23/30! Time Lapse!

All your e-mails are timestamped 1 a.m. or later
early.

Each sunrise comes and goes without you
hopefully, the post noon ritual
of coffee
shower
sandwich for breakfast.

to catch up with visiting
relatives at 11 a.m. and they
think you a bit rougher
than you are

this is your six a.m.

Every night there comes a turning point
where it starts to feel like evening,
like the dark isn't

just mocking you for being up,
but all the possibilities of
evening.

Rode past in nightowl bus rides
the windows out to anything.

#10 Didn't happen, ironically, because I was reading poetry to people. #11: Sleep Becomes an Entity

Like trying to get a cat into a travel kennel.

Like a two year old running after a remote controlled car.

Like a basketball rolling off the court.

There are drugs, there are songs, there are movies

that are supposed to help, like watching the ceiling drip

down onto a molding pillowcase.

Like mouthing the words to a speech.

Like grounding a paper airplane.

Like unpopping popcorn.

You want to wrap it in bubble wrap and push it
out a window. You want to rock it gently

in a giant recliner. You want to smother it

with a metal teddy bear. 

There are folk remedies, mantras, prayers

that are supposed to help. But really,

you are chasing it down the hall, breathing heavy,
as it ducks and dodges and shrieks away from you,

and you, dead eyed, singular, keep charging, 

brandishing your knife.

Stay inside til somebody finds us, do whatever the TV tells us

The next Claustrophobia Reading Is Totally Happening. sargalmcshutadustttttt.....

"There was a lone 'woo-oo' out there that sounded really weird."

*) waiting at Empire Espresso to hear from Marty, who will have heard from Vicky, about when to get the keys to the NEW PLACE IN RAINIER BEACH.

**) over the last couple of days, Not Drugs and I went up and pestered Jake Tucker in Vancouver, BC. Vancouver, population-wise, is slightly smaller than Seattle, but the whole vibe of it is a lot more "LOOK AT US. WE ARE VANCOUVER. WE ARE A BIG BIG CITY WITH LOTS OF TALLNESSES!"
This makes sense, I guess, since they are a lot closer to the top of the cultural food chain in Canada than Seattle is in the U.S.A., coming in somewhere after Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, etc. I dug the more metro-vibe, though I think it'd take longer to get accustomed to navigating the downtown; I'm perpetually used to everything ending at the water. Not there being a WHOLE 'NOTHER SIDE OF TOWN after the water (shutup, West Seattle.)
The National kicked ass, in a way that is consistent with The National. Which is to say, greater energy, more screaming (no joke), but still a sense of the serious, melancholy and ornate. The Alligator and Boxer tracks took me RIGHT BACK to Wales, which, in that dark, rainy time, is when I got into the band. Broken by Matt's jokes about penis-nicknames, which managed to not be as incongruous as it sounds.

***) I have all these ideas, but first, it is time for a Panini.

So Far Around the Bend

Late April, I went to New York City. This is what it looks like from one of Greenpoint's industrial beaches. New York City was a lot and nothing like what people say it was. Growing up Northwestern, I've always had this sort of idea that I don't like "big cities"; it's only within the last ten or so years that Seattle has committed itself (or really felt at all like) a Big City with Lots of Stuff.
And I've just started living in it now.
But the lesson is, I actually like Big Cities. Or, I think I do. I'm not sure. I liked Brooklyn, anyway, and parts of Manhattan. There were definitely some rows and rows of tall buildings full of things I don't care about, but all in all it was good.
and people were friendly. yes, they moved quickly, had places to be, clearly spent more time than NWers do on their hair, shirt and skirt, but when I was catching a bus from a predominantly Spanish part of Queens, a girl came up to me and told me that "if you're going to the airport, you actually need to wait over there."

(this was useful.)
when Lailey left her phone in a bar, a couple came out with it, yelling at us not to forget our stuff. I saw loads of people on the subway give up seats for the elderly, disabled or overweight. In a McDonalds in Manhattan I was looking for the bathroom and a girl (looked about twelve) waved at me-- "naw, naw, it's downstairs." Same spot, someone ran out to catch up with someone who'd left their wallet.



