25/30: Conversations With My Classmate-Professor Over Lunch in Cardiff

Of all the places, high street, of all the places on high street, a faux-mexican

chain with bad spellings and valleys accents. Here again for all the unpacking
at the logical end of the course we took together.
find ourselves comparing notes eight years from the day he said

so you’re also an American, and showed me the best seat

in the mini-cafe.

The years they have been kind?

Strange? About the same?

His kids are people now, big

laughs and so many transgressive

authors, Naked Lunch Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch and how the students

need

to be shaken

and twisted

and broken

you just keep writing and throwing it

out and keep writing and throwing it

out to the high street, he gestures,

something for the people, these

people they just go about their little

lives.

At some point in our thirties we just start looking the same

for a long time. We met when he was a year younger

than I am now, he’s lost a little weight, but aging only

shows in family pictures.

So many beat authors  and  pages full

of violence, his students complain, especially

the women, but people need to know

life’s not all gardens and shopping

and roses. he references Thoreau

and Ginsberg and Lydia so and so

and says something about guts

on the page. GUTS.

To break up the bland, pleasant

horror of domesticity.

What are we doing

here on the high street,

if we’re not picking  up tail

or telling rough truths?

He’s married. I’m not. He was married when we met.
I wasn’t. The Cardiff we meet in and the Cardiff

he lives in are different places even so.

The new book is meant to be

destroyed, because art is temporal.

I get a copy for free. He has to give

some of his students credit, they call him

on his shit. He’s got shit, like I’ve got shit

like they’ve got shit, but these

are his classes and

I learn more, here on high street

about Cardiff Uni Politics

than will

hopefully ever be useful.

Always used to joke to me to not get married, fuck around as

long as possible. Struck me as sad, and honest. A third weak

beer in and I remember three years ago, he sent a few links

for professor jobs in Cardiff, then one in Bellingham that

he’d thought about.

But you can’t uproot family. You, you could go anywhere.

He pulls a page out of his book and wraps his tip in it

things are going pretty well, he re-iterates, life is what it

is, just kicking against the long going

and I take another look down high street

contemplating curriculums for those who only

wish

their desperation could be

quiet.

April 1st, 2013 (Napowriyolo#1) Pogopogopogopogo

The fiends! Normally I wouldn't go out in a rainstorm without my foil helmet but drastic times, measures. They were running down the block with my giant plastic santa claus-- the one I got for the halloween party-- and I had no choice but to mount my pogostick and hop after them. There were lightning crashes. There were thunder strikes. There were traffic jams. There were wage hikes. The bastards! How did they know my pogo would run out of spring so soon? I was stuck in a growing puddle as cars whizzed around me sporting Star Wars Political Slogans. Nothing mattered any more, though it might later, I reminded myself, catching the first ghost train to another planet and ripping out my spleen. It'd not done much for me anyway, since the deventing operation.

Steampunk Cartoons

after hours of reading Ryan Johnson's writings I grew huge bat wings and crawled into the hollowed steeple of a disused church, where I thought about the differing types of adjectives that I and my girlfriend would use to describe me. The church turned out to be an airship run by gears and cogs and a man with a tophat and monocle, who refused to address me unless I bowed properly.
we are going to France, he said, but not Paris, they are all persnickety cheese eaters, we are going to Real France, where no one has a sense of fashion or good taste in music. These are the real parts of countries, he said, spinning a globe and poking at it with a disingenuous cane. Can you do anything about these wings, I asked, because there was no one else to ask, and he looked educated.
No, actually, you are our backup plan in case these gears fail. This will be your one service from now on, he said, little knowing that I'd long since gouged my eyes out in a ritual that did little to aleviate an inborn sense of guilt.

the judge said "i will never die."

On a rare slow day, I've finished "Blood Meridian." Combine with a started-great-got-weird last night still weighing on the brain and all its attendant grogginess the mill of students and teachers and the un-comma-ed neo-biblical writing style of Cormac McCarthy and you have a day of inclement unexplainably strange sadness whirring through and under the clicks of computers and the slow mumble of minds seeking expansion that may never come.

Thursday Night

looked sort of like this:

Falling down is not magic

Thursday's Hoarse reading--complete with welsh magicians, cake, lots of awesome readers and deepstomach laughter-- and last night's Drink for the Kids (benefitting Vera) were good but sitting completely alone in my house without music on, tacos impending, this is good. Soon I will watch Peep Show and sleep.

