Piano Manatee Ball Championship

Fuck You, Billy Joel

Last time you were in the kind of bar you

sing about, it was still classy, and fun,

and you were there with your wife

and the drinks were free
and don’t try to tell me about lonely,

I will invent it for you
brand new and bloody

right before I break your fucking fingers.

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.

When I'm not working, I'm working: Three New Roughs.

these are all recent musings I may work with more in the future. The second is from a prompt by Lindsey Walker, the third from a prompt by Ryan Johnson.

daily mundane #425

in a bleachstained black shirt
i work in due to unseasonable
february sun, the snapdown impractical.

bills go out, bills come in.
the smiles and swinging arms
down fourth avenue come
earlier every year, turn
to dust. I should buy

new clothes for work for money
to buy new clothes to work in so I can
get money that I use to pay for clothes
that are appropriate for--

you get the picture. the barista
dances to the Beatles in his
fedora and somehow I am not
annoyed.

_____________________

Transiberian Express

(the prompt was to write about a place I'd never been) 

Frozen in place and loaded onto a train
leaving from the last city at the edge of the
world, a whole greyscale cliffscape of others

frozen in place, and you begin the thaw.
The next nine days, split between the soup

and the shiver, the ice crawls up your
legs at the moment of sleep, the snow
rushing past years of punishment-wilderness,
a place whose name itself evoked terror,

starvation, disappearance. By the time you
get to Moscow, you'e frozen and thawed
and frozen again, a lifetime of gruel in
your veins. Step out into the first city
at the edge of two worlds and hold cap
but don't lose it. You'll need it. You'll need it.

_____________________________

Trump Plaza

At the end of Napoleon, there was a drawn out sigh. This much I know from genghis khan international airport. The longer it goes, atrocities are forgotten, only glory remains. I'm eating an eclair. Watching one building fall to be danced on by another. The glass warbles and so many coiffed handbags. Despite my classy pastry, I am especially ugly today, as Stalin must have looked to those he was sentencing. I have done all my sentencing already, just waiting for the execution. Frosting gets on my cheek.

Do buildings fantasize about power? The power wielded in them? Stay up late thinking about orders given? Of course not, don't be silly. They just wish they were fields or vineyards. The crowd becomes too much. I leave, the frosting on my cheek.

Broadcast Coffee, Summer Day Date (Overheard) (rough)

Tables separation. Tindr date near the door. Hum of espresso. Pretending not to eavesdrop. Pretending to pretend not to eavesdrop. She is more attractive, objectively, than he is. This always encourages. I ate fishballs for dinner last night, and possibly will have grilled cheese this evening. These are the sorts of details people tend to omit. Or lead with. Who knows. This thing that everyone does, no one seems to know how to do. Dinner, movie, checking apps.

Now.
Now.
Now they are talking about housing prices. Each face drops, but they are new and do not have anecdotes that don't make them sound like they'd rather be home. A house in place for a price is
how much? My head starts to hurt. Neither likes this conversation. But they can't stop. The boredom oozes across and around the coffee shop. The decor seems somehow even more tasteful. The barista caresses his own beard in an effort to soothe himself. They keep talking. Really? That much for a room? Something about investments.

Other conversations wither and die. The boredom seeps out of the coffeeshop. Kills the trees in the park. Another building topples. Time, space, stop. I am slumped to my seat. No one will every make love again as long as the dry tongues of endless boredom and the fidget of anxious fingers.

A terror so mundane that nothing can stop it.


________________________________________________
the original draft accelerated the level of absurdity of the situation, and in this version I tried to reign it in a bit, cutting lines like "Jesus goes back and un-dies for all our sins," just because that sort of goofing tends to be a well I go to a lot. But I'm not sure-- kinda miss that ramp up. 

all things return to the all things return to the poememe.

Lately in my new scratches, I find myself returning to the "all things return to the. . ." titling system that made up the second half of "Filthy Jerry's Guide to Parking Lots."  This is partly because it's a funny way to title pieces, and also because it's an effective way to title pieces. It might seem like a cheap hack to re-use a literary device ad-nausea but tell that to Marvin Bell or Shakespeare. Plus, if it gets me writing.

