Dude, Totally Move to Columbia City

Across the street from the clean, clean counter where
you dig elbows into glossed oak surfaces, there is a closed
dive, lamented, serenaded by neighborhood historians,
glasses raised, you loved it, you knew it, you say
after one-- maybe three- pitchers of high life, shrunk
into corners by snarling old black men proclaiming

that you're like one of the uglier beatles.
just. look at that hair.

across the way, up the hill and a bus or three away,
on the dilapidated sidewalk outside the bar where
an acquaintance from high school sells cocaine to part
time art-schoolers, you smoke and smoke and buy t-shirts
and hot dogs and smoke and smoke and eat more hot dogs
and do not realize the taxis stop running, do not realize
the limits within the city's limits.

there are so many boxes holding old copies of the Stranger.
two weeks, a day, four months. as if no one reads hear any more.

past the place you always meant to buy a cheesesteak, but
really, who could expect you to, when the bike paths meant so many
swerved tires and knocked-elderlies. across the way, sometimes
you watch the sunrise, or set, and wonder when they'll foreclose
on the ethiopian coffeeshop, the hispanic church and the
laundromat you assume is a drug front, get a bar in that
plays Sufjan Stevens.

but the row is full of food. there are so many ways
to eat a drink. to fill a counter.

your girlfriend chastises the server for a lack of gluten free options.
after all, sweeping back her hair, we're not savages.

Starting With Intent to Finish

Start it with a poem about drinking. About a long, dark porter
and sly slow slurp. The real, hard, anger of salt.
Then go to your most detatched, your commentator newscast.
Don't get your hands dirty, wear clean gloves. Comment on the sun,
raying out over the hood of a dented buick. As you stand there with
a microphone in a suit your 17 year old self still protests, make
that buick glinting your goal.
aspire.
Talk it good so people forget all about the
drinking poem. Write the light so hard that you are
a tee-totaler, always were. Write yourself celibate
on forests that you camped under the day before
yesteryear, punctuate with a poem about acid rain.
Go righteous. Go fist pumping.
Then, write the sex poem-filthy and needed--
before writing the monsters out of the closet
and back under the bed where they belong.

_______________________________________________________

blogspot will probably wreak havoc with the format of this, but so goes. I wrote this on tuesday at the SPLAB meeting I facilitated on Writing Goals. This is as it was in the minute, and as a freewrite, I'm pretty happy with both how it feels and what I was "trying to say" about both the process and product of writing new poetry in the new year.

Recap in Eleven Sentences.

If I had the technology, the know-how, the patience, there'd be a graph with several arrows and a few would bounce straight along, a couple would shoot towards the top line-markers and the rest would drop right off.

The more I am blessed/burdened with the cars of others, the less I want one for myself, as a solo individual. Kids, family, these potential eventualities could dictate otherwise, but there's a certain yoke-around-the-neck about having a car, despite the obvious opportunities it affords. It is bad enough having a phone.

There were a lot of poems I meant to write.

There were a lot of albums I meant to hear.

The world does not seem to want us on it any more.

Currently, this day, this moment, I have a hard time picturing "fun" tonight; there's so much I have to do and only some of it have I any clue how. I tend to consistently resent the holidays for draining me of all financial, emotional and energy resources right before I'm supposed to really focus on goals that remain a good climb away.

There were a lot of movies I thought might be kind of nice to see, but knew for sure I wouldn't have the time or money.

All that said, I'm taking aim; it always takes longer than one thinks, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.

"Let's just try to get through Christmas."

an escalation of violence in several southeast neighborhoods

and you are big, ish, tall, ish,
lumber like something tough or clumsy.

but no fights since fourteen
or one joke-out-of-hand-with-your-cousin
that had to stop --
bartenders.

and there's nothing you've got that anyone
could fence for much,
and if it's all so co-ordinated
or just conveniently along every transit hub
you've lived in, well you are big, ish,
and your coat is torn and bad shoes and

you have a beard so
no reason to fuck with you

but somehow, an evening walk
just seems out of the question,
and you are big, ish, tall, ish, can
run

but if you wait too long, then it's too late
and you are fast, ish, but if you start
too soon, then chase becomes inevitable

and the cops post bulletins advising people
to walk shivering and terrified in groups of three
or more, bereft of books or money or music
or all things that made the transit
work as a second home and you are smart, ish,

but

growth/entropy/roath/centipede/statshots.

claustrophobia went well saturday. watch the videos here. Tomorrow I read at Northwest Playwrights Alliance's Literary Salon. Right now I am at NSCC, printing out some poem copies which I will doubtlessly just fucking wow audiences with. Friday I'm doing the same sort of thing, but at a giant Christmas Light Event where I used to work. Then the next day I am going to read at Elyse Brownell's (you can find her poetic works online or in links above) going away party.



I just deleted a whole bit I was going to post that was just going to read too much like, well, someone's personal blog. There is drinking for such things.

"There was a lone 'woo-oo' out there that sounded really weird."

*) waiting at Empire Espresso to hear from Marty, who will have heard from Vicky, about when to get the keys to the NEW PLACE IN RAINIER BEACH.

**) over the last couple of days, Not Drugs and I went up and pestered Jake Tucker in Vancouver, BC. Vancouver, population-wise, is slightly smaller than Seattle, but the whole vibe of it is a lot more "LOOK AT US. WE ARE VANCOUVER. WE ARE A BIG BIG CITY WITH LOTS OF TALLNESSES!"
This makes sense, I guess, since they are a lot closer to the top of the cultural food chain in Canada than Seattle is in the U.S.A., coming in somewhere after Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, etc. I dug the more metro-vibe, though I think it'd take longer to get accustomed to navigating the downtown; I'm perpetually used to everything ending at the water. Not there being a WHOLE 'NOTHER SIDE OF TOWN after the water (shutup, West Seattle.)
The National kicked ass, in a way that is consistent with The National. Which is to say, greater energy, more screaming (no joke), but still a sense of the serious, melancholy and ornate. The Alligator and Boxer tracks took me RIGHT BACK to Wales, which, in that dark, rainy time, is when I got into the band. Broken by Matt's jokes about penis-nicknames, which managed to not be as incongruous as it sounds.

***) I have all these ideas, but first, it is time for a Panini.