January I hear is a good time for art patronage. This will be the first of paid posts. If you’re hearing this, thank you for your money in advance, there’s more on the way. This month I will be focusing on my upcoming chapbook, The Second. I wrote this over the past 2 years following In Praise of Shadows. I’m excited to share it with you. I don’t really like reading poetry out loud in the spoken word way, I do like the performance aspect though, I’ve been practicing. I’ve got plenty of time on my head with the way I’m traveling these days. I won’t feed you the mood of the writing, rather I’ll let you experience it as I do to some degree. Something about reading aloud suspends the feeling of the poem in the space between hearing and speaking. I've experienced it as a listener, so this is my gift to you.
Some other details, I’ve pirated a playlist from ________. In doing some analytics, I pulled out all the musical references from the poems and made a song list. The whole thing runs 4 hours and some change. At the end of the month I’ll make it available along with the book. I make a lot of musical references in my writing and this is the first that I’ve put together. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. I’ve been reading a lot of _______ so I’ve been doubly inspired by the sonics. Music is all around me. I want to say peace to _______ the blues man from ______, I wish I got to work with you more. Now that I’ve done this once, maybe I’ll go back through my older writings and hear what's there.
I’m working on the visuals attached to this project for my upcoming collaboration with ________. It's been a project over a year in the making. I'm really excited about this one. I get this way and it's even more powerful because I have a little something in the tank emotionally and psychically. Physically I’m rebuilding. I’ve pulled myself all over and been pulled all over the past 12 months. Right now I’m considering a move to _____. With that there is an opportunity to do some things in my body again that I really care about and have needed to do just to maintain my practice moving forward. I’ve broken ___________________________________________________________________________________. There are a lot of physical things I have planned moving forward so I need to do some maintenance. I’ve already kind of done it with my _______. I’ve also been ______. I joked with a friend that I don’t know if I could do what I’m doing now ______________, I don’t really have any strong feelings on ________.
This month’s guest is __________. I won’t say who they are just yet. Recording has been going well. It’s the least exciting part of all of this to some degree so also the hardest part to maintain. I think around this time is when I often abandon a project like this. Writing it out helps keep me in the space of the work. I really do love it. Speaking it aloud is a kind of _________. Something we can share for the longer ends, something for me to remember when I would otherwise forget. I really don’t like the sound of my voice, it's something I have to get over at some point. These are the first steps as it were. Thank you for coming along.
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(The form of hard places)
If put next to hunger
When I can
I cannot
Slow
The ticking clocks
The women crying
Each promise
Every promise
The, when-you-don’t-have-to
The, you-do
Understood through anger
Raised voices
Curse words
Cursing
Violence
And vision
The distance
Where we are going
Went there and came back
Came back
Never returned
Laughing
Those people
I tear at my skin every day
So often trying to come
Closer
Close my eyes
Try to comeback and be again in a place worth remembering
Worth forgetting
Worth more than coming and going
For granted whispers
Smiles
Tears
That aren’t water
Or blood
Or jizzum
Becoming
The kind of lust life demands
In hands clasping so much of what could be
Believe
Believe everything
And it is as it is
Alive
In the worst of times
A pillow buzzing pressure
Sleepless
The watershed moment
You know
When it all begins to overflow
Or spill
Or breakthrough
The other side of the shoe
Soft
In soul
You see
You see
A not so veiled threat
A non apology
Praise
Recognition
An, I-told-you-so
A flex
Respect
The last laugh
Let me find out
The reinforcements
The blood stains of dead mosquitoes
On white walls
White guts
White wall tires
On black ice
In the wee hours
Ours
We
Another couple
Of days
And it is the morning
With all the trappings of the sun
More quiet than usual
The moon is a soft smile on a black face
Sharing the unsaid
Turn
On the phone at an hour ungodly
Time meaning less to a God
The God of small type
Gestures to a small device
Pleases them
Touches them as a lover
Reflects on their face
Surfaced in the tide
Bubbling
Muddy
Deliberate
Eyes like a crocodile
Aging less
In the endless unchange
As things did and do
However many millions
A dagger
Or each tooth
Smiling
Sour face
Not a flower
Or some other metaphor
The most beautiful thing I had ever seen I will say
As day clears to another day I have not forgotten
And that is enough
Shadows on a pair of chairs in conversation over how art can be a vehicle for reconstructing community
The empty city
Holding up your head
However many hours
Many days
Later
Or until
The untitled
Teeth in another night
Streaks of red
And blue
Vain
Thinking this is about anything other than being closer to one another
Comrade
In another life I call you
And in this one I call you
Like the last time I called you no one answered
And still waiting
Should I go home?
