how’d you get here??

Hey there friend, I’m not sure how you made it to these pages but here’s 3 years of blog posts that I didn’t want to unpublish but didn’t quite know where to put them. Congratulations on finding this backroom, enjoy exploring.

Rat + Killer

There is a rat in the basement ceiling. I’ve stared at it face to face, the rodent perched a top the water heater. I laid traps, big traps, with a lightning fast Kill Bar. I think fortunate we, people, are. That all of life’s traps are not equipped with Kills Bars. Everything is designed only to wound. Then I hear from the warmth of the living room a quiet knocking. A tell take heart of an unchecked trap. I’ve heard rodents will chew off their own arm if caught, if the Kill Bar is subpar. There are only a few situations I can recall in my life that if given that option I would have brandished a smile. There are many many more situations I would trade a limb to return to. How fortunate to day dream, even while wounded, ignoring the possibility of a Kill Bar snap.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Owning a home requires you to be equipped for mass murder. One million blades of grass, nest after nest of hornets and wasps, the snapping spine of a rodent pinched in a trap. The less violent patching of dents, erasing the signs of life. The replacement of appliances 50 years my senior. Owning a home is struggle for survival that requires bloodshed.

Love + End

The sky is crisp, so flat the sun radiates despite the breath of every passerby being visible and naked. I think this morning of all the love I have for Kat. The force of that feeling, that emotion. Kat has never thrown a glass as me, like in the turning point of a movie but I imagine our love in that moment. Not the fury needed to throw a glass, or the unthought of repercussions of having an odd number of dinner wares. Our love is the breaking against the wall, the shocking smash sound as glass scatters. We are ever startling, emotions bared. Our love interrupts life. Everything can halt, the rotation of the star above, when I tell her how I feel.

△ △ △ △ △

I look forward to the ends. Some people dread them, so sad it is all over, boo hoo boo hoo. I love a bookend! The end is the only moment everything gains perspective. You get a moment to pause and reflect, to analyze you suspicions and bias. This is all to get around to saying that I have a hard time watching new TV shows. Their constant cliff hanger click to the next episode so we can cancel the show before season 2 is just too much. I hate to leave anything in life unbuttoned. To write a good ending for any piece of work is such a uniquely magical skill. I cannot recall a single scene in A Farewell to Arms but can relive the final scene in such a vivid way my throat clenches to stop tears from swelling. How many different kinds of endings. Some so quiet and some in such a fit. I imagine at my end I will be too excited to rage against the inevitable, like a child in line for a ride, holding carnival tickets, excited with nerves, knowing no fear, but ready to appreciate the experience.

DE + Poem

I’m am DE-hydrated
I am DE-pressed
and just by being alive
I am DE-compossing
and whatever gassy corpse I leave
will contribute to pollutants
feeding climate fires
across the West Coast

So I muster (I must!)
all the little bits
bellowing as a war horn
fortify! fortify! Find a way
to cling this all together
bolster against all
the waves of the day

I cannot build castles from ash
only from grains of sand
I am depending on you
all the little bits of my life
bolster bolster bolster

Failure + Mugs

All the mugs I own are failures
The gym I no longer go to
All the jobs I’ve lost
I long for a good mug for a cup of coffee that sparks at the success I feel achievable in the morning, the ambition, the motivation, matched in a mug. It need not be punny, my mornings are not in jestful quip to be laughed at and passed over. It not be place specific for I have not found the place I would forever return to. I would just as soon pour the coffee into my palms and drink from them as if dipped into a spring. The refreshing fil of cold water, the feeling of finding oasis.
Perhaps I should smash them, all these failed cups. I would want some grandiose moment but maybe they deserve even less. Just chucked into a bin and forgotten. I think I shall reject new mugs to avoid this situation in the future, or approached any new mug with the highest level of consideration. Drink with intention from vessels of intention. I do have one mug I love, from my sister in law. The mug is from “World Market”, nowhere and unnotable. A product bought and carried through a strip mall parking lot. On this mug is a little bird, an etched monogram of a jay, maybe from a pencil sketch. The simplicity of a single bird is the perfect amount of inspiration when taking a sip. The weight of the mug is correct. That little bird carries my thoughts across warm waves of coffee.

