garrett sherwood writes

february 13

2012-02-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

I think and think and think,
I've thought myself out of happiness one million time,
but never once into it

-jonathan safran foer

I've been losing weight this week.
heavy pieces of can't-give-ups and salty heart pictures of not-this-not-now-not-anymore

I think and think and think,
and I dream and dream and dream.

tomorrow is shouting day

to the girl who loves me only in my dreams

2012-02-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

I still hope you come back again tonight

though it took me forty-seven minutes
to pick up the pieces this morning

forty-seven reasons why I'm no crowbar
and you're no lock pick

yet I still pull the pins from the door frame
and stretch a landing pad across the window sill

I'm sleeping now

come back to me

this right is not always

2012-01-31T23:40:00.000-08:00

sweet

tell me where those knuckles have been

unclench them for me

write me letters that end in exclamation points

show me how to catch rain

open mouthed and hands reaching

chase me under the stadium bleachers

let me take you to the highest rooftop in this town

tell me why you have a favorite star

I’ll tell you why I call every mountain mine

get your fingers up underneath my wrists

show me pictures of old russian women

the ones with handprints deep in their wrinkles

I’ll say it makes me feel like God

drive with me to mexico

when we see we’re starting to fall

help me remember my dream last night

tell me it means we’re dying

tell me the last time you cried for no reason

draw me pictures of your favorite color

drink water like it was made of diamonds

break fasts like a lumberjack

steal your hips from the hanged crescent moon

read my stories off of my neck veins

I’ll write my poems along your backbone

I’ll write my name along your backbone

tell me you would love me forever

if only you knew how

I’ll say samesies

call me a liar

but don’t mean it

the bug catcher

2012-01-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

1. She
entered me not through the top
or the hip
but around and around and around
so many times around
I did not see through her
until that night my toes were frozen
to my brake pedal in Bend, Oregon
sleeping off six months

that night I dreamt of
collapsible bird cages

that night I dreamt of
scraping paint-on wood grain off
of photosinister pulpits
where people dressed as mail-men
gave my body away
for 37 cent stamps and a pack of
cigarettes hard and fuzzy
special price cause I already
dug my bones
half way to her

when she went lookin

2. She found
inside of me
flower-pot shape heart-picks
along the back walls
behind the racing striped camera boxes
pointing crisscrossed towards
the cardboard corneas in the front
with a heavy ply of floor board
rattle snares across the two
lines of sight intentionally
laid bare except for the
red encrusted curtains that were
only visible in the sun
hanging parallel but passive
against the wolf trap stencils
to the right
and the burlap bag
full of starter pistols
to the left

that was all it took

3. She found me
in her kitchen cupboard
straddling the vinegar
and the spice rack

she told me she loved me
as I drove away the next day
but we both knew that
you love the butterfly
not the bug catcher

she buried my bones
for a 37 cent stamp
and a Polaroid

she said it was of me
but I saw from a distance
that it was a tree lightninbolt
split in half

that night I dreamt
of tilting banana trees
and broken brake lights

that night I dreamt
of holy cork-board finger paintings
and hands I just couldn’t get clean

the sun also rises

2012-01-29T00:55:00.000-08:00

this is also the name of a book by Ernest Hemingway which I read this week. I found this book to be more thought-provoking and emotionally stirring than any of his other books that I've read, especially the ending (despite the fact that no one dies). it's been on my mind heavy the past few days. this little journal entry is not about the book or the story, or related in any specific way, but just a continuance of the theme and feelings that I carried from the book.

I never think too much about dust.
Cause then I wonder
what people are in my mouth
and my nose.

Little (tiny) deaths are not in everything
not if that's all there is
that and pretty thoughts
and what could have been.

I can begin to see why people drink so much.

Call yourself a puffer fish
and maybe people won't pick so hard
at the crusty forget-me-nots
along your back.
If you're already full of air
of dust
of dead people and dead lovers

if no one wants to put a hole through you
because they're waiting for someone else to.

I can begin to see why so many people
become bull fighters.

behind the downward eye

2012-01-24T23:02:00.000-08:00

a fantasy

I told her
yes, drop on by

we tussle twisted fingers
along the top of the couch
it reminds me of canopies and cradles
the way this couch is being undervalued

a band plays in the TV box

I fixed the clicker the other day
dead batteries
I took the ones from the alarm clock

but I don't tell her that

it was reminding me of how often
these last four months
I wanted to tell her I missed her

we haven't spoken in four months

I change the channel

she mentions how tired I look
I say
it's been a weird day

I think
at least I can sleep in tomorrow

I try to tell her with my mind
that I wish she would sit closer to me

and then she does

what you did today (little fire)

2012-01-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

if I were on fire
would you beat me until the flames were put out?

let me burn burn
burn for you

chemical blood

2012-01-17T22:24:00.000-08:00

1. All these hands are tree trunks
chest tubes and shoulder valves.

2. There is more to this place
than Marco Polo.
Though I haven’t learned who is who
I’m memorizing how everyone sleeps
this or that bad dream
at a time.

I see them in the hallways
buckets of scar tissue
beneath their eyelids

I make tallies
brow broken bodies and artificial limbs

except for when my pockets are too full of marbles.

Because then all I can think about is marbles.

Also boots that would look good in the rain.

I wonder how all these people
would feel about me if it were raining.
Perhaps they would ask me
if I’ve ever been in love.
I would tell them my name
like a puzzle
and see how long it takes them
to fix me.

3. There is a church of chainsaw silence
at the end of the dinner table.
At the the other end is a house in the round
with the butterfly doors.
In between these there is nothing but
bee sting tongues and rabid dog lips.
And plastic depositions.

This is what I mean by
stop and go motion.

I drink to horses
and to kites shaped like biplanes.
I drink to chalkboards
with hand prints of every size
that are surprisingly hard to wash away.

I drink to the way that feels.

I tell the mismatched flashbulbs
what I dreamed of the night before
using my fork and my knife
for dramatic effect.

There is already enough chemical blood
and fire spit sweat
between the house and the church
that I don’t bother asking them
what they dream of.

I figure it’s either too much to hear
or not enough to hold on to.

I crack the window.
Then we all smile.

I assume we are all thinking about
window-broken summers

or perhaps the way that screen doors smell.

4. There are initials in your concrete bones.
My initials.
It is my system of backseat sainthood.

It has to do with film strips
and photo booths
strobe lights and fish hooks.

Stop and go motion.

I figure if I am written
along the cracks of your body
that there will be enough breaking
for the both of us.

Between my steel breast plate
and flashbang arteries
and your smoke stack fingers
and diamond mine palms

all we would need is that
extra bit of tongue spiral cartilage
around our spines
to keep us upright

and we would call it a day

and a night

and a day.

Then I would ask you what you were dreaming about.

5. All these hands are tree trunks
spy-novel romance and bread crumbs.

corruptible

2012-01-16T23:25:00.000-08:00

if you were looking down on me right now

I'd be so stretched out from all the things
I have to hide

my legs in bubble gum stretch swivels
around my butterfly body

my hands on the corners of this room
my elbows crooked around my bed posts

my yoga mat become an art studio
I would break it to pieces

my pillow where my ear folds itself
hear my heart
I would break it to pieces

my body
my body
my body

an art studio

be careful how you say those words
I'd rather nobody saw me naked

you cannot eat poems

2012-01-12T23:40:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if this is a good poem. probably not.

But it has been in my mind for a while to do something like this. This idea started when I saw a certain poet in Berkeley whom I admire. Most of his poems have a certain social narrative provoking emotional responses about how much this world is flawed and how we should all be doing more to fix it. In particular one of his poems was on this point and was extremely motivating. However he ends this poem with something along the lines of 'so get up and write a poem about it'. It was my friend Ryan who pointed out the contradiction of this. As if poems were the way to solve the world's problems or that by writing poetry about those problems I would somehow be elevated out of the ignorant and therefore guiltless.

I have come to the conclusion that this is not the case, and instead I believe that poets, even the socially-conscious ones, are just slightly more interesting forms of cowards. And that includes myself.

I had originally thought that this might turn out a rage-filled rant, but instead it turned into a more introspective self-indictment. That is why the poem takes a turn half-way through from social problems to more love-related problems, since I found that my cowardice also extended to that part of my life and my poetry.

Feel free to discuss.

you are not going to like this

this isn’t going to cook in old pans
inside of bamboo huts with ten hungry eyes looking on
this isn’t going to grow from tired fields
and make fortunes from dirty hands
without washing good ground
out to sea

this poem will not even save
one
of the 25,000 people who will starve to death today

this is not food

this isn’t going to take to the streets
break fire-hose brigades with hunger strikes
it won’t separate pacifists from humanists
people from politics
missionaries from media

this isn’t going to scrape the blood
off of clay classroom walls
where skeletons
are still gripping onto each other’s last
shhhh it’s going to be alright

this isn’t going to hold babies
that are only a shade of love’s difference
between God’s greatest miracles
and quickly forgotten ghosts

it will not learn to speak Setswana or Somali
or Haitian Creole
just enough to say
child, you don’t have to cry today

this does not replace the machete
or the machine gun
it does not replace the chainsaw
or the harpoon

this is not love

and so it isn’t going to break bits of silence
with more than just my heart beat

this is not going to open my mouth
this is not going to bring your ears
within breathing distance

this is not apologies or
forgiveness
or gut-punchy romance

this isn’t going to pull at your bottom lip
or tease at the hem of your dress
just above your knee
this isn’t going to take you
to the lake shore
love your ankles
and your collarbones

this isn’t going to build our bodies
into the shrine we we’ve been asking for
this isn’t going to be pictures
above the fireplace
or the steam coming from the floor

this is not me

you cannot kiss this poem
you cannot make these words feel
you
you unbreakable across my mind you

this will not save anybody

if I were not such a coward
(all the things I could do with my hands)
I would never bother writing another word

in this book

2012-01-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

Am I a man who pours lonely from cereal boxes?

