San Fransisco [January 31st | 30/365]

Before the move back East, Dad drove us up the coast,
through Big Sur standing over us like legs under the table,
through a memorabilia restaurant in Monterey,
up to sleep in the minivan in a Denny's parking lot
because the server said the Scottish Festival was in town.

We drove in the next morning and spent all day following him
through the city. We jumped on a carnival trampoline
and watched a magician on the sidewalk. Magic never
looked so real or so fake. After that, though, we saw
these seals, or maybe sea lions (Dad didn't know)
flopped down in the sun, fat and surrounded by each other.
The way they stretched and rolled on the drenched wood,
you could forget that they ever went anywhere.

Trumbull 1:12 [January 31st | 29/365]

and God hollered at the people of Fairfield County,
at the high school librarians and part-time realtors,
at the town hall politicians and stay-home piano teachers,
at the back-from-school musicians and all-night diner philosophers;
He hollered down to all of the towns and their lost and stationary people
in the voice of a 12-year-old boy with a stolen megaphone,
and He said, "If you can hear my voice, you're going crazy,"
and then He laughed and said, "My son is still a Jew."

The Words Came Out and That Was That [January 30th | 30/365]

It wasn’t meant to we see cause exes mark spots understand that’s a pun but don’t hate me I can’t stop words sliding slipping shaking rolling rattling like snakings on sand around the next dune there’s fangs and venom some tomboy you are but I’m not and never have been because my name isn’t Tom or any other variation of tomorrow is different from yesterday’s day after tomorrow and that’s fine I guess can’t become plainer about what’s never happened not happening but I forgot that the future doesn’t exist and that working towards futures is futile because nothing ever happens it’s only situations taking place and that’s fine I guess it wasn’t meant to seem likely or a story just an amount of events taking place in a defined period of time rhyme is another form of wordplay but don’t hate me I can’t stop words sounding bounding grounding like wiry life undulating across the sand towards the future doesn’t exist and that’s fine I guess

The Hooker With A Heart Of Gold [January 29th | 28/365]

The Hooker With A Heart Of Gold walks down the street.
She is wearing long and loose-fitting jeans.
She is wearing a sweater and a winter coat.
She is not wearing a brightly-colored boa, or any boa.

Today, The Hooker With A Heart Of Gold is taking a break.
She is not taking a smoke break
because she doesn't smoke.
She is just walking the streets, not getting solicited
by too many of the men passing by,
telling the ones who do ask
to go fuck themselves
instead. She is enjoying the day. Actually,
today is her birthday.

Nobody got a present for The Hooker With A Heart Of Gold.
She talks about her frigid parents to the customers who want to chat
with their hooker. She isn't thinking about them--
the perverts or her parents.
She's thinking about that Neil Young song,
the one about the miner.
She's thinking about the miner. Actually,
she isn't thinking much.

She is just walking down the street.
She is not her job.
She is not what she says
when people get her to chat.
She is not her clothes.
She is someone who is walking down the street.
She is Walking Down The Street.

The Unvoiced Among the Voiced [January 28th | 29/365]

The people one table over are muttering about atom bombs
They look like father and daughter but could be professor and student
There is a university around here after all but no
That does not make sense it is too late for curricular activities
This must be a different story maybe an abductee and her abductor
Threaded together by Stockholm Syndrome and now groupthinking
Their way to an apocalyptic revenge scheme on a world which doesn't understand
Them and how ropes and screams can twist into DNA

In Humor Truth in Truth Humor [January 27th | 28/365]

The only one who can say anything is the jester
For that privilege it must dress like a fool
Live knowing that every night it will get beaten
Love shall not be given only laughter and insults
Give up its identity its name and its gender
To become a mouth that speaks the thoughts of everyone else

Every Sonnet is About Its Poet [January 27th | 27/365]

I chase the poets into the desert
Hunting scribbles that mean nothing and something perhaps
Demanding that someone admit that he or she held the implement
That marked the lines I follow

I read the way a phrenologist feels bumps
The way an astrologer looks at the night sky
A schizophrenic sees everything
Seeking the personal in randomness

I turn dead poets into members of my hoodlum gang
Go to parties with people I only know as collections of words
Hike in pastoral poems and unique takes on the Arcadian myth
And ignore how a page is a two dimensional surface

I start every verse I write with I
As if you could find me in my poems

Reading [January 28th | 27/365]

Tongues cling to square walls with snaking stems.
The ravens and magpies recite borrowed verses to each other.
If the tongues had roots they would find nourishment in the liver.
The birds exclaim: Poetry is sex!
As if orgasms are only a matter of will.
That fucking is pure and clean.
Poetry is words; everything compressed into a few scribbled marks or a set number of sounds.