Dusk + Snake

Pending in slow motion, a crash
Dusk holding time by the wrists spinning in a maddening whirl
as the beacons of bugs warn or wait for the crash of night
in the soft whirlwind of the kiss of daytime
pulling back into the grass, we can trace
a line winding over broken flat backed blades
of grass
Shadows spread their shores, tides of night
pulling themselves from every crevice, the beacon bugs
keep blinking warning us to caution were we
brave enough to take a step.

Finish + Hope

I woke with the feeling of approaching a finish line. Even better I felt as if I still had gas in the tank. The new year will be crossed into with haste, not sputtering and wheezing for air. This morning I’m feeling more like I’m on a precipice, more like I felt back in May. Kat brought up possibly taking on some of her workload which is exciting and makes sense. More so I just have this dumb sense inside me telling me, rather affirming in me, that things are about to change for the better.

Cash + Out

I sold my magic collection this week. Cards that I’ve had since college, some even older maybe since grade school when I started playing. A piece of me is gone, sold. The space within me feels vast as I distance myself from a game that I was sometimes playing five times a week. A game that was a genuine factor when we picked where we wanted to live. That space feels so vast right now, echo filled of memories and blinded in the dark. I trust the other parts of me will grow to fill that chamber and be richer because I’m giving them the space to grow. I did tell a small fib, I only sold about 90% of my collection. The competitive side of me will always hunger and Magic fills that outlet really well. There’s also the social aspect, I know in stepping away from the game those relationships will fade as I pull back. I wish to cast them gently from the shore rather than sever them quickly and watch them struggle and drown clinging to a rope I refuse to handle. There is this strange power in the choice to change. the process of selling felt sort like picking off a familiar scab. This piece of me that is familiar, safe, even protective even. Attached to me and grown over time but not truly belonging to me. There’s something to be said about the connections in life that sustain themselves through “I’m going to try something different” conversations. Maybe more to be said in hindsight about those that don’t. For now, I live in this intentional internal dismantling with a trust that the pieces will all fit together again somehow.

□ □ □ □ □

How much of myself can fit in a printer paper box?
when the cards are gone, I’m unsure what to do with my hands
unshuffleable
How long until I no longer flick my credit card against my id in the coffee line?
How quickly I fall out of the meta, my attention elsewhere, my knowledge only from an old photo album,
There is no where to grow from revisiting a year book of all the greatest past moments.

— When I sold everything I sold you as well without knowing it, perhaps the buyer factored you in the deal and I did not see that angle. I should have included your phone number, your home address, your coffee order, that photo of all us in Vegas.

Chrome + Lamp

I think chrome had this appeal of false luxury. It’s like a cheap vegas hotel, unarguably still a piece of acquired luxury but it oversell itself. Chrome is like the accessible level of luxury that the middle class could achieve, the trim line of a car, the edges of the diner booth on a night out to eat. Even when scuffed or scratched it has this fondness to it like a bronze statue’s patina. Chrome always shines, in spite of. I love the idea of polishing chrome, something about rubbing that trim with a cloth, like some magic middle class lamp clinging to hope.

Devil + Deal

A deal with the Devil
has a palpable appeal
when Fate won’t load
the dice my way
Maybe he is caring
in a way I’m missing
in a way like asking
for a text to know that
I am home safe
Maybe his asks sound selfish
but maybe he is clinging
like I am to anything
starved and ravaged
shaking quietly in the dark
the same way I am
both of our breaths
cursing Fate quietly
while we fall asleep

