Wrist Deep

So Ready for Summer.

2011-03-25T12:29:00.001-07:00

So ready.

2011-03-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

Cast hard your heart like a gold coin to the tracks.

Roseworld.

2011-03-08T12:06:00.001-08:00

Roseworld is an ongoing documentation, conceived by designer Steven Christopher Carey and photographer Ryan Kobane, of the popular typeface Rosewood. We encourage you to send us your photos of Rosewood to Roseworld Project so we can further document this bizarre phenomenon.

Get up in it.

Middle Point.

2011-03-04T23:07:00.000-08:00

Figuring. Available Now.

2011-02-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

Download Now.

2011

2011-01-27T14:56:00.001-08:00

What I'm Working On.

2011-01-25T11:21:00.001-08:00

Font design.

Just Don't Go Outside.

2010-12-27T13:07:00.001-08:00

Brooklyn.

Are You Happy?

2010-12-23T12:34:00.000-08:00

F.T.S.

2010-12-21T14:06:00.000-08:00

Jeff Buckley : Me :: Usher : Everybody Else

2010-12-20T21:53:00.000-08:00

What I've Been Doing.

2010-12-14T23:22:00.000-08:00

Updates to come, as they come to me.

Dare to Dream.

2010-12-14T09:06:00.001-08:00

Kelly Thompson

Star Stuff.

2010-12-09T12:27:00.001-08:00

Spam For Breakfast.

2010-12-08T09:46:00.000-08:00

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

2010-12-07T21:17:00.001-08:00

Show Me the Prints

2010-12-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

Haha! English!

2010-12-04T02:14:00.000-08:00

Also, nipple ring.

Theory of Relativity.

2010-12-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

Phantom Limb

2010-11-12T01:05:00.000-08:00

Coiling in ether, caressing the devil’s tongue,
that finger may be gone but I still feel it
ringing the keys from my pocket without success.
That finger may be gone but I still feel it
pushing through the universe’s walls.

Trailing seconds behind my hand like a sickly dog
with a broken necked bird in his slack jaw,
I can sense it cleaving hollow spaces
in the blurred and heavy snowed paths
of my deep periphery. That finger,
that strange appendage, may be gone
but I still feel it; my darkly homage.

The dead are gone. I wander before them in awe.
They are rushing toward us from behind.

Ringing Any Bells.

2010-10-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

Cotard Delusion

[The patient's] symptoms occurred in the context of more general feelings of unreality and being dead. In January 1990, after his discharge from hospital in Edinburgh, his mother took him to South Africa. He was convinced that he had been taken to hell (which was confirmed by the heat), and that he had died of septicaemia (which had been a risk early in his recovery), or perhaps from AIDS (he had read a story in The Scotsman about someone with AIDS who died from septicaemia), or from an overdose of a yellow fever injection. He thought he had "borrowed my mother's spirit to show me round hell", and that he was asleep in Scotland.

Phantom Limb

2010-10-23T03:22:00.000-07:00

That finger may be gone but I still feel it
coiling in ether, caressing the devil’s tongue,
or ringing the keys from my pocket without success.
That finger may be gone but I still feel it
pushing through the universe’s walls.
Trailing seconds behind my hand like a sickly dog
with a broken necked bird in his slack jaw,
I can sense it cleaving hollow spaces
in the blurred and heavy snowed paths
of my deep periphery. That finger,
that strange appendage, may be gone
but I still feel it; my darkly homage.

The dead are gone. I stand before them in awe.
They are rushing toward us from behind.

Can't Get Enough Of These

2010-10-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Steven,

Thank you for letting us consider some of your work, but unfortunately we’ve decided not to publish any of these pieces. I want to assure you that your work has been taken under careful consideration—at least two editors read each submission, and I’m always one of them.

This is a form letter—necessary with a tiny staff and all these submissions—but what I’m about to say is sincere: Unlike most literary magazines, we don’t solicit work from famous poets; we feel that practice isn’t fair, and doesn’t make for a good magazine. Every single poem we publish started out as a submission, and 90% of the submissions we receive are from people who’ve submitted before. If you add those two facts together, you’ll see how much we rely on your persistence and generosity. We really do hope you’ll keep sending new work as it’s ready.

Also, it should go without saying that our decision to return this submission doesn’t mean much. We’re just fans of poetry ourselves, and all tastes are subjective. Moreover, we’re always looking to make the magazine as eclectic as possible – often we end up turning down submissions that we enjoy, simply because they’re similar in tone or content to other pieces we’ve published.

Though we’re always open to submissions from anyone, in any style, and on any subject, we do have a themed section in every issue. Now through 2/1/11, we’d like to receive as many submissions as we can from Canadian poets. If you consider yourself Canadian, with reason, please do try us again by the deadline. We still only publish a small percentage of what we receive, but the more submissions we read, the stronger the special section will be. The poems need not be about Canada or anything in particular, so long as they are written by Canadians.

In any event, thanks for continuing to share your work.

Best Wishes,
Tim

Don't worry. I'm used to it by now. And this one's one of the betters I've seen.

Siblings.

2010-10-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I play this game with myself; I stare at the pictures of my siblings until I don't recognize them anymore, until they become beautiful again.

I've been in New York for ten months. I miss my family.

Deciding

2010-10-07T00:05:00.000-07:00

She spoke avid
like a breaking lid:
Flipping a coin
is the best way
to make a decision.

Words split
half and half
and halves of halves.
Flitting and not
worth mention.

The thing is that
while the coin flips,
in that split second
(a blue or brown eyed
universe is born;
its name is everything)

in the minutia of falling
(me thinking
where have I been
until now? in smoke?
wrestling my own muscles
against pillows?)
you begin to root
for one side

or for another.

2010-10-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

The Moon and Me.

2010-10-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

Reflecting only light; not giving. Or the Moon; or me in phases.

Ordinary People.

2010-10-02T20:56:00.001-07:00

Ordinary people are everywhere. With ordinary histories.

Hmm.