So, this is a draft of a newbie that may end up completely different, set somewhere else, but for now it's called All Things Return to the Chinatown Library Ten Minutes Before Close on a Weekday.

all the coughing in this library.

all the threadbare gloves.

every sniffle. as the sky goes purple
over the firs, the lights in here feel so bright.

a globe in the children's area.

a lego map of returning.

computers and computers and
"thank you for respecting others"

also means "please no obvious porn."

a woman with a face like a free paper
bag in a pikachu hat. cartoon merch
from a free bin.

all the standing, waiting for computers,

pretending to browse CDs, magazines,

hoping to check e-mail before 8pm.

after 8, there is no where to be for
free, no room connected, nowhere

to go where it's your public right to cough.

I don't know these things or need these

things for nothing, not as much, maybe, as
the man with the giant backpack full of knives

or something. I hesitate to guess what,

knowing I might be right, knowing I 

may know this room too well already.

3 versions of nerdery

1) The last few months have been a lot of gigs I've had my hand in making happen, behind the scenes, stuff like that. From the fairly large-scale greenwood litcrawl to the more frequent, but much cozier claustrophobia series, there's been a lot of collaborative planning. as such-- and because I'm currently wrangling the last bits of knowledge from filthy jerry and all things before trying to put myself out there much-- I've almost felt I'd fallen out off practice at just showing up, throwing down and leaving.
Fortunately, August has had a couple readings I've felt pretty solid about. Yes, this is the part where I post setlists and "reflect." If hearing what pieces I read, where and with whom, isn't your bag, there's a part 2 and 3 to this post that you can skip to.
August 3rd, I co-featured with Dave Wheeler and Kate Farrell in the aforementioned Kate's backyard in the Central District. We read in a round, around a fire until it got dark. The general "it" and the fire.
My set:  Unacceptable but Inevitable*/Isolation Therapy/All Things Return to the Dusty Liquor Shelf
Ambition is Critical/Little Fear of Drowning/Missing Every Day
Civic Duty/Several Snapshots*/Genus, Species and Flavour
Rugby '08
This was the first time I'd ever read while seated and it felt natural and right. I think that speaks to the success of the casual/artsy vibe, a vibe that too often falters under its own expectations.

A couple nights ago I opened for Scumeating at The Josephine, a DIY spot in Ballard, next to a bad irish bar and down the street from the Tin Hat, which it is good I don't leave nearby, because I would be there with unhealthy frequency. I did two sets, on either side of Scumeating's performance, ended on my knees, shouting a half-adlibbed ending to Filthy Jerry Gets Paid. If there were video, it probably wouldn't be as awesome as I wished.
Set: Filthy Jerry Sleeps with the Fishes/2012/Tall Drink of Water/Genus, Species and Flavour
Filthy Jerry Gets Paid
Sometimes I wonder why I do readings at venues that are at best, ambivalent toward spoketryword, but some good friends came out and I also am getting back into finding that sort of ambivalence energizing and facepunchy, instead of shoulder-slumpy.

2) The new Aesop Rock album:


It's good. Feels more isolated than his last record, as he's the only rapper and while there are hooks, there are fewer Singles than the last record had (which was still like, three? four, if you're generous?)

3)
All the jokes I want to make, leaving
a new Comic Book movie
with my Dad
are a bit to arch for him,
a bit too newb
for a true believer.

The in-car cd player
stays silent.

The cranes over downtown spark in sunset.
There is no media I can use to improve my standing.

All Things Curved, Cartoonish

the saxophone's slow slope,

the drummer's snare taps, gathering gradually

the guitar player slides into place for a full fifty seconds

before a shift the players
just

nail, just

barely.

i do not know jazz enough to tell you

if this is good or bad, but can say there is something

(i'm sorry) phallic about the saxophone, if not literally, holistically

(what a weird looking dick) in pieces, mabye, like three or

four (quite large) dicks taped together,or less literally, 

just something SPIRITUALLY phallic

and I'm reminded of a carlos santana interview
where he stroked an acoustic guitar slowly, with two
fingers, back and forth, as he talked about the

sensuality of the music, the shape of the instrument

like a beautiful woman

without a head.

i do not know if the guitar player likes santana. that

is probably beside the point, what i do know is

it is too light

outside

and the shades

aren't drawn

and it will be three hours

until it feels like a jazz club

and sweet potato fries

dipped in ranch

and a laptop

belie the potential of this place

for nostalgic poetry, completely

displaced from the overdoses

of yesteryear's jazz

but I do know

that the servers are neither sexy 

nor grizzled enough, in their loose

buttondowns. They are, mind you, sexy and grizzled enough

for real life, or most bars, but they aren't SAXOPHONE SEXY,

where all the women become fluid cartoons, in 

teetering proportions and official classy sex uniforms

from a deliciously repressed era,

all the men, cowled and coiffed and quick with a line

and probably good at the saxophone

and there is no one in here like that

except for this one couple, at a table,

with ranch and potato chips

and with a diet like that,

you know they aren't here for the music.