Agitation (a found poem) [January 27th | 27/365]

On the wall of a Club Passim bathroom
in red marker:

NO WAR
BUT CLASS WAR

changed with black pen
to read:

NO WARts
BUT CLASS WARts

My Hair Has Frozen in Spikes Across Music [January 26th | 25/365]

I went against the national code of mothers.
I have been condemned to adjectives.
It is in the grain of the voice I read sentences.
Letters mean nothing but sound and sound is breath.
Swell and break and explode, the ice in the hair melts.
You will never hear me breathe only my breaths.
The melody disappears and sinks into water.
I abandon my language lovingly
like after a one night stand
like a pleasurable shiver
like a shared perversion
like grain against wood
like water wood in flames

The Future Does Not Exist [January 25th | 24/365]

The Sun has been buried
This glow is but cold light
Older than any star
The Sun is under the Earth
And the Moon is invisible in the sky
A circle of darkness on the dark

We are the funeral of the Sun
A song of flesh and sunbeams
Alcohol and food and black clothes
Rooms temporarily full of people
Soon to be empty but for dirt and air
The Sun is sensual in the ground

Our sleepless passion
Soothes no urges or needs
Vanishing in a flicker
Like ghosts whose stories
Are no longer told to children
But die inside old minds

I see the buried Sun
Trembling as it sinks into dark
Like wood among embers
Turning black and fragile
The night is heavy and silent
A rock on top of disturbed ground

An Illness [January 24th | 23/365]

There is no world for me to exist in
Or perhaps no me to exist in a world
no body and no mind
just pain and vomit and thirst
And dreams either of an existence or of nonexistence

My Pitch for a Teen Romantic Comedy [January 23rd | 23/365]

Our hero will be a popular athlete--sharp hair, slick clothes, quick to joke, but always a little sad because he knows something is missing. He falls in love with the pretty girl with glasses. She would have a crush on him at first, but then she'd hear a rumor or he'd tell a bad joke.

The boy would be in a fraternity. He'd drink a lot, and the other fraternity brothers would think he was just "up for a good time," but really he'd be drinking away this feeling that he'd rather be doing something else. Their nickname for him would be "Abraham Drinkin'." They could maybe have found a top hat at a yard sale and make him wear it when he's had a lot to drink.

In one scene, he would be wandering around campus with the hat on. He would have had some beer in the morning to try to ease his hangover, but he'll have drunk too much. He'll be stumbling around the main green, shouting the cute girl with glasses' name. His friends will make fun of him as they walk by. Non-college students walking by will think he's crazy and laugh at him or just get scared. Someone will recognize him from sports, and he'll yell at them and throw a punch but miss. He won't get the girl.

Big Nosebleed [January 22nd | 22/365]

If there really is enough blood in my veins
to make me an ocean, then all that's leaving me
is not the Amazon but only a small pond
hidden in the woods of a small town,
which surely played no small part
in the childhoods of everyone in town,
and which, if recalled in water cooler conversation,
would rekindle old friendships
and hush for a few kind moments
the friction of commerce between the townsfolk,
if only they could see through the thick brush
and notice that the pond has dried up.

RADI CALS NEVR LEEV [January 22nd | 22/365]

list ento apod cast
ofth soun dmay dbye
ther evol oosh yunn
itis loud andh arsh

thep eepl intr vyud
sayw eeha vhad enuf
oura nger will only
grow more insi stnt

arou ndme isee snow
mixd with tara ndit
remm inds meof olld
reyk javi kstr eets

prov iden ssis also
myho mand itis very
hard toof eeln otat
home when iyam home

Brain at the End of a Long Journey [January 21st | 21/365]

Not that time happens faster but that the brain stops forming as many memories because few truly new events occur and thus you forget that time has passed and if you do not remember then nothing took place and that is why all those poets wrote true when they likened the end of a journey to death.