2010-09-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

I Want To Be Well

2010-09-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

I Am A Projectionist.

2010-09-22T00:09:00.000-07:00

Facts About Projection from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

2010-09-18T01:54:00.000-07:00

I can smell you now. You've built yourself into the architecture of my skin.

No Comment.

2010-09-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Book of You

2010-09-11T02:48:00.000-07:00

So there’s this book. You know this book. You’ve probably picked it up at your nearest Borders or Barnes & Noble. You’ve probably been intrigued as I was when I first saw the book. When I first picked it up I was enamored with the cover. The cover was the thing. I truly believe that you can judge a book by its cover. So I picked it up. Sat down. It was bright. Too bright for reading.

Let’s pretend you are me and you are the one sitting in a large bright room and all there is is this small beautiful book in your lap and you are alone. Are you alone yet? Okay. Let’s begin.

In this book are all of the strange and wonderful things that have ever happened in your life. You can’t understand at first. That is understandable. The pictures within it are pictures of you. In some of them you are crying. In most of them you are laughing. You are happy about that part. This book is not broken up into chapters as you thought it would have been. Strangely enough, this book that you are holding now in your lap (it is so heavy now, you realize) has no parts, no segments, and no dividers. There are not even paragraphs. Here you are; you are a baby. You are being washed. You don’t even recognize yourself. You are so small. You are so contrary to what you think you have become. Where did these pictures come from, you might be asking yourself now. And as you ask, flashes of what you were come on like strange movies projected across the backs of your eyes. Here is a picture of you discovering grass for the first time, you picking it out of the ground and suckling the yellow tubers. Here, you digging in the sand, digging as deep as you can dig. This picture is of you next to a tree. You look happy in it. When did you ever look so happy as you did in that picture of you next to that tree? Here is the picture that was taken when you were opening a present you didn’t want. Here is the picture of you with a splinter in your finger. Here are the pictures in which you are crying. Do you remember when being sad used to be so easy, so uncomplicated? Do you remember hanging over your knees like a badly carven statue? Do you remember becoming limestone in the dark cold pressure of the upper mantle? Those pictures are there as well.

But — this picture book, this pop-up book of memories, this pop-up book of joy, this strange and sad little book of everything you’ve ever known — this book belongs to you; within it’s stitches you are stitched. You can do with it what you want. Have it. I do not want it anymore. Rip from it the pages you do not want. Earmark the pages you love (honestly, those are my favorite pages, too). Read them over and over again. It is your book. Write notes in the margins. Dirty it with your fingerprints. Ruin the pages with your love. Scrape them to bits with your want. Burn them in the furnace of your heart. Make this book your own. Make it belong to you. Because it is yours. Because it has always belonged to you.

Because your strange book is beautiful; and, strangely enough, you are too.

The Wilderness Downtown.

2010-08-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Just check this out. Made in HTML5, which is your computer's new daddy.

Pictures of the Ceiling

2010-08-29T17:13:00.001-07:00

After working in the projection booth at my theatre for nearly four months, having always noticed the pipes above me, I finally, today, realized the strange and dark beauty they possess.

2001: A Space Double Rainbow

2010-08-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Little Sister

2010-08-27T00:22:00.001-07:00

Moored on the shores of consciousness, but loose,
we’ve slipped into this drunken ship together before
where the black sky defies its darkness
like a purring cat stretching its spine over the world;
and the walls take to air like waterfalls
in reverse; where canons of lightning throng
against the sibilant mist and distance cliffs.
We’ve ridden the upward jutting currents, watched stone
birth stone in pillow smoke and slow slither river magma.
We’ve charted existences as they became,
before they were understood un-understood;
places where your skin is salt, your blood frightened eels,
fingernails frail as ice shelves sheering off,
eyelids thin as onion husk. Throats parches as chalk,
this is the edge. This is what I’ve tried to keep you from.

Hallelujah. I named you after praise, watched you grow
warm like the inside of the earth. Your fingers
are magnetic fields of broomstraw I’ve harvested yearly.
How did it come to be that I depend on you so much?
Your roots are nostalgia. I plunge my hands into the soil,
which is you also, somehow. I’ve pulled you,
little weed, and held you against the sun, shadows
telling time across my face and the damp ground.
The sun; the wet, wet ground; the bizarre shaped shadows;
over the years (to me, little sister) you have become these.

Update.

2010-08-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

This 17 minutes will be the end of me.

Friday Nights.

2010-08-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

Without realizing it, my Friday nights have started to resemble Sammy Davis Jr.'s Friday nights.

Unflying As We Are

2010-08-25T01:45:00.000-07:00

I wait for that woman who finds me not so strong
but falling, a broken piece of glass mid-flight.
In she sweeps, a strange pink flamingo, her leg gone
beneath her closet of mysteriousness, her light
wrinkled eyelids. How, I ask, or why, have they become
so dark? so made of midnight and void of life?

Little one, my small but distinct claws have come from
an evolution (they grew small like birds). My hands are the proof.

Our fingers have come from so many things; mostly feathers
wrapped up and tied into dream catchers. Our parts
are made into beauty and have been weaved, are tethers
refusing to be cut. Our whale pedal arms are a strange art.

My penguin, we’ve both put our scratches into the earth’s hardwood;
but also into water and (unflying as we are) the air, somehow launching as we should.

2010-08-25T00:46:00.000-07:00

If it troubles you to breathe, wait a moment. I could change the scenery.

2010-08-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

Abee Seedy Eifgy Aecheye Jakay Ellemeno Pee, Cue Are Estea Youvee, Double-you Ex Why Andzy?

Defined, But Not By These

2010-08-23T22:51:00.001-07:00

After I learned that the universe is defined not
by circles but by ellipses, as illustrated
by Kepler’s second law of planetary motion,
the world started to disintegrate for me;
the orbits of stars around a black hole
no longer so simple as the lip of a cup
I might be twisting on a Monday evening,
(I used to imagine my hand a withered satellite)
the soapy antiquated thing slipping from my hands
and shattering like youth across a hardwood floor.

