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The attached file is another excerpt from the retail manuscript I'm working on. 
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The first 3,540 words of the retail manuscript I'm currently working on.
I start every year with desire
thick braid of maybe tied around my head The heart bloods the fingers to their tasks The calendar winking its filthy progression Every checked box is an impending excuse for another failure Every friend a bartender with a free pint of congratulations Tonight and every night we celebrate having one less thing to celebrate Even: (Adj.) free from variations or fluctuations; regular on the level . calm . horizontal keel on a flat body of water . a debt paid to someone who once owed you . just . justified . text bordered the same distance from the margins even. an adverb meaning very or more which doesn't sound redundant when used to modify very or more. very more . very stable . its own synonym and antonym even . sometimes although even . a match that never sparks interesting . equal but perhaps not fair . smooth or dulcet . both plane and plain . 4/4 time . square . equilateral . any number divisible by two . the precise word to fill a two syllable space . snagglepuss's vocal tic . a way to break without loss . the utopia of revenge . (I'm compiling the Terrible Poets' Thesaurus by reading poems by unfamiliar writers and jotting down unusual word choices. Once I find a term three times, I attempt to define it by deconstructing it as it appears to me in the context of the poems in which they're used, which are unlikely to be the way the authors intended them. Alternately, I look at my own poems and find words that I overuse and attempt to imagine how others might interpret them.)
Habit: (n.) an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary always approaching pants from the west and shirts from the east before getting dressed . a liter of soda a day to ward off the tooth fairy . something to do when your brain is too agonized to function . sleeping with exes . a term that non-addicts use to describe addiction . like chemical dependency was born of boredom and not terror . the repetitive act of living . wearing good clothes to church and ripped jeans to do yardwork . habit is how you are dressed not how others see you as dressed . a habit is something you can control . it is not an addiction . no one has ever neglected to pick up their children from daycare so they could chew their fingernails . which habits are bad depend on a point of view . addiction helps no individual but helps industries and corporations . a nun's costume . belief structures handed down from your ancestors that actively hurt you and the people you care about . blaming yourself or blaming everyone but yourself . going to work when it no longer fulfills you or pays you enough to be happy . a cheap attempt at ritual . a passionless exercise in passionless exercise . this again . familiarity over satisfaction . taking self-inventory without any intent of changing . the way plants hang or grow . a holding pattern . a function served by rote and not usefulness . believing the people who look most like you . trusting or distrusting people by their positions of power instead of their words . running a mile every morning to avoid thinking about your dreams (I'm compiling the Terrible Poets' Thesaurus by reading poems by unfamiliar writers and jotting down unusual word choices. Once I find a term three times, I attempt to define it by deconstructing it as it appears to me in the context of the poems in which they're used, which are unlikely to be the way the authors intended them. Alternately, I look at my own poems and find words that I overuse and attempt to imagine how others might interpret them.)
What do you think Paul Simon is doing now that Carrie Fisher is dead? Carl asks.
Crying? I ask. Yea. He says. Besides that. I don't know how anyone mourns their abandoned loves. Do you cry over the ashes of the childhood home that you torched? Do you shake your head, remembering the rooms where no one hurt you but which had to be destroyed for your own sanity? What the fuck is wistful anyway? Why does our language have so many flavors of sadness but insist on a single version of history? Besides that, I don't know. Why Paul Simon? Why not Harrison Ford or Bryan Lourd or Dan Akroyd?I ask. Dan Akroyd? Carl's version of history doesn't include things like liner notes or Wikipedia, or even Cliff's Notes or SparkNotes. If a fact is not a headline, it has to be explained to him. The Ghostbuster? They were engaged. When something is broken. A promise. An engagement. A rule. Anything but a heart. A leg maybe. Not a heart. When something is broken, a person has two options: anger or forgiveness. You can never have both simultaneously. You can forget you're angry with someone, and decide to forgive them, or you can forget you forgave someone and surrender to anger but you can not angrily forgive someone. During Blues Brothers, Akroyd proposed. They might have gotten married but then she got back together with Paul. Carl wrinkles his nose. Paul Who? Simon. I say. Paul Simon. Back together? I don't know why people drift back together when they've come to the almost always correct conclusion that they don't belong together. Nostalgia? Familiarity? The