 

half-week of snowball fights. the best thing about it,

even then, were the pictures of friends, best ones,

collapsed in banks outside rest areas. action shots

snowballs quick and in-frame. that was a time ago,

now, algorithm calculated for nostalgia,

for when it snowed,

when we were

there, naming our adventures

when that was even a frame

we'd all be in.

 

               .                                

11/30: Knives For Sale

"Why on earth would you ever need a knife?”-- Concerned Younger Sister
“In case I need to stab someone. Duh.”-- Me.

This collection of knives
For sale to not the highest,

                But first

Bidder.

I want them gone. My wrist action

Is tired, I don’t fancy a quick garrotting

Any more.

They are sharp, clean, in good condition,
they should go to someone I know,

Who will use them well.

I’m neither as tough
Nor noble

As I thought.

So here, for  a reasonable-- I’m not
Asking much; pick them up or walk.

We’ve been having this conversation too long.

And either way
You’ll get them.

Those Lights, Those Pipes.

Top floor of Vita, as the day transitions from natural to artificial light, and the destinations of commuter buses shine. Mukilteo. Lakewood. Ash Way Park and Ride. Detroit minimalism in the headphones, where you see the inorganic turning grass again. Flowers. Never been to Detroit, so it remains unsafe from romantic narratives. After a full press of e-mails, clicks and drags, work that doesn't feel like work, but feels so much heavier than

work.

If I have to see another friend in the hospital I swear I'm going to

just go see them, what else can you do? Again again again. Everett. Federal Way. Mountlake Terrace. Atlanta bounces and bangs through the coffeeshop speakers. They've transitioned from day to night music, from coffee for business to coffee for necessity. Americanos are an all hour drink, eyes sleepy or engorged. Mouths dry from telling stories. In telling stories, in

sharing

concern I'm trying not to be a gossip. Trading others' troubles across platforms like handshake bribes at a party. Ways to make it to the invitation. Staying here with the mottled wood and metal pipes and architecture's dance between warmth and starkness. Outsidde keeps dimming. Fully artificial. The sky is so dark and these lights are so bright and the sky is so dark and these lights are so bright and the sky is so bright with: Tacoma Dome. Bothell. North Lynnwood.

"I now understand panic attacks as a bitter struggle between myself and the homunculus."--B.E.

Tonight I'm reading with Emily Wittenhagen on the Google Hangout reading series The Casserole, hosted by Chelsea Kurnick, whose been running this reading from her Cap Hill apartment for several months (a year?) with an impressive consistency and range of readers.
Pretty stoked to be reading. You can find it on Google Hangouts, or http://www.youtube.com/users/thecasserolereading, if you can't see it live, it'll be up there. I'm currently eating Cheezits, printing out poems and listening to Bryan Edenfield talk about fighting his homunculus. Here's a few good ones from recent months:

See: The Way Things Start and End on Time.

See: Long Breakfast Coming
Sometime Sunday morning, afternoon, actually, the day after the final Greenwood Lit Crawl, eating a veggie breakfast burrito at a favorite Columbia City brunch spot, an hour and a half before working a crazy shift where I had to use both elbows to get through crowds of dancers (without spilling beer), on a recap-tip with Rachel, I still swam with half-thoughts and images. I thought about the writers group I started attending in Jr. High and loved, then grew completely frustrated with by the time I was 19; there was no exit point. I thought about getting kicked out of the UK about six months (at least) too soon and trying to scramble to put things in place so the stuff I started there would work. I thought about how I'd loved Bellingham, Washington, in November 2005, how I'd have not moved to stop a fullscale demolition in May of 2007.

See: Not to be Confused With a Swedish Rock Band
I was recapping the story of how Basement Poetry ended-- a 67 year old one-handed veteran reading an epic narrative about his father to about 20 people, four cop cars, three separate noise-violation tickets of $250-- to Rachel, who'd either not heard it, or felt I needed to feel like I was telling a new story. Either way, a once-storied thing I'd put together (not coincidentally, with two other friends, over beer) I'd apparently not even mentioned to my girlfriend. Buried? Blurred? (ask her, however, if she wants to hear about The Crunch again. . .)