More and more the coins in my own pocket
becoming a farce, no longer cymbals clashing
the arrival of things undying; no longer my parents’
wedding rings (still perfect as Saturn’s rings)
an accurate representation of forever.

Instead, now, comes to mind the chicken egg
with its sinewy yellow sun yolk balanced
askew in its shell or framed in the uneven
sizzling white on the pan’s hot nonstick black.

The bent hula-hoop of my childhood;
my sister at dusk trying still to spin it
around her unformed hips, hips that would
later give birth. The oval shape of a child’s head,
the strange second birth of the irregular placenta
discarded into the stainless steel receptacle.

I place another round glass on the drying rack.
I place another round glass on the drying rack
and sweep up the remains of the broken
into the dust pan and gently place them, so as not to rip,
into the round-lipped trashcan;
gentle as Giotto may have drawn a circle;
gentle as I might have placed a newborn’s neck
into the soft and strange irregular oval of my arms.

After jump starting an engine it is usually good to let it idle for a while. Thus:

2010-08-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

Figuring

Tireless driver,
driving the world like a hoop
with your long regular stick,
you meander the cosmos skipping stones
on the shores of existence.
Black water spreads like echoes
bouncing in a vacuum where there is no sound.
Sleepy, six-headed earth bender,
I’m a little embarrassed to admit
I’ve been eavesdropping on you all these years,
watching patterns in your movement
(you have become so predictably unpredictable).
Lazy thief,
you’ve left fingerprints everywhere
and I have been rousing the red iron dust
of your sneezes to see them.
Metronome father, dulcimer mother; you
are a thousand spoked wagon wheel giver
with no hub and no circumference.
In the delta at the meeting place
of circumstance and consequence
I found you
huddled like a toad.
You were crying like a quiet cooling coal
whispering your convoluted mantras
which I cataloged one by one in the river muck
until you slid your slick time-machine hands
over the words, made smooth the mud
and produced from it trilobites
that we halved and ate like peaches,
the egg-white colored guts stuck to our chins.
Ancient wind-talker, strange
that you ate so much like a child then.
I told you so and you thanked me.
But your needle tongue pierced my earlobe.
From then on I was marked by you
and so picked up my stick and walked with you.
I remember so little of then but what I do
I remember so well; how navigable
the woods were under the lamplight of your voice,
the electricity of your stride; your spiral
galaxy spine; your lightning touch;
your constant autumnal breath, your scent
potent as smoldering foliage.
Smoke magi;
the hollows of your footprints sprout
loose-leaf tobacco and sweet white corn.
When you ascended to the canopy to turn
all the sparrow’s breasts to rubies and
all their nests to amber and tiger’s eye
I shrunk to the size of a tick
and grew to the magnitude of joy.
You could not have held me then
because you had made me too fragile to touch
and so did not return to me—
a troubadour firefly stinging light ceaselessly
with the impossible beat of your impossible heart.

All Delighted People.

2010-08-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

Raise your hands.

Put A Fork In Me. I'm Done.

2010-08-23T07:59:00.001-07:00

2010-08-22T00:41:00.000-07:00

For a limited time only, my original blog.

For posterity.

2010-08-21T02:01:00.000-07:00

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.

Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves . . .

- Rimbaud, "The Drunken Boat"

The Ocean.

2010-08-08T22:50:00.001-07:00

There is dark light
that lives in all of us.
We are saturated
with disgust, born
anew into filth.

We have little legs
that we use to try
to run. We cannot.
We are so simple.
We are disgusting

and so are you.
These are our fingers
wrapping the glass.
This is your mind
in a kerfuffle.

Every now and then
you think you can
escape. No. You cannot.
We are trapped,
in a dream within

a shell. We are pearls,
encumbered forever.
We are bright, beautiful,
rare. We are notes
unheard. We are circles.

We are sad, and so are you.
We have so much
within us. Where are we?
Over the edge of a cliff
there is the constant ocean.

Is that where we are?
Will you find me in the waves?
I am a note, a fret;
you are a pick. You pluck
me. I am lost in dissonance.

A man dives down. It is only
blue and dark all around him.
He picks an oyster from the group.
The oyster has within it a pearl.
You are the pearl. He is lucky.

And I am lost. I am the ocean.

Take a Look Into My Life.

2010-08-08T22:21:00.001-07:00

Mom,

I love all of you insurmountably. And, yes, everything is going well. Brooklyn is treating me well. Manhattan was fun but it's a little too crazy for me. It's full of drunks, homeless people, and people from Jersey. It's kind of like Sunset Boulevard on a more massive scale.

So, I won't be your friend on Facebook; but I can give you an update on my life. I have a steady job at a movie theatre (go figure) in Union Square. I am the head projectionist and I really enjoy the work. I am also interning at Paper Magazine, which is the magazine that I really wanted to work at when I moved out here. Hopefully, if I do enough free work for them, they will give me a real job. I have my fingers crossed but it's pretty cut-throat out here.

I had another job as well, at an all African-American golf magazine - the job I think I told you was set up for me once I came out. Unfortunately the publisher is a bit sheisty, and I think he may have been dabbling in fraud. So I quit on Friday. So, tomorrow I'm going to be spending a few hours sending out resumes.

But you should not worry. I've got plenty of money. Once I have enough to live on and more I plan to start sending some back home. I love you all very much. Tell Ashley to be good (I know that she's a teenager now, and probably a handful). I miss you all unconditionally.

Steven

Horse Head.

2010-07-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

Prints for sale soon?

Might Being the Operative Word.

2010-07-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

This might change my life.

Also, boom goes the dynamite.

Don't.

2010-07-22T15:39:00.001-07:00

2010-07-14T21:20:00.001-07:00

I pray you please not read
the last line of this poem first.
Oh, shit. You just did.
So what can I do worse?
Then I pooped.

The Bed.