A Heated Conversation About Steampunk

Its like all these people put on their grandpa's peacoats
and have suddenly conjured a culture that doesn't really exist

Likewhat? saywhat? Youyouyouyoudontevenknow!
how can you say tell me the 5,000+ crammed into
top hats and convention centers
don't exist. This is about a past-future that never really was.

just ask the world's major religions.
just ask the north renton ghost society.
just ask the 53 year old woman who went
as slutty hermione for halloween.

(just because it's not pretty
just because it's not your scene--
this is the future we're talking about.

this is culture we're talking about.
this is the future of culture we're talking
about

--where things happen instantly!
all bolts and gears and buildings creaking
to life fired by boys with bangs
shoveling coal into ovens)

just ask the 15 Seattle-area entertainment magazine writers
getting paychecks from inventing and dismantling Zeitgeists.

You can't say that when the hats are so cute.
IT'S TOTALLY SEXY!

ten thousand elvis impersonators, drunk off prohibition cocktails,
dancing in a circle around brand new anachronisms.
Ten thousand others taking notes and shaking heads.
Complete rolling blackouts.

__________________________________________

this month is Nanowrimo. Instead of trying to squeeze in a Novel in my spare time I want to 1) write a new poem a day or 2) edit existing pieces or pieces of pieces. I think I can do this, even while I'm in the UK. The above needs some editing but it doesn't feel like a rehash of other things I've done, so I'm happy about that.

in other news, I'm getting rid of my mattress. wanna know why? last owner had cats. THAT. MIGHT. EXPLAIN. A LOT.

after heavy editing advice from emily w and eva s:

Tunnels

in the last frame of the photostrip
its just photobooth curtains,
a mess of hair and flailing hands.

i pass out on the L train and end up in manhattan,
rubbing my eye-bags. legs gave out so someone carries
me to a doctor or a taxidermist; above the receptionist
a stuffed wolf's head, teeth sharp and straight.

the third frame is scratched out like a lotto ticket,
no hints left.

by the time i’m back to brooklyn,
the sun has turned it into a brick oven.
at the table with a wallet full of numbers
i try to remember things. the barista wears a handgun.

Second , two joke-kissed. a third lit a match,
held just inside the frame.

at the bodega they burned barrel fires,
smoke of steel and plastic choking up the room.
I thumbed a matchbook--directions to a house--
must have gone, but next thing i remember is
subways cornering, the tilt and creak,
speeding curve and sudden stop.

in the first frame of the photostrip we smiled huge,
lip-cracking smiles, our eyes shone like candy wrappers.

material referencing material.

. . . of being pure at heart

and in the video there was a girl eating elephant ears
and the band played in a basement
until it got too sunny
and it was a field then, in Scotland near a pond
and the girl was trying on blue shirts
and I could relate to the words better than the pictures
and could see how this would be something to lay me out for a while
like someone once had a similar shaped back yard they never wanted to leave.

New york heat and the end of poem-a-day pressure.

Lailey and I are drinking tomato juice and staying inside because the heat is huge and still and dry. Later we'll go to MOMA on the bus and walk over a bridge in Greenpoint. Last night i had "the greenpoint" at Lulu's, which is a bar that gives you a free pizza with your drink, if you ask for it. "The Greenpoint" is two shots of room temperature well vodka. That's it. Named for the neighbourhood's largely polish population.
Lailey is making pancakes and cofee and I am considering a beard trim and thinking about how I'm glad I am here for a week and not just a weekend and am not thinking yet about leaving.
I've been writing a fair amount about my time so far in Brooklyn but that will take some time to Coalesce. Here are the last two of the Nanowripomos I'll be posting. The rest will be fixed or forgotten as time and favor dictate.

God Delegates

be dusk for now, sattelite dish.
spires quiet, stoic over roofs.
be dusk for now, your round dish reflecting.

eventually the world will flood or burn
or change formats.
some will hope for a former option
in all its biblical terror.

ten standing in a crop circle, praying.
to?

Some nights the big dipper is made up of
red-eye flights.

Beam those re-runs up to heaven,
like great literature buried in sealed capsules,
like sacred texts with re-upping returns.

