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.

I'll see your "do what you love" and raise you one "that's why they call it work, kid."

So lately a variety of people have posted this article about the culture of unpaid arts and academic work, and while Slate is increasingly becoming about as reliable and readable as Salon, the article (which was originally posted on Jacobin, natch) nicely articulates a lot of frustrations I have with the culture around writing, arts organizing, and "getting involved." The writer does a decent job of balancing practical and philosophical concerns, and while the author (wisely) doesn't propose a practical solution to the free-work/dismissal of labor problem, I like the ways-of-thinking suggestions in the last paragraph.

Because while a lot of the internship/volunteer/lowpay positions came into existence because of economic realities surrounding pursuits of artistic, spiritual, or intangible value, they are increasingly re-enforced by a sorta beatific, pie-in-the-sky mentality truly available to only a few. The human soul needs to be nourished, but folks tend to nourish the body first. So unlike nurses and mousetrap-makers, most people with any type of say, humanities degree, won't always have a market for their work.
I think the do-what-you-love-and-it-isn't-work paradigm ironically creates a self-love/self-loathing hamster wheel for artists, writers, designers, researchers, who don't feel they have any "real" skills, yet also see themselves as elevated by "pursuing their passions" after years of having their professors tell them to. (or you know, years of following the blog of an oil heiress who decided to quit her job and "make a living" selling necklaces made out of chicken feathers while practicing a self-invented form of yoga and tutting disapprovingly at those in the "rat race.")

There's a longer discussion here with regards to ideas about what it means to be "serious about your art" that tends to get caught up in these pinwheels as well.

At this point I've made an evolving, uneasy peace with ways I pursue my art, ways I pursue my livelihood, and how often the two do or don't intersect. Every individual has to do that on their own; I sort of figured on getting a Creative Writing Degree that bartending, or record store working (ha!) was going to figure heavily in my future.
This is why I roll my eyes at the precious snowflackes who complain that they just "aren't being fullfilled" or feel like they "just, you know, want something more. . ." from their work. I mean, if a job sucks, yeah, get outta there, go for the promotion, etc. but sometimes work is just, you know, work. And that's fine.
Necessary, even.

Split Schedule Informal Poll:

You work evenings. Not quite graveyard, but the earliest you're ever done with work is 11:30 p.m. Late ends around 3:15 a.m., though the general average for shift-finishing is 1:30 a.m., which is what it'll likely be tonight. You often take between one and three hours after getting off work to fall asleep. Today, due to a variety of forces, you got up at 8:30 a.m. (you didn't work last  night, so you got about 6 1/2 hours of fitfullish sleep) and now it is 1:45 p.m. and you're looking ahead to a night of work. You've achieved a couple of things you planned for the day, but there's a huge gap between the now and the then.
Soo do you:
--all answers are legally binding, btw--

A) Go home and nap; sleep all the sleep you didn't have until your alarm sounds and you have fifteen minutes to get to the train and work. Ignore bodily or mental impulses that try to wake you up, sublimate the already consumed caffeine and pull blankets and pillows over your head and squeeze your eyes tight, demanding every possible second of rest from the universe.

B) Power through. Another cup of coffee, dish doing, poem editing, service-provider-calling, information-gathering, eating, then, after that, work will seem less a daily grind than a remarkably decision-free zone where you can know for facts what your best uses of time are.

C) Start "The Idiot."

D) Wander around the general waterfront area and do a lot of gazing out upon it, toy with the idea of taking a ferry to Bremerton and back again, just in time for work. Backlog that on a list of things to do someday. (See also: King Street Station and a bus to Kent.)

E) A reasonable mix: go home, short nap, dishes, grab some groceries for the morning. Boring blog post, decent day.

F) If you do________________ much of _______________, you'll give yourself permission to ___________ before work. If not, WEEP!

G) What was that movie everyone was telling you about? You've got the time.

These are the things I talk to myself about on days like this.

January 8th, half finished, in eight lines.

you will live and die in front of a computer, by choice or pay.
time spent summoning the angels will outlast the help they give.

mongolian names are harder than ethiopian, welsh, or chinese.
working girls/smirking churls/lurking hurls.

the habit of putting off hard decisions just long enough for someone else to make them.
have a good time at the funeral; you know what I mean.

you will live and die and this mist will feel the same either way.
you know what I mean. obviously, I'm being dramatic.

At the End of a Quarter, Everything Goes Slow

There is nearly nothing to say about the last day at the loft. I rarely get not-working guilt-feels, but today I turned in my time sheet an hour short because of how little actual work I've done. To the future.