2010-07-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

After resolving myself against a weak hope knowing
the drill bits had gone to that inexorable place
for lost familiar things—farther than noon is from dream—
I set to building the bed by hand, fastening each hard screw,
each fumbling bolt, not looking once at the written instructions
as is customary to men. And so the bed took on its semblance,
though not as I’d imagined; yoked down the center,
strutted by ribs blackened by age and human oil steeped,
it resembled more a body (smelling human) or a ship
keeling tumult after tumult in which I could lie calm
each evening confounded by joy tinged nightmare,
traveling the insurmountable dark distance
taking its blistered hold between stars and me,
pressing to the cool wet beams my tender palms.

Cubism Dream.

2010-07-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Universe.

2010-07-08T11:35:00.000-07:00

a.k.a. What I do/think about at work when there is no work to be done.

New Goal.

2010-07-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

Find & date a certain Molly Young.

The Statement.

2010-06-27T22:11:00.001-07:00

Steven Carey does not bite his nails
like a nervous child, like a rat gnawing
at the walls, scratching at the low ceiling beams;

does not fall asleep in bed with beer;
does not smoke late into the night; does not
wake up after ten o’clock or go to bed
after midnight; practices regular calisthenics,
works pecks, legs and back in regular intervals

allowing time for healing; runs two miles
and does not throw up; does not punch
his fists into the walls sometimes until they bleed
only barely at the knuckles; does not split

the silverfish in half and spray their babies
down with bleach; bathes regularly with soap
and (bleach) water; no longer sitting in a dark room
wondering; no longer pressing himself
against or into everything, like the atmosphere,
the clouds, or god; no longer so selfish.

No longer afraid of circles and everything
that circles mean; does not break sticks
over his knee anymore; coming to terms
with the universal analogy; does not furrow
his brow at on comers like a cowering foal,

a hen in a coop, a pig in a pen, a man
in a cubicle; does not die a little every day.

Does not put ice in the skillet to watch it melt;
does not pull hair out like new grass
from the moist summer soil; greets the morning
with a sense of admiration; does not fret;
no longer jealous, envious; follows that commandment.

Walks only when told to by the signals; listens
only when told; grows, grows, and grows,
upon the walls, like so much slow uncertain mold.

At Work.

2010-06-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

Reduction (complexity).

2010-06-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

Garmonique

2010-06-21T10:36:00.001-07:00

Found This Pair Of Legs in My Email This Morning.

2010-06-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

How much are they and where do I get them?

Small Moth Dance

2010-06-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

Sitting on a rock on the bottom floor
of the Comfort Inn, in Knoxville Tennessee,
the moths cast their shadows across
the walls from the light cast to light
the building. And on them you can see many,
many small creatures, living their tiny lives,
maybe, or maybe not wondering who they are
or what they are doing. Might they simply be
attracted to the light? I smoked my simple cigarette
and wanted maybe to die then.

As the larger moths made their way across the ray
they spread their shadows like large asymmetrical angels,
made their presence known to the people who may
or may have not have been staying in those rooms.

There were two or three circling then,
as if the light were carrion,
as if the light were something
they could gain their sustenance from.

And I too gained my sustenance
from the shadows cast upon the granite walls.

I did not wish to cry then.
I wished only that it could go on forever
like that. These things, doing their small dances,
doing their little things, making their way
into forever, as if that were the only thing to do,
as if it were the only thing they could do.

Let It Begin.

2010-06-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

Fitter Happier.

2010-06-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable, not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week), getting on better
with your associate employee contemporaries,
at ease, eating well (no more microwave dinners
and saturated fats), a patient better driver,
a safer car (baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well (no bad dreams), no paranoia,
careful to all animals (never washing spiders
down the plughole), keep in contact
with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then),
will frequently check credit
at (moral) bank (hole in the wall),
favors for favors, fond but not in love,
charity standing orders, on Sundays
ring road supermarket (no killing moths
or putting boiling water on the ants),
car wash (also on Sundays), no longer afraid
of the dark or midday shadows,
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate,
nothing so childish - at a better pace,
slower and more calculated,
no chance of escape, now self-employed,
concerned (but powerless), an empowered
and informed member of society
(pragmatism not idealism), will not cry
in public, less chance of illness, tires that grip
in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat),
a good memory, still cries at a good film,
still kisses with saliva, no longer empty
and frantic like a cat tied to a stick,
that's driven into frozen winter shit
(the ability to laugh at weakness),
calm, fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig in a cage on antibiotics.

Everything I Did, I Did For You.

2010-06-05T23:33:00.000-07:00

I'll Try To Find Something On This Thing That Means Nothing.

2010-05-31T21:09:00.000-07:00

Losing my breath.

Roll-Out Cot Caveat.

2010-05-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

"I just want to piss on your faces from the top of my high horse riding around in my ivory tower of glass where I'll be throwing rocks."
-Ryan Kobane

Just Breathe and I Will Be More In You

2010-05-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Bed.

On Coming Home

2010-05-16T00:25:00.001-07:00

There is a small savings bank buried
between my heart and my spine.

It is deep and filled with joy unformidable.
I take from the little that is there very rarely,

though when I do it is simply warmth
that I emit. And as I stepped through

the threshold – dragged my hands across
the white walls, let my feet putter

lightly on the hardwood floor,
looked out the window to the J train

making its slow curve into Marcy St. station,
felt the pulse of the bridge traffic push

through the ground – I paused,
filled out the small (miniature almost, invisible maybe)

withdrawal slip, pressed it to my chest, sweaty, nearly dead
from lugging the dirty clothes, the little bits I’m made of –

digital cameras, laptops, too many books,
my toothbrush (so personal, the toothbrush) –

and took a bit out. I placed it in a small rinsed jelly jar
and sealed it, looked at it. So, when the sun lazily made

its way, drunk perhaps, to bed, I did not turn on the lights.
Instead, I carried around the jar, found my way

through this hallway or that lit by this crumbling
and quick diminished unformidable joy.

Umm...