____________________

Extra Wide Bathtubs
At night he dreams of prohibition,
streets clean and whispering after 11pm,
of people leaving theaters in unstained gowns
quietly discussing directorial technique.
Of grocery stores with unlimited supplies of juice
of never finding beer cans on his running trails.

He wants it illegal like prostitution is illegal.
Full-bodied whores in saloon dresses taking
virgins into candle-lit rooms; powerful madames
with curly black hair, lilting accents and huge eyes
charming sherriffs and legislators into
delayed investigations.

Nobody wants that, his wife tells him, drinking
coffee in a slim red turtleneck. Her brother's
vineyard does so much business they're opening
another one. The wine, even he has to admit,
is delicious.

At night he dreams of the vineyard, of tousle-haired
youths in rolled up trousers dancing in huge vats of grapes.
Of muscled young couples swept up in eachothers
arms, but the vats are all machine run.

The roads are rich with decaying fruit-rinds,
plastic juice bottles that take forever to break down,
the crowds passing on crosswalks to all their places,

he imagines himself and two other men comparing
bootlegged rye, practices his speakeasy knock, a
kerosene-lit room full of scholars and pirates,
a soul-sad but drink-happy piano player rolling
notes off his fingers like it were just that easy.

Nanowripomo (more more more)

(In response to SCB(BHMED)

Ask yourself again, waiting in line for coffee
three minutes late for work
Ask yourself again on the plane ride over
once the buildings disappear
all that are left are clouds
and movies starring
jessica alba and a talking dog.
Ask yourself when Home comes
Sign the date on the rent check
you've not filed, depending on the kindness
of parents, friends, siblings.
Ask yourself when you are too tired
to finish a chapter
of the classic novel
you should have read by now.
Ask yourself when the seven is
rolling like squares and your eyelids are crumbling city halls.
Keep yourself in check when you want to proclaim
the end of bad habits, the ways you like to love, the crash courses
you claim you've completed. Ask yourself again how long it will take
when you cannot stop the chatter wearing down your ears,
when your knees give way on everyday hills that turned downward escalators.

Satans Hands of Hats or
All I Ever Wanted to Know About Macrame Remains a Mystery
It'll burn your hair clean off,
the way they throw the drambuie in this place.
across the room like a frisbee
(if you can dodge a flaming drink, you can dodge a ball)
"I don't know why we come here," she says everytime,
though she's the driver.

We danced when there was the bone-music,
the head-swivel rock.
We billed the waiters for their poor service
and vomited on the still-young
indoor rhodedendrons, but they shook us down
for the last scrags of change
their ever-widening eyes nothing but wheels of rotating flame

we tipped our wigs to the devil in the corner,
who knew he was such a good accordionist?

Holy, Holy, Holy (sing along now)
or I Responded to the Altar Call and All I Got Was this Stifling, Guilt-Inducing Relationship
They have such reverent stances. Fresh blue tennis-shoes on
convention hall carpet. The boys in the worship band used
to be bartenders, espresso machines, hired killers, but now
their freshly-strung guitars and eyes-half-closed toward heaven
beckon you forward, after, they do the conversion strut,
would high-five if it weren't so worldly.

They drink stouts over bible studies, where they bear the weight
of the lost around them with deep sad brown eyes, don't suscribe to
a theology allowing jokes, there is no time for joy not derived
from the sharp curves of their arms on acoustic guitars,
their plate-passing, their entire bodies are the cross, the nails,
you can make them holy

and when they walk with you, you are the bride of christ,
the heat of their hands burns hot into your side, when you
pass other men they draw you tight like lost little lambs,
faces imploring you to ask them about their tears; they quote
St Augustine or Shane Claiborne and have money set aside
for charity once house payments are done.

Nanowripomo and other notes.

NANOWRIPOMO is a lot like NANOWRIMO but with poems. Like, because April is "national poetry month" writer types are encouraged to try to write a poem a day this april. So far I've only missed one day. This is fine; I'm shooting for "produced or significantly revised a poem on the majority of days in april." It's not a literalist interpetation of the law.

Also: been picking up shifts at the RHH Cafe/Bar during events. This is good. Keeps me in incidentals/coffee/incidentals. Placed my chapbooks in a couple of indie bookstores-- Left Bank and Pilot.
About a week ago did a gig at New Crompton with Deerseekingheadlights, My Printer Broke, 1985 and Cat Band. We broadcast the whole thing live on Chatroullette to a smattering of confused 15 year old girls and a Sea of Penises (band name!) I did brief sets between the bands and everyone was bundles of friendly and it was good to see DSH with Peter and hear 1985 again.
Talks of more such gigs.