I ain't no prize darlin

I'd rather crunch your hips between my teeth
and still leave room between my cheeks
for what you'd call dancers' sweat

nineteen-fifty-eight is the only time lately
that seems to know what I'm sayin
nineteen-fifty-eight is the only breach of confidentiality
I'm going to make in this poem

because them boys

them boys knew how to dream
and I wish I knew how like they knew how

without wrists and fingertips
but with scream sing-songs and matching outfits

they made their women sound like wine-glasses

they beat their guitars and their guitars beat back to them

my love
I could not give you up for Portland
or for black and white youtube videos
or for books about the sun

but what kind of man pours lonely from cereal boxes?

I can't even tell you about all this

so there's really nothing here to say

sorry this won't make sense

if I didn't have holes in all my pockets

2012-01-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

this is not intended to be about anyone in particular. more like a non-specific description of a fantasy-land.

and if you really believe that, then you will probably note how self-indulgent this all is.

cheers.

we could dance together.
the way they do in the movies.
like humming birds were flying out of our eyes
and our chests.
like we both knew something
from the way our hips kept gliding
back and forth
to find each other.

we could both get a big stupid smile on our face
when we saw one of those things
memory lovestroked just for us
maybe not something so overtly crushing
but precious still for the piece of our love story
it would open music boxed in our brains.
maybe it could be haystacks or six-string banjos
or apples cut sideways so you can see the star
I don’t know.

we could make believe
that every night was the night
before the radio was invented
and that the jazz spinning off the record player
would be ours and only ours
but only for twelve more hours
and that’s all the excuse we would need
to let the walls hear our bones
and the ringing of our bodies
counting down to tomorrow.

I could find out if there really is a difference
between loving someone
and dreaming about loving someone
because one of those definitely feels more real than the other
but it might not be the one you’d expect.
in my dreams there is no amount of broken bits of spine
that could keep me from forgetting
everything
everything everywhere
except the way she looked that night
when she began to sit just a little bit closer to me.

we could both make peace offerings every day
not for any tongue lashed back bites
but for every bit of life that stuttered wingless
in our hands
before we figured out what Etta James
was singin about all this time
love
at last
the big love

I could make sketches of us
on brightly colored construction paper
with long-worded titles.
leave you love letters
on the steamed up bathroom mirror
after each shower.
we could make pinatas from the wanted section
of sunday morning’s newspaper.
make pilgrimages to the spots
where we stole each other’s glances.
inscribe our initials into every bed post and oak tree
we ever met

I could make it easier.
like the way a sunrise comes from red slices
to big burning waltz on the skyline
in the moment just before you close your eyes
so too
we could jump from young wanderlovers
with fingers in each other’s hair
to gray whisperers of sweet nothings
into one another’s hearing aid filled ears
all in the moment just before we close our eyes.

the problem with white people is that they all look alike

2011-12-25T23:03:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas. Here's a poem about racism.

Also, since I am not currently on the facebook, and cannot figure out twitter, if you like the poem, feel free to give the old sharesy.

I was in the 9th grade when I was first informed
that I was in fact a racist.

I sat next to a girl named Minori in my biology class.
Minori was smart
which is why when she explained to me
that due to my particular socioeconomic status
as well what version of God
my family prayed to
that I undeniably hated black people,
she did so eloquently.

But I denied it.
I did my very best to match her tics
with my own tac-toe tongue retort

I’m pretty sure I don’t hate black people.

Yes you do.
Your parents taught you to
just as their parents taught them.

I let my mouth hang open
as she filled the empty space with her own
Minori-sized trump card:

You’re a racist
they’ve just brainwashed you into thinking you’re not.

I learned that day that the only thing worse
than being a racist
was being a secret racist
the kind that is so secret
that even the racist doesn’t know
how secretly racist he is
he just goes on each ignorant day
thinking that everyone is the same
when in fact his soul spews silent bigoted

that was me, 15 years old,
appalled that somewhere deep inside
I wasn’t so appalled
that somewhere even deeper inside
I was hating people just because of their skin.

What would all my black friends think?
I thought.
It was too bad I hated them
because I like them so very much.

As I walked home from school that day
I started to wonder
if it was only black people I hated
or maybe there were more
since I didn’t know about them
there could be a lot of different people
that I secretly hated.

Maybe I hated
those fast-food drive-through operators
who always ask you how you’re doin today
but you can tell through the crackly-ass speaker
that they don’t really care.

Maybe I hated
soccer moms
and also anyone who drives a minivan
because it reminds me of soccer moms.

Maybe I hated
people who treat dogs and cats
like human beings
just as much as I hated
human beings who treat dogs and cats
as disposable accessories to people.

Maybe I hated
the gun-touters and the freedom-touters
and the ones who tout guns
as symbols of freedom
and the ones who tout freedom
as being accomplished by guns.

Maybe I hated
fat people,
this was a particularly troublesome notion
as both my parents happened to be overweight,
they being the ones
who built my body into this hate machine
but subsequently brainwashed me
with ideas like
God loves everyone the same

Then I wondered
if maybe I hated white people.
This stopped me right where I stood
my jaw unhinged again
as the annals of history opened up to me
a truth where quite obviously
white people had been
and continue to be the cause
of most of the world’s problems
and it actually made sense
that I should hate them
at least a little bit,

but then of course where
would I put my skin?

Maybe under my knees,
when I ask God
to see me bloody.

Cause we all get bloody sometimes.

december 23

2011-12-23T23:57:00.000-08:00

chest tubes and fish hooks

yesterday I took a day trip from the 'no' 2 hours north to the slightly less 'no'.
trying not to write so much on what I'm trying to escape (that would be a bit self-defeatist, not to mention massively contradictory), instead write on what I'm escaping to.
if only all escapes were supersized houses and fiery redheads with word-turning families.

it's almost Christmas. that's coming weird out of my mouth.
this might rank right along with my famous car crash extravaganza for my bleakest Christmas.
it feels like every one here is standin on each other's shoe laces and we are all trying to jump but just at slightly different times.
we can't time it right.

and still, chest tubes and fish hooks
and chemo-therapy

there's a word to describe all this
but I haven't found it yet

december 11

2011-12-19T14:54:00.000-08:00

my little brother's wedding

friday night I came to town with road trip still on my breath. it didn't take long to get swept up into it though. there was some wholesome representation of a bachelor party in which we went to s trampoline amusement place. I felt stifled by the long day and the realization that despite my girthy 25 years of age almost all the other patrons there were less than half of that. I did enjoy watching my 8 year old nephew put barbaric hootspah on dodgeballs in a game think they entitled 'a demonstration on gangles; dodge ball on trampolines'.

the next day, the wedding. I wore my fancy pants. pants whose existence I could only describe to my mother as being birthed from my own creative womb, somehow without my awares, but then presenting themselves on a rack vintage thrift shop in fresno last summer. they are a patchwork of green and blue corduroy patches as well as patches of green and blue plaid. I put on my favorite tie, the one with the Thai Buddha on it, and my only dress jacket; tan tweed with leather elbow patches only the sleeves are a bit too short so the patches run somewhere closer to my tricep area.

the ceremony itself was nice, rather smooth I suppose, with little entertainment value except for my mother's reactionary faces to the unfamiliar catholic traditions and my 3 year old nieces interpretation of a flower-child. also, the priest reminded of a character from an adam sandler movie. the guy who was the principal of the school but had a secret double life as a professional wrestler. there was some time between the wedding and the reception which I spent with my brother and his girlfriend, I took them to that same vintage store from whence my pants were birthed.

the reception was also very nice, albeit somewhat boring for a cynic like me. mostly I stayed seated and mused at the bald/mullet combo of the photographer and wondered if I should think it strange to hear katy perry songs at a wedding party. despite being one of the few single adult males there I once again began to feel old, not necessarily older, but old, like an old peach with the beginnings of what looks to be an inevitable decline into moldiness.
anyway, that's my thing.

congrats to the happy couple.

continued lessons on subterranean healthy lifestyles

2011-12-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

here's to the next chapter
this is called continued lessons on subterranean healthy lifestyles.

1. I've fallen gut first a few times too often into unhealthy writing.
this is the apex and practical application of all that is to follow here.
there is a difference between healthy creative deepsoul release and emotion mongering(which leads to sentiment dumping (bleh)), which is highly tempting due to the convenience of facility with which one can simply scribe something like f@*k you b#tch.
however this lapse into absolutist vomit is, as Ernest Dimnet says, 'highly productive of thought-hindering insincerity'.
emotions are complicated, as are people, as are facts.
all of these are also almost always incomplete.
and that's okay..

2. to produce healthy writing I suppose I should re-attempt some semblance of healthy living.
the road has done some interesting things to me.
on the obvious, get back to super yoga-isms.
want to know a secret? I eat a lot of vegetable soup. also, it's a gluten free life, starting now.
more than that, I need schedule.
subterranean yes, but I'm also a grown-ass man.
I'm coming off of productive; better to stay near productive if at all possible. scheduling sleep is the most tricky part of it, as the insomniac's frustration can be an excellent stew for both good and evil. but I'm gonna get me my 7:30 AM brainstorms one way or another.