See: Everything I do, I do for Love and a Suffocating Sense of Obligation.
There is no online recording of Lobster Manor, the Poem that,had I written later in my writing career/education, would have probably taken on a greater element of word collage. I was palpably bitter because I was twenty six and had enough fucked shit going on personally that I could afford to spread it around, and because me, Jake, Ryler had to live in that house for a year after the tickets, could barely even have people over ("If this happens again, you'll probably get evicted") and I, at least, had folks I barely knew coming up to me and guilting me for not risking my house and prosecution in order to keep having shows and readings. . .you know, FOR THE SCENE.

See: Getting to the Nostalgia At Hand
One year ago Saturday, we had the first Five Alarms Lit Crawl. Below you can watch my rambling, overexplanatory introduction and Eva Suter's set, which kicked off the whole shebang. You can also remember that sometimes I don't have a beard, and then there's my hair, solidly at the middle point between "terrible" and "decent" grahamhair.




I, Aaron, and Greg got better and briefer with the intros. Saw some fantastic readings, some readers stepping in at clutch time to fill a void and knocking it outta the part (larry, jesse, kris, erin), got love in the local press, love from our friends and got to know a lot of awesome folks that we'd not beforehand. I tend to think that curating is a delicate balance between sacrifice and selfishness; when you have respected writers getting on a mic and saying "This is one of the best/my favorite literary event series. . ."
well that may not be the reason you started (because that is a bad reason to expend so much effort) but it can help you keep going (perpetual motion machine. maybe we can top ourselves)
I think next to starting The Crunch, Five Alarms has been my consistent favorite curation experience. Merging the fun (drinking! crawling! socializing!) with a commitment to quality and challenging work (that line betwen crowd-accessible and experimental and confrontational) both nailed my personal aesthetic and helped to expand it. The energy, shifting vibe-- the crawls all had basic ingredients in common, but no two had the same atmosphere around them. This was huge for me.
For comprehensive video, photos, check out www.fivealarms.wordpress.com.
I was going to have a mini list of my own personal favorite moments, but that would be some saccharine bullshit.

See: All Good Things
So if you clicked his name, you know Greg is going to Cambodia. If you've talked to any of us in person, you know we somewhat arbitrarily set out to do 5, and that you are welcome to pick our brains if you want to pick up where we left off. There've been more than a few "Why are you stopping?" queries, but they've generally been unloaded; no guilt, no guff. Partly because I think it can actually be harder to stop a reading when it's struggling; it feels like a defeat, like no one will step up. I have no question that we would have gotten to that point if we'd tried to drag it on; there were many writers I'd have loved to see at a crawl, but you know what? I'm pretty sure the scene can take care of itself. There was a sense in the conversations I heard and was a part of that this can be a start, or a link, in Seattle's ongoing literary metamorphosis.
Ending like I started: On a personal note it's been so. good. for me to be involved in something that ended at the right moment.

15 Years of Listening to the same band.

There were about fifteen of us in a barn-converted loft in Snohomish, Wa with shag carpet, card tables and scatterings of chips and soda, passing around a portable landline. My buddy Cliff gets through.

"1077 The End."

"Hi. I'm part of the vast conspiracy trying to get you to play Local H." 

"Oh, Jesus. We've talked to a lot of you tonight."

* * * * *

In college, when people related their prom stories with equal parts instant nostalgia and maturity-based distance, this was always when I had to explain to them that I was Home-Schooled, and it worked differently for me, that instead of the go/don't go binary, I got a Third Option-- I was the DJ. And in my cool-music-kid stories, the one about playing the Pixies' "Where is My Mind" as a final slowdance got loads of "oh, man, that's awesome."
And it was, in that record-store clerk sort of way. Very few people cared; it was slow enough they could rub their thighs against one another in what was (theoretically) as close as any of us would come to sex before God came down from the Heavens with a Ring and The One and we were bathed in glorious copulative light.

The REAL cool moment, though, had come the year before, when, after a frenzy-producing "backstreet's back," I popped on "Fritz's Corner."
Rather than dividing the room into Rockers and Preppies (or whatever highschool movie thing you're into) the whole room was stomping, shouting and basically going nuts in their lipstick and prom-dresses and tuxes. It's one of the few times I've seen music work exactly like it feels it should-- grabbing people by the ears and taking them with it, no matter. Trying to convey this moment to people unfamiliar with Local H, or too cool, required too many explanations of context.
Immediately following the song, a Perpetually Concerned Mother scampered up to the DJ Booth.

"You are doing a GREAT JOB. Really wonderful job, I-- we, the other chaperones-- just have one request. Please, no more songs like that last one."

