Redesigned a million times before.

So between poeming, storying, laptop-not-having, and delaying inevitable "here's what's going on in my life I know I've neglected the blog but trust me you don't really want inside this head right now oh no that sounded way more ominous than I meant it to" post(s?) not much has gone on here in the last few months.

I've got plenty of things I want to write about for the Trains and Tall Buildings series, some of the aforementioned life updates, and a few more drafts of poems to throw at the wall and see if they stick. But the perfect is perpetually the enemy of the good, so here's a couple quickies--

I'm writing music reviews again.

I sent out the proofs to Alice Blue, and will have a new chapbook as part of the Shotgun Wedding Imprint of Alice Blue. It's called The Third Best of Possible Outcomes. I'm also re-drafting one I wrote last year (mainly in post-work whiskey-fueled sessions when my laptop worked) and trying to polish it up.

I'm ZAPPing again.

This all will be easier once I re-laptop, but as is, the gentle scent of metal, stale beer(!) and humanness surrounds me in the Seattle Public Library.

Some productivity jams:



later, but not much.

"It is good to rejoice in our commonalities."

Over the weekend, Seattle Playwright's Collective mounted the fourth of the Medicine Ball series, in which I pick some poets, Dan Tarker picks some playwrights, they write to a theme, and the audience votes on which artform is superior. We started about 2 years ago, the voting thing has always been pretty tongue-in-cheek (winners get 2 buck chuck, losers get warm PBR) but it tends to be a hook that gets more folks in. Slams, etc. This time the Playwrights took it by 5 ballots over the course of a three day run.
The Medicine Ball is consistently different from all the other things I've been involved in putting together-- essentially it's introducing poetry into a theater context. In the past we've done staged readings, this time it was full staged, costumed, propped. Though it's a bit strange to be involved in such a conceptual way in such a physical undertaking ("hey guys! here's some poets! poets! write a thing, send it to these guys. see you at the show!") each time out the dialogue between playwriting and poeting seems to get more nuanced. Especially as we've got people hopping sides-- Robert Lashley wrote an incredibly powerful one act, and playwright Craig Kentworthy sent in a strong, multifaceted poem that worked on multiple levels (kind of funny they were working from the same prompt. Hmm.)
This time we also incorporated visual cues from local artists, specific word cues, and let the writers see the faces of the actors they'd be writing for. Interestingly, this led to the most serious Medicine Ball to date. There was plenty of humor, sure, but the overall tone of the night was contemplative, desperate, and punchy. I could go on about the specific choices made by writers and directors (though I gotta drop a shout out to the way Dan turned Ryan Johnson's surrealist pastiche into a helpless shrug on the ubiquity of oppressive masculinity) but ultimately, I was just stoked on the evening as a whole, and occasionally forgot I was even involved. That's one of the better parts of organizing, when you can just enjoy something as an audience member.
Of course, you get reminded reaal quick when it's time to strike the set. . .

Forward/Backward.

So Shane Guthrie first appeared in my life when I was about 15, he a couple years older, as part of a teen writer's group. The first thing I heard of his was a poem that scanned both backwards. He had pieces that proposed a viewpoint one way, and an opposite viewpoint the other (Christian/Atheist being my favorite, natch). For the Filthy Jerry kickstarter, he demanded a forward/backwards piece from me. It's taken me this long to write it, with some false starts and scrapped efforts (I decided it didn't need to present opposing viewpoints, but should attempt some sort of sense) and I do some fiddling with the punctuation from one version to the next. But this is the first piece of this type I've completed.

Tasty! (maybe inspired by politics. Or not.)

Saintly ,again, disappearing into water.

Turning expectations, repasting billboards

All good deeds, all charity drives, all blessed returns.

Saintly, again, rewritten histories.

Bodies, bulldozers, cremations, buyoffs.

Pitchshifted. Rebeats. Chopped, screwed.

Again, Saintliness as moving goalposts.

Stories fit headlines. Splashed page full.

Halos glowing shinier, for flashbulbs.

Searching, a finished writeup, new review.

Again, bowing. Saved great act for last.