Library Signs (with apologies, on occasion, to Cloud Nothings)

Enter/Exit
the only profession in the world
where the "sexy" version can be the
same as the real one. but don't do that,
please.

check out and reserves.
I'm stuck in here, like beef in a locker. like a mark
in a book.  a list of names.
held for a moment and dropped down the chute.
(tired of everywhere, so close to the door)
how
ultimately
does one leave?

Reference and Information
everything listed.
counted.
decimated.
decimaled.
decimalfunction city.

the sign on the librarian's computer reads


Bother Me
with long question about the Teutonics.
things we must know
NOW
I need time
I need time
I need--

Please Do Not Reshelve Reference Books
all things in their place, all metal, wooden shelving
in it's place, all screens in their place, all stools just askew,
all visitors in their place, from place to place, jaws
hung open, all studious in their place, all procrastinators
in their place, at the tables, with eyes hanging out of their
sockets, their tongues lolling over, to stop moving,
useless.

Covered Drinks Only, When Using A Computer
give up your crusades, guardians of civility.
let people talk. there was a day when we had to walk outside
to slurp. to squeeze and gatorade our studies into waking hours.
but fuck it, whatever. don't spill on the keyboards,
look at porn if you want, speech freedom. the temples
of knowledge have already burned, the idea of quiet
is a museum.

Cell Phones, Please Take them Outside
This is our waterloo. The last of our dignity.

Reserved For Research and Scanning
nothing I could do could make things change.

Fall Checklist: Returning to School (for Job not studies)

2012/perpetual edition.

* Smell of rain on concrete, generally.

* The gears in your head slowly shifting from drunk-wrangling to grammar-wrangling sorts of intelligence.

* The part where the Rock Dude who works for student services remains compellingly all-purpose. Zeppelin hat, DK t-shirt, crystal castles hoodie. This figures continued existence in spite, or because, of dubstep, etc.

* Being glad that the one barista still works there-- at nearly three quarter's worth of experience, she is closest the campus cafe gets to simulating the coffee of the outside world.

* New teachers, no sleep. Old teachers, all sleep.

* Reflecting that it hasn't changed much since I was a student, that I reflect that every year.

after-noon haikunated thought mangle (3/7/12)

so many beware of dog fences with open gates.
so many puddles, beginning to ice.
so many uncrowned enemies, stumping through tubes and wires.
so many laughing hats.
a slink into a rolling chair, a roll into another room, a shut-door, a quick nap, a curtain, blinds, a next next, day full of shaking wires, expectant crows.

back at the loft:

Because of technology, there is no more serious injury, bad illness or death. All people live forever, like vampires or demons.

from a student's short paper assignment about the Future, and Possible consequences of technology. (she also addressed the idea that with people living forever, innovation would stagnate and birth rates would plummet.)

zabrecky makes himself disappear

or if you're taking over, then it's over

LA is a city that always dangles a carrot three feet away
from the noses of its citizens. this arrives to screen,
by phone, from my friend who holds microphones and wails
in an attempt to corral all the searing noise around him
into a cohesive statement. beat. riff. rhythm. anthem,
even rising to the sky, but stopped at last by smog.
songs try their best to find their way out of the city,
in the bumping trunks of riders, in the collapsing chanteuses
somewhere just outside hollywood, the bricked off lofts
of silverlake. I can't get back there. I can't get into it.
I can't even name a street that isn't already famous,
despite the hours behind the wheel of a twelve wheeler.
Someone tells me something about Bukowski, the city making
him what he was. About sleaze and punk and availability of
everything. i think about a poem I wrote ten years ago and
how I heard the subject turned to magic after a collection
of late 90s new wave songs failed to advance his neighborhood.
he is probably on stage tonight, somewhere on the second floor
of a tall building, wearing a funny hat and introducing
women in fancy underwear to a crowd who don't have shows that night.
_________________________________________________________

the opening quote is from Robert Lashley, of Scume Eating, etc, who are in LA right now, or leaving it, on their way to Spokane. The prompt was from Theresa Mitchell, from a while back, who told me to write about a musician who influenced me. I was ostensibly going to write about Rob Zabrecky, from Possum Dixon, a band I liked in High School, but obviously, I ended up writing about LA. As you can tell from the time of day and sloppy prose style, i wrote it at work.