desire to prove friends and family wrong? Because those who refuse to acknowledge history repeat it until they're doomed? Yea. They were a couple. They broke up. She got engaged to Dan Akroyd, and then broke up with him to get back together with Paul. How do you know this shit? He asks. I read things. I read. Carl says. As though I've implied otherwise. I have implied otherwise. Carl is a reader of license plates, if a car cuts him off, ingredients on boxes of frozen food, if he thinks I am watching, magazine covers while waiting in line at the pharmacy. An avid reader he is. It is fine. I don't listen to music the way he doesn't read. I've heard music. I don't plug my fingers with radishes when I'm in the grocery store or start screaming when the background music of a film slowly encroaches until you can't hear the characters speak anymore, and what you're watching is less a movie and more a glorified music video. I've even been known to turn on a radio or put on a tape in a car. Though, it's been long enough that what I put in was not a CD or an iPod or a cell phone or whatever it is these days people would plug into a car in order to listen to music that wasn't selected by some stranger sitting in a booth hoping the radio industry won't die in their lifetime. I've even heard Paul Simon. When I was watching The Graduate. And probably over the speakers in one of the hipster department stores Carl likes to go into but never buy anything from. I don't know. Why do you give a shit about Paul Simon anyway? I ask. I don't. He says. I just know you like Carrie Fisher, and wondered. You know. I like Carrie Fisher? I ask. God, I am made of questions today. Yea. You have her books, and you like Star Wars, and, you know. What do I know? I ask. I know hints and allegations. I know the difference between books and music. I know that Carrie Fisher had at least one lover who left her for a man. I know Simon and Garfunkel broke up and don't like to talk about it. I know that they still perform together when it suits them. I know they are unlikely to ever record another album together. I know Paul Simon wrote a song about Frank Lloyd Wright because he was asked to. Not because he even knew who Frank Lloyd Wright was. I know who Frank Lloyd Wright was, although I've never knowingly seen one of his buildings in person. I know architecture like I know music. I know Carl is hinting that I'm bipolar. You know, he says. And I do. But Tell me what I know, I say. He does not. So we are just sitting here. In my bedroom. Both of us dressed and waiting for the other person to leave. You didn't ask me how Iman was doing after Bowie died or how I need to stop making accusatory statements before I think them through to their conclusion. You're trying to remember the name of one of Prince's ex-wives. He says. Shut up. He's right, of course. I don't know, either. Finally something in common. Ignorance. I laugh. He laughs. I feel that if I were to get up now, he'd think I am the one who's leaving first. I don't want to leave. I want him to leave. Still. If, a little less than I did a minute ago. He starts cracking his knuckles. I flinch. He rolls his eyes. It's so much easier to talk this way. I should go, I finish. apologize, he says. I'm not trying to start anything. I don't think you're crazy anymore. I feel crazy. Not like bugs under skin crazy or screaming on a bus crazy. I feel like confessing an affair to a stranger on a plane crazy or waking up in the middle of the night convinced there's a burglar only to remember that your exboyfriend is sleeping on your couch until he gets a new job crazy. Do you mean you no longer think I was ever crazy, or that you think I was crazy before but am not currently? He looks at me as though that wasn't the obvious question. As though I haven't questioned every statement he's made since we started this arrangement. And the last one. And the one before that. As though I've ever done anything but question his intentions. He looks at me. I look at him. He doesn't look angry like used to. So maybe, maybe we've finally reached the forgiveness stage of our over. He puts his shoes on and stands up. He shakes his head and smiles at me. I've got to go. He says. Nobody has to do anything they don't want to. I counter. He rolls his eyes. He leaves. You, Who Are An Argument For Not Being Alone
The man who works upstairs from the shop where i chronicle the end of civil discourse tells me that i am the nicest person who works in this building . The woman who hosts the poetry reading where i bartend tells the audience that i am an asshole . winks without using her eyes . that she only likes one of the two of us tending bar . In a year i will remember only one of these events Three of my exes . men who love men . men without jobs . men without jobs who love men with jobs . post classist memes in support of politicians who hate them for four different dehumanizing reasons . only one is envy . I wonder . does someone have to be stupid to love me . or just lack self awareness When my closest friends moved away . i stopped drinking alone . stopped enjoying the company of those who drank alone with me . lost other bartenders’ phone numbers . stopped drinking with other bartenders . stopped exploiting free drinks . stopped going to parties with my alcoholic friends . All my friends are alcoholics . some