_____--____

Last for act. Great. Saved, bowing again.

Review new writeup, finished a searching.

Flashbulbs for shinier glowing halos.

Full page splashed headlines fit stories.

Goalposts moving as Saintliness, again,

Screwed, chopped. Rebeats. Pitchshifted.

Buyoffs, cremations, bulldozers, bodies.

Histories rewritten again, Saintly.

Returns blessed all, drives charity all, deeds good all

Billboards repasting expectations, turning

Water into disappearing again, Saintly.

Firstbooth/coldfeet

Been annoyed at "the grid" lately. partly because technology is less useful when you're working on hand-drawing, collage art, etc. I've got a booth tomorrow at the Rainier Beach Artwalk and I'd like to have some new stuff to display, but the time limits I've put on myself (through procrastination, largely) lead to stress, to confusion, to more procrastination. Pictures up later if I don't hate what I've got.

Even if I crash and burn (which i don't plan) this'll be a good experience for me.

Grammaticality aside

All Things Gets Paid

will probably be the title of my next chapbook, and it will probably happen soon. A couple pieces to pair down, shape up, narrativize, but we go forward with this.

Up, coming:

Claustrophobia #5. The overflowing patio.

Greenwood Lit Crawl

both things I have been directly and furiously involved in planning. for now, however, I have not eaten anything that's not come wailing back up my throat. all day. i'm going to watch some simpsons and lay down.

The only way to not be dead

Most of my writing lately has been particularly acidic towards people who claim to mean well. I am already late for an appointment and later will have the last shreds of my eardrums mashed into a fine paste by A Place to Bury Strangers, but feel compelled to enter some "content" here for my "audience" to "read."

Internet Jazz Hands.

Here's what I listen to, over and over, while writing some purposefully overwrought SAILOR PROSE about Filthy Jerry's adventures in Squidheadland.

It's like the Awesome Nameless Summer Poetry Project, but will probably get a title soon. Part 1.

Today I got an e-mail from GPS with a contract and everything. Something about invoicing them. I've never "invoiced" anyone before; largely because I'm usually on the other end of that equation and because most of my dealings are with friends. This, however, is with a large, poetry-based corporation.

More on that later. With regards to the Other End of my cash-acquisition, I'm currently working on a new Chapbook to complete in time for a top-secret lock-in fundraiser at Lewis' band's practice space beginning of April.
Yeah, I know.
Something about a "top-secret fundraiser" sounds eight ways to dodgy, but still. . . I like reading in cramped, poorly lit spaces. If my words don't hit people, specks of saliva will.

So I'm currently going through a list of potential poems for this book. I want it to largely consist of pieces I've written (or heavily edited and completed) here in Swansea, I want it to have a strong Sense of Place, but I don't want it to read like a poetry-based laundry list of images and places; I find that heavily themed works get real stale real fast.
So. I've got a list of titles here, some with links to them, others you can easily find on this blog, others are yet unseen in online form and we'll let that stay the case.



First off, the Poems I Wrote Pre-Wales, that for whatever reason I Feel Strongly Enough About to consider including
Story Problem
Zombies and Paint Thinner
Dinner For One
Watching Films About Death
Little Red Corvette
Cavities
Caleb Barber Loses His Teeth to Meth
Everyone Has Something
Murder Ballads

Poems I've Written in Swansea, More or Less About Swansea or Places in It or about General 'Welshness'-->(*Marks one that needs a good bit of work)
Beneath the Cathedral
Paintings of Famous Satanists
Rugby '08
Rugby '09*
Rucksacks*
The Cafe Across From the Train Station
Glasgow Weather and Inappropriate Footwear
Carmarthen Train #1
Its What We Writers Do (For Jen)
Christmas Light Gallows*
Tall Drink of Water
Black Pudding*
Isolation Therapy
At the Chip Shop
Beck House D 3.1*
Ambition is Critical*
Swansea-Cardiff Blues (Bellngham Edition)*
Earl Grey
All My Friend Back Home (Start a band about this one)*
Tired Eyes