* * * *
I think I was sort of annoyed at Cliff that night, because I actually thought it would "work."
I later got into a long argument with Marco Collins, the DJ at 107.7 the end, about his refusal to play the group after listening to Hamfisted, which he threw against the wall for sounding so much like Bleach. 

Yeah, I said. But who the hell rips off "Bleach?!" You play Bush ALL THE TIME.

(aside: there's something pretty cool about a Radio Personality who will devote 15 minutes to arguing with a16 year old. everyone was sad when he left, even if we were a bit skeptical about his love of British Electronic Music.)
* * * *

It was during my scarf-phase and green fuzzy jacket phase and hair nice and fluffy phase, and arguably H's
punkest phase they stopped at Graceland, in Seattle, touring on the No Fun EP, which was great, but I was already ready for a new album, to the point where I could name songs from this theoretical record.
"Hey, play everyone alive!"

"Oh man. You're a pretty girl. Just the sort I'd take home to my mom. . . ."
 * * * * *

 (there is a VHS copy of Local H's 1998 show at RCKNDY sitting somewhere next to some Darkwing Duck cartoons I taped off TV when I was 10.)

* * * * *
Here Comes the Zoo-- arguably the band's last real stab at recapturing/continuing radio/mainstream success, came out the same week Jason and Alina died in car accident. there was nothing on Zoo that spoke to that, directly, but a new release from my favorite band, and the discussions/analyzations of it with close friends, provided something to enjoy, and be good at talking about, when there wasn't much else of either.

* * * *
arguably, I tend to rep 1998's Pack Up the Cats the hardest, though it was As Good As Dead that first introduced me to their basic thing. The basic thing being a grim underdog sensibility, blue collar angst, angst-angst, sarcasm, humor, sensitivity, and not-to-be-underestimated-- hard, catchy rock.
though I might say that 2004's Whatever Happened to PJ Soles? has the group's best 3-song run in the whole catalogue.

* * * *


you know this year was a blur; I only thought it was fun at first.

* * * *
Yes, I've hung out with Scott Lucas a few times. He's always been pretty drunk.
-- Elizabeth, from The Reputation, at the same afterparty that yielded "Mayonaise and mustard" and arguably my most performed poem.

for a while, the lyric in PUTC's song "Hit the Skids. . . or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Rock" about wanting to go to parties where you knew people, have friends who were doing things, and feeling completely fucking out of place, that was me. Then, at some point, I realized I was at afterparties with touring bands, getting free drinks at Caps (oh, man. Caps.) and free passes to shows. The relevant lyric then became . . . I'm in love with Rock and roll, but that'll change eventually.


(acoustic version for maximum lyric accessibility.)
Likewise, for someone who takes on musical taste as such a large part of their identity, as I spent less time in my room and more time in crowded clubs, or hyper-catered sorts of gatherings, I always assumed I'd get over it. That the designated "cool" bands from highschool/early college-- your Sonic Youths, Far, Radiohead, etc-- would be the ones whose banner I'd wave in the parade of evolving musical identity. Because it's really exhausting to try to explain to your friends why you like a band that they don't care about, let alone over the course of years.
Because this isn't some canonized cult-- "Wait, you like THE FALL? I also like THE FALL," "Dude, Trout Mask Replica"-- nor was it a "quirky' pop-love ("It's embarrassing but I am SO INTO Christina Aguilera!") or a nostalgia-based taste. Plenty of folks were like "oh yeah! I remember (all the kids are right)(bound for the floor) (high fiving mf)" but few wanted to hear about the NEW album. Crowded rooms where large, bearded men who listened to BOTH types of music-- Heavy AND Metal-- "playfully" shoved me in my So/So t-shirt and turned back to the bar with a "what are you, new?" Kids for whom music was invented by the Beatles in 1966, ceased to exist around 1973, then started existing again with Kid A doing that indie-rock self-hug and openjawed sneer.
Though, to be fair, 2004's Whatever happened to PJ Soles? had a more than a few plays at Lobster House parties and a few converts at that.

(interestingly enough, have the same problems with Mudhoney, a far more conventionally "credible" act. maybe it's a grunge thing.)
* * * *
Everytime I listen to Local H I marvel that Graham managed to pick a band out in 1997 that essentially nobody else cared about and that was arguably already irrelevant and somehow,15 years later they're one of the only bands that existed then who are still making good music. Either it was incredibly genius or complete luck.-- Josh Adams.