News From Home

the t-shirt factory burned down and now he have nothing to wear on the tops of our bodies. your uncle painted his torso with the melted skin of the factory workers. the rest of town saw that and liked it. now we walk around beating our chests and thinking of clever designs. Some of the knitting circle sold their sewing machines to pay for glue. Skin gets flakey. There'd been a plan, approved by the mayor and everything, to boost civic pride by creating apparel based on the sillouhette of the water tower and catfish billboard by city limits. The idea, your cousin tells me, is to sell them to chiseled men and tall women to wear sexily in other
states, but now all our cloth is smoke. No one can put our town on their bodies, the jobs are all grumpy and angry, fruit is sad and wilty and we've been removed from wikipedia. This is what the mayor told us when he visited for dinner. We had my famous lamb-chops and he asked about you, what you're doing, I said I wasn't sure because your letters are so vague. We all had a laugh about that, except
for your aunt, who is not well and refuses to stay awake in church. When you come, bring anynews clippings about your activities, some smelling salts and sweaters. It will be winter by then,
I'm sure.

To Fix the Gash In Your Head

Perpetual States

To be forever eating, to be forever drinking, never sated. What they said it would be like in hell (a variety of sources, don't ask me to be specific,) the vice of choice shoveling, battering, inundating. To be forever packing snowballs with no one to throw them at. To be forever pissing, never relieved (bad example: in the act itself there is relief)what they said hell would be like when they believed in it. Sometimes the bus is forever turning a corner and Jerry is always just missing his connector. At times like this the sky remains exactly the same as it was the moment before and pieces of bread fall from the old lady's hand to the pigeons (who eat the crumbs, this old lady is not in hell.) At times like this, and sometimes at other times, Jerry thinks of Joe Wenderoth, sitting in Wendy's, completely dazed on cough medicine and perpetually wanting to fuck the red, soft, wet
mouth of the girl at the register. How sore would you get, from shifting in your seat, due to that wanting, and what about those days when people think you terrible for disenjoying their picnic and being unthankful for your peeling sunburn? There are a few of us, and we are forever realizing we aren't alone.


I wrote these both in under 25 minutes at work. Or you could read James Burns' Largely Correct rant/take on Indie Rock in all it's linguistic meaninglessness. I quibble with some definitions, but I think the larger thrust of what he says is well stated and something I'd have written here but am lazy and hate writing about music a lot of the time.

Pinching, Pulling

Crabs running sideways in sunglasses make me hop quicker than a dance with "hop" in the title ever could. My girlfriend is hungover from wine and whisky after wandering the streets of Columbia City lost but nonplussed. Eventually the bar (there's always one of those) overcharged me for drinks and the man who makes a living playing guitar on cruise ships was talking to the off-duty bartender. It was like a dance. Or hop. The woman he will see later is in California, so it will be much later. I think the off-duty bartender's swooping dark hair has him convinced. Successfully, I guide my wandering girlfriend to her whisky-ginger, which is now mainly melted ice (I hadn't known about the earlier wine) and in low light I still drink IPAs like they were ales with half the strength (maybe why I always have a headache) and the on-duty bartender is reluctant to do anything at all. Half the walk home I had my fingers through blonde hair, staggery past fields of disused tires. This morning I was glad I can give directions and cook eggs, because if there'd been a pack of wild dogs, I doubt I'd have been able to fight them off.

The Mason Jar of Timeliness Says You Just Missed a Guarantee.

Workburrow. Arrived at the Library an hour early (like I usually do) with the intention of listening to music, writing, sending necessary corrospondences (like I usually do.) Network was down. Spent some time with Devils and a maple bar.

Shortly after arriving at my shift, computers flicker back on and the students swarmed. I tend to intend to Write Something, but company time isn't my time and I suppose it's not fair to grump out on a poor student for interrupting a haibun about Concrete or some such thing.

Last night was my first night actually Hosting Hugo House's Works In Progress open mic. We ran it about the same way, save that after 9pm the time limit drops from 5 to 3 minutes and instead of playing a soothing A chord on an instrument of folky troubadors, I clear my throat all growly-like to let people know when they're finished. Some good readers last night and good energy. I thin people tipped Garth more than they did me.

Pics to follow, probably.

Flaying Babies

Piling up some rejection e-mails from places I'd like to be published in less because I read themm all the time and more because it'd be cool to say "I've been published in___________"

That said, hell or highwater, I'm compiling a new collection to send to various places and people, specifically with the intention of not self-publishing this time around. It's not that I'm "done" with Self-Publishing, but I wouldn't help footing the bill, booking gigs and whatnot. Already stacking up pieces; range from a few pieces I'm already-sorta-sick-of-reading-live to stuff written just the other day.
More on this as it develops, or not.

Toda at the Loft (from whence I write this) I helped a high schooler write a paper on A Modest Proposal. Saying that essay is still a high-water mark in satire is like commenting on the wetness of water, the greasiness of cheap pizza, the annoying irritation that are lapdogs.
But still-- you forget how dark it is until you're trying to work "making boots out of the skinned babies" into a rhetorical essay about exaggerated persona.