But! It should be noted that I'm not just imagining how fun the Hoarse! readings are, or how (coughcoughterriblewordalert) "vibrant" and "diverse" (ughgross) Seattle's "literary community" (AAAAAAAAAAGGGGH!) is, as evidenced by Emily Wittenhagen's awesomely enthused manifesto of the this is why we do this variety.

I like the part about Jurassic Park.

All this talk of leaving when it still feels so far away.

Today is a heavy internet day for me. So be it.

For Lent this year I'm going with the old standby of giving up booze. There've been the odd occasions in the past when (for lent or other reasons) I've given up booze where the fact that I really didn't want to meant I needed to; this time the fact that I'm not bothered about it means it's all just as well.


I mailed off my visa app yesterday. The weight off my shoulders is tremendous. I probably have about 2 -4 more months in Swansea now and I've got shit to do. Among the things I've got planned:

--> Help Theresa move forward with her plans; she sent off an application to Grad School in Cardiff yesterday and will be looking to move soon. I like our parallell trajectories in some ways; we're helping each other along. Also, do more fun stuff with her now that I'm not in perma-whinge mode.

--> Global Poetry System. On March 27th there's a workshop in London I go to (this may be one of the few notable Lent Exceptions I allow myself as long as its determined ahead of time) and we'll get some events nailed down. The idea being to schedule a series of events related to poetry found in unconventional places and presented in new and unusual ways. It's a UK-wide deal and I'm Swansea's guy for it.

--> Pare down my collection of books, clothes and CDs; when I do move I want to minimise shipping costs. Maybe get the odd new item to supplement; I can throw out five old T-shirts I never wear a lot easier if I have one new one I think is rad.

--> The Crunch. Get that shit official; talk to Academi and get funding so we can pay features from out of town. Find someone to host in my eventual absence. Keep the momentum we have.

--> I still owe a few people Letters from Wales. It's way more exciting (when you're in Seattlingporthamland) to receive Letters from Wales than from Stanwood.

--> Tunes with John. Demos at least. Something to remember the Unnamed Trio by.

--> I'm thinking of making an extended version of Swansea Morning Coming Down with 15-20 poems in it; mainly ones written since coming to Swansea. Maybe a few old standbys. It'd be a cool thing to have as a record of a specific time and place; plus I could schedule a few readings and sell them. I'm broke.

--> See more of Wales. Preferably the parts that weren't bombed to shit by the Luftwaffe and subsequently paved over.

--> Get a few more pictures of this town, country and my friends that aren't taken inside Mozart's Wine Bar or The Office. This will possibly be the most difficult.

-- and I shout that you're all fakes,

fakes!


the point came fast but it was too blunt to miss:
life handed us a paycheck, we said "we worked harder than this!!"
________________________________________________
I have two readings in the next few weeks and don't know what I'm going to read. Probably drag out little red corvette (ie: the new like taking communion but without falling over and throwing microphones) and paintings of famous satanists (another new-school high-repetition favorite) and call it good. or maybe I'll try reaaaaal haaaaard and write some new things, fix some old things and make it "special."

at any rate, here's an old one that never got much play the first time around.

Dinner for One
She walks slow from oven to table
hands pressed firm against ceramic.
mits makeshifted from towels

someone once told her that you could
burn your fingerprints off
on simple kitchen appliances

she hung a "caution" sign above the stove
for anyone who might use it,
took the batteries out of the smoke detector.

a week later her tongs disappeared.
a few close calls with oven doors and apron strings,
untied hair and blender lids,

a few too many arm-burns on oven racks;
friends started telling her
she's got to be more careful.

she eats the pasta dispassionately,
roast with abandon,
half bottle of wine in.

a fork in one hand,
steaknife in the other,
gazing out the window
as she slices.

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?

Neglect

Algaed water clings to the side of the
fishbowl, empty save for the plastic
castle, covered in wet grime.

The terrarium nearby holds the flaking
skin of a newly dead python, lying in
bits of tail and hair from the mice it'd
been fed.

scratchmarks from tiny claws on the side
of the glass.

on the desk lies a short shopping list,
dated two weeks back. fish food, water
purifyer, tropical heatlamp.

but the light burnt out and coldbloodedness
took over.