We Know the Results (rough, new)

The Super Bowl is Over

and with it, speculation

as pros and amateurs alike

call in to collect their bets.

The Super Bowl is  Over

and we're all a little drunk and

mentioning our friends in Philly

and considering more cocaine

or maybe fighting the bartender.

I need to leave this shouting neighborhood.

The Super Bowl is Over

and there are so many new buildings

beckoning for retail, the suited men

look tired, these streets will not be clean.

the sports bars prepare for another

downturn and hope to live off

these profits at least until Saint Patrick’s day.

The Super Bowl is Over

and it is time to  sort my w2s.

The Super Bowl is Over

and my Dad’s best friend, laid to rest

at the Rainier Beach Mortuary in

a two hour ceremony one hour before

I work. My sister texting tears that

she can’t make it out.

My Mom’s pet dove, family pet for

thirteen years, shivering in it’s blanket

then still.

The Super Bowl is Over

and seriously fuck that one guy,

and his voting record, this can,

or has to, mean something. We

taste  his tears from TV screens.

The Super Bowl is Over

and there are buses I no longer take

pictures I’m wiping from my phone

a Cat I’ll never see again

and a line around the block

for a play I will not see.

The Super Bowl is Over

so no more guesswork. The why

it went the way it did are stories

that will change with tellers. There

will be another one next year

and after that, an occasion

for fundraisers and toy drives
and nachos and puppies

and million dollar commercials.

The Super Bowl is Over

which means there must be winners

but I am more concerned with losses now;

that corner space in the charming building
promised such potential, sits empty.

27/30: Constant Closet Concerns

The weather's playing tricks again

fashion dismay in the brick courtyard.

Falafel tragedies on sidewalks, too fast

in heels up first avenue, power lunches

on the cheap. Sweat your make up off,

loosen your silk tie. The lies this morning's

haze told, you should know better by

now, just have the wardrobe follow you,

like a puppy or a goat, there for when

you need to reach back and grab a blazer.

It's already almost May is both

the reason this rain has you aghast

and why it shouldn't be so hot yet.

A light jacket, fashionable top,

open toed shoes; all shows of optimism

or defiance.

24/30: Evictions

Upside down American Flag                                                       Try me, fuckers, try me.
wheatpasted next to Johnny Cash                                                Ambiguous icons. No arguments.
and a robot lady with eagle                                                         Sexy, but not. Ominous.
tattoos on a brick                                                                         Plan your wedding photos here.
building that isn't long                                                                 I am surprised you are not dead yet.
for this block.                     

The key to my room I marked with a Hot Water sticker
from work in a month when all my keys looked the same
and I was frequently drunk and every other day they
entered my room to check for pipe problems or ventilation
problems or bug problems or window problems. They did
this with all the rooms, according notes on computer paper
taped to doors, minutes within compliance of renter's rights
law.

                                                        What do you want from a home
  These apartments are made of steel,
                                                                stucco, glass, cocaine, rat corpses
                                     and Adderall. No one gets out of these
                 apartments alive because these apartments
                                                          are the entire world, you are just moving
                                     room to room to room and sometimes
                    falling out of windows.

Saul is gone. Notice on his door.
Not sure why. He was skinnier and
skinnier and more swollen and he was
friendly enough and we talked
about PJ Harvey's fucked up
relationship with Nick Cave
and he was one of the few people
on my floor that neither twitched
and muttered nor wore
a backwards baseball cap.

I am a cold ghost. I am a fire alarm. I am a broken flatscreen. I am a home invasion warning from the new security team. I am here to answer any of your questions. I am a floor and a ceiling. I am fucking in the weight room bathrooms. I am constantly tuned to CNN while an elderly polish woman endlessly folds laundry at midnight. I am a bed of roaches. I am a hall of rat tails. I am a song about the same neighborhood that sicks in your throat. I am a book about prostitutes at the turn of the century. I am your neighbor's sex life, loud and unforgiving. I am a hot plate and a broken microwave. I am a block without trees. I am a manmade waterfall. I am your neighbor's toilet flushing at five a.m. I am a gathering of poets staring at night skyscrapers. I am a constantly reconstructing view. I am in the middle of everything and sending you everywhere. I am the reason you are gone. I am the reason this building still stands. I am temporary. I am permanent.

10/30: Other Types of Light Fixtures or Interior Design As Blank Slate For Disappointment

Coat hooks
Foot rails
Bench backs

(important for convenience
and productivity and urgency
and calm)

the efficacy of sweaters
the efficacy of casual tennis
shoes for efficacy in the puddles
constantly thwarting slacks

(transitioning from greeting
to networking to flirting)

hanging lamps
barely
sway

(indie business casual
ties optional, rare,
no overriding aesthetic
excepting default cleanliness)

Exposed pipes
Exposed brick
Buffed, sanded,
Knots in the wood.