* * * *

So what brings this up?


today is the guys' 7th record release and I'm fucking stoked. I'm still into these guys; every time I think i'm done, that hey, I have McLusky now, I'll just throw on the new Queens of the Stone Age, it's really all about Future of the Left for me now, H do what they do, and do it a little bit better each time. Seeing the new single for a band I've been into since highschool and the guys looking kind of like cool uncles, with grey beards and all, that's not an "I'm getting old" moment, that's rad. Of course I'm getting older, -- linear time, hello-- but there's a comfort in seeing them own it, do their thing and, frankly, keep kicking ass. This blog was originally going to do a lot more of the music-reviewing; why Here Comes the Zoo suffered under Jack Douglas' hand, the strength of the concept behind 12 Angry Months and how it'd have been devastating to me if it'd come out when I was in Bham instead of Swansea, but that's not the point. I got out of music writing for a reason, and I'm not trying to convince anyone any more.
I don't know if Hallelujah! I'm a Bum will be their best album, or what it'll do commercially, but I'm about to hop on a bus and go pick it up.

giglist

appearing, in one form or another, at the following public-ish venues:

March 17th Greb Bem's poetrybirthdayextravaganza (columbia city, seattle)
March 28th feature at Broken Mic @ the Baby Bar/Neato Burrito (Spokane, Wa)
May 16th The Breadline @ Vermillion Art Bar. W/Roy Seitz, Megan Kelso (Seattle)
December 5th First Wednesday @ The Grange (Duvall, Wa)

this possibly sets a record for farthest-out booking. hey internet! more gigs. alll about gigggs, gigs and giiiiigs.

Thanks!*

For: the northwest, and how even when it feels like you're going to die from sprawl (hello, smokey point) the light bursts and you're out in the Middle of Nowhere, in the best way possible. And that my folks live out here, instead of at some enclave on the edge of Kirkland, so they can be close to a megachurch.
that I've got a new place to live. that i've got good enough friends that the last months have been punctuated by stress headaches, rather than been one constant panic attack or a filthy sleep closet in the ID.
not drugs.
the fam.
creative pursuits and the support they've (already) been shown by Seattle's poetry community.

speaking of Creative Efforts. The now-internet-elusive Wood is marketing the following: OK, so this is me self-promoting. The plan is to get my irresponsible, stupid, violent, sexy and ultimately marketable novel finished, and to get funded to do it, so I'm crowdsourcing, with the aim of getting it sorted this week. You can read more about it here.
Pay it forward, people. While I'm sure he's embarked on more "literary" efforts (i've read some, they're good), Wood also chronically underrates his own work, so it's great to see him getting ambitious.

*I know that being Grateful should be a constant concern, and that the History of Thanksgiving is Wrought and Fraught, but that doesn't mean we can't all use a good reminder now and then. Most folks reading blogs, even those in dire straits, have it better than huge chunks of the world. I believe the reaction to that shouldn't be guilt, but gratitude.

Silence, Communication, Rosemary and Thyme

Thursday night I participated in Silence and Communication (check out the link two posts down, I'm feeling lazy.)
You can read The Stranger's review, which describes things pretty well from an audience point of view. It went well, and while I believe that Greg Bem, Matthew Thompson and Jason Conger (who probably also have links I could link to, but, lazy) put together a fantastic reading lineup, the concept was well-executed enough it almost didn't matter who the readers were. It was a whole piece. A concept. Plenty of folks showed up to support their friends, but there wasn't a feeling of a "headliner" or what-have-you. That said, definitely enjoyed a lot of the specific pieces on their own as well.
As for my part, I read a piece called "context(subtext)" that existed prior to getting the invitation, but hasn't made it out much, so I hacked it up. The event consisted of straight up poetry, prose pieces, sound poems, noise music, performance art, etc etc etc. Alllll sorts.


Nico Vassilakis tore up the above paper into a microphone for his piece.


Sole Repair, photoed from the balcony. Once the event got going I didn't have much time or energy to take more pics. Suffice to say there were a lot more people there.

I was pretty damn out of it the whole day/night. This added an additional level of surrealism to the experience for me. Note how it looks like my face is falling off.

I do not remember whose head this is the back of.


We sat in chairs around the room. I was in chair number 9, next to Jarrett, who sometimes wears a hat similar to those which I used to own.