2010-05-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

steven,

perhaps my growing up too deprived of love or emotional security and my subsequent conscious effort in opening up to love etc. play a role in my interpretation of your action as somewhat callous, or at least uncaring. i am sorry but this can’t continue any longer. i can’t do this. it’s a soft spot for me and i feel like i’m playing hangman. maybe it is just pure hallucination the way i felt your thinking about me every now and then, the way i believe that you’d actually call. whether you’re doing it intentionally to hurt me or not, it doesn’t matter, you’ve done it. i can’t bear to read another email from you days later apologizing either. if there were care in the first place, damage and apology wouldn’t have been necessary. i don’t want this kind of wishy-washy connection or insensitivity in my life. i am sorry, i hope that i haven’t hurt your feelings. pls understand that i never meant to put myself in the position of hurt and of continual disappointment just by wanting to acknowledge our affinity. i neither date nor play games, nor do i believe in or have respect for either. so if that is something that you find entertaining, it’s better that you stay away from me. i don’t know how many people you are seeing or how emotionally involved you are otherwise, or whatever reason there could be that makes you want to keep the distance. but we both know that it can’t be just work, or apt hunt, or whatever this whatever that... there will always be something going on in life, i just feel that i haven’t been welcomed in your life. sorry it’s taking me so long to accept. i was naive in thinking we’d really meet again. things are great when we meet or when i hear your voice... i don’t know... i wish you’d just told me things upfront or keep me informed of what really is up, instead of dragging it out and demanding that i read it through your actions, which to me is and has been more brutal.
life is too short. i hope to live mine with all the love and tenderness i am capable of with people who want to be with me. it always sucks when things are not mutual. but at least i have done my best, and have been honest and open with you. i wish you all the best and happiness in the world.

take good care of yourself,a—

p.s. don’t worry, should we ever run into each other professionally in the future, i’ll pretend that we’ve never met.

(na-Po-Wri-Mo #30) Part VI

2010-05-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

VI

There are few things to count, days for one,
also months, eventually years as they go
and become smaller, less significant.
Somehow, yesterday, the microwave on the fritz
started beeping off the minutes. Beep, another

minute of your life is over, beep, another minute,
beep, beep, beep (we woke to the alarm counting
off the time we’d agreed to wake, shook our bodies
out of sleep and thought of only how cold it was
beyond the comfort of sleep. I used to sleep with you then.

I used to sleep well with you then. So many times
I lost track. You were the unperceivable, the shadow
in the corner I’ve felt upon waking for years now.
You were the ghost in the old house, the crack
making its way up the windshield, the sound

that puts a doubt in the fact that we are awake.)
Awake, awake, awake, and it is bursting daytime,
bustling nightlife setting itself into the concrete seams
of the sidewalk and I am walking, a bit of something
lodged that keeps me in kilter, something a bit like glue.

I scrape, at last, the final pebble from my shoe
as the dark eyed owl spreads his down, filling slow
the gutters, and begin to feel lighter, so he can soar
for solitary hours; and this, my single wish,
alone, disheveled, spry, somewhat diminished.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #29) Cold Water

2010-05-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

Cold Water

When the first silver of morning
slips between the space on the sill
and the lower lips of the curtains

and the slow beginning of an owl’s coo
start thrumming through the walls,

having not slept, I place my sadness
in the form of old records
under a new needle and sigh

for the only time your dark hair
has ever dragged across my eyes
like a vast cold river over stones
is during my deepest of deep dreams.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #28)

2010-05-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

When the ceiling starts raining down
like the high hidden roof beams have melted
because the bathroom upstairs has flooded;

when cracks start crawling up the walls
like faults shifting in the ground,
when you’re shaken into awareness of what

you’ve become, detritus in the corner,
a space between space; a lie covering
another lie; when every room seems too small

spread your arms out wide and sigh.
The galaxy spins on like a plate on a stick
balanced at the bottom of a dark empty ocean.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #27) Rubbish

2010-04-28T09:03:00.001-07:00

Rubbish

Side-tables; desktop knick-knacks; bric-a-brac;
whatever the thing, nothing gave me greater pleasure

than throwing it away. Conspicuous consumption,
some said. I tossed their intermittent interruptions

into the wastebasket with the dust were they belonged;
with old beer cans collecting mold, dust, and flies.

If I could’ve seen to the bottom it would’ve been filled
with pictures of memories I’ve forgotten—the time I fell asleep

in a bowl of Spagettios; being beaned on the first pitch;
walking home bruised because no one remembered

to pick me up; watering the fresh planted tree
in the front yard of my parents first house

donning red overalls (those I don’t particularly wish
to remember). Further up in the stack, between

scraps of old shoeboxes, grade school report cards,
perfect attendance certificates, or honorable mentions,

the pictures take on a pimpled hue, spotted with black heads
flushed with blood rising to the surface all around;

sitting under an awning writing my first poem
because someone else had written a poem

and that seemed like a pretty cool thing for sad kids to do;
a shot of me riding a bike with my brother on the pegs

holding my shoulders, because my father wanted to test
the aperture on his new digital camera (the thing was huge,

but then what isn’t when you’re young). Dining tables,
huge. Rooms and hills, climbing up them, huge.

Trees, the distance between me and the tallest branch,
huge. The way I felt when I sat atop it. Beds; collections

of friends; the length of phone calls (whoever had so much
to talk about?) huge. And, still, at the top of the tree

or beyond the top rung of any ladder (being all ladders)
that I was too afraid to climb, exists another branch,

another existential leap into infinity. Watch as the rest
gets tossed out, sucked down, flung into a heap

that keeps getting smaller as it more, and steadily more,
recedes into the tiny pile. Nothing gives me pleasure now.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than throwing it away.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #26) Vagina Dentata

2010-04-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Vagina Dentata

“A fish inhabits the vagina of the Terrible Mother;
the hero is the man who overcomes the Terrible Mother,
breaks the teeth out of her vagina,
and so makes her into a woman.”
-Erich Neuman

So I’ve always wanted to catch a fish with my hands
the way people snag mosquitoes in summer
or Mr. Miyagi style with the chopsticks, swift.
And that’s how it happens, being snatched up

by a woman, out of no where, like two nailed paws
had come down and struck you. There is something
beautiful about being stunned, eyes glazed over.
Try to imagine not being able to breathe the air.