Sour + Patch

Sour Patch Kids candy
tiny sugar coated hands
vegan by nature

harm free fruit candy
scraping the roof of my mouth
your harm is a kiss

die along my tongue
staining my battlefield mouth
gnashed hues of purple

Bloody + Nose

When I’m a kid my nose bleeds. It bleeds often, enough to cause concern that a child is bleeding from his nose in the middle of 3rd grade social studies. I’m told not to pick my nose, which I wasn’t cause it was bleeding. Why would I ever want to put my fingers into my body where it’s bleeding. It becomes second nature that I may have a nose bleed. A nose bleed is almost certainly guaranteed if my nose is ever impacted. I use this to impress Johnny Wilson freshman year of high school explaining that all he needs to do is flick my nose and the blood will come. He laughs and doubts me and I tell him go ahead, do it, flick my nose. He flexes his finger and flicks and with a certainty I believe in blood begins to drip out of my nose, then flows. Everyone around is amazed and I’m saying I’m fine and Johnny Wilson is apologizing and I’ve pinched my nose with the bandana and laugh and tell him I told you so and it will stop soon. Sometimes my nose bleeds and I don’t even know, I’d wake up with my face caked into the thin threads of my pillow case, brown lake shaped stains reaching across my jaw and cheek up into my nostril. At scout camp Phil Zachow and I practice our fake fighting moves, kicking and fighting the drawn out summer afternoon with nothing to do and unable to go anywhere. Then Phil’s fist grazes my face, my nose bouncing across his knuckles like the spring of a door guard and the blood comes. Blasting out of my nose in a way that stunned even me. The older scouts rushed us and Phil is panicking trying to answer the teenager guardians asking us what happened over one another. I’m assuring them nothing happened and they’re ready to crucify Phil and I’m between two of them explaining this happens but they don’t believe me in the way I believe that my nose will bleed. Their shocked that my calmness and nickname me “bloody mouse” for the rest of the week, mouse because my round plump face made them think of micky mouse. I realize then that spilling blood brings a kind of honor but not always the kind of honor you want. The summer I’m sixteen I’m struggling in the way sixteen year olds struggle. My father is also struggling, he can’t get his boat motor to work. Then he comes into my room telling me I’m going to work the deep fryer job he got me at the fair and I’m telling him I’m absolutely not. Then I’m kicking him off me. His greased hands grabbing at my shoulders. My feet kicking at his throat, pushing so hard with my legs my back is bending into the worn springs of my twin bed. Then my foot goes through my bedroom window. There’s no blood, I remember quickly glancing at my ankle amazed I didn’t bleed. When he tosses me from the bed into the closet door I know I won’t bleed. When he’s got me on my back on the floor, grabbed by the collar, he punches my face and I know something with more certainty that he does. I know absolutely that I will be bleeding. My nose gushes and I keep my eyes open, I see every fist and can feel the heat of the blood expanding across my face. Even after I get married I still get nose bleeds, they shock my wife. Her concern is palpable every time I stuff toilet paper up my nose finally asking me to see a doctor. Which I won’t, I have a parlor trick, a secret that I know well that is a mystery to everyone else.

Gift + Diorama

I love saying something was a gift. In the truthful sense there is a bit of a gloat. “Oh that thing you’re armiring, yeah someone thought so highly of me to just give that to me - FOR FREE”. There’s this immediate sense of untold backstory that I think often doesn’t get probed into. Most people leave the idea at that. Would I rather have gifts or be self made though? The idea of being handed what I need at first feels appealing but the lack of control and decision would be a struggle. Material achievement while often gaudy are sometimes quite grand. Our wedding and our first house. were both moment to this day I cannot fathom how we managed to save enough and acquire those. Now we are breaking, not quite broke, not house-less but being whittled down out of the sideshow act that is the middle class. A performance of illusion. Would I grant trust to a gift giver that provided a gift no strings attached? How much of my own dignity need be degraded and eroded away to trust so willingly. ‘

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

In the soft light of dusk the world is a diorama, the washed square shingles of the neighbors house are brown again, their gray cinder block garage a dying blue. A cacophony of crows beckons to someone unknown, come hither, come wither, bring flesh, bring bone. The trees behind behave, branches snapping as someone crawls up. Were it not for my other senses my mind would have sworn the japanese maple in front of me was made of plastic for a still life diorama.

Chills + Problems

“When the chill of the air is the same as when you were 12”

Wrestling the window frame

Jammed crooked cracked veneer
holding back the paralyzing licks
that can relax me to sleep
let me have reprise after a full day
of summer heat, open damn you, open
my palm flats slamming upwards
on the tilted frame, open
open open open

At eye level the twist crescent lock
catches on the edge of the edge
repeatedly my problems are rarely
what I believe them to be
when I somehow solve them
at the hundredth slam wiggling
the crescent lock just slightly
the solution often takes me to the same place
when I’ve come the hard way
the breeze seems sweeted
and I sleep better

Table + Family

I dreamed the house next to my grandma’s was gone. The lot leveled and growing grass that went uncut around the edges, a smitten wilderness in the blocky shadows of the apartment complex. In the lawn next to the driveway, between the large concrete picnic table and the beiged apartment building where you could read the rain streaks across the brick, was a long table. Long and wooden and lasting, a table large enough for generations of families to sit and eat. When I saw this table in my dream, the place settings were neat, cloth napkins folded at each seat. I hear the squeaking of my Grandma’s screendoor and knew in no way could everyone sharing this table know one another. Then I saw the actual table top, a deep chestnut finish, polished and oiled rich, but refinished decades over. I found the stains through the clear coats, the spilled wine that looks like the wood grain, a gouge from a child unable to use the metal forks. I saw the wear from where we sat on the long benches. My palm down on the table held the stillness but could feel the soft vibration of a glass being set down on the far end.