in recovery . most not yet or ever When my closest alcoholics moved away . i stopped drinking alone . i stopped mostly drinking . i did not stop being alone I do not miss drinking . or you . very much . when i am not alone . I do not miss the awareness of my body . the not tripping over sidewalks or tongues or you or your friends or myself or stairs or the light fantastic or whatever obstacles i placed in my own path and blamed someone else for . I do not miss listening to dull strangers in poorly lit rooms . I do not miss my friends being strangers You tell me about your loneliness . how it tastes the same no matter which continent you land on . how it waves goodbye when your new strangers invite you out for drinks . but then . there it is waiting for you at the bar . already tipsy and calling your name Oh god . am i your loneliness Sometimes . when i am home and everyone else is away . i call your name without touching any part of myself . but usually i forget that you exist Maybe we are each other’s . loneliness My worst ex . wrecking ball . pluto . defective tube in a neon sign . fictional land i once believed home . keeps finding work and lovers like they are pennies . and he lives in a fountain at the center of a naive village I wish he were lonelier than us Ugh . lonely . Destitute of companionship . isolated . even when surrounded by people . society . a raft of hands . Lonely . The condition of self-exile . The song on everyone’s lips when the lights go out unexpectedly . The most common word in a realist’s vocabulary . A drink with no recipe . You when we met . Me when we met . Us when we were together . A nuptial ponzi scheme . A rent to own lifestyle How were we ever any of this without each other The woman who lives across the street . invites me to dinner with her terrible nephew . tells me we have a lot in common . You call while i am inventing a reason to stay home . you do not say anything memorable . do not give me a reason to do anything but stay same as i ever am . do not offer company or conversation . just a steady stream of how awful the world is without . each other 17 Rebeccas Crossing The Street Against The Light
The cappuccino wasn’t foamy enough and had to be sent back twice The cheese had not been melted properly on the panini and so they were not going to pay full price thank you The cars were approaching at a reasonable speed and they were nowhere near a crosswalk but sometimes you can’t wait There are clothes to return and servers who don’t smile enough and why would anyone even wear those shoes out of the haha I know, right house? Where is the fleet of pink Cadillacs with box plows to clean this refuse from the street? Where are the ancestors of the coyotes killed for their trendy winter parkas blood hungry and beautiful? the plucked geese (who, themselves, are entitled assholes) hissing and cold so their coats could be warm? Where are their parents who still pay their bills because the twenty-first century is too expensive for anyone under fifty whose parents are still alive? Where is my humanity in all of this? Has it refused to pay the full price of respect for someone else’s individuality because a few of their behaviors haven’t set properly? Is it wearing a parka made of teeth with bleach blonde trim? Is it running into traffic to tell the world how important it is? Alarm (noun): a warning sound, a signal for attention The sound morning makes to steal you from dreams . Surprise . Every day the same surprise . A buzzing in your pocket . A howl in a forest when you do not live near a forest . A howl in a city that once was a forest . A nagging reminder that the day requires movement. A thing to snooze . A raised voice before you touch something hot . But everything's burning these days . keep your hands to yourself . A red switch in a school for avoiding homework . To cause fear . sometimes when no danger is present . A bipartisan political ploy . An unethical journalism tactic . Tabloid sales booster . How can there always be a state of emergency . There is a state of emergency . moreso than the last time there was a state of emergency . The boy who cried wolf was actually being chased by wolves . but the old wolves were slow and elderly and we assumed they wouldn't catch him . they caught him . but he lived. Now there are bigger wolves . Now the boy . injured in the last attack . is slower . The bells have been clanging for so long . it's difficult to remember to hear them (I'm compiling the Terrible Poets' Thesaurus by reading poems by unfamiliar writers and jotting down unusual word choices. Once I find a term three times, I attempt to define it by deconstructing it as it appears to me in the context of the poems in which they're used, which are unlikely to be the way the authors intended them. Alternately, I look at my own poems and find words that I overuse and attempt to imagine how others might interpret them.)
I don't know which is worse: the disillusion of discovering a person or passion is a hypocritical farce or having to be the person who exposes the farce to someone who still has faith in the person or passion. I'm lucky that the passion I'm writing about, slam poetry, was created to be a farce. It's just a shame that so many people who devote their time and energy to slam poetry forget that it's always been, at its heart, a self-aware hoax.
