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.

12/30: Canadian Angst/Cascadian Rain

Dan Boeckner salutes the puddles collecting in the Central
District by the sidewalks by the 20th Century brownstone on
the corner, empty, mid-repaint, windows stickered with

construction logos. One still may not smoke near

the abandoned doorway. Synth tones and baritones soaring warped,

decades of lite socialism have not cured sadness, have not

bulwarked against nostalgia, nor have the neo-liberal reversals

restored good times glory to the Maple Leaf.

All the songs that make it south are sad ones;

dancing and crying translate internationally.

The rains of Vancouver don't hit different than the rains

of Tacoma or the rains, when they come, of Portland or

Everett; they flow to different bodies of water, but sound

the same in crosswalks.

Canadian citizenship became an active

interest that November day in North Carolina,
where rains were few and different
and my phone filled with texts, and

everyone’s Canadian friends
were suddenly Besties,
infinite couches and spare rooms
and job leads and citizenship paperwork,
and a different kind of city grid
but same kinds of mountains

seemed like not a sacrifice at all.

To hear the songs with ownership.  The washed out
melancholy of the Northern Cities of the

World.

As the days passed, and the texts petered out, and Everyone
Suddenly Knew Why The Bad Thing Happened and Whose Fault It
Was, everyone stopped their moves to Canada, renewed their

Passport for travel purposes only. Some cautiously suggested

it’d be for the best, for the dissolution of borders, of the lines

that dictate the nationality of rivers, the citizenship of rain. Others

suggested it’d be for the worst, for the dissolution of

everything. Under it all I heard
“When I get back

When I get back

Home

I won’t be the same
No more.”

And asked Jake if he was ever moving back. The answer wasn’t

No, he said, but the rivers up here are good, even if the bars are

expensive, and I can hear these songs just how I need to, sad

as they may be.

Petty Pains of Modern Life and Why White Zombie are the Best Band Ever

Recent life in Bullet-List Form

>>> Brielle, youngest of the bio-sisters, is somewhere in the midwest (not colorado, har har) right now, highwaying her way closer to Chicago,



where she'll study art and writing at the Art Institute of Chicago. The absence there is palpable, rather than symbolic, as I've been living in the same house as her the last year and a half.

******> Soon that will change. Investigating (limited) housing options now. They include beacon hill, chinatown (ostensibly), capitol district (what I'm calling that space between Pine and Jefferson and 12th and 20th that is literally Central District but increasingly co-opted by 'hillsters) or probably places in suburbs that are affordable but far away from everyone i know and everything I want to do.

>work. have had little luck/fucked up my interviews for full-time jobs. stop that, brain. >still, some digging and pestering have yielded some freelance tutoring opps, some freelance blurb-writing opps that are still in-process.

in.
process.
this is the frustrating part; waiting for writing samples to be cleared, etc, before I can go full-bore. Things I would have been more confident in before a summer of job-hunting. Confidence is key. Irony.<<<<<<<<

(Not much to do but keep at it. Dig in. Make it part of you until it doesn't have to be. All sorts of mantras to make the demoralizing slog of Craigslist and numbing rigor of cover letters into some sort of arch-masculine chest-pound.)



!!!!Tonight, however, Jake Tucker and I will drown our respective (and very different "sorrows" in beer at various town-based places and then I do a gig with Cristina Bautista's new band and Police Teeth, whom have been mentioned here before as fine individuals and purveyors of good-time, rootsy folk music, which is the best type of music for humans to make. Here is them covering White Zombie and then playing their own song about trashing living rooms and jumping fences:



and the original:



so good.

also: anyone notice how the ads for Colombiana are basically "check out this hot chick killing shit?" or perhaps more specifically, "check out this hot south american chick killing shit?"

Body Party . . .

can now be found online at the current issue of beat the dust.
Thanks to David Oprava for the nomination.

Other news, Saturday was the Your Hands Your Mouth release party for issues 8 and 9. We had ten people reading in the living room. TEN. And hey, it went well. Readers (from last to first): Robert Lashley, Greg Bem, Jessica Lohafer, Jay Steingold, Chris Gusta (break!) Cate McGehee, Ryan Johnson, Caren Scott, Rainey Warren and Jake Tucker.


Phew.

"it was a good reading. i don't care what everyone else says."-- jake

tonight I did a feature at zippy's java lounge in everett. felt good about it, though the crowd was appreciatively unresponsive. . . unresponsively appreciative? I think it is not a room that lends itself to raucous sorts of participation i.e. Poetry Night or The Crunch, but has a bit "bigger" feel than a lot of coffee shops, so spacing it out can be difficult.

Setlist:
Neo Takes the Blue Pill
Little Red Corvette
Zombies and Paint Thinner
Cafe Across . . .
Beneath the Cathedral
Get Smart!
Rucksacks
Ambition is Critical
Paintings of Famous Satanists

I realised afters that just because I close with my two favourites in the book doesn't mean they'll be crowd pleasers.
But. It was great to see loads of friends and family there (from camp and abroad, new and old) and getting to hang out with Chris/Ryan/Jake always serves both as fun and grounding. Reading at Chris' house in December, too which I'm excited for.

on the way home I listened to Pack Up the Cats for the first time in about 3 years. My copy still skips.

Notes from a Christian Wedding:

Jake: You know, if we go somewhere in town I'd like to get my good clothes on.

Ryan: Jake, you are so ugly that it wouldn't matter what you wear.

Jake: At least people love me and I am worth something, unlike you, who is worthless and the sort of person that people hope to go into a bathroom and find hanging from a belt.

Ryan: I've said it before and I will say it again: you make the rest of humanity look pre-fall.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

it probably didn't beat out Jess and John's for Best. Wedding. E-var. but it was top-five easily. And I've been to lots of weddings and in a few. the huge amounts of protracted, gleeful yet calm happiness in both Isaac and April was ridiculous.

and the camping bit allowed 1) a trip through the hard, throbbing metropolis of Chimacum, 2) actual time spent with groom and bride beyond five-minute "heywhereareyougoingforyourhoneymoonyoulooksoHAPPy" sorts of conversations.
3) opportunity for me to forget to bring a sleeping bag or blanket and get about two hours of sleep (in increments) on a blow up mattress in a drafty tent. oh man. 4) jake-vanquishing via rocks and clapping.

we had more fun.

**** ***** ***** *****

April actually had to ask pastor Pete to move it along. Ha.

_

sunburns hurt. beaches are pretty cool sometimes.
so goes the paradox of modern man.

^= ?

as observed by Gusta, there were a lot of pretty girls there, but as I assumed would be the case, they generally speaking were all married or on a 6 month-2 year plan to be so, with a specific subject.

this is fine; I'm getting confirmed more and more that church-related events are terrible places to meet women, since even a majority of the single ones will just want to know if I'm going to make a really good husband




speaking of terrible places to meet women, Monday I'll be up at Poetry Night for Kate and Elissa's feature.

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?”