Setting up/knocking down. Future/past tense for April

Writing for this has been a strange cycle of image generations (going around Pioneer Square taking pictures, drawing ducks wearing glasses and strange monsters) and text-writing, the occasional cribbing from older work that never found a home, older images that never found a home, or might get re-homed, and of course, stress, stress, stress. Finally got an initial text draft done, touches on:

place (duh, Graham, always you do that), my Grandpa, nightmares, epiphany, Pioneer Square, boorish conversations, weather, churches and various other things. I've got six minutes.

Before that, tomorrow I read with Arlene Kim, Laura Wachs, Michael Hodges, and Mira Kraft at one of the few recently-opened-but-not-bullshit places on Capitol Hill. Its on the theme of identity, and I'll probably bring some Lake City to the table.

not strippers (ahaaaaa! Lake City joke!) 

Beginning of the month, I went to Boulder, Co, and hung out with Elyse Brownell and Chris Shugrue, who were wonderful hosts, made me feel at home and love some Colorado. The Bouldering Poets Series was a great host reading, with one of the better open mics I've witnessed recently. 

my setlist: Love and breakfast/Perpetual States/Seeker Friendly/Ambition is Critical/Little Fear of Drowning/Rite Aid Parking Lot/Sleeps with the Fishes. I overdressed for the plane/cold and was able to take off an item or two of clothing between each poem and still have all things covered in such a way that I'd get served in most restaurants.

I did not do an encore.

January: Grinding to a nub!

Progress and loss.
The broken record on linear time: december feels like a year ago, this month feels like it just started.

#24 is in the back of a notebook, at the bottom of a bag. #25 didn't happen. #26: There Is No Right To Privacy in this System

each click,
dash,
space,
full stop.

each name, number, initial, monetary amount.
shot
through
open
sourced.

now we are being completely honest. now we are being truly vulnerable.
now we are returned to sender. now we are pinging back. now we
are the thought in the lobe, traveling to the other side of the mind
via brain rail. no we are a flat bed truck carrying fruits and jewelry
open to the wind and pickpocketing monkeys. now we are the swimming
pool for everyone to dive into.

each angry tap,
each key,
each address change,
each medical condition,
real or imagined,
scattered,
dis-s
seminated
and you just clicked okay.

Starting With Intent to Finish

Start it with a poem about drinking. About a long, dark porter
and sly slow slurp. The real, hard, anger of salt.
Then go to your most detatched, your commentator newscast.
Don't get your hands dirty, wear clean gloves. Comment on the sun,
raying out over the hood of a dented buick. As you stand there with
a microphone in a suit your 17 year old self still protests, make
that buick glinting your goal.
aspire.
Talk it good so people forget all about the
drinking poem. Write the light so hard that you are
a tee-totaler, always were. Write yourself celibate
on forests that you camped under the day before
yesteryear, punctuate with a poem about acid rain.
Go righteous. Go fist pumping.
Then, write the sex poem-filthy and needed--
before writing the monsters out of the closet
and back under the bed where they belong.

_______________________________________________________

blogspot will probably wreak havoc with the format of this, but so goes. I wrote this on tuesday at the SPLAB meeting I facilitated on Writing Goals. This is as it was in the minute, and as a freewrite, I'm pretty happy with both how it feels and what I was "trying to say" about both the process and product of writing new poetry in the new year.

Recap in Eleven Sentences.

If I had the technology, the know-how, the patience, there'd be a graph with several arrows and a few would bounce straight along, a couple would shoot towards the top line-markers and the rest would drop right off.

The more I am blessed/burdened with the cars of others, the less I want one for myself, as a solo individual. Kids, family, these potential eventualities could dictate otherwise, but there's a certain yoke-around-the-neck about having a car, despite the obvious opportunities it affords. It is bad enough having a phone.

There were a lot of poems I meant to write.

There were a lot of albums I meant to hear.

The world does not seem to want us on it any more.

Currently, this day, this moment, I have a hard time picturing "fun" tonight; there's so much I have to do and only some of it have I any clue how. I tend to consistently resent the holidays for draining me of all financial, emotional and energy resources right before I'm supposed to really focus on goals that remain a good climb away.

There were a lot of movies I thought might be kind of nice to see, but knew for sure I wouldn't have the time or money.

All that said, I'm taking aim; it always takes longer than one thinks, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.