3. in the pocket. healthy mind.
I admit that I still spend way too much time with my hands around the throats of old ghosts
and talking myself out of ripping out the first 100 pages of this here journal.
it's a mix of chemical dependency on answer-finding
and the desire for the sterilizing effect of forgetting things.
this is obviously a warfare of compulsions, and is what makes my mind the sick man of my soul.
there are perhaps two ways to begin to remedy this:

first, the Ip Man method- machine gun punches to the clerical errors I call memories.
second, the wheelbarrow William Faulkner method- let it swell so heavy in my belly til it drives every blood bruised jot of the pen into one elaborate and final expulsion of guilt and self-defiance.
either way it's a healing thing.

vagabonding word hurlers part 3

2011-12-14T00:50:00.000-08:00

this is late in it's coming. this is for two reasons. firstly, utter laziness as it laid waste to me near the end of the road trip. secondly, I began to be more introspective in my journal entries which, as per usual, led to self-involved bitchiness. so here is a somewhat condensed retelling of my time in seattle and san francisco in my so-called hunt for literariness.

day 13

seattle.
staying with my friend who I wish, more than any other, was my brother.

went to the slam, just to witness this time. having breathed in portland, I expected more of that, just steroided. but seattle poetry had ice in its blood. that room felt damp.
while I recognize it's possible I need only to sink my teeth farther into it, I see poets who deserve something more.

day 15

I finished two poems, probably the two poems most difficult for me to share to this date. they touch hard. both of them. in different ways.
threw em up on the blog anyway, afraid if I didnt what that would mean. but giving someone so much of this soul in these two took something from me.

stormed another open mic the other night. this one was saddled with old riders/writers. a different thing for me. monuments of poetry people. I was quite happy to be a part of that. even sold a couple books.

outside seattle is doing an odd thing to me. making me miss outside chicago. my friend here lived an unusually parallel life to mine. every park, restaurant, even occasional dentist office has a history personal to him. that is what it means to grow up somewhere. it makes me miss growing up somewhere.

day 16

heavy dreams last night.
when I dream heavy all my body tenses and contracts. it stresses me out. I wake feeling worn through pretty damn thin.
today I'm marking myself at two thirds full of holiness and looking for the last piece.
however, I'm wondering if I'm happy as I've been telling myself.
I've been basically on the road since June. I'm worn pretty damn thin

day 18

rattlesnake ridge
the northwest wins.
the trail had been laid out for us with one of my favorite things. fresh snow.
it's like distant firecrackers the last few fourth of july pops were on the mountain.
the mountains were perfect for us.

day 23

if you had to quagmire somebody, who would it be?
this paper is getting stale

day 24

I read 'as a man thinketh'
it makes me consider the days in which I stole all my ticklishness from myself with mind exercises of the most terrifying nature.

at this point in my journal I proceeded into a 4 page self-indulgent treatise on the nature of thoughts and circumstances and the tranquilizer of happy thinking. as it is in no way poetic, I'm keeping it for myself.

day 25

seattle poetry slam
I was all-time anxious.
I had this new poem and it felt like a stove in my belly.
hot heavy nervous.
it was a night of superinflation as far as scores go. I pulled down my first perfect score with Science. and rolled on to win the second round with punch holes.
the third round was my new one, the things I would tell him. I botched it, but held together okay. in the end I missed first place my a tenth of a point. the winner, justin hearns, was quite easily the best poet I've ever competed against.

funny how it kind of feels good to lose to someone so talented.

my reflection is this: I'm almost there.
two second place finishes tell me I can compete with anyone, but I need to own the damn room.

that was my last day in seattle, we then spent a week in san francisco. there are journal entries on the matter, but they are incoherent bemoanings of the loneliness I've lately been feeling. I planned to do two slams there, neither of them worked out, nor did the show I was planned to have on the Stanford campus. instead I spent most of my free time recording an album with Jon and Ryan.

and with that my road trip pittered out to a grind, then a halt, then a stumble.

the things I would tell him

2011-11-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

I. the stagecoach

there was one day I remember
when the ghosts didn’t bother me so very much
and I was nice to everyone
and everyone was nice to me

I wish my father had met me on that day

most mornings there are invisible people
holding love thickwristed over me
laying blows into the ribcage storage
where everything that has been made desert
is put away

these are usually the type of days
in which my father meets me

he combs back my head long hair
he picks two nice things
to say about my face
and one thing I could work on
about my back
how to keep it as close to being straight
as I can

he spares me from absolutes
always at first
I wonder what he thinks he’s saving me from

but today is not one of those days
today I’ve armed myself to meet him
I have a stagecoach
full of letters I’ve written to him
it’s been readied by the light of a colt revolver
with a team of slow witted but sturdy horses
that know me by the sound of my voice

I’m riding shotgun
not driving
because I know my father is the type
that appreciates the unheralded one

besides
he always dreams in terms of cowboys

II. the letters

the letters would be all the justincase things
that I would tell him
as in

dear dad
just in case I lose an arm
wrestling bears in the Yukon

dear dad
just in case the hollows of my fortune cookies
break open fortuneless from here on out

dear dad
just in case all these smart phones get way too smart
and we get way too lazy to talk anymore

just in case
I was right about what makes good people good
and bad people bad

just in case
I was wrong

just in case
the rapture happens and we end up on different sides
of the great white lie

just in case
you weren’t the man I thought you were

just in case
you’re more a man than I’ll ever be

just in case
all you’re left to remember me by
are the phony smiles and stupid haircuts
on walls of outdated family portraits

just in case
you’ll one day be proud of me

just in case
I one day have a son who reminds me of you

just in case
my beard grows so big
you won’t be able to think of me as a boy anymore

just in case
you find out I’ve secretly been voting democrat
all these years

just in case
you find out I don’t vote at all

just in case
you weren’t able to pull me
from the river in time

just in case
the music takes me

just in case
the doctors one day determine
that it was that headfirst fall
when I was three years old
that made me who I am

just in case
I don’t ever see you again

just in case
your surgery doesn’t go so well

just in case
you’re gone before I get home for Christmas

just in case
it’s all over
all of it

every word
even love

just in case
there’s no such thing

just in case
you were too busy paying bills and buying presents
to be my father

just in case
I was too busy chasing dreams and fighting ghosts
to be your son

just in case
I find the right words
at the greatest moment for speaking words
when both our theme songs
are pouring out in buckets
just like in the movies
but still say nothing

III. the things

oh the things I would tell that man

even on waves of so very much want
these things fill me up to my hands
up my almost straight back
but they never reach my mouth

I suppose I get that from him

for keeps

2011-11-18T22:57:00.000-08:00

something important just happened
and I want to be sure I don’t forget it

but, just as my journal entry today
began by referring to you as her
only by the end
painting every pronoun
in second person funeral pyres
with your name printed heavy on my lips

every line becoming a letter to you
yes you

I should tell you,
I’m hoping you don’t forget it either

you sat in my corner
and I’m pretty sure you knew it was mine
it was draped in red plaid
broken zippered sleeping bags
and stacks of books by dead poets
propping up my pillow

you should know
it was not my plan to pull you so close to me
it was not my plan to touch your hand
that way
as if there were heartsecrets embedded in your palm lines
as if there was some giant sized prize
for knowing what your fingers felt like
as if all the days I’d lived and died
had been numbered and all of them
counting down to this

my heart rolled up
into both my hands
the space where my heart used to be
in my chest
began to swell with fissures of hot wet regret
for each breath I’d ever spent
not begging you to come closer

so I put one arm around you
then I put both
I pulled you closer

I felt you pulse

keep up with this

it was just a boneshake of hesitation
a shiver and a single inhalation alone
of hoping for something biggersaint special

I was hoping that you’d feel
like you were pulling brand new strands of spine
from your back
but that there would never be sufficient back bone
to ever feel brave enough for when I finally let you go

I was hoping that you’d feel
like a shiny white raingutter
swallowing water spouts from the sky whole
letting the raindrops rinse the dust
from your too often closed eyelids
washing twigs down your arms
across your wrists
and forever off your naked finger tips

I was hoping you’d feel
like carving canyons from the carpet
through my breastplate
like drawing ghosts from the bottom of my chest
with each breath
not thinking you could ever get enough of it
like the Morse code in your wrists
would be blaring big fast SOS
too many times to even call it
again and again

I was hoping you’d feel
like making hand-painted ceramic plates
stacks and stacks and stacks of ‘em
each one made with a different stick figure representation
of a day-dreamed moment
in which I made you feel light

I was hoping that you’d feel light
untroubled uncomplicated

that way, when I touched your hand for the very first time
there on that pillow of dead poets
we could both say at precisely the same moment

yeah, that’s the stuff

but instead I just mumbled quietly to myself
something about destiny and bad timing

I’m not sure if you heard me

but I knew
I knew from the instant
your pulse wasn’t so electric
between my funeral pyre arms
it wasn’t me
who should be asking you to
keep up with this

you should know
that in an effort to be fully accountable
for all things that I am
not
to you
I decided right then

I won’t be touching you again
I won’t be pulling you in so close
I won’t be fishing for my backbone
or burning holes through my breastplate
for you again

just
don’t you go and forget
what my corner looks like

cause I felt that

vagabonding word hurlers, part 2

2011-11-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

day 6

monday night we went to an open mic built in the dimensions of everything I could ever hope for.
Portland poets. I was wishin that that was my home and whose were all my friends.
one poet in particular fascinates me. he has this wonderful fu manchu thing goin on, I met him when he MC'd the poetry slam on sunday night. at first he put off the fog of jackassery that most slam MCs do; usually because they must. however, when I met this man and spoke with him it was instantly apparent that he wore his heart in his eyes as much, or perhaps more so than anyone I've ever met. It was a sincerity and a humility, so real that I feel I can't even elaborate on any further.

we made our way to lincoln city. I'm sleeping in the poets' room in a beach house courtesy of people I wish were my own grandparents.
the ocean hums while I pray and prays while I sleep.
we are having ourselves a writing day. essentially singing quietly to myself and scratching down my aburdities.
yes.

day 8

being road bound and vagabonded is no supposed to be so easy.
we ended up extending our stay in lincoln city, being so intoxicated with the view, the smell, and with our hosts the jacksons.
there was a sunset last night that defied words like 'blood' and 'red' and simply sat narrow on top of all my superlatives. as similar feeling I felt as that in montana in july; that I can't recall being good enough to deserve this.

jack. thank the Lord for people like jack. 60 years my senior but would probably end up my best friend if I stick around much longer. and I would be more than okay with that. with each sentence he sincerely, if not deliberately, draws life from a boyishness Tennessee farm as well as a military man as well as a poet. he gives me vicarious looks and fills me with the kind of praise that no one else in the world could give.