Sometimes Very Cheerful Moments Happen To Me When I'm Too Depressed To Appreciate Them Fully (for Raya) [January 20th | 18/365]

Sometimes, when I'm depressed,
I find myself somehow
walking down Harvard Avenue
wearing or carrying something
that would seem more fitting
for a non-depressed person
to wear or carry, like I'll be carrying
a stuffed monkey with fairy wings
that meows like a cat when you squeeze its hand,

and an oldish lady who looks like she's been crying
will stop me and say, "Where did you get that little guy?"
and I'll have six beers in me, so I'll have to say, "What?"
and the oldish lady will say, "Where did you get your friend?"
and I'll say, "My friend gave him to me. Here, check this out,"
and I'll squeeze his hand, and he'll meow like a cat,

and she'll chuckle and look at me
like she's completely done crying
and say, "What's his name?"
and I'll say, "I don't know. What should his name be?"
and she'll look at his red and pink shirt and say,
"Happy. Happy--Heart."
and I'll say, "Happy Heart.
Okay." and I'll smile a little,
and I'll kind of want to ask if she's been crying,
or talk about why I've been crying,
but instead I'll turn back around
and continue walking home,

and I'll pass out over the sheets of my futon,
and at some point in the middle of the night
I'll toss to the corner of the futon
and squeeze against something
and get woken up by a meowing sound,
and I'll think it's the cat, but it's Happy Heart,
and I'll smile again, and fall back to sleep
before remembering how depressed I am.

Inauguration at Union Station [January 20th | 20/365]

The white woman with her four black foster children who explained who every single person on screen was

The portly old woman who yelled "put some pride in your stride" when Obama walked on stage

All who sat and stood and jumped and danced and shouted and hugged around and with me

Everyone kept on cheering clapping and crying when the camera cut from Obama to Bush

The woman waving the Canadian flag and the man who gave me his stars and stripes

My friends who texted me with with witty and joyful commentary on the inauguration

The people who clapped when Obama said the word "non-believers"

My friend who danced with me afterwards to warm up joyously

All those people were holy to me

I will keep their memories

Safe from cynicism

Talking in Similes [January 19th | 19/365]

Talking to you is like staring at a map

The longer it lasts the more I disassociate meaning from image until the differently colored and shaded fields float in my visual space as if the map had depth.

Talking to you is like staring at blinking lights in the sky

If I want I can make my mind stop seeing the plane that is attached to the lights and start drawing lines in my head until I see a flying saucer.

Talking to you like staring into a clear pond on an cold and still day

I can see the sand at the bottom and every frond and rock.

Southern African Storytelling in DC [January 18th | 18/365]

We almost lost each other
In the group of people walking along the platform to the Metro train
Likening them to a herd of any kind of non-human animal would be a lie
Calling this collection of individuals a mass or a throng would also be untrue
It is best no to engage in description of others but merely say it was hard
For the two of us to keep each in sight

Much later in the comfort of an apartment
I was told the story of driving in a jeep through tea fields in the Honde Valley
Seeing a flash of green ahead like the last ray of the sun on the horizon
A green mamba raised up with its eyes at eye level and weaving back and forth
Brakes were slammed and all the passenger stared with wide eyes and mouths
At the human length snake dancing on the road in between the tea bushes
Though to call it dancing is to not understand

Then as I prepared to go to sleep
I was told of an old railway signalman in the bush of South Africa
Who trained a baboon to read the signals and move the points
So that trains would follow the right rails but even more importantly so that
The signalman would not have to work any more that lazy fucker
But I say that any human who trains a baboon to read train signals
And operate the levers deserves a rest

I Believe That Negative Energy Can Be Good [January 18th | 17/365]