If you're one of the blessed many who has never been to a poetry slam, here's the spiel that a slam host will often present to an audience: Slam poetry was invented in the 1980s by a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith (and here, the poets and audience members familiar with how seriously Marc takes his creation shout "So what?!") who wanted to take poetry out of the textbooks and stuffy halls of academia and present it to the people to be judged. This is all you need to know about slam: some drunk guy thought poetry would be more popular is it was a bar game that the audience felt they had a stake in. Nothing else about slam matters. Even Marc Smith's name is mostly irrelevant. It's one of the few real names I'll use in this book because even the most luddite uncle can google well enough to reveal his role as Slampapi, and since he was on his route to distance himself from slam just as I was beginning to engage in it, I don't have anything defamatory to say about him except Thanks for inadvertantly establishing a series of communities in which I've wasted nearly two valuable decades of my life. Dingleberry. Two decades is a long time to be involved in any mostly non-paying arts community. I'm tempted to add the caveat that I didn't live and breathe slam for twenty-four hours a day since 1998 but that's not precisely true. I can't identify a single second in the perp walk of my memory that hasn't been somehow influenced by my time in slam. It's not quite like being locked in a room and forced to watch the entire run of Two And A Half Men on a loop for twenty years, it's more like having to live your life in a room where Two And A Half Men is constantly playing on the TV. You can mute it. You can turn and face the other way. But you can usually see it in your peripheral vision, and even when you shut your eyes, you know it will be there when you open them. Plus, someone you like will come into the room and tell you how the show used to be better before Ashton Kutcher replaced Charlie Sheen. No matter how many times you explain that taste is subjective and that it's always been more or less the same shit writing staff with only slightly different shit actors, they will still clamor their irrelevant opinions as though they were facts. Very little of what I will tell you are facts. They are my highly subjective perspectives on my experiences. I recently read another poet's memoir on slam and was ludicrously angry that they portrayed an event I'd designed and hosted, erased me from it, and given credit to a poet who'd called for a boycott of my work because she thought me and my event were problematic. When I expressed this anger to a mutual colleague, I said something to the effect of This whole book is a series of poorly written, unresearched, uninteresting lies. "It's a memoir." She said. "You can't refer to someone's experience as a lie." This is a series of stories about my experiences with slam poets. It's filled with lies. Some of them are mine. You don't need to worry about guns in the first act going off in the second. I'm anti-gun. Sure, some words will blow up in my face but that happens to everyone. Some people are just smart enough to leave the room and scrub the letters off their face as soon as possible. I threaded mine into a beard. The title of this book, The Box Of Doom, comes from an event I'm associated with in the slam community, though I did not invent it. The Box Of Doom is a celebration of bad art. A curator, often me, collects poems they find offensively bad (not offensive to someone's political leanings, offensive to one's taste in writing) poems, song lyrics, or piece of prose they can find, and puts it in a box or a waste paper basket or a child's potty training chair. A participant blindly draws a piece of writing from the box and has to perform it with little or know preparation. This book is pretty much stream of consciousness. I'm sure I'll edit it with the help of my many wonderful under-appreciated friends, but there's no outline. I'll be using certain prompts and literary devices to inspire sections. I hope you don't find them too gimmicky. Part of my desire not to outline this is that there are certain parts of my time amongst slam poets that enrage me. I don't want to think about them until I absolutely have to write about them. Unlike your average shitty slam poem, I'm not going to tell you why you should agree with or disagree with me or my thesis. Part of the aforementioned emcee spiel states Judges, be true to yourselves. Don't be swayed by the audience's uninformed opinions. This is usually immediately followed by Audience, these judges don't know what the fuck they're doing, sway the hell out of them. If you've never been to or heard of slam poetry before, I hope this book sways you to learn more about it. If you're someone interested in getting involved with slam poetry, I hope this book encourages you to run screaming. In which direction is entirely up to you. If you're a member of a slam scene hoping to encounter a character resembling you, god luck! If I don't love you or your work, or hate your hypocrisy, I probably don't remember you, no matter how clever your stage name is or how many colors your hair was dyed when we I stood in a room while you yelled at me and other strangers. If you Know you're in this book and end up being pleased with how you're portrayed, I'm glad. I probably wish I could better reflect how vital you were to me continuing to stay involved with slam. It's been difficult to hate a thing so many people that I love are interested in. If you Know you're in this book and you become angry at how a certain fictitious character resembles your flaws, maybe talk to your therapist about it. Also, consider this: slam poetry was intended as a movement not a genre, yet a generation of certain poets will be identified as slam poets in the way that certain poets of the mid-twentieth century were labeled beat poets. Outside of people passionate about poetry, most people can only name four beat poets: the accused pedophile whose work was labeled obscenity, the heroin addict who shot his wife in the head and killed her, the guy who opened the press and the bookstore, and the one the other three were in love with. The most widely published and taught in schools was the one the other three were in love with. I'm not the one everyone loves. I am currently investigating opening a bookstore. |
What Is This All About?This page is where the content from previous poetry blogs have been condensed. It's not on the menu, since most of these projects are over, or on hiatus, but the posts are still here to peruse. Archives
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