I sit down at a small sushi bar and wait, kimonos
hanging like curtains against the walls, beach crusted,
hands washed. Where moments before they had passed
between my legs; flounders, sea bass, bat rays.

The waves come down over each other like blinds
pulled up against the sun. And then the slices arrive,
some bits of pickled ginger, split down the middle like fins
splitting under the water you need to live. Surrounded,

all you can do is swallow and never breathe again.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #25) New Shape

2010-04-26T10:18:00.001-07:00

New Shape

Spring came and went so quick,
or did it leave? Within the week
rain had destroyed the soil
and heat came back reliable
as a migratory bird, heavy
shadow spread on the light green
shoots of new grass sprouting.
Two days and the trees had flung
themselves into the air, burst
into dark bud like an unshaved face.
Distinguished. And now grizzled
beneath the low returning clouds.

And sometimes the morning fog
settles down like a bum and begs
against the buildings, blurring lines,
undefining the visible. But sometimes
the drops smash against the brickwork
of the taller nightscape and from them take
on new shape; light streamed windows
like hearts on fire, like hearts aglow.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #24) A Nice Place To Live

2010-04-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

A Nice Place to Live

This morning when I woke there was a line
painted, and this much is true, on the sidewalk,
on one side written in plain white chalk, New Yorkers,
on the other side, tourists. So I meandered the border

like a drunk during a sobriety test, left leg on the right
side, right crossed to left as if on the threshold of visiting.
I meet people from all around the world now; met a man
from Florida and cringed at the though, immediately

regretted it. Said, I’m sorry. He said, Can’t really blame you.
Said, It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
Once, in California, I told a woman I was moving to New York.
She said, driving’s atrocious, the streets too crowded,

weather weird. No wonder then, when people ask how
I like New York, I took to saying It’s a nice place to visit,
or what California was like, Are there really on every corner
palm trees swaying? I say, Yes, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #23)

2010-04-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

Taking a break from the pebble poem.

Paint, Spice, and Light

Because the amateur cook didn’t know
what to do he utilized every spice
and all at once—thyme and Worchester sauce;
garlic salt, turmeric, parsley flakes, soy—
This is the way he painted, like color
was a sense he could taste, like his palate
was the cupboard, the flavors his wet paints;
took the Pollack approach to cooking, or
maybe no one told him about finesse,
depth; or no one said how a pinch left out
versus the pinch put in could make it right—
like life—could be enough to save the dish.
No. So no one told him it’s not pigment
but light, that built upon itself, makes white.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #22) Part V

2010-04-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

V

Behind the stars is a darkness,
dark as evil is dark, dark as a man.
We spent our lives trying to find it.
Do you remember being pressing against
it (hard lungs breathing, you between them,
a grunt of not knowing where you were

or who you belonged to. You always belonged
to me; I am emptiness; I was the place between
you and him, or you and her. Don’t you know
that moments between us were spaced
like the spaces between harp strings,
blues and reds, realized only through tones.

Why did you run away from us? What did you
gain? from becoming a nothing mist?
Nothing, you used to say to us. I’m sorry.
And I placed my ribs upon a scaffold
and built up fortresses, planks to put
myself up on. I was high, for a moment.

But there was a fight, a fire-fight,
and you were there too, bright as aurora,
streaking across the sky like I never knew,
bright like I never knew; you,
breaking into fire. Do you remember sitting

lowly, on a couch, made of fake, plastic leather?
Do you remember sinking into what life seemed?)
The stars are slowly fading. I place myself between
them, light clouds shadowing my existence,
as sky turns to a deeper shade of blue,
I scrape another pebble from underneath my shoe.

An Exciting Business Opportunity.

2010-04-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

27b/6

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #21) Part IV : A New Hope

2010-04-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

IV

(And the stars in the desert spread out
like stones cast into a pond, a handful thrown
by a child, ripples shooting out like light
in every direction, every action and its equal
but opposite. There are ripples in everything;
in the motions we make; ripples; in hearts

we break; ripples; in the quiet valley air we split
as we made our way down Interstate 5
from Seattle, glowing from the light
radiating from the stereo, the console,
you falling intermittently into sleep,
and me too, though I was diving; ripples.

There was a thin weaving road from my house
to yours between the woods then. Remember
how you said you’d become afraid of the trees?
Afraid you’d see bodies hanging from the branches
in the flashes of light? And though I didn’t believe it,
I think now I know there are ghosts in the timber.

Like there are ghosts in everything we touched
together, spirits in the electric signals
of phone calls, pops and hiss, static:
waves of sound making their way from your mouth
across an ocean of rivers and grain to my ear.
When I close my eyes I think I can hear them.

I can still see stars here; can you believe it?
Their voices, like someone saying nothing,
like pulses of a heart beating a rhythm
under flushed lips, like specters of the unsaid,
like ripples sent across a widening pool.)
I scrape another pebble from my shoe.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #20) Parts 1-3

2010-04-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

I

Sticks, bric-a-brac, cigarette butts,
things I’ve picked up along the way;
but most of all the pebble, the gum
that held it, stuck to my shoe
since when? The Brooklyn Flea?
The Bronx? California?

At every corner I scrape it, try
to pull the bits of whatever I remember
off (I must have spent hours
walking down the alley to your house,
between the fixed electric poles buzzing,
spitting booze and drinking wildly;

I always wanted to be drunk before
I arrived. One night we gathered wood,
took my truck into the night like ghosts
and stole trash like the trash stealers did,
turned it into a hobby. I must have rode
around with that wood in my truck

for months; the weight of it baring down
on my shocks until the breaks gave.
Do you remember that? The panic?
The awe of coming to a halt? The stop?
Weeks were spent coming to terms
with who we were after that, as if

the earth had be hit, had stopped
spinning, had sent us into hurling,
spry, limbs akimbo, phosphorescent
into the sky. Do you remember being alive?
Do you remember having something to prove?
Because I don’t.) I scrape another pebble from my shoe.