Window + Jam

Nothing about my bedroom window quite fits. The frame jams. The lock needs to be pushed down upon to latch. Even then there are cold gaps where cold air let in all sorts of whispers.

The frame jams and I don’t know how to not force it. It requires pause, a gentleness and any amount of force just makes the jam worse. I’m stuck and the lock on the window never worked anyways. I’d lean with my entire body weight onto the window and eventually the crescent latch would slide smoothly into place. At night, in the summer, if I managed to get the window open, my mind would get carried on the cross breeze. Then cool air would cause the frame to swell or shrink and sometimes suddenly close. clapping the wood on wood, cracking the aged veneer, shedding bits onto the sill.

Bedroom + Curtain

I keep thinking about the curtains in my bedroom window growing up. I’d be awake late, the summer air finally cooling and the thing curtains would whip up into the room. Bigger than I remember, like they might fill the entire room in a shroud. Sometimes they would snap back, cracking in the relief the breeze brought into my room. The ebb and flow of the night always made me feel the itch of possibility. I wouldn’t learn the word liminal until the malls started to close. What felt possible wasn’t earthly but fantastical. Could I walk on air, vampire are real, someone out there between the stars is looking back at me at this exact moment. Hearing the tractor trailers rushing along the freeway next to the house always made escape feel imminent.

□ □ □ □ □

Through the window, all night long
the summer breeze beckons,
come sleep come sleep,
yet the curtain says no
snapping back at me, cracking
away the sands of slumber
if I could only grab you
pull you from my bedroom
out into the open summer air
what would you say to such freedom
could I cling to your thin gray threading
would I find the breeze different outside
or only bigger shadows even more shrouded

Poetic + Experience

I realized that a lot of what I love about poetry comes from the experience. The words and sounds and structures are all wonderful but the readings, the r e a d i n g s, are experiential. The creativity that comes with presentation is what compels me. I just wrapped up a 100 days until the end of the year workshop with LWS. the thought occurred to me that while I struggle to assemble a collection (evidenced by the lack of updates to this blog) the experience is what I really am chasing. Turning the pages of a chap simply isn’t enough.

In that 100 days workshop I wrote “I long for the analog” My mind immediately jumped to GBMaker Studio, some sort of little story you can click through. Having my work on a GB cart feels very me. I like the act of uncovering as well, that feels central to what poetry is about to begin with. I think having a functional part of the project to work on will keep me motivated and give me a part to work on in the late hours when I’m less motivated to write.

Arrival + Gash

The way my chuck taylors make a hollo thud and the plants overgrown in the crux of the curb and the street. When the rain starts how those little roots cling against the waves headed to the storm drain. I never want to go back anywhere, never want to be in a state of rushing to return. Even when I head home I am not returning but arriving again. Maybe that’s toxic. That inability to settle into something, always hungering for the new. Maybe that’s toxic too. When I’ve had the experience, when I’ve met the person, had the plate, I am content to package them away in reverence and seek out something new.

△ △ △ △ △

I had a dream there was a gash in my forearm so deep I could reach my fingers into the flap. Blood was not gushing but emptying like the middle pour of a five gallon bucket. Nothing hurts but there’s confusion as to ho this ended up happening. There’s this lacking, where is the pain? How much longer will the gash be there because the wound is quite distracting. I’m not sure what I’m to do but this is a nuisance.

Bus + Ride

Thinking about all the buses that my grandma must have ridden. The people she saw and who saw here. Who did she recognize on any given day as a regular. Who wondered about her on her journey. Who was trusting enough to receive her smile. Was she ever short the fare, did she ever ride for free? Was the feeling of that free day queenlike, cruising down greenfield avenue on the no cost mileage.