Other things have happened, or not happened, but I'm not too concerned. Below you'll find two of the things I wrote for Nanowripomopomopwripomo and the setlist for the above show. Enjoy.

The Bar You Like Will Come Back Into Style
Hours: From two hours before you admit you drink
to three hours after its legal.
86ed: the guy with the silver soul patch who always came in with
those two girls who looked way younger than him, reeking of gin at 3pm.
He had a deep voice and perpetually open wallet; the sort you like in every night
until he mistook a server for one of his ladies, darting hand, cheek-slap, escalation.
Now when the girls show up they are drearily sober,
order one drink before hailing taxis.
Benny, the sports nut. Welcome enough to watch the game, but touchdown
re-enactments cost Old Jim his prosthetic leg.
The frat boys who kept trying to hump the moose head.
Loose Mary.

Todays Lunch Special: A burger. A big burger, with bits of meatgrease smeared on the side of the plate. A big huge salty burger you have to unhinge your jaw to eat. A big huge salty burger you have to unhinge your jaw to eat and a whole fuckoff mountain of fries covered in pigsweat and sitting in the meatgrease smeared to the side of the plate, paintchips and stringlets of the fry-cooks curly beard between the bun and pickles. You will have to order a second drink to finish and by then
happy hour is over.

Weekend Events: Friday: A band. Almost good. No, almost GREAT. Almost phenomenal. They know good jokes to tell between songs, you laugh loud but their friends still shoot you dirty looks when they realize they don’t recognize you.

Saturday: Karaoke, magic tricks, dancing clowns, abyss-staring.

Daily Drink Special: Gin and Paint thinner. Scraped and melted from the counter. Whisky and motor oil, straight from the moose’s mouth. Ten bucks extra for some rusty nails. You pay extra to sit here, the last shitty bar in a renovated side of town, wondering if today you’ll finally get to start a fight.

Kids Stuff
In the poem I write about Childhood
I stand in a field with adults and prophets,
running out ahead, hugging the wind
face beaming, I am cute and precocious
and wise like a child in the bible.
In the poem I write about Childhood
we are angelfaced, shedding light
innocent and smiling, positively goddamn beatific,
-- I’ve even got the last half of the end line:
“we knew so much. . . then.”

a little more wistful, a little more pure
instead of the grubby little shits we were,
clawing to the top of the slide,
punching eachother out for bits of snickers.


setlist for 3/28
Rucksacks
Ryan Johnson Asks Me Why Chris Gusta Got a Vasectomy
Little Red Corvette
When Saying Mean Things About Strangers
Cavities
_________
Rules For Riding the King County Metro
_________
Explorer
Pack Mentality and Your Tenderloins


then there was lots of noise and trumpet-raping.

Rainier and Wedding Music (rough.)

It was their first dance and everybody cried. Everyone. Really.
The room was all champaigne and candles and aftershave and
a circle in the middle where one of the handful of couples I’ve
ever seen that no one had reservations about slow-stepped
into eachother and began the waltz. Perfect wedding eye-contact.
not a dry eye.

Writing alone and in public is an invitation. For interruption,
unwantedconversation. At the bar at a place that’s fast becoming
a “haunt” I liveunswayed by schedule or finances, get another.
I’ve not been writing long, they aren’t busy and this is a thought
to finish. Plus, I haven’t been interrupted yet.

I’ve been involved in executing—at some level—a fair
number of Weddings. Dj, best man, usher, something.
Ritual is important but always better when the Bride and
Groom are Having Fun Up There. The nervous pre-vow clap.
The blush-and-giggle. The spontaneous high-five.
Good food at the reception, if not an open bar.

The bartender isn’t interested that his music choice
triggered these memories, or what I’m writing, or that
I write, or if he is, that’s the wrong assumption to make.
Still, bringing it up is part of the ritual. I have still
avoided interruption, but take thoughtful pauses as I consider more.
Rainier is not a slow sipper.

What makes a great wedding song? Believability. That
the couple has reached into what they think of love
and pulled something out together, both rare and welcome.
That if they can find the right song, perhaps they
just might be ready for anything.

These are unexpected thoughts, ponderances, not plans.
I’ve long stopped making assumptions. Things I work out on paper
but never read as I ease into new haunts. Bartender wipes the
counter down with the absent vigor of one who’s been at this for years.
I lift my glass in deference without even thinking.

________________________________________________________________________________-
this is a few drafts away from anywhere close to "finished" or "let's read this out somewhere" so I'm welcoming comment.

