July 2010
2 posts
[ellie]
like a scratchy old black and white film -darkness set with light i saw you today your eyes already alight as timeless lovers winged in bravery your hands reaching for every shimmer, every dance, every harrow and heartache this world breathes upon us
June 2010
3 posts
nirvana is boring if we find out -,
there’s nothing to do tomorrow
simplicity
you and me, Ellie hopscotching across state lines
washed with warm air standing tall on the tallest mountains chins high and brave
alive together, barefoot, dreaming awake beneath the bourbon sun love is our food dancing always - your soft feet never far from mine darling girl, you are the love of my life
the girl i should have talked to but didn't...
we are a saxophone blaring through an August night
we are a clapping high hat bringing on the rainbow-faced fireworks
we are Elvis Presley we are the goddamn Rolling Stones
we are greek gods of youth our beautiful bodies follow the sun west the morning hawks crow as we pack our bags and dance slow down the bright road
leaving nothing but a few...
May 2010
5 posts
Overture
Though I don’t recall submitting it, my poem “Overture” is in the 2010 edition of Grub Street. The lit mag is available all over the Towson University campus and in various spots in Baltimore.
The magazine is full of free, local art. So check it out.
Overture (or, five or six ways to not pay your taxes) I.
this rabid militia of snakes dates back to the first ghost writer with...
noble wind
what is it to know that you’re doing the right thing - ?
to wake up in a nameless town with yesterday’s dirt still in your hair
to watch the morning sun yawn through low hills and over passing cars as they push on to work
to eat the last of a stolen loaf of bread and follow a...
killing time before i clock out
don’t kid yourself - every single moment of every dragged out day is life or death. whether you are clutching the last inch of a wire over god’s empty cavern or drinking red juice on the same dull brown couch week after month you are either alive or you are not.
liability
stand tall and unbreakable upon the shapeless guilty heart of the city. feel the sun - the sun feels you. dance. dance like you are four years old, limbs and hair barely clinging to a center. dance like you will die tonight and no one will ask about it tomorrow. the world belongs to you but your feet owe a debt.
hidden city
The Hidden City Quarterly, a Baltimore Literary Magazine, published my poem “bound.” They added odd line breaks, capitalized things I did not capitalize and changed the last two words. But, nevertheless, its local and its free art.
April 2010
9 posts
locomotive
a thought about the gushing thunder sound of a train barreling thru the shambles of a wet, april night;
we live for the stolen mew of stainless steal meals and immured birth, but on those tracks, like a riot in the dark, - a brooding, desperate rapture there is true love and, as sharp as death, there is god.
dandelion tea
“Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass— innocent, golden, calm as the dawn, The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.” - Walt Whitman
Spring is dandelion tea time.
Dandelion leaves and roots contain substantial...
if we learn anything if we are to sing let us empty ourselves let us live without ourselves we will die we will carry on
7/25/2009 austin, tx
time, square
a saturday night empty bottle stroll thru times square. lights and sound systems, a popping high hat. a silver lightening struck with every step. the american dream pressed in my lips embers of smoke sweet like the cotton air. this night my great war this blood my grail of godly wine
Food and Maps
I recently finished my new zine, “Food and Maps.” It features artwork by my good friend James A. Martin Jr. (see above) and poetry by yours truly. It is a darling little book and would look great pressed between your copy of “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Rock” and that spiral ring book about juggling that you never actually read. Contact me if you...
olympia
just south of olympia, washington we mustwalk this scattered world carry little, plan less and sometimes bask in the unequaled warmth of a stolen night spent in the back of a quiet churchyard falling asleep to the moon’s gentle song with worn, huddled feet in a cradle of blanketing grass
and, with brightness, waking to birds, birds everywhere birds silhouetted like poised shaman honoring the...
Shukke
Shukke
we are steadfast mice mousey rambles of huddled feet living in undetected gridworks we are unseen and we see the flickering breathe we wield is every searing hope we have to warm ourselves by our songs are quiet our sense of adventure deafening we lean like shelter on one another sharing food and maps
[written in November of 2009 in Harlem,...
December 2009
1 post
johanna
In this room the heat pipes just cough The country music station plays soft But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
- bob dylan