(everyone is writing up
proposals in their handshakes,
hoping the next check that comes
their way is
blank)

Treatise/Treaties (rough)

A treatise on spiced
pork shoulder, the correct
way for a sandwich to
fall apart:

in your hands, before biting.
dripping down Denny, spreading
lettuce with my gait, I am in
no hurry to get anywhere:

I am in a hurry to get 
everywhere. 

Half recollected bounce back
of a Ludacris song. Wind chimes
in the city like phone
dings. A future child
mocks the tortured novelty
of ringtones:

Why would you- how could you-
possibly think that was
cool?

Down the hill and up again,
ten dollar street food, plastic
fork. Ten miles between trash
cans.

Clouds and heat disagree,
there is no truce in the weather,
there is no energy in this protein
there is no welcoming handshake
at my destination:

dirge, dirge, dirge.

28/30! There's Nothing Out There We'd Pay to See!

Riding back from from a river bar, the man across from me is covered in rats. They seem to be his pets, he's talking to them, or someone, about rocketpops. Every now and then a rat escapes and runs to the back of the bus, where the girl with two cats has to scramble to stop full on chaos. They both get off at the same stop. Maybe they're in love.

They rip out homes like picking scabs and scratch
their beards about the blood. They sell gas masks
and gas masks at the same stands, one for immediate
one just in case, and the whole town

turns out in zombie makeup.

The unfinished buildings look like bombed out parking lots built up instead of out. The phone-riders
and car-yellers alike are covered in a thin film of egg yolk. I've committed to swimming every where I go for a month, so I keep two fingers in a thermos of seawater. Who's to say if I'm lying or not? Who's to say?

When it rains, I don't have to keep my hands in the water. When I promised
to always be swimming, it was more an exhortation to the weather than
anything else.

They say it's a good view but
we're all washed out. Staring out a
high rise window at lights in the fog
like some kind of protagonist, but what kind?
hero or villain? Who's to say?

They ripped the playground out of the city center,
sent all the games to the dump. Now it's a shrine
to self importance and niche artforms. Look,
when the sun comes out there's a rainbow!

and I am still swimming, or lying.

17/30! Fares (Fair?) Fares!

The mariners lost so
every jersey walking swagger
was denied entrance into bars.
the rest contemplating with
their shrines at home.
My grandmother was religious
about the Ms, also
religious. But wouldn't have
countenanced these instances of
"fucks" and "kill yourself dude"
from numbered, stumbling
players. Is that Griffey? I could
have sworn his number said so.

There is ice in my bones and
Rachel needs to piss. The 7/11
man shoes away the guy
who yells a little louder each
time for "just a five, man."
I already gave him three and need
the rest of my depleting ones for
a cab ride. Ludicrous, the four
block
jaunt, but cold, and weary
and what the hell. Arms full
of brown paper bags, feet
blistering.

"You must live here" he says,
pulled up just past a trio
who have not left that corner
for three stop lights. Speculation
leads to judgement, leads to
crow. "this is it," i say, and he's
all "give me whatever you feel
comfortable with" and as I hand
him seven singles I realize
the meters never been turned
on.

trains and tall buildings # 1. Intro.

I walk out of my apartment building every day, cross the street to a bus island and walk alongside the tunnel for the Great Northern Railroad.

Some days, given the right weather, mood and amount of time, it feels like I've moved not just neighborhoods, but cities entirely. Today is not quite one of those, but it comes close. Lately I've been trying to measure the ways that moving to the I.D./Pioneer Square has affected my life, mood and living style. I've been here for almost five months and it's felt five months; it feels almost like more. I'm going to start recording my thoughts on this (and other Seattle/City/"urban living" *blech*/sorts of thoughts) blog under the Trains and Tall Buildings tags. If you're one of the eight people who come here for poems, or one of the five-to-ten who are looking for general life updates, this will definitely not be a place for the former, and only questionably a place for the latter, as "how I'm doing here near downtown and what" will slide quite nicely alongside me talking about things like the shape of buildings or use of public space. 

So if you're interested in these things, yay. If not, you aren't alone.
One thing that is true about my life now is that I cannot simply walk out of my house at 6:42 to get to work by 6:58. I must go catch a train to avoid the shame of tardiness.

which is why this was largely just an intro, devoid of any real ideas or content. and I got you to read it!

And the hopeful predictions ending with a "womp WOMP"

Well, she didn't win. Most of the things I was hoping to pass failed, but some of the things I dreaded passing also failed, and plucky little do-gooder Mike O'Brien retains his seat on the city council, despite Seattle Times' declaration that he was "too liberal" for the city. Anyway, was bummed yesterday and Tuesday, took half a sec to scroll through my semi-active Facebook, and after about forty minutes of rant-reading, have taken to looking forward. Murray is mayor, Conlin at least had to sweat for his seat, this is the reality, it is still rainy, I still have a job I don't hate, and I've just completed a move to as close to the middle of the city as I can afford. This is day two of typing from Cafe Vita Pioneer Square, which may easily become a second living room, for as long as I'm netless in my studio.