Lailey and i went to Coney Island. It was awesome. Some parts of it were super cheesy, some genuinely cool, other parts were really fucked up ("Shoot the Freak" you can pay money to simply shoot a "freak"-- in this case just some really ripped black dude in a do-rag-- with paintball pellets) and you had to wait forever for Hot Dogs. I had hot dogs. They were delicious. The sense of American History there was great too; a far less obscured vision of Old-World connections and how those cultures and individuals have shaped what we think of as "american."



This is a view from the rooftop Highline Park in Manhattan. Its new and kinda posh, but open to everyone and a great view. I wrote something close to a love poem there.

Some people have asked me if I'm "going to move to New York now," in a near-accusing tone, like, hey asshole, don't think you can just live anywhere, you had your time away.
I dunno man. I am too deep in debt and obligations, some short term, some long, to make promises. But I'm gonna go again, that's for sure.

carried: to Ohio in a swarm of bees.

Right now I don't feel like writing about my life. So here are some videos with music.

sometimes it takes a song of understated melodic power and a fierce melancholy pull to remind me that there should be nothing ironic about beard-growth.


Not a cover of the Presidents of the U.S.A.'s 1996 hit, but an entirely different song.


Dear M.I.A.: I love you, but I do not believe violence is the answer.


Katrina Miller, whom I've known since prior to being able to speak, is the crying girl in Seattle Rockers (in all senses of the word) Unnatural Helpers hot new hip-swinger.

Still owe money to the money to the money I owe

I'd be pretty happy if my tax return decided to direct deposit sometime soon. Preeeeettttty happy.

Dreams lately: pretty weird.
"Dreams" lately: what?

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?”

New Poem For Old Plasters

"We don't talk about love,
we only want to get drunk."-- msp

so the Manics song—the one that could have been our story
if our story had been much longer—came on and I sat on my

underused balcony where you smoked in the rain and watched
Swansea’s skyline for the length of a song, long enough for a lump

to travel from my throat to my stomach and watched the august
mist-- it was November then-- and shook my head. it’s a shame, really.

that no one comes up here. It’s a good view but I need company to
enjoy it. so I've never quite done the deep-breath-in-and calm down

that a good view is supposed to give.

that’s what the cigarettes were supposed to do?
calm you down, right?
you went through so many packs in your yellow room with it’s

candles and liters of Strongbow I was happy to help you with but
ultimately the fags were on a long list of things that were going to

hurt you. I hesitate to put myself on that list; I wrote you a good
poem-- not this one-- and bought you breakfast and tried not to

ever let you see how scared I was, especially that night
when it was too late for nothing to happen and

we polished off two more cans and
you told me about the razors.

you were right about the end; I don't think it's gonna rain

this afternoon I set out to write a brief, pithy comment on the sort of posters one finds at a college poster sale. it turned into a multi-tiered epic sprawling all accross the front of my myspace.

which tells me I need to write blogs sometimes; I need an outlet. As I suspected when I got it, this blogspot may end up being just that. because while I've got other outlets for sure, the number of people who read them that I actually want to know about my life any more is disproportionate to the amount of people I'd like to keep in touch with.
* * * * * *

speaking of people I'd like to keep in touch with, Anna Weeks' last night in town tonight. She decided Uni's not for her and she's heading back to Bournemouth (about four hours awayish, south england). While prior to her decision she was already my closest friend here, in the last two weeks we got involved. Obviously, knowing something's gonna end gives it it's own sort of safety (let's talk about safety and graham some other time) but also made the entire thing feel like a weeklong goodbye. It feels like I'm starting over (again) tommorrow.
She said it herself: "It does sort of get a bit 'we'll always have Swansea,' dunnit?"

kinda feels like I did six months in a weeks' time and damnitfuckinghell I am tired.