I see a life here in oregon for me. whether it's in 2 months or 40 years; this place feels more like home than any other I've known of to this point.

day 10

occupy portland. a countdown.
the jungle has teeth. so does the fish tank.

we meandered through tension and anxious souls. even the cops were bouncing.
the mayor had given an eviction notice that was about to expire at midnight. but they had no intention of obedience. in front of our very eyes we saw the crowd swell from a few hundred to nearly 5000. a bike gang swirled round the park. there were witness sections (where we mostly stayed) across the street on the courthouse steps that numbered near a thousand as well.

every one thinking something was going to happen at mid night.
it did not.
at least not what was expected. a new years type countdown to anticlimactic.
I was in the somberest of moods, not because what didn't happen, but because the way my mind was being trampled upon by old notions.
everything felt heavy, even the rain.
and I didn't want to trivialize any of it. not these people. not that passion.
I was kept wondering if perhaps the other people were missing the point. or if I was missing the point. or if everyone was missing the point. I'm not sure. I did know that I didn't want to be no tourist.

most of the observers, including my immediate company, might remember this night for what did not happen. but it is important to recognize what did happen.
the cops backed down. no one was hurt. the message heard louder and more forcefully than ever.
power in voice. power in numbers. power in peace.

being a skeptic and a critic of vagueness, I will now bit my tongue. not because the message suddenly became more clear to me.
but because their passion was impenetrable.

vagabonding word hurlers, part 1

2011-11-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

day 1

continuing in the tune of sad and breaky

a deep love hangover the size of a cannonball
more than that, paying the price for a few great nights. it's the inevitability factor. we all know it.
leaving that town may be the best/worst thing for me. funny how that is, home and everything.
no more what ifs, and only one big shouldabeen. it's time to move on.

the way J reacts to her texts is providing the most entertainment so far on day 1.
that, and this diner (J says it's like something out of a wes anderson film, I'm reluctant to agree, but it's definitely a diner outta somewhere make-believe)
I'm trying to forget about things that are making my heart bounce everywhere which way (probably a poem on that in the near to immediate future).

the water here tastes like cowboys.

see, I feel like I'm missin somethin. somethin real real good. somethin rolled tight up against me
somethin worth being heldonto
yessir
for long stretches of breathholding presence, held her against me.
and it doesnt matter if that was only then, and it's not the possible future.
that's kind of the point I guess. the point of the heldonto. the point of that girl.
moments like that, unbreakable moments like that. hold em good and strong against me.
except my heart keeps bouncin all over
grab onto something darling.

the road un-alone does not make it necessarily less lonely it turns out. just less ample for screaming.
I'm still eyeballin for Hozomeen
day dreaming of last sunday night and next spring
and looking west like I'm chewing on finger nails

day 2
burns, oregon
froze my hello off.
slept with feet folded up underneath me like a duck to keep the sad street corner we slept on from pulling them right down to a frozen gullet.
J suffered too I'm sure. I'd feel worse about it, but it's the kind of adventure she deserves, even if it's not the kind of adventure she asked for.

in a diner in Bend, known for it's breakfast. this is like a comic strip.
a comic strip.
every word is comic, but you never admit, even to yourself, that you're not always entirely sure why.

the men in the boot behind me are talking about bowling and communism.

day 4

portland poetry slam

they made us battle. one poet against the other. our worst fear was almost realized when, for a brief moment, J and I thought we were going to have to square off against each other in the first round. as it happened, we ended up having to square off in the second round.
they don't use scores in portland. just mob noise. in the final round the mob broke for the other man in the slimmest of margins.
I got 2nd place.
an important experience for two reasons; the wave I felt I made in that room was not affected my my placing. that is something to remember. also, J picked up the heat last night. I think she's finally getting the poetry back under her skin. that's going to carry this trip to a better place.

a victory dance

2011-10-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

had a slam with friends and whole lot more people than I expected. a huge congrats to the Idaho poetry slam for that.
a little dilemma as to whether I should try something new, or stick the the things I pull big confidence from.
I decided in the end the reason I do poetry competitively at at all
is to own the room.
I want to own the room.
and so I did.
big poetry and a hat full of money. a 9.75 average for my science poem.
also, I was informed afterwards, that I was the first in the history of that particular slam to get a standing ovation.
wow. I dig that pretty good.

afterwards among the hooplah
a strange young girl came up to me, the conversation went something like this:
hi.
hi. (a long pause)
hi.
hey, it's nice to meet you, I'm garrett.
so, ummm, I don't have an american history textbook, but you can punt my government text book if you want.
sure, I'll punt your american history text book
(at this moment she gets really excited, and then in a flash instantly griefstricken)
oh but I didn't bring it. it's at my house.
that's okay, just bring it next time, we can punt it together.
(she once again returns to exuberance)
okay! I will

so something cool, that girl.

october 30

the crunch of my deep love family against this breaking soul.
so so much.

this was everything.
everything ever.

friday was loaded down real big by the heaviest of boots from some bad email news.
someone is breaking apart.
so I searched for solitude.
not as many people in seats as we'd been working so very hard for. I think it got us in a little knots.
they said at intermission that we were lacking a little bit of power.
I swallowed that deep into my gullet, then let the show rip hard from my stomach.
constance be gone like my life depended on it.

went to get my smile back with my family afterwards,
then to the DJ MH party.
crammed two days worth of bone pains and dry eyes into 20 minutes of catharsis.
sweat splashing everywhere. and glowsticks y'all.
that was something I need good and hard.

saturday,
hit everything with everything on top of it all.
so much love for my small family.
so much love for my big family.
party guys, you earned it.

so full of worth, it's harder to know what to do with that than my more standard lack thereof. we did something pretty crazy special.
crazy special. time to get more and more special.
I was full of this, full full of this.
but only one tiny little thing missing really.

singing super lovesongs when all I want to do
is reach out and grab onto that feeling
onto that girl.
it's the only moments I get when I can really be free from this
this man
I get crack in that just for a 3 minute
how it feels
yeah, how it feels.

they keep asking what's next.
what's next? next,
the road the road the road.

so grateful to all you beautiful people.

the end

2011-10-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

in the end there will be baskets
baskets to hold stuff in
because in the end, seems like there’s
gonna be a lot stuff scattered
a lotta stuff we used to hang
sacred from our clothespin lips
but that will, in the end
dance naked in the spider webs
we can only barely see after we
fall face first into them,
only
our hands won’t be so strong in the end
so we’re gonna need baskets

in the end there’s gonna be a lot of
restless leg syndrome,
I know, it sounds really fun
but just wait until you get a load
of all the people along the roadside
twisting themselves into knots of clay and bones
to keep their broken souls from absorbing
the bad news that yes,
unfortunately your condition
of having the wiggles,
is chronic

in the end the only cookies will be fig bars
that taste like dollar stores and expletives
and there will be men,
a lot lot meaner than you,
going around telling lies
about how good it all is,
they will offer you these cakey bombs,
you will refuse at first
but with time they will wear you wear you down
until the impostors take hold of your tongue,
then the mean men will laugh satisfied into megaphones
while your mouth implodes into desert warfare

in the end
all the poets will still have their head
and their hearts making love in their throats
trying to get the answers out
in backstabbing monotones
only, in the end
the questions will be arranged
by relativity and fugues
not by what you can see
but by what you can prove

in the end no one will be impressed
by metaphors anymore

in the end the only songs will be
drinking songs
and the only dances will be in long lines
where everybody holds hands
and takes slow sips of the same
confidential drowsiness
until all the people start passing out
one on top of the other
making romantic saliva waterfalls
that bounce from one face to the next
collecting at the bottom
in pools of wisecracks
and explicit memories about the big city

in the end all dreams
will be about freight trains
impossibly long and fast freight trains
that carry alphabetic love stories
from one town to the next,
your love stories,
my love stories,
filed neatly together
at 100 miles per hour
on smooth straight track
passing by just barely too fast
to catch up with
before our eyes split big wide open,

in the end the first thing we will think
when we wake up will be
boy, I really need a nap

in the end love will be determined
when I grab onto your wrists
with my thumbs over your veins
checking for pulses
counting them
comparing them to mine
being sure you’re alive
and then saying
baby it ain’t too late
not just yet anyway

in the end our knuckles will constantly crackle
from clenching too hard

in the end our feet will be dinosaured
from all the broken hearts and bramble
we walk upon

in the end
every child’s favorite color will be gray
because it is both everything and nothing

in the end there will be no secrets
except for the little things
that make you smile

like accidental broken glass art
like the first raindrop on the back of your neck
like the way some people hold their soup spoons
all funny

no, in the end you’ll probably keep those things to yourself,
keep ‘em real close to yourself

october 19

2011-10-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

on the tip of the hill, a place of birth so to speak.
reading buddy wakefield's my giant saint everything
many times
many times lonely

a spider came slick out of the sky and dropped webs all over my face and hair and hands and book.
a good two minutes to get me undone.
sorry little buddy, I ain't your lunch today.