Sometimes, when I'm depressed,
I hear people laughing
on the other side of a door,
or I feel my desk shaking
because my housemates are having sex,
or I get sent a linkto a funny YouTube video,
and I think that I'm right to be depressed,
and everybody else is wrong,

and I want to tell my housemates that they're wrong
for having sex even though sex is dangerous and pointless
and causes children, which are bad for the planet,

and I want to tell my friends and strangers
that nothing they find funny is actually clever or good,

and I want to tell people
who won't read a poem that starts, "Sometimes, when I'm depressed,"
that they're stupid and will be depressed one day too,
and they'll still be stupid,

but instead I bottle up my anger,
and it becomes like a bottle rocket of anger,
which propells me out of bed
to my kitchen,
which is good, because then I can make tea,
and tea is good for you.

The Second Mouth Called Mega Biblion [January 17th | 17/365]

The corpses of the 3 Magi rest in the Cologne Cathedral
Through a gilt coffin's window glitter 3 crowns
3 heads and 3 mouths just like we
Fucking somewhere we shouldn't be fucking
I refuse to think of that moment as the past

Now I sit in a café hurrying to finish a book
Too heavy to take with me when I leave tonight

"Why people say 'life is short' I cannot say, it's the longest span of time anyone will ever know." [January 16th | 16/365]

Every life is exactly the same length
One unit of lifetime
And every life always one lifetime long

I am now just shy of twenty eight
Eventually this will be the half point of my life
Like almost fourteen is now
But it will always be exactly as long
To the midpoint from the now

But there's nothing to divide
There is only one lifetime
The smallest and the longest unit of time
Like the atoms of Democritus
A man ancient enough
To have lived an indeterminate amount of time
Some days he was living or dead
And others alive or not born
But he still lived just one unit of lifetime

Meditation on a Signature [January 16th | 12/365]

My signature
on the screen
at Trader

Joe's, where I have purchased
70 dollars' worth of health food
so I can go back to living at home

looks like I didn't used to believe
my own signature would ever look
when I was in the third grade

learning cursive. They were teaching us
how to write with our hands casually
without stopping. I thought I would

always write my name carefully. I thought
that my name was too important to scrawl.
I also thought my stuffed shark loved me,

which is ridiculous
because in most cases
sharks do not love humans,

but before one's trust in the inanimate,
before one's love for the ungiving of love,
even before one's ability to stop mid-word,

belief in one's name must be the first to go.

The Cold Like a Barrette File [January 15th | 15/365]

Pile of ice like shards of brick
Resting against the wall they broke from
Snow trod into a rigidity like rock
It makes no sound when stepped on
I am sure there would be stars in the sky
If I looked up like a drowning man

Cars roll by like an avalanche
Music thudding from the occasional vehicle
The lamppost leans away from the road
And the lightbulb flickers imperceptibly
And I walk away from you like a stone
Skidding across a frozen pond

NEUR ALPA THWW AYSS [January 14th | 14/365]

inas ertn mood thuh
stay nonn thew ohll
ofmy offi ssll ooks
like aspy ralg laxy

ithi nkth atmy self
isme rely apat turn
thot less lytr aced
bymy bray nnss ells

inap arti culr mood
ibee leev ican wtch
mybr aino bser ving
thep attu rnit self

apay ntin cann ever
beaa pksh urof itss
hole self only just
thep aint init self

Cozy [January 14th | 10/365]

I want to be knitted alive into a body-sized cozy
made of organic fair-trade soy yarn
by very creative people who are skilled at knitting.

While these creative people knitted my cozy,
I would feel like I was being touched by the feelers
of large furry insects who were curious about me.

The cozy would wrap my body completely,
leaving no openings wide enough for anyone to see any part of my face.
(To survive, my body could maybe develop photosynthesis.)

They could leave me in a hip art gallery,
and hipsters could come and look at me lying there,
and I wouldn't have to worry about doing anything to impress them.
I wouldn't have to worry about doing or saying anything ever again.

From Nebraska up to Chicago [January 14th | 9/365]

The moon clocks back in
like a tall child in the night
at its parents' door,

right above the road.
It says, "You can't come up here;
I am not your home.