II

I read somewhere that when you die
you go to heaven, and that heaven is a place
where everything you could have ever wanted
just happens. So I pictured filth, pictured rats,
cockroaches in the seams of buildings,

between dishes, hiding in everything (
and growing in the space within pasta
and water was a place for bacteria, growing,
red as red lights at traffic signals, green
as stagnant algae pools, a place for going.

I do not blame you because I delved into
those deep waters too, felt the warmth
of being held by life, however small,
knowing that I was loved by parasites.
And have you ever been loved more
than by those that fed off you? I rile

and rive at the thought. I split into two.
I think of the space between two rooms.
There is silence like we have never known
in space, like the day I never walked in
on you having sex with this girl or that;
the day I put six beers in a bowl of ice

and walked quietly into my room
so as not to hear; the day I walked
less gently, passed the piano my aunt gave me,
“white as a ghost” you later said, which
made me snicker, curt, as I made my move
toward Cortlandt.) I scrape another pebble from my shoe.

III

It must have been coming with me
for some time, because I felt a lump
under my sole, like a lump in a throat,
like a feeling that a tracker must have
when he’s realized he’s retraced his steps
(like that time we took those girls down

Broadway in shopping carts, ripping
through the dark like men in the eighties
ripped through dresses, because they
didn’t know what rape meant.
Do you remember doing cartwheels
in the street? Do you remember

scraped wrists? Showing up to work
hung-over to all hell and waiting
for five o’clock to come around again
to do it all over. The man in the corner,
forty years older than us, drinking
a Budwiser, wanting only to be us,

young, him telling stories of how
he saw Bukowski stand on this table
or that; piss on Ferlinghetti or whoever.
The day he fought a girl in the street
because he knew that we were okay,
had become part of the pavement,

had spread ourselves so thin
we barely recognized ourselves.
The nights we walked home alone,
together, thinking only of each other,
into, but not against, the wind’s coo)
I scrape, slow, another pebble from my shoe.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #19)

2010-04-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

Lottery

Upturned at the bus stop
the opened box of fresh
lottery tickets had dropped.
Beautiful, almost, the litter seemed,
twisting up the street like shining fish
and the empty box of unlost dreams
skirting down gutter, unblemished

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #18) Adam in the Cave

2010-04-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

Adam in the Cave

Because there were no words
for bison, hyena, lion or horse,
Adam began collecting
the necessary equipment
for naming animals—red ochre,
crushed, black charcoal, spit,
water, fire with which to see—
and started drawing,

scraped clean the surface rock,
cleared lichen and mold,
hit white stone and made outlines.

Completely alone—
with no voice from God
but an urge to make it
permanent in pigment

(his thin inadequate torch
rousing his silhouette into dance
against the tighter spaces)—

he pressed further into the earth
sketching manes, horns twisting
(years before they became
hollowed instruments)
like the arms of spiral galaxies.

And have you heard the halls of the Chauvet Caves?
Hundreds of hand-stenciled hand-prints
spread like fields of wheat or willow
reaching out through time and stone?

Curious it took anthropologists so long;
it took them navigating passageways,
arching backs and scraping skin to find them,
(nearly out of breath, unable to speak,
their fires quenched from lack of oxygen)
for them to understand.

With no reference to know, no light now to see,
he spit red against the wall, against the wall his hand;
his only word for Adam; his only word for Man.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #17) Write a Poem Right Now?

2010-04-18T01:24:00.001-07:00

Write a Poem Right Now?

The red rusted dust brushed our faces
as we began our accent out
of the Grand Canyon. The donkeys
with their ever clobbering clobbers—

and here I start to laugh
because the sound is ridiculous
as if I could pontificate my tongue,
liberate the millennia within the walls

with words. Layers of age.
Pillars of strong rock gathered
like pyres pointing upward toward heaven.
And like them, stratified, we are

not that young, and not entirely that old
while others fold (quietly around us) into the river.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #16)

2010-04-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

Trouble in the Suburbs

Trouble’s what we’ve got coming.
It’s just crested the white-capped mountains,

is just about to spread, just about to file
down slopes through ravines,

through scars carved millennia ago
by ancient glaciers, about to cover

chaparral and grassland lying low
before it roars back up, geyser-like,

to make its way like a parade
into townships, rural development projects,

between cookie-cut, pop-up houses,
up and down gutters, overwhelming

the street-sweepers, pooling up,
flooding streets where proper drainage

is less than lacking, scaring the shit
out of the city counsel who’s yet

to address the situation,
about to knock on your door,

about to crash through your windows,
ruin your carpet, steal your children,

raise them to be thieves, drug addicts, or worse,
poets, about to take the air out of your lungs,

about to leave you bruised and broken
hearted, ready to disappoint,

and trust, you will be disappointed,
and definitely not spared because

trouble’s what we’ve got coming.
Trouble is already here.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #15) A Sonnet Plus The Line About You

2010-04-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

A Sonnet Plus The Line About You

The trees are not in full thrush
though their petals litter the ground.
The smell of first spring rain brings on
memories of walking only. But please,

let’s not be coy, as if you didn't know
what new rain against old asphalt smelled like.
Raw, distinguished, like waking up
in a room you smoked in all night.

I used to walk to school every day,
passed smiling at the old women
jogging the other way. Then, as fog
slipped into the field thick like a slug,

I, like a child, slipped under sheets toward the fence,
while in my dreams you we're sleeping, very beautifully,
and we disappeared into the distance.

In Other News.

2010-04-15T00:54:00.001-07:00

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #14) Conceptual Poetry

2010-04-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

What I’ve Learned About Quantum Physics From Searching Wikipedia*

Quantum mechanics is a set
of scientific principles
describing the known
behavior of energy,
a quantity
that can be assigned
to every particle,
a particle not known

to have substructure;
a structure
whose domain
is a subset, especially in
set theory, the branch
of mathematics, the study
of quantity, structure,
space, and change.