There are bees and butterflies and birds up here,
always in pairs.
I didn't know it was that time.
makes sense though.
lonesomeness will make you see lonesomeness in everything.

it's time to move on.

if I were to strip down all my chain choking exterior parts to really show who I am, or what I am, I get the feeling the big reveal would be something highly inconsequential to anyone but myself:

sitting by a river as I write this very phrase, a bee landed on my neck. instead of swatting him away I let him crawl around on my neck for a good half minute. I figured my calmness would ultimately prevail over his curiosity and propensity to cause pain, and then he would fly harmlessly away. move on.
after a half minute of stillness he stung me. right up in my neck vein. I gently grabbed him, caught in the act, and placed him dead on a rock.
it didn't hurt as bad as I thought it would.

so there it is. big reveal.
walk,
walk all over me.

Love, buzzlikeyoumeanit

october 16

2011-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

to the symphony with a woman of singularity in my eyes
will stay quite the picture in the frontest part of my mind

she wore a black dress that made rifts in my neck bones as I labored
to keep my jaw from dropping.
I felt nerves full of nervousness in brand new places
and mortar in bones where I thought there was only holes.
a lovely thing.

we watched this pianist in the symphony, martina from croatia,
she dropped hammers on those keys with almost reckless authority,
like she was tossin horseshoes, shootin cowboy hand guns, deliverin napalm magic lines of song.

I Tchaikovsky'd my way to a happier place in the balcony.
I love to watch the way the players play, the way the players sway,
especially those violin players.
holy swaying violin players

a lovely dinner not so completely marred with my awkward amounts of self-consciousness.
there's no punchline here, just another of those heldonto moments
full of eyes and smiles and five cheese pasta.

I didn't feel so fully full of depression and self-loathing (hold the laughter...) afterwards,
I suppose that makes it the most successful date in my nearsighted memory (there it is)

Love, cominupbiggernow

poet lawson inada

2011-10-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

he broke cackles cracked sacks of wide smile back breaking belly laugh charm.
gosh
he put my world on fire. set it off with strong handed story time.
what I take for granted, lord, what I take for granted.

lessons on being lost, lesson on being lost I could take all that howto with that man
how many losts, how many times,
knowing how to be found
how many times, how many times.
he made me wish there was overpass in my childhood I could brag about.
he made me meditate on ramen noodle rituals
and dream of internment poetry anthologies.
he made me wish I could clear all the pretentiousness from a room
with a simple turn of phrase
we're in a mood now

he made me daydream of shovel people
he made me wish I was a shovel person
he made me wish I could write poems like his poem about shovel people.

the legend of burning the world.
go read it.

october 9

2011-10-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

when the madness wears off, all youre left with is sympathetic in your eyes

I woke up, having couldn't sleeps, not knowing what decade I belonged to. At least my face and my feet were warm.
I don't remember any dream just now, which seems unfair.
hell, I earned it.

my pages of 3 am scribbles only leave me clues as to what tree I was barking up.
but the translation may have broken off when I opened my eyes this morning. pages and pages of what the what? on the tip of my tongue.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my masterpiece
if only

I sit in a winter's calm.
Wyoming flowers in deep breaths of satisfaction.
yoga with J and all my heavy bootsiness is breathed away
breathed away
I was pulling on tail feathers and putting down punchy roots all at the same time.
it hasn't breathed much better than this.
it hasn't breathed much better than this.

if they ask where I've gone to,
tell them I'm just as angel as I've ever been,
and I'm laughing
laughing

Love, comegetmenow

october 6

2011-10-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

deep love family in the basement of the buffalo
october dances along along

there is a girl in a dream I had that is the type that always replies so modest to the excessive stream of people telling her how pretty she is.
it makes me wonder: could I possibly pronounce how personal her beauty is to me without sounding like just another raindrop exploding on a tin rooftop.
probably not.
and that makes me sad.

now that I am a (successful (business owner)) I find it even easier to stomp out the
buzzer beater gotchya you aint nothin from nothins
that have my elementary days still in tangles.
everything gets taller and faster.

had a moment with RJ that brought me back to the second song I ever wrote.
17 years old, naked, unconquerably alone, on the bathroom floor.
scribbled out on toilet paper a rhyme about the end of the world, the end of it all, and how I wouln't care so much.
wouldn't I?
I can barely quell the outburst of bigger corked up beatitudes I hold inside me with too much shaking shaking.
there's a secret to that bathroom genius boy that I've never let anyone reach into me to get at.

if I put words into my mouth and let them fall completely down they always seem to land
heavier then the way they slipped out.
what sheddeding.
I get that space is space and room is room
that everyone puts their mega head into without lookin first for the spit sign fist
but hell,
lemme get outta the way first.
lemme suck my stomach in.
lemme cross my legs.
lemme twist my pretzel tighter.
lemme drag my gray hands through my tortured widow's peak
and let my self esteem kick back kickbacks to itself
while I blast why'dyas and shouldntyas until everyone looks at me,
me, with the fingers full of effyou..

no no no no

would someone like to tell me what happened?
push this button and I would gladly take my voice box away so that
so that
so that
I don't have to be the one who was right
I don't have to be the one who was wrong
I don't have to have good love good friend good night
cluttered with good I'm sorry
I'm sorry
no no no no no

there is no goodbye if you mean it
so I guess I'm forever alone

yes.

if there's anyone out there who wants to come find me,
I'm feeling ready to be found.

Love, sostartsanewchapter

october 1

2011-10-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

I took blades to the thing I liked most about my face
bleh
I dont want to break that way, but I'm hard up for other ways
I'm clean shaven and big shot shootin
rocktober. gonna get a big sign to hold round my neck so the peoples know it's all happenin. all happenin

put the after burners on for a magic run to the dog house wyoming y'all
it's the kind of place that makes everything big more funny, bad movies taste like real good''ns, beds become sanctuaries against the autumn sprung mountains as a big step god step closer to bein what you want
everyone needs dog house

when I'm alone every mountain makes me hozomeen.
at least, every glance is a hozomeen glance.
but today these mountains are givin me somethin more myself

Love, bigdarkwagthattongue

september 29

2011-09-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

leaving that hurt more than I expected
picking up some last minute groceries last night I gripped my chest and my pushcart
all at the same time
pulling threads from the pushcart keeping my chest from flying out somewhere.
somethin about illinois in september
somethin about the sun punchin out three days of rain
somethin about a piece of me that feels like home there
no, it's not home, not really, but it's piece that wishes for home there

got alvin youngblood hart theming my westwardness expansiveness in something groovy.
one day Im gonna get myself a bus and do this right, but for now
the 1000 twistturnbend nights of sleepin in this lil red car suit me okay.

hit idaho after rollin wyoming hightops with autumn fully comin in.
that was about the point, around the 20 hour mark, when I usually turn off the music
and just start conversing with myself.
I'm not mad, I just got a lot to say.

landed in rexburg with a tummy growl that scared me and big business in my pocket.
I'm all business these days.

Love, imashavemybeardnow

green mill poetry slam

2011-09-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

I believe a train is the most eloquent way to travel. I'm on the pulse of the rail straight towards big chicago. My head leaning against vibrating glass with the blurring freight trains and oncoming slogans of We Build America an almost arm's length away.

Slept heavy with the city heavy underneath my belling. Thanks to the Kogas for the couch. 41st floor couch. Nodded off to the sound of Lake Michigan choking on skyscrapers and traffic.

I got the last spot in the slam. The Green Mill is the kind of place that all other places everywhere wish they could be more like. Usually a jazz joint, on sunday nights they break the Uptown Poetry Slam. the famous. the only. the envy of all other Chicago slams.
I experienced nerves. nerves. for the first time in while. This slam had been deposited somewhere in my mind for months, but I haven remembered these nerves for years until this.
my kneesshakingthis. my insidesgonetwistingthis.

We say though the open mic portion of the evening and then a music hour from a jazzy pianist goddess.
and then we slammed.

I got big time lucky to draw the last position in the first round. My unfortunate rockford companion Amelia had the miserable first spot; while she made nicely her sacrificial duty and the judges did their part to bring the boos, a 5? a 5?
This brought a little extra tension to my already indian burning skin.
The rest of the poets came and some bombs were dropped. One named Poetry Smith did his thing his poetry shtick and made the tables bellow and vibrate.

But man do I love the microphone.

Had the band groove up some Bill Withers-esque-ness
and gave the poetry people my science poem with all my soulmuster.
Few things have ever felt that good.

Brought down a 26 somethin. Good enough for a big big first round win.
The second round was just 3 of us. Big Poetry Smith used all his cleverness and got himself clever 26.5.
I followed. I hoped for some hearts and did my punch holes poem. I did it the way it was supposed to be,
for people that could feel it.
Got myself a 27.5. Enough to win.

Perhaps I got lucky. But it makes no difference when a dream comes true.
This night, one night, rises up bigger and big better important in my world of aspiration than any night so far.

I feel like for the last 9 months or so I've been wearing the 'aspiring poet' tag
But this, oh this now.
I have my poet on.

a momentum thing

2011-09-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

I suppose it will be quite impossible, with the exception of a few people, for anyone to understand what I'm filling this page up with. And likewise, it would be impossible for me to completely explain to the satisfaction of anyone reading.
So instead, I give a scenario: imagine you found yourself suddenly without a soul. Then a man comes along, a good man to be sure, and says he has found your soul, but will only give you half right now, and the other half exactly one year from now, just to make sure you won't lose it again.
This is a halfway point reflection of half-souledness.