Go home on your shield."
Flowers lined this warpath, but
I couldn't smell them
through the stink of my helmet--
dumb drama of night.

Depth of Field [January 13th | 13/365]

I see no stars through the skylight and no moon but I do not think the universe beyond this room has disappeared even though the only signs of its existence tonight have been the far off moans of trains and the whine of car tires on asphalt.

The longer my night gets the deeper I sink into my brain like a bathysphere down into my imagination peering out into the darkness through tiny portholes built especially to withstand the pressure so that I may remain uncrushed.

It is true that the bottom of the sea is a desert but deserts are ecologies and so goes for the ocean floor not that I have been there but I have watched many nature documentaries especially late at night when I could not sleep.

I have a television but I never watch it because I am tired of falling asleep on a couch when I could instead lie awake in bed staring through a skylight hoping to see stars and planets and the moon so that I have proof the universe still exists.

HYUM ANSA CRIF IESS [January 13th | 12/365]

suis ides have risn
amon gmih dlll aged
wite wimm enin this
past half deck aide

andm onte zuma said
tuco rtez what more
duyu want from meee
idoo notw antu live

debt isth esto reee
that wipe sout evry
memo ryth atdo esnt
rise upag enst debt

shud weef orrg ivvv
thoa swho sacr ifys
hyum nlie fbee caus
thep ublc axep tsit

Execution of Gordon the Slave Trader, February 21, 1862 [January 11th | 11/365]

The newspaper illustration is so pleasing, the lined up
Soldiers, the two distinct groups of onlookers, the shadows
Adding time and drama and off-center the slave trader
Nathaniel Gordon waiting to be hanged, the noose
Around the neck.

It is beyond me to understand how a man could
Dream of making his fortune running slaves from
Africa to Brazil, how he could consider it fitting to
Provide for his son's future with the spoils from
Trading in humans.

My anger set aflame by reading today's newspaper
Spreads across my brain searching indiscriminately
And dumbly for new fuel like its algae in a pond
Eating the sunlight or like clouds of dust drifting
Through space.

Imitation Snow [January 10th | 10/365]

Not looking at the human but the x-rays
Showing the fracture that is long healed
Until the eye focuses through the film
On the snow falling outside the window

Not understanding that there's a person
But fitting a life into the context
Of other stories and expecting similarities
With a whole different from this body

A tiger stalks the autumn leaves
We have shadows for eyes
Under the white the land is dead

The autumn leaves scatter like butterflies
We have rationally deranged our perspective
After the snow there is stillness

The Need for Clouds [January 9th | 9/365]

The sunshine glared at his life
Showing every detail of the long road
And oh was it a long road
From a small town deep in the interior
All the way to the definition of a life well lived

He knew he could be seen from miles around
Illuminated by the rays of the high sun
The immobile sun that had not budged since his birth
To parents that wished nothing but happiness for him
And that he wanted to give his own success to

If his sky had been scattered with clouds
He would not have needed to seed his own
A cloudmaker hoping it would never rain
And even though he drowned out of sight
His body lies out in the open under the glaring sun

13 Strings of Language [January 8th | 8/365]

The density of language can be measured by its unfamiliarity to each other
The seacoast harbors greater density caused by its living borderness
The dry interior restricts lineage because without water there is no border
The words rush out of the interior towards the sea only to crash change bounce
The change is joyous and necessary to such essenceness as to be hallow
The make is of no import only the joy of sound and inflection
The branching of sound is only and always binary except when they weren’t
The pruning has been cackhanded and left stumpy speech and frightened speakers
The land that is like another land belongs to the same difference between speech
The root can be refashioned out of all those differences without violation
The argument that is inviolable is that roots must originate in soil
The confusion circles out that leaves must be of the soil they shade
Let us not mince words those who crush language kill life murder joy

Eveninglight [January 7th | 7/365]

We chase the evening to ensure we never see more than one star or I should say planet because the first and last pin-prick of light through the canopy is always Venus and we must not let love have competition for our eye's attention

We must cheat our way from airport to airport printing fake tickets and boarding passes and staff ID to make our way to the next available plane and stealing fresh clothes from unguarded bags so we can keep chasing the evening

It can end two ways either we die in a plane crash or we get caught by airport security and shuttled back to the previous airport and then the security there will send us back to the airport before and so on endlessly going against the day until our airplane crashes

We will keep moving to avoid that certainty because we are safe in the air and the less time we spend on the ground the better so we will keep chasing the evening and we will keep Venus as our only point of light in the sky

Zombie Baby [January 7th | 6/365]

My mother won't feed me brains,
and I'm too small to reach them.