Explorer

. . . or How the HELL Am I Supposed to make Crepes?

For five years I've been the sole operator of a fishing boat on the moon. Its part of a subsidized grad-school outplacement plan called “Expanding Horizons.” Just me, a one-way radio and a jar of instant coffee. Assigned to catalogue any life in the many crater lakes on the dark side. Found: only eyeless, finless wormfish, no telling how they lived or what they ate.
I’d hoped they'd send more people, but in five years there’s been one unsigned postcard from a café in Paris, a recipe for raspberry crepes on the back in pastel calligraphy. I thought it was a mistake, but there’s my name, right above the address.
I sleep seated with an itchy wool blanket so the fish don’t crawl into my ears. Sometimes radio static keeps me awake and twitching; there aren’t days and nights like I remember. The mission completes in ten years. By then my resume will put me in the top 20% for jobs in my field.
Now they’re firing missiles straight for my area; they warned me I wouldn't go to one of the nice bits with a flag or the mouth or eyes. NASA's always hated the moon, so I'm not surprised they're sending bombs up here. Not surprised at all, especially when I heard the transmission that there was enough explosive to "blast that crater straight to hell."
Hell. Easy concept when you’re alone in a boat with cold coffee, watching death advance daily, surrounded by worms.
____________________________________________________________________________

The above piece appeared in the first of (hopefully) many in a bi-monthly series of zines called Your Hands, Your Mouth, brainchild of one Chris Gusta. On friday I went up to B'ham and read at the launch of said series with Andrew Cole, Robyn Bateman and Melissa Queen, none of whom I'd heard before, all of whom I enjoyed. Felt better as a whole about my own energy and crowd-response at this one than the one in Everett.

Setlist:
Dentistry is a Delicate Art *
Paintings of Famous Satanists
Explorer
Ferries
A Little Fear of Drowning
Poor Sisyphus *
Genus, Species and Flavour

*these are both new pieces I'd either written down in other spots or not written down at all, and were therefore off-book and at least partially ad-libbed. went better than the whole "space coyote" fiasco.

it was a good night all in all, though every time I go to Bellingham it feels farther away geographically (which is simply strange) and a bit regressive personally (which is to be expected I suppose.) I saw Ryler today and we discussed this phenomenon at a bar on Capitol Hill in Seattle and maybe that seems to be more of what I want; old friends in new contexts. Who knows.

Forestry.

I've been meaning to post a link to Wood's blog for a while, and now its narcissistic of me to do so.



www.marriedtothesea.com

, but I'm sure as hell not the walrus--

Lately I've not felt much like writing. I've been hanging out with Lailey and trying to figure out things like going to Ireland, when to visit family friends, how to pay for things when i don't work all the time and what to do with the stupid rest of my life.
Some asshole once said that "life is what happens when you're making other plans" so i'm trying to keep production rates rolling and keep casting my nets in moderately ambitious ways. No formal announcements but I am going to be downloading lots of goddamn paperwork in the near future.
I did write this one thing, though and why the hell not put it up here? I'm probably sending this to 3AM. If more people knew about this blog I wouldn't post poems I was going to submit up here any more, but they don't, so I still can.
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Donkey Kong country

When they cut some poets open they find trees and rivers and mountains and whole cities of frozen warriors guarding aliens and rainbows. Others they find empty after empty of Jack Daniels and unfinished love letters drown in crusted over bile. When they cut this one-- and only one-- open all they found was an empty barrel marked “toxic waste” and a grand piano reading Kerouac. The Priest said a prayer but the Piano refused to close its eyes so he burst into flames. The Scientist adjusted her X-ray glasses and saw through the corpse to the bottom of the world and all her vision came back paralysed. The other poets wrote odes to the deceased, about pianos and anger and burning bright into the night sky like a million blazing rangers but before any could utter their last line the barrel rolled across the linoleum and into the hallway where it startled all the flirting interns and the Piano started playing Fats Domino at top volume.

Beneath the Cathedral

beneath the cathedral-- 200+ years old
lie the white plastic tarps,
2+ weeks old by the look of it
with gnawed, holed trainers
sticking out from under,
and she, 24 years old
wants to poke it with a stick.

There are so many buildings here
older than my country, so many ghosts.
But the scariest thing I've seen
is a girl in black lipstick
clutching my arm and pulling me--
26 years old--
through weeds-ridden cobblestones

towards a tattered white plastic tarp
that doesn't seem to be moving.