And These Are About Girls or Concepts or came from Ryan's prompts and aren't necessarily tied to Wales
Ellie
Donkey Kong Country
New Poem For Old Plasters
We Laughed at the Same Thing (M4W)
Clippers! Clippers! Clippers!
A Little Fear of Drowning
Flicking Ash
24th Ave, NE*
Cities that Exist in Movies*
Children Go Missing Every Day
Context and Subtext
Ways In Which Gloriana Flotsam McGrew Will Probably Die, Since It's Always So Fucking Glamourous With Her (addressed to the subject)
Pigeon Bait
Children Go Missing Every Day
Forward Thinking
Boyz*
Three Counts of Public Urination
Enough With the Cape Already*
Genus, Species and Flavour
I am the tired orphan*

yeah. So about 15-20 poems out of those. Plus a few that are very much in my head but not on paper yet. Some are shoe-ins, but it really depends what sort of thing I want to make and what purpose I want it to serve for me and how long. Which I'll talk about later. I've tagged a lot of places you can find some of the mentioned poems.

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?”

Shiny New Diner

The wood all polished, varnished,
licenses and certificates hung on bright-
white walls, only two or three handprints
on the window.

The TVs in the corner showing top 40
music videos are flatscreens now. The
servers' uniforms are cleaner, blond
hair fluffier and I can even imagine
them smiling.

Morning eaters walk through, starved
looks on gaunt faces while I sip orange
juice and check the clock; all polished
wood, roman numerals and accuracy.

25 minutes and I've still not received
my eggs on toast.
________________________________________________________
project update: now the question is-- is it easier to fix a 5,000 word story with lots going on, or to generate roughly 3,000 newer, better words?
I'm leaning towards the latter.

September First.

Summer may not end officially for a few weeks, but with the onset of September hopefully there will be less whinging about how it "doesn't feel like summer." Because it isn't.

Speaking of: The Summer Project Which Never Had an Awesome Name.
I think I'll continue this until I've turned in my dissertation or at least until I have to focus all my efforts on editing. The posting of poems here weekly has kept me at writing and has encouraged me to dig out and dust off a few pieces that I'm a lot happier with now. I've probably produced almost as many poems I'm satisfied with in this three month period as I did during the two terms of Poetry Class. This isn't a comment on the class- it was great- but I do think just now some of the things I learned are catching up with me. Or the groove is more consistent. Or perhaps in two months I'll hate everything I wrote here. Either way, it'll continue at least for another month or so. Thanks for the advice and encouragement I've got from those of you who've been reading.

As for my disseration: I've got some ideas, not as far into them as I'd like. What I have so far are the following finished stories (titles subject to change:
My Ugly Twin A first person account of a deteriorating relationship between identical twins. Lots of unreliable narration.
Seagulls Flash fiction I posted here about the guy and his hat.
Bob and Janet Beat the Light or Have You Tried the new FenTech Navigation System? A couple gets stuck at a red light for twelve hours. You learn lots of stuff about their relationship, blah blah, characterisation. This is the one my professor likes. At the end they die.
I'll Only Fuck You If You Keep Your Mouth Shut or I Was a Sexy Teenage Cannibal and All I Got Was a Bit Part in an Ed Wood Film The teenage son of the aforementioned Bob and Janet and his girlfriend are gonna, you know. Do it. But they can't, because the son is too bummed out that his parents are dead. Also because the last time they saw him was when they walked in on him and his girlfriend about to, you know. Do it.

Other stories I've got in mind: Letters from the Third Checkout Line A girl who works at Tesco and has one of those adopt-a-orphan things going on (through the mail) meets a friendly hippie who tries to get her to join his protest organisation. Comparing/contrasting different types of political action and personal responsibility. I also think the organisation ends up spurring the apocalypse in the final story entitled. . .
The World Can End Just Let Me Finish My Pint First A fairly weak, not very well organised group decides to initiate the apocalypse here in Swansea. You'd think they'd be easily stopped, but people really just can't be bothered. A few try, of course, but they're not getting paid for this, you know? Terror and destruction reign, but what you gonna do, innit?

regress report.