Wait I thought you said VIOLENCE--

Tonight is the Silence and Communication Event at Sole Repair

I think it'll be pretty sweet. Spending the next couple hours making some arts with papers and pens.

Catch the right bus.

With my schedule what it is, I catch my reading in forty minute sessions between bus-boardings. I've stopped trying to read things longer than poems on the buses I ride, largely due to the jostling, starts and stops and darkness. I don't get sick per se, but I get annoyed.
So I'm reading The Savage Detectives and because its a Lailey-recommendation and I started it in New York I feel somewhat like hey-- I'm still in New York! Sort of. Even when I'm sitting at the cafe at the Community College constantly checking the clock to make sure I am not late for my tutoring shift.
This morning I decided to come north before my reading session. Usually I sit for a few at Empire Coffee (pictured) in Columbia City. Timing was fortuitous because as I boarded the 41 to Lake City a dude with curly hair and a Steel Tigers of Death T-shirt boarded. Pause. That faint inner-headscratch of recognition.
Hey Arlo.
Well hello, Graham.

Been probably 7 years (last time I saw him I think I'd not yet compiled Because I Don't Play Guitar since the other founding member of the i.o.i. and I last saw eachother; as katherine would often like to reminisce, we met at 13 in a house in Shoreline where a woman who advertised herself as a "writing mentor for teens" was having a meet-up for young writers.

the rest, as they say, is history.
more to come?

Clickyclickyclicky

Don't bend your legs when you fly.

Or live in Swansea much longer, sleepless and hungry.

Or post new poems on your blog, JAKE. POST NEW POEMS ON YOUR BLOG

Or remain uninformed on the radical but not-completely-batshit left.

Or forgo sweet jams.

Or drink whisky and soda without me.

I wish that I believed in fate, I wish I didn't sleep so late

So, its done. The whole thing, all 20,500 words plus essay, handed in to the secretary who raised her eyebrow when I had put the non-plagarism declaration on the wrong side of the title page. well, there you go. still got in.

much thanks to Howard (too fried to re-figure out link posting-- just go to www.johnheronproject.com already) for reading through my stories and making sure they weren't horrible messes of grammatical fuckup and narrative goop.

this means that while I'll still post poems here, it won't be as regular, probably. Or maybe more regular. But the Summer Writing Project is over and this will go back to being a bit more of a blog that people can read. I'll keep the livejournal (as I have) because there's many people that read it that I'd rather only deal with on there.

I was going to post a reflective on my Year In Swansea.
I decided not to. At least not right right right now. Instead, i'm posting an old poem I wrote, shortly before leaving Seattle. I expected to re-read it and not identify or think "oh, MAN things have changed" but maybe I'm not as different as I feel. Or maybe it was a moment of clarity. Anyways, it'll probably get posted elsewhere too, so don't get annoyed if you end up reading it more than once.

because it's really fucking long. It will get trimmed someday, but hasn't been touched since I got on the plane.

here you go.

I still owe gas money 9/13/07

Riding shotgun through highway nine past the chip-and-sweat
smelling garage I practically lived in the summer before I
cut my hair and all that meant,
I wonder if next time really will be the last time
we disagree on movies based on comics, if quoting you
back to you will still be funny in 17 years and a few more
pounds or if all the licorice has already gone
to our teeth
or if I’m all idle threats
and you’re all big-voiced drama
threatening a collapse when ten years later
will simply find us in a more spacious garage
cleaner clothes, better reasons for short hair

as highway nine’s forests are replaced with
gas stations, spacious estates and finally, condos

northgate way has long since been deforested
and ceased substantive change;
it wont always be northgate way
someday, it will be iced over or renamed by
a conquering nation with virus-shooting guns
but as is, in the car with my sister, past miles
of couches I’ve been sleeping on, I can’t help
but want nine years back, and a shower
--shower first

* * * *

stacking poems into “keep”
and “toss” piles in a rapidly emptying room
is a lot like picking the lint and pennies
off the carpet in preparation for vacuuming
is a lot like cleaning up your nostalgia,
filing it in boxes in storage spaces, bringing it
out again, primping for public consumption
sanding it down for maximum curves, photographing
with black and white film for the sort of
detatched, timeless
quality, is a lot like hanging those pictures up
sardonically captioned so everyone will know
you haven’t lost your edge.

my “toss” pile is immense.