The concept of being in place
When all else fails
When all else fades
And the sidewalk ends
There is no place like
There is no place like
Clicking heels as said before
Another poem begins this way
With a return
But this is not that poem
The Sun God is much taller
Hands in all the pockets
A thousand arms
Coated in gold
All the things you were used to have dipped below the horizon
Dipped into another life
And in another life
A flash of darkness paints the sky
All the stars
Reflected through the night
The economics of beauty processed passion into collecting money
How it feels knowing that you choose wrong
Would take it back if you could
An emergency service
Wheels ground down to nubs
10 out of 10 officers agreeing I look like a young Marvin Gaye
The young Sisyphus
A man too big for his britches
A heart attack man
This skeleton dancing in the light of blue and whites
Red all over and still making you sweat
Controlled heartbreak
The give up upon them
Walking away
Madness
Taking tears with tea
Asymmetry in power
Sometimes I think I am bigger than the gun in my face
Or the water around my ankles
The noose around my neck
Making a run for it
All the feet in the world
The money in my bank account
Bail money
Black specter
Sanctuary
A city mounted on stilts
Stilted laughter
Knowing
We don’t have much
But can always make more
In the grand scheme of things
Unable to say the word home in over a decade
Disagreeing over linguistics
The sum of parts
Taking our bodies to go
Early fat
Parts of the whole
The sweetest thing
You too will wander the earth
Reek of flowers and salt
Distressed
We sit in the back of a taxi
Science not failing
Distrusted
Gun shy
Boy looking
Fuller
You know
You know you know
And nobody had to tell you
Told you otherwise
Confusing the point
Counter point
Lost in our own thoughts
A kind of annunciation
Therefore I am a revolutionary
The performative aspect of light
The people watch as you spray our names over the walled city
Everyone above ground
Under the influence of a cemetery
Peeling yellow paint
An irresistible thing
Flavored glass
A bigger knife
The shadow
The monarch's retreat
Resting bitch faced
Vibrating orange wings
Dry heat
A lifetime avoiding traffic
Pale yellow hood
A crutch
Legs open
A familiar taking of space
The rose patch
The myth of strawberries
Palms hanging low
A pocket filled
Cropping good will
Peace on earth
A man camouflaged in numbers shouts
There is gum on your shoes
Why be something you are not
Like a rosary
Not a rosary
Right now
The dizzying array
Sucked teeth
Silk
Picking over the table
Sharp eyes
Glistening
Inhaling on a cigarette and moving a little further down the street
Whistling
Brake lights
A piece of all men looks toward this game called survival in the end
Biting into a kind of absurdity
Particles
Suspension
Disbelief
The not-here-but-there
A banana in the winter state
A bigger boat
Overtaking the tide
On the banks of the mighty river
To be specific
Or limit this to a place
A twist of her hands on the wheel
Grasping life
Five points
Incising
An incision
Cut
Brutality
Honesty
And sincere
Happiness is much more than a warm gun
For instance
A loaded baked potato
Fixing a small problem
Or a large one
In transit through the universe
Multiple points of light in the brain
The refrain
Repeating
Bell
Passing and passing
Without pause
Waves
It is still
Dark
A bit of magic or otherwise
The net worked itself open
Releasing to the sea every fish
Unravelling
Revelry
From a pain
Structured
Earth
The refrain
Or why not
Thinking in a lifetime we will switch places
Setting fire
And leaving
Another poem as the numbers add up
Taken together
Like a phrase
Strings
Along the way
A song
Plucked
Hairs standing
Still tangled up
The city's smoke
Impasse
Passionate
Scenes
Played out on the asphalt
In parks
Behind closed doors
All I hear is violence
All I see
Breathe
Is perfumed with the missing notes
With the unfulfilled promises of Spring still in Winter
With exhaust and silence
Silence becoming traffic
Traffic becoming sirens
Sirens becoming bird song
Of a height
A flight
And fall
The all of things
Complete
You move towards where the sun sinks
And laugh at what we used to be
And always are
And will be again
Rarely is the the world shaped to our liking
Crunching
Predawn
The Queen's hotel
Summer
Licking and purring
Eyes reflecting the little light
Every time the sun comes up
Rubbing my face
Where did the night go?