So you know that dissertation I'm working on? Well, it doesn't know you. At least not in a biblical sense. Nonetheless, here are the stats on it as of now:
I owe by October 20,000 words of Short Story. Well crafted, subtle, nuanced short story.
So far I am 10,000 words in. Most of these words couldn't accurately be adjectivised in the above manner, but I'm trying. I've gotten some fairly solid edits in on two of my stories and then have sorts of cluttered/sprawling messes of two other ones.
My professor seemed to like the progress I made on the Twin story, so that is good.

It is requiring levels of eyes-to-screen time that give a headache when I would really rather laze about, go out, do anything "fun" in a more widely-accepted sense (yes, you can insert the "this is what you want to do" speech here) after working however many hours at the bar.
pretty much perpetually tired and cranky with less attention span for people or things even than usual. but slowly eeking out some sorts of productivity and even some poems on the side. all this and I get to pour beer for money.

livin' the dream.

Seagulls (flash fiction)

It was like a scene out of “The Birds,” the Seagulls diving all at once, ripping his hat to shreds. A bowler cap, timeless and stylish. The wind blew it down Swansea Beach and into a discarded chip tray where the seagulls had destroyed it. In the days that followed, his head felt naked and exposed, despite the matte of prematurely greying hair that lay on his head like a sleeping dog.
His girlfriend was secretly relieved; she thought the hat was silly, so when he decided to search out a new one she accompanied him with great reluctance. He searched the charity shops first, but their aisles of cast-off clothes held nothing for him. His mood worsened; he told his girlfriend of the time his mother had lost her favourite brooch and how she brooded for months and it must run in the family. She nodded and made him tea. He searched the aisles of Debenhams and the racks at TK Maxx. He walked the beach and cursed the seagulls. He started noticing people’s hair and when he was with his mates he constantly compared. His best friend drove him to Cardiff where they ruffled through boutiques and found a few that fit in size and style but were too expensive—the last one had come to him cheaply, so should the next.
He stopped looking. He stopped combing his hair. He took to eating lots of sea food and bitterly cursing all men his age whose hair retained its youthful brownness. One day he stood in line at the market for an order of cod and saw the vendor a booth over wearing a stylish golfer’s cap, checked and full of life. He looked once, then twice. Mid-purchase, he dropped his fish, ran and made an offer.

too old to marry young

It doesn't gnaw at me any more,
just darts through my brain
taking pieces of me with it.

the what-ifs.

it's not to say I know exactly
what I'd go back and undo, it's just that
there are so many possibilities.

like what if I'd talked to the girl
reading CS Lewis in the cafeteria
that rainy tuesday in spring, or
what if I had the ability and inclination
to love any of those girls from
my youth that my Mom was sure I'd marry someday.

probably be a social worker in the
Greater Seattle Area and generally
less embarrassing at family reunions.

it's a twisted sort of nostalgia,
for things that didn't happen.

if I said I was sorry, that'd be
only half, no, a quarter of the story
and you know how sorry I'm capable of.

I'll just need a few more thinking years
to know what to do or undo, all while
passing girls reading CS Lewis without
saying anything,

lest I wake up and find myself a teacher,
Mom always said
I should work with kids.

_ - _ - _ - _

not too satisfied with that one.
today is bad with writer's block, so I'm just glad to get a shape of it posted. got some feedback from my professor on one of my stories. work continues.

The cafe across from the train station

Everything here is a little crooked.
The booth backs.
The peas + faggots sign under the lamp.
The lamp.
The “Gent’s Bathroom” placard.
The vent above the coke machine.
The signed “Twin Town” poster.
My handwriting sitting here
on crooked cushions
and her smile as she hands me change.

progress report #1.

I am 1,250 words into the first story of my collection. Tenatively titled "seagulls," so far it's about a guy who loses his hat and can't find one to replace it.
It may or may not have him being stalked by birds, losing his girlfriend and/or comitting acts of violence. I am realising that in order for this to be an effective collection, not every story can have acts of violence or slightly surreal nature-interfering-with-man stuff.

I'll revise and post the new version of the poem tommorrow.