I've been counting towards today and counting out past it.
There are not many things I plan so concretely, but,
if this was going to be a day when heaven shakes loose,
then I wasn't going to miss it.

Looking back.

Days with only half a soul are far better than the old night times with no soul at all. If it's linkin logs I'm built from, then I guess I'm startin to feel like a linkin log freight train.
I think it's a momentum thing.

While I've gone through more blueprints than I hoped, and Lord knows I haven't sparkled shined the way I thought maybe I should, I'm sittin in a nameless park right now knowing that I got outta those blues alive,
a circledraineater times three.

Six months ago I told myself I was strong, thinking I was invincible I gave myself to a Lioness I fully expected to rampage all over my more vulnerable parts.
Scoffers scoffed, and rightly so, but I figured there was a right way to get my heart broken and that was by not closing it up at all, as Tagore recommends. In the end, I got a crunchy metallic tasting memory out of it and a hell of a lot of things to write about, so I'd call it square.
Seems to me that sunrises and sunsets are both beautiful not only for what they bring but for what they leave behind,
so why let it trouble me any more?

I've seen angels in Fresno, miracles in Idaho, perfection in the Badlands, accomplishment in the Cornfields.
I've felt kindred where ever I go,
and found strong smilin beautiful people everywhere.

Looking forward.

I'm fully anticipating that this next month will be beyond any I've known so far in terms of pure excitement. Getting loved up by Deep Love, putting my hands in the earthy gravy with Trust Falls, it's all going to taste so good. I'm letting my voice out in just a little bit too.

I feel like I got a kite tied to each hand on a windy day and every once in a while I get the feeling I might be flyin outta here.

And truthfully, there are times when I think about the writing thing and wonder if I'm cut out for it. But then I get these moments, like last night at the House Cafe, when Im breathin out soul in the microphone and I just know I've taken the whole room like it was mine to begin with and I could take everyone there to some place I invented, like I've pulled everyone's eyes up into a part of me I've given to them and can never take back, like I've owned it.
And then I think yes, I was built for this.

I was just asked recently whether I am still walkin the good path. And perhaps a more precise answer would be this:
I'm heading uphill but I'm not scared of falling anymore.
My boots are still heavy but my legs are grand canyons.
I got vices in my finger bones and I'm reaching up above me.
I don't know exactly where I'm going buy my eyes are fixed on something good.
Something really good.

september 18

2011-09-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

I'm troubled at my latest sporting of productivity, not that I don't want to be productive. It's just a strange shell to put a top my unambitious amorphous soul. It doesn't generally point in a direction, my soul. It's a pancake batter soul.

A piece of a church song broke into my brain today
[He] Reaches my reaching
Reaches my reaching
my reaching
I spend 3 page poems trying to paint pictures as really real and thirst quenching as those three words felt all up and down me.

I'm getting west in mah bones, went pickin apples in apple orchards and so simply content with my cornfield adventures I pulled those apples bit into those apples sucked the extra juices from my apple beard played bocce with the apple cores smelled like apples for apple days on apple ends
gonna start gettin uphill now. west.

Love, jonnyapplebeard

september 11

2011-09-15T00:53:00.000-07:00

what I remember from 10 years ago?
lung pain. cosmic.

people who wear name tags are people I probably don't understand. I've noticed that.
I bet they notice how silly I feel introducing myself to people I didn't want to talk to in the first place
and say to themselves they don't understand

having 5am can't sleeps. wishing the sunrise will give me something to talk about. but I get so rolled up in dreams I'm hoping to still have that I decide to keep my eyes closed. I'm falling into Let It Pass foolishness.
again.
I'm betting a certain amount of self image chips on a feeling (now we're talkin mr.vanity)
a book. a feeling.
I want to be a writer. no wait, I want to feel like a writer?
there's a consensus somewhere in the more primitive parts of my illusions of grandeur
and I suppose that publishing this book is going to give me some redefined version of myself
that I can sell for an extra nickel on the dollar

Love, gettinpriceylately

patching punch holes in heaven

2011-09-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

I wrote this for a September 11 remembrance and healing event I'm participating in. basically rooted in a thought I had once,

if perhaps it wouldn't be more useful to remember the day after a tragedy instead of the day itself.

best if read out loud, kinda deliberate and slowlike

I once made myself a halo
out of coffee mugs and misdemeanors
and microwaveable TV dinners

just to see if God was watching

I wish I could tell you that that
was the first time I tried to make Him cry
and I wish I could tell you
that I didn’t now and then
huck a rock hard at the edges of heaven
hoping to punch a hole clean through
the pedestals where we keep everything
holy meaningful
the things kept above our heads
and out of sight
in wooden boxes rubber stamped
over and over again
with questions that end in why
why why why
each time the ink pounding drier
until you can barely see the why
at all anymore

it’s not our fault
that there are people who are more angels
than either of our clumsinesses
would lead us to believe
believe
as if that word alone
could keep those neverhurtnobody
pranksters from lightning striking
their way back up through those
angry prayers
we made above our head
and out of sight

you remember
those boxing glove lonely nights
we spent alive looking for answers

they gotta be up there somewhere

so I guess I’m not the only one
fixin up old halos with blank calenders
and tonic water
and I’m not the only one keepin
empty chairs empty
and makin table cloths
out of the obituary sections
from old newspapers
and I’m not the only one afraid to say
that if I stop for one moment
remembering
all the tearbroken days
of my raingutter life
that if I stop for one moment
remembering
the sound of stamping whys
onto wooden boxes
of broken promises
that if I stop for one moment
to patch up all my punch holes
in all my pedestals
in all my holy holy
meaningfulls

then I’m not sure what I would
talk to God about anymore

maybe I would say
Lord
I’ve given up trying to understand
why some people can do such bad things

and maybe He would respond
my boy
so have I

and then

maybe

I would

remember
what it really means to

remember

like on the day after a car crash
like on the day after a funeral
like on September 12th

when we
remembered
how heavysoul beautiful a smile could be
and the price we pay
for those broken glass grinning dreams

so just in case

if God is watching

I’m sorry bout the rocks
I’m sorry bout the holes
I’m sorry bout the tongue tied halos

it’s just hard to let go sometimes

september 8

2011-09-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

I wish cobwebs were more fashionable
it's a do less with more sort of thing
I dig that

man, this circledraineater plan hasn't been the machine thing I hoped
I get lonely sometimes

but I still get a couple days a week of kindred with people
who hopefully think I'm as interesting as they are

cause I rather be interesting than cool

Love, lookinwestsoon

september 1

2011-09-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

feelin summer blues chased down and spicy by autumn
give me that some'n some'n back.
in the hotness. of course.
folked my tuesday night into playing my soul songs at the the the the
center of the universe.
besides my propensity for sonic over-ambition,
a real fine show
and a cathartic sweat off with my brother too. music gets me hot and bothered.

bluffed my way into a job as an electrician.
an electrician.
yeah, I can rewire your 100 year old house with the must in the woodgrain.psh.
sweaty dirty sweaty dirtiness.
I think I crave little fingerlickings of real life as lived by real people.
but just a taste;
cause then I remember I don't like paying taxes

love, bigworkinman

ol mister blowtorch-gunshy

2011-08-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

this is essentially a connect the dots of many recent journal entries on the idea of being a person divided in two. for now it stands as only a personal indictment and does not yet extend to the plausible reasoning that we are all, in fact,

twofers

continuing on the topic of being a two sided lifeman

I seem to write all my most tender
lovemetightisms
in graveyards
and my most death defying
deepsoul anthems
in churches

sometimes there’s more peace
in a parking lot
than grind in a garbage disposal
and you never can tell
where God is

in a field of bodies
at least I stand the tallest
but in a church of high fliers
I feel like I’m the only one
still getting my backup plan
put back together

so, like this tombstone
I’m leanin up against
that looks like a big granite cat
with the capital word
DIVINE
inscribed across it,

it is what it is what it is.

I seem to be blowtorched split in half,
half wishing there is someone out there,
anyone,
who makes sense
from these dollar bill poems
the same way I do,
the other half,
spent my last nickel,
Godwilling,
no one does

it’s called the paradox of the onlyness
and I don’t know if it’s the devil inside me
or maybe I’m just a lilbit
gunshy
but either way I still limp on
both dead and alive

like I’m a passenger van full of bulletholes
or a gunshot victim that only has one breath left
to say I’m sorry with

like I’m a thief of my own imitation coonskin cap childhood
tightly wrapping it in boxes of
there’s gotta be something more than this

this,
a kid, I made headstones
from my baby teeth
to commemorate the days
I held my dreams
in the expanses of my cheeks
without breathing a word
about any of it to anyone,
but Lord knows I was dyin to

cause I’m the type that divides all music into
something groovy and something crunchy
and that’s all there ever was

and I’m the type that loves too long
too hard
until it turns my heart,
and everything it beats down upon,
to shrapnel

I cut my parachutes
from my safety nets
I squeeze cinder
from my afterthoughts
I’m a two minded spyplane
a three fisted radiowave
a four pronged misconception
a five way cassette tape
a six sided storm drain

and I love the way certain spitfire ladies
can sharpen their shivs of sincerity
all up and down my spine
but why can’t they see all I want is
someone who will keep that knife
buried inside me
as if it were mine

and I’m afraid to ask for praise anymore
so instead I beg
for open hands to hold my shame in,
because that’s the only connotation of love
I can still accept

and I still got these dreams,
these dreams,
caught between my tongue and my cheeks,

and I will not breath a word to anyone
about any of it,
though Lord knows I’m dyin to.

august 28

2011-08-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

feelin more and more ballooned up hallowed out bone heavy blues
but at least I have a soul pedestal in the way I play songs, all loud and things and things.
tuesday release. live from the center of the universe

in the magical capital of corn, we had ourselves a cornfest these days. cornhuggers uniting. carnival funfinding
my nephew's the wildman breed of human being, you can tell. rode those rides like a tiger baby. but he's got the family gene of clamshell tighten up when it comes to the female kind. it's all very funny.

a cornfest VIP, a dreamIP. got in with the help of M, a newfriend. her plus ten years of life over mine and simple sincerity sang thick and really real through her polish accent.
I dig that

Love, mygrandpa'snamewascorny

august 21

2011-08-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

sittin on the idea of self-publishing. all things point upward, seems like a pretty faretheewell step towards wanting to want something bigger.
but I want to sink heavy and low on it for a bit before I shout the sitcom streets to jump my train.
but the trains a-comin comin comin comin

I'm fiddlin with notions of bringin back to a shortsightedness. at least for now.
As I have spent most of my life bein a sucker in lilts of beyond-me-able, I believe it's time for a shade of a more jetstream cynic as far as the whole heart issue goes. Use my gut reactions and my earthy dirty prowess for a safer type of passage to two hundred and eleven days from now.