* * * *
riding shotgun down I-5 has become customary
explaining the specific dynamics of today’s tired
--the long wear of a month of goodbyes, the universal
sigh of explaining the same things to everyone you meet,
the internal sturm and drang of making memories
for the sake of it—
versus yesterdays’ tired—too little sleep and
too much to do
is enough to keep me in conversation for a car ride
so much depends on the five dollar bills I
finger every time we pull up to a gas pump
whether it’s accepted or not

we are making the highways into lengths of rope
we can pull towards ourselves and bring the people with it
but you can’t drive across the atlantic.

we are making a point of having fun, of doing things we’ve
meant to, of it being normal, after all nothing’s going to change.

there’s echoes, though, of the joke
“this is probably the last time
you, me, lailey and ryan will walk down this street
holding books in our hands
on a Sunday.”


* * * *

my grandmother is downstairs on the couch
watching Dr. Phil, waiting for the painkillers to kick in

at 5:45, my father is taking her down the hill into town
for a haircut

in the mail today I received papers with information
regarding tuition, campus life, courses. the same that
they send everyone. there’s a separate, smaller paper
with tips for adjusting for overseas students

they assume I don’t speak english. probably safe.

I’m trying to decide if a thick glass of orange juice
will hold me until dinner, which percentage of
camera after disposable camera worth of pictures
I will want a couple thousand miles from here

There’s not room for the whole box, but I’ve
already thrown so much away, forced my nostalgia
back down my throat and tossed in the fire
that these decisions are inventing a new typeof tired
one only knows these things once they’ve seen
the wall they’ll be covering.

Before there, though, there are passenger seats
with people I want to see and people I don’t want to
see and the distinctions between the two are
blurring into the last month’s worth of slow bleed out
but bad shocks and jolting tires bring me back
for the handful of nights left, my eyes on the road
and the dripping down of questions I don’t have answers to
I am not leaving town; I am draining out of it

“Is there anything you want to do in Seattle before you go?”

secret blog's adventures in travel, cold, callous reasoning

Just back from Scotland. Blogging comes before shaving or washing, apparently. Toothpastefordinner have a comic about that somewhere, or not because it's too obvious.

I had a good time in Glasgow/Edinburgh with Chelsea. I was feeling pretty under the weather for most of it with sneezing and the headaches that come from needing to sneeze but not allowing yourself. That, I fear, made me less awesome at being a guest/rekindling old acquaintanceships.
Nonetheless, I'm glad I went. I'm actually really glad to be in my room now, with no set comitted plans for the rest of the weekend.

my room. it's currently a lot of papers and wrapping and suitcase. Checking the mail has been futile for the last month, but the week I was gone I hit a jackpot.

___----_____-----_____

In Port Talbot, there are lots of industrial parks. Granted, trains always run through that part of town, and I've never been to Port Talbot but I've been by it a few times, as it lies between Cardiff and Swansea on pretty much any line you take.
There's a couple factories in particular that tend to strike me hard, especially in the dark. I'm used to smokestacks, I'm used to solid, opaque black smoke bunching up over buildings and I'm getting used to seeing it float over sheep pastures. Still not used to smokestacks shooting out bolts of yellow flame at all times. Against the night sky it's sharp and bright and makes the factory look like something from hell. Same goes for the stack with blue smoke.
Next to these factories there's something (I'm assuming gas/energy building) with all the pipes and round lights. . . it doesn't look like something from a horror/sci fi movie because I've seen a lot of those, a lot of movies like that have been made because of buildings like this.
Sights like that do a lot more for my pessimism re: the state of the world than any war-casualty reports. After all, the factories are new.

++++++++++++++++++
I'm already starting to feel torn in social priorities. I talked with Anne, my mother's friend and my adopted auntie as she drove me to Cardiff Central to ride up to Glasgow. How Tuesday is both the Gerald House (my "real" friends, for the sake of afterschool special) Christmas Party and the Framework Social (a open-to-public gathering for creative types in Swansea to meet and mingle-- i.e.: the "cool/fake" friends our hero cruelly betrays his "real" friends for only to realize What Really Matters in the End). . . cough, cough.

Yeah, I'm going to the Social. Time's gone on and I've found that very few people who'd play the "real friends" card care as much about you as they think they do.

It's not as cynical as it sounds, or it's more so; I'm here for a year and I want to do a lot. I need to meet fellow creative types who also want to do a lot. Very often this is not people in school. I think this is an Ecclesiastes thing; everything in it's time.

I'm here for a year and I gotta know about this stuff for a reason.