Focused on limits,
functions, derivatives,
integrals, and infinite
series, given an infinite
sequence, a set
that is not a finite set.
A set that has a finite
number

of elements
is any one
of the distinct objects
that make up that,
the relation, a binary relation
on a set, a collection of
distinct objects, considered as
an object in its own right.

* This poem was written by pulling a section of the first sentence from the Wikipedia article on Quantum Physics and following the subsequent links at the end of said sentence, and repeating. The whole experience turned out to be interestingly reductive, like the child who keeps asking "Why?" until the adult finally admits they simply do not know.

This One's A Freebee.

2010-04-13T22:27:00.001-07:00

Instead
of a hand written
note, for the beer
he took
he left a five
dollar note
that said,

I drank
the beer
that was in
the fridge.

Forgive me.
it was hoppy
and so cold,

by its mere
appearance
there.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #13) My Offering

2010-04-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

My Offering

“…feeling God in a pool hall but not church—Holy.”
-Derrick Brown

In the apse of the bar, lit like an altar,
the pool table crossed over with cues,
balls striped and solid racked in rows like candles.
Damn it, I think, Someone already playing,
making my way toward the barkeep.

A woman laid out upon a bench, arms cast
down, clothes draped and tired like St. Theresa
in ecstasy, not bathed but drenched in red light
bouncing off the walls, reflecting the red felt
of the pool table. Smell of smoke. Dirty ceiling.
A place like coming home after a long trip.

I order a beer, place my name on the list
of those who came to play, who do not want
to simply sink like submarines with holes
punched through them. Pay the man.

My offering. Also my quarters, placed
in a stack on the bumper, shining. A baseball game,
pre-recorded, playing in the background;
murmurs of things that happened hours ago.

And when my turn is up I make sure the rack
is tight, Don’t mess it up now, though your nervous.
And the break. And the world shattering in a crack
that sounds like everything coming back to life,
the click happening within our bodies of things colliding.

The break, the scratch; a man, white-robed, walking
through the colonnade. The Latin. The English.
The sinker. The sinner. The End. The End.

The End. I didn’t know what it looked like until now.

It looks like a bright white dot draped in solid black.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #12)

2010-04-13T15:59:00.001-07:00

Five For A Dollar

As I stepped from strong shadow into sun,
light skipped across my eyelids like smooth stones.
Warmth filled me and passed quick through my body
like dumplings from Prosperity Dumpling
on Eldridge St. between Grand and Canal.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #11)

2010-04-13T12:39:00.001-07:00

Loneliness has its own rewards,
solitude, rest, and so much more:
time to think great thoughts; let chords
from wind and distant voices form.

And freedom too, to do what you might,
to hit the bars, not caring if you fight,
or maybe just to lay down and hit the light,
sleepless, as you may have done last night.

Billy (The lost Na-Po-Wri-Mo #10)

2010-04-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

Wrote a decent poem today; lost it. Promise to find it. Promise also (half-heartedly) not to write any more poems where the last line negates the whole poem.

Billy

has trouble with metaphors;
woke up one day with a hangover
and made a milkshake from the literal dog
(you should have seen him shaving it)
that bit him, coughed it down sip by sip;

tried to look at the bright side
he stared at the sun, like his mother said he shouldn’t,
went blind in six minutes; saw only white from then on.

At every new position he got,
spent weeks literally testing the water
from the tap. “Is that chlorine? A tinge a rust I taste?”
He lost many jobs that way;

Even had trouble with slang,
which isn’t quite the same, but close;
called the record store to price some records,
fifteen bucks, the guy on the line had said,

so called his uncle in Montana
where the elk are plentiful;
never got it right.
Billy, the name I picked
because it sounds like no one in particular.

Billy, the metaphor himself,
he cannot understand.

Jesus Moved to Jersey (Na-Po-Wri-Mo #9)

2010-04-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

Jesus Moved to Jersey

The part they don’t tell you in Sunday school
is that after the resurrection, the ascension,
Jesus left heaven and moved to Jersey
where he still lives now, a little more pudgy,
(the signature Jesus Christ abs long gone)
where he owns a little baker shop, making bread
hour after hour, every mouthful so warm, so good
that for a moment you believe that God is real.

You would not recognize him, his beard grayed,
his long silken hair a bit receding, somewhat thinner;
the light Jersey accent he’s taken on like a cross;
not to mention the attitude he’s picked up, a force
behind the voice, like a regular sinner.
But then he’s never cared much for authority,
which is the other part they don’t let you see
but hint at with his lonesome moments of dismay.

Prayers weaved out of doubt in gardens for hours,
the part where Jesus wept. The famous short line.
But these days he’s quite the exhibitionist, every thought
scribbled down in journals, each emotion wrought
into red words blazoned on pages like bloodstains;
Or even more telling, his letters to dad, the Why don’t you see
that you cannot just die vicariously through me?
each note arriving, bread scented, dusted lightly with flour.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #8)

2010-04-08T22:50:00.000-07:00

A Sonnet Minus The Line About You

Somehow, the florescent light comes upward
from the yellow yard below and casts shadows
through the blinds like diagonal prison bars.

Nothing is right. Nothing is pure. The air is tinted
with a tinge of darkness, even in the day. And all
my poems about love are tinged with dark. I wish

I knew how to make things sound more like how
I see them, surrounded, always, by petals, like you;
the way my knees have shifted into falling,

the way I’ve fallen before you like a meek flower
(you being everyone I’ve ever met, and not you,
or at least not the you you think, but greater)
in the heat, bowing to a power I still do not know.

(Na-Po-Wri-Mo #7)

2010-04-08T22:49:00.000-07:00

A beard is like a badge one wears,
a thing a man can carry around that bares
his worth. And if you have the courage
to grow one, congrats. You will find your age

has grown as well, by at least three years.
But there is nothing like the day, when overcoming fear,
you decide to shave it off, and the wind hits you just so
and you realize that you are young again, like so long ago.