Love, letsbreaksomehearts

august 18

2011-08-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

I'm worried about the limit of my headspaces. Gotta seep out the lonely parts to make room for... well... whatever else is out there. I guess it's time to get my palms read again; this time by someone who isn't in the skyscraper business.

I seem to be blowtorched split in in half. Half wishing wishing that there is someone out there, anyone, who is like me. The other half, raging mad hopeful that no one is.
It's called the paradox of the onlyness. The price of feeling mine. I'm the person who divides the music into something groovy and something crunchy. and thats all there ever was.
Crippled by paradox I limp on both dead and alive
(Schrodinger's cat was a poet, and didn't even know it. get it?)
Though, I am looking forward to a life of real gentle coldheartedness. Gonna be real a sweet bastard. A super nice villain. One day teach my kids to be perfectly kind pain-mongers.

I get the post-love yips from time to time. It's ruining my idleness.

Love, todaysomethingcrunchy

comin' up big

2011-08-13T15:18:00.000-07:00

for those of you who still believe,
a bit of two brained madness. best if taken with a stroke of lightheartedness.

I held her like shiny new varnish

against my old chest.

Fortunately I have two minds

and a chatterbox brainstem

always barking mad willyas and wontyas

some of them, moments I mean,

gotta be heldonto

if you think you can put the whole world

between me and my heart

then know this

something somewhere’s gonna spin you

back to an old North Dakota bar

where someone who looks just like me

will be singin bluescrusted line after line

of God knows I tried

with all the hardnosed mustachioed folk

cryin right along,

and you’ll know that

somethings

gotta be heldonto.

I hear I hear all of your crimes
comin up big

burning silent across the golden callous

in the sky

and I hope you believed me when

I told you I knew you

because it doesn’t matter who meant it

if it makes the bad days

still feel warm like this.

So when I say I painted

her

thick across my old soul

you can know it’s not you

I’m lacquered up with anymore

and that this is the last time you

will be the you

in any of the little parts of my mind

and that the heldonto moments

that pierce the pulsing promises

I made to you

are full of stars and rivers’ glow

and a big sky full of

something better and better

than keeping my word.

I wish I hadn’t ever believed before

so that now, right now,

I could be saint screaming

full of rebirth

and tell the whole world

there is a light

a heart

a big-ass beacon of hope

grab on to it

stagger at my stammered

loveprobed cliches,

blood pumping saint that I am:

all we have is

and all we need is

and all there is is is

his’s and her’s

and peaces and perfect

it will all come down to this

love

for all of you that know me

I wish you didn’t

so you wouldn’t have to believe me

when I say that I miss

the way that lightning and love

make my neck tickle

and dip to remind me

of where the ground is

and I won’t be getting back up from this
no no no

well maybe once more

but not too fast

because there are some things

that gotta be heldonto

even ones that hiss to be let go

and it’s growin y’all

So I don’t want to believe in words that assail

me with it all comes down to this

And I don’t want to believe in a person

that can count up the degrees of all our differences

And I don’t want to believe that

I am both big and small

that my flight is my fall

because there’s no might in

trying to fly

if all I’m feeling is falling all the time

for each and every you

that make my old chest

feel like new

for each and every line that splits

bottomless through your tombstone teeth

putting holes in my heart ventricles

beating all over the notion

that one day all that will be left

of your breath on my skin

is a song or a poem or a

God knows I tried

because some things

gotta be heldonto

even the saintscreaming ones

they're comin up bigger now

august 11

2011-08-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

I believe my moments of rising self-esteem are up. I'm writing these journals in pen lately.

My poor mind. Hearing boston poetry through the computer I bought with a book report on a Truman Capote.
true story
While hearing old bluesmen'n'women makes me think I never could, listenin to the lilts of super poets only makes me want to get cape fitted(hurry hurry now). I can do that, and I won't even have to scratch the hard-to-reach back of everthingsucksism.
well, maybe just a little, but not so bursty belligerent about it.

I've been having dreams about telekinetic tires and one-eyed Norsemen.
Is there a proper front I could put on the screaming boredom that wouldn't look like a plea for friendlier friends?? Or is it that I just watch too many weird movies...
eh, loneliness is loneliness says the one-eyed man.

Even a tire needs someone to roll with
(roll with me babies)

Love, superwordman

august 9

2011-08-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

I need to shrink wrap the better day words all around my wingspan again,
or else the laziness in my bones' gonna bring me down.

A fisherman in the field wouldnt throw me back, so why let my carcass rot? just to think I could wiggle my way out of this one?
Better to swim on by baby child, says the hook. And we still dream of biting it.
ugh

A lesser type of solitude is finding me here. One that pulses bright but never shines. Across from my blow up bed there's a picture of a mountain that looks like a face to me just as a lot of things look like faces do. Everything lookin at me.
Youve got to do something
I'm not the mayor the pall bearer or the mother i-n-g po-lice, but somebody's gotta clean this place up.

Love, circledraineater

badlands and cornfields

2011-08-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

Originally I was writing simply to create material I could then shape into a poem, which I still may do. But I think it also works as-is, a brief (and slightly pretentious) road trip narrative.

The road the road the road the road the road!!
Go 'head and write your fairytales big love story magic too perfect world, I'll write about the pavement rolled from here 'til I don't care no more.

I'm not trying to get myself lost, but no closer to wanting to be found neither (secret is it's the deepest in my belly desire to be lost up here, however the paradox of the planning to be lost forces me upon eyeballin a map at least once or twice, in this case once).
Heading east, heading for a thinkabout. Leo Kottke beatin up on me my speakers
took a road less travelered up into some grouchy mountains. Vaseline Machine Gun. Beat.

The mountains up here all groan dark and lonesome in the overcast sky. They all remind my of a mountain I've never seen but been thinkin about a long time, one I read about in the diaries of man I've never met, but whose face I know as well as my own. I'm tryin to be more him than me sometimes,
but these are my mountains.

Just went swimming in lake 'EllifIknow here in Godknowswhere, Montana. Water this clear feels different as it falls. Better, and less really real. Up on a cliff, overlooking not a soul other me but a soul in moutain ripple, I feel like a sinner
done washed my filth off in a place that's not for me, better than me, beyond me
I don't know
Not sayin it didn't feel amazing though. repentence good.

For dinner a stale bagel and a granola bar. I'm a hundred miles at least from the nearest fast food, my tummy purrs in simultaneous if not autonomous claps of satisfaction and dismay at that.
I'm a complicated glutton.

Found a nice little spot on plateau of big wild adventure. My hopes of sleeping plain beneath heaven dashed by a mouthful of mosquitos on breaking for an overlook of the world I will soon be sleeping on top of. No matter, watching the sunset and in just a blink sunrise from the center of an untamed universe is going to sanitize away any desires in my bones other than to be still: I'm sure of this.

My face felt like broken chandelier to the dancing sunrise melt. Dance with me.

My big sky wanderdream quickly turned North Dakota strip mine smoke stack morning. mourning. My pout was dripping off my face. Still able to meander through it to the good good stuff by lunch. Big T.R.'s park and a dip in a strong man's river.
Every little town sees to have its own lil museum here, its own twobit gas station. Some of these towns even have their own twobit jackasses. Got hassled with a "california boy". Just gave him my super stare and let silence be my effyou for the day.

Finally coerced my self (so starved up) to get myself to the noisy land for a gander.
I'm having way too much fun galumfing through badlands its a two second lesson to know that the confines of the interstate is no way to see a brand new world,
but I'm wanted in the corn the corn the corn gotta move move move

The miraculous thing about a 16 hour day of driving and funning too is that all the driving makes the funning feel more like dreaming, dreaming feel like paintings plain and bright but on another planet somewhere just out of reach of whats really real. Miracle.

On rides like this ride I seem to think that this northbound pulsing should give way to some close-knit bit of clarity before I turn south again. Shake all dem alabaster pebbles loose from the front of my brain
the ones bouncing speedy between things and things and things like missings for the last girl I kissed and imaginations of the next girl I will kiss and things and things and things.
shake it all come loose now
except, this time, doesn't seem to be much loosed nor found,
rather just a rattlin rattlin tween the badlands and the cornfields, just curious to catch a feel for it all
feel it all feel it all feel it all

a sunrise is a lifetime trouncing down from hell's high hopes to corn Mecca getchyousum
still, my boyhood's missed this storm cloud humidity
gonna get a grip on this drain circle swallow me up the next two months,
see how strong this God of mine's really made me

july 29

2011-07-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

Drivin 1AM Tyler George, that guy will laugh your ass off.
Half asleep in the back seat with K rolled up against me soft and good. Besides a minor uncorked drooling thing she does, a perfect picture of sleep grace.
For a moment I gasped at myself when I hoped we would get there sooner.
Fortunately I have two minds and a chatterbox brainstem that are always barking mad willyas and wontyas at me:
There are moments that need to be heldonto

One person who misses ya is worth a hundred and one who keep ya in the crawlspaces. damn
what I wouldnt give to be more bigger invisible sometimes, see the way someone watches, waits for somethin without knowing I'm watchin, waitin, too.