Down the street
Into a basket
A case of beer on Sunday
A bottle of whiskey on Monday
Tuesday stakes
Higher
Always higher
Get higher baby
The silhouetted thing against bedroom windows
Against bedroom curtains
Against green and white
Orange mold
Slime
Breaking ritual
As the slow creep eats what was left of yesterday
All the money in the world and your ass ain’t cash
Walking now
Faster than an automobile
The autonomous vehicle
A clown
Possessing the ways of a corkscrew
A pocket full of trash
When the revolution comes
Like how many billionaires do I have to kill to teleport
Or get a free wifi signal
Or a cell phone plan
Another tax on motherfuckers
Land rich and mineral wealth
Dark skin and good health
A reminder Hell is not hot
There are no palm trees in this place
A man pitching softballs at the ocean
A boat on fire
A black cat
And more things that speak to the world as it is
Always an ending
As we have begun before
Blood pooling from a man's head
The red touching concrete
Becoming earth
A place where flowers spread
Over the ground
Rolling
Waves of black
Tar
Poured
Thick
Just us in the room
Looking at each other
The wilted starch of fresh laundry
Wrapping skin in gauze
Plastic
Rubber
Rubbing wax into the wound
A mold of you
Shown
To the world
This is where we rest
Tired of the other part
A construct
Contract
Voided
Writing the city
Endless
As it stretches past the curve of the earth
A sea of wildflowers
Blooming out of season
But not out of time
Out of time
As there never was
A siren's wail filling my ears
And the smell of perfume like a melody
The song familiar
Yet foreign
Bodies
As we are
One and the same
More shadows
And static
And other
Late passing resolution
To redefine success
A new year
Everyday
Passes me
Too
One more little voice
The stream
A slippery stone
Treading water
Water so violent it road grades
Lies ahead
The outro
The limits of a victory
A new jacket slightly worn
Patching the right places
I'm tired
The black of my eyes bigger behind my glasses
Bigger in my hands
Something beaten
Always sharp
Binging
The want to be present
Omnibus
Taking the place for granted
Taking my presence for granted
Always here
Always her
Always them
We share a life even when missing
Like a phantom limb but not
Unattached
With open arms
With open hands
A release
As love can be
The staples in a head wound
The sugar in a gas tanks
Or in concrete
To make the thing
Less itself and more
A sight that it is all for not
Sore eyes and not
Dry spells and not
Empty words
The lot where all the cars sit parked
Idling
For a life on the road
Engines oiled
Collecting
Dust off the tarmac forming small tornados
The devils we make of it all up in the air
Like it wasn't even there to begin with
Like it won't move you
Make you do stupid things
Say things like I trust you
I love you
Don’t worry
The approaching maelstrom of Spring
The body count
Checking off the list
Hiding under the covers
Locking the doors
Pulling the curtains back
Walking on sunshine
Asking yourself
Don’t it feel good?