Thank God for Julys and Idahos.
I spent more time falling than landing finally,
the thrill of the last intake breath as you leap from a ledge.... yeah
a month of that. filling.

As per my nature, northbound when things get hot.
Hopefully find those badlands before I turn back to the cornfields, but first a stop to play hero uncle to the littlest important people I know. My niece says my name the way I wish I could recite poetry;
rapid fire soul piercing

Love, heldonto todays

july 26

2011-07-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

The 4am can't sleeps.
Can't sleeping tends to turn into big thought thinking which often leads to my puny life pitying. Better to go get me adventurous instead.
Drove to the mountain for a sunrise summit. Had to get up in a hurry to catch it. Legs burning.

I started thinking about what I was going to write about the things I would see (clear thy head O fool) makes me self-conscious about my pretentiousness. Hurried to the top with a clearness (finally), got to my learning sit down, and 6:15ish; my Lord, my God.

Waiting for the sunrise is like waiting for redemption after a long night of looking for reason in only unGodly places. At some point you have to sit and let the good good world spin you into the embraces of a divine indescribableness that will fill up all your fingertips with meaning.

The mountains are mere lace to the golden hue and the clouds and rivers are epitaphs to the life of a master painter. I came up here wondering if I would feel the tinge of possessiveness as I sometimes do
(like I wish I was the only one and this mountain belonged only to me)
But I don't.
There's not a two inch extension of my body that I wish was mine. Up here, I don't know what I would do with any of it.
Instead I'm just wishing I could paint myself always the way I imagine I look right now. Without a hair of overbearence but neither a breath of despair. If this was my very last epistle it would sign off with:

All this light will roll me up inside it seems, and I'll fly away more angel than devil,
laughing laughing laughing

Love, willwork4solitude

train dodge, dig it

2011-07-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

I watched the movie Stand By Me for the first time. Decided conclusively that my childhood was not nearly as fulfilling as it should have been. This poem dribbled out in the subsequent few days.

The sound of 4 feet down a railraod track
is always better than 2.
I shoulda been a wise guy.
With a nickname and an adventure story
they coulda made a movie out of
in the crossstitch of a no-consequence thought
I'd find the friends I loved most
practice my curse words on 'em
show 'em how much

Call me a wild one or call me a hard up one for all
as long as it's not me
a suburban baby I want more free, free
to chase the train tracks
followin past the point of the farthest
I'd ever been but then
never be a follower again
I'm ablaze
just me and my brothers
the baby christian girls
would say we were crazy
it'd take a fire hose to cool down
the devil inside of us
find lookin for anything that would burn
me and my brothers we would burn

But I'm a jigsawed 25.
I converted so much of my soul those days
to wanting to be a man that I was only briefly
a boy and ended up spending most of everything
being neither
and though I'm just learning to do backflips
tricks off of bridges
I got all kinds of half-sized
dreams still
of being something someday,
someone somebody would see and say
"isn't that something?"

But I'm a jigsawed 25
and wonderin if there's somethin left
in this time is time all time will be
seemin to always have to make time
to feel free
make time to feel crazy again
make time to fall in
then right back out of love
with a different girl each week
I want all my clouds to look like horses
and angels again
I want the measure of how much fun I had today
to be the amount of dirt on my skin
I want to wage wars against thorn bushes
with stick shaped hero swords
and know God only in words and stories
I here again and gain
I want to be smart just because I am
and brave just because I can
and learn new ways to smiles
in the gaps of the smallness of my world
and how much world there is out there
still to find

But I'm a jigsawed 25.
And I'm just now finding out what's down
the train tracks besides the sound
of my very own two feet.
A cloud. A smoke.
A friend.
Train dodge, dig it.

july 22

2011-07-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

Had a dream last night; real long sequence fill in the blank type. I was a police detective hunting some big brained killer man. Turned out it was secretly my best friend. Gave him a chance to behave in a parking lot somewhere. Then I blew him away.
Still thinkin in that one, I'll come back to it later.

I wanna be Otis Redding when I grow up. Have every one come jump up into my soul. I want to stop performing (jump off this here) and start suckin up, all everyone, up up into this place I'm tryin to get myself to; where the really good ones are at.
Otis baby get me there.
Shake it.

As a pretender of just things, I'm curious to know whether some one, any one, is made in the right way so they could brace themselves against all the corners I used to cut, and now am swallowing whole. The penitent man.
I'm talkin bout dark spaces, they tend to make hard the easy-does-it portraits that most would like to make
so someone who hears that feels that what I am,
I'd think it'd come loose. Runaway.

So it makes me mad when the hypocrite's happy.

Love, needsoullovebad

july 20

2011-07-20T23:21:00.000-07:00

Never bored of blarin my big words into a microphone. A little fried smellin poetry slam tonight.
Mr. Drew called me Kerouac (that's gotta tickle yo)
I wanted to pull apart that microphone and serve it in pieces to the 20ish friends who showed up for something like, stuff so many damn words down inside. In a town like this, it's hard to know what a poet is supposed to feel like. Makes me grateful there is somebody, somebody, who wants to hear me speak words at them.
Thank you friends.

Love, tinygarrettpoet

Story of Samantha

2011-07-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

It's almost like a dance. Clipboard white paper logo poloshirt kaki shorts white tennis shoes ringin doorbells give me your money this is a stick up dance.
For those of you who have never tried it, it's neat to be the enemy all day every day. Neat.
Shoot me up neat.
Stick that morphine right up in my neck vein neat.
Run me over giant SUV please lord neat.
So when a door opened up and the third most beautiful woman I've ever seen (I won't tell you who the first two are our of respect to what I deem divine) stood soundlessly before me, you can comprehend just how hard my heart exploded against my spine.

I put down my clipboard, put my hand over the poison logo over my heart space
and just said my name "uh I'm garrett".
Her lips parted slow
with a focus like a firebomb
and a ring of flowers and floating honeybees
I could almost barely see
beyond the arc of her tongue
and with one deliberate oh! deliberate
syllable in broken time at a time she said
"I'm just recovering from a stroke"

I didn't want to look at her
but I knew I'd lose my license to humanity
if I looked away so I just asked her if I could come in
and she nodded
just nodded
I left that damn clipboard on the porch

We sat in sitting chairs in a room
without the slightest sniff of femininity
"You live here with your dad?"
she nodded
"Were you at college?"
she nodded just nodded

If I ever doubted whether this planet of ours
is really truly spinning
right then, yeah, I felt it

I mean felt it

and I could tell she felt it too
we both grabbed on to the man-made sanctuary chairs
and prayed God would keep us there
we both began to cry but didn't care
to catch the tear drops at our eyes afraid
that we might fly way way way way out
of this moment
I could tell she wanted to say something
the way her firebomb eyes began to
burn out at me so I said

"It's okay,
it's okay I know sometimes things
are so press and fade that we don't
remember the way we used to be
back when things were getting themselves more simple
and I know, there are too too many two bit
child people playing themselves so hard
looking for all the easy way outs
and I know although my skin
is being blackened with amens
and my face is full of gray sweat,
that you can see I'm holding on to something
better, from the way my arms bow and arrow
and the way my mouth is all broken glass teeth
you can see that I'm still fighting
love
and yes you can see it's leaving me butchered lately
but I'm finding God in all the right places
to keep me brave talking
and soul spinning
and I'm gonna one day twist up my bones
so tight
that I break right on through the marrow
see what I'm really m-m-made of,

and I know you're thinking,
if only,
as in, if only in another lifetime
we could have been lovers or at the very least
dancers
and spun sacred ideas off one another's
God-sparked backs
and I could pay the wage of my brain
for yours I would
even though I don't yet have the courage
to catch your tears
I'd still say fearlessly at each waltz
of summer rain
love
it wouldn't have to be so hard
all the time

but you and me,
I think
we are gonna
be
okay."

We stood as if it was all part of the plan
walked to the door and she told me her name
as if it belonged to me
I said
"If I ever see you again
I'm gonna take you somewhere lovely"
She nodded, and smiled.

July 15

2011-07-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

I'm buggin on funk music like a white boy only could. Got all loved up by NEW ORLEANS last night in Victor, Idaho.
Dumpstaphunk. Heaven sweat. So funky.

Had an interesting trip to the airport with Tyler George. He pushed my "why I am" button and I couldn't shut up. I guess I was tryin to convince him (or maybe Jesus) that I'm not the same salty bastard (see: Salty Bear Principle) and that I'm burnin with a bigger bit of simplicity these days and it's givin me fits of joy and that I want to take the world and put it on my belly laugh and see if I can't make it bounce in some kind of way that makes us all feel better.

I want to make a list somewhere of things I could never do and write "a back flip off a bridge" just so I could scratch it out. An adventurist like Ryan J. is thinkin
no big deal,
but I feel like a jamaican bobsled team right now.

Love, buck wild with the Buck Moon tonight

blog with me baby

2011-07-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

So I have this plan.
I want to be writer. And at some point, I want to be good enough of a writer that people will pay me money to speak words at them.

Starting this blog is all part of my master plan.

Love, ambition baby