My mother used to say,
"Who's a happy little baby?"
Now she says,
"Nruhm,"
and I still say,
"Blurg."

The alive adults say,
"Oh God! Oh no!"
and "Lock the doors!"

The doors hate me.
The adults hate me.
I used to be the baby and now I'm just hungry.
I would just eat some applesauce,
but I think I'd still be hungry and I don't like it anyway.
Brains are good. Blood is good.
I never knew my father's face would taste so good.

Some mornings I crawl onto a windowsill
I look out the window and cry and shout,
"Blurg!" when I mean to say,
"I'm fucked up!"
and then I go outside and look for scraps of brains.
Some nights I play with a foot or an ear that I found,
and I gnaw on the foot or ear until I fall asleep.

I have a pet zombie cat.
He mostly leaves me alone.
He mostly eats scraps off of bones.
The next time I can't find a foot or an ear,
I'll jump on my cat and ask him to bring me to the humans,
and if he can't find him maybe I'll eat him,
but that would probably make me cry.

I cry all the time anyway.
Maybe it doesn't matter.

Rain Falls on Saturn [January 6th | 6/365]

The wet crackling of steady rain keeps me awake
No it's my brain that doesn't go to sleep
Even though it is only thinking about Saturn
Imagining living on one of its moons
Or a floating city in its atmosphere

If my brain chooses not to rest
I know Saturn will arrive in my room
Hovering and spinning with spread rings
A kid would know if rain keeps Saturn away
But I'm just left to wonder and wait

Words Like Snow [January 5th | 5/365]

Snow should be falling but it's not
The season is without seasonal words
That which should have rotted is whole
And lies on the ground like driftwood

I will build houses out of driftwood
And not question where it comes from
The sea shall be my parent and aid
Nothing shall I want and nothing will harm

The world doesn't care when the world ends
I won't know I'm dead
Driftwood is driftwood like weather is weather
No matter season or no season

If there were still an outside
It would be thawing weather
But there's nothing to melt
Snow should lie on the ground

I Found Some Old Photos in a Book and Felt Like Gilgamesh [January 4th | 4/365]

Bodies in the water
Froth on the surface
The shore at the bottom
Out of focus
Can't make out any more

Woman with a tree at her feet
The rest of her missing
Gray grass gray sky
Black and white
I'm not sure who this is

A man lying on a couch
Looks like he's sighing
His skin looks like resin
I know who that is
It's me

And then there's you
You never smile in pictures
And never look at the camera
Too distracted by something
You're sitting on a sidewalk

I will go into this other world
To get you back from its gods
But you know and I know
That I will fail at the final task
And have you disappear again

Riding in a Scion Up and Down I70 Blues [January 4th | 5/365]

I met a bartender at the last spot open in the Kansas City Power & Light.
She spoke Midwestern like she had no second language,
without a trace of Toby Keith.
All I know is that I'm coming up to Chicago,
and Chicago will be hiding you behind its dirty teeth.

And there was Jackie Onassis in The Catacombs in Boulder.
Over PBR, she told me she liked bluegrass
and certain tracks by MIA.
All I know is that I'm coming up to Chicago
and Chicago still won't call me up to tell me where to stay.

Interstate 70 never gets the message
that I don’t want to eat at Mickey D’s,
Most of the cities know how to treat an ethical consumer,
but these streets stretch out like the graph of some disease.

I can’t complain, at least they’ll take me up to Chicago,
and later in my life I’ll get someone to help me plant some trees.

And every place I drink down here in Denver
is full of pretty haircuts and eyes
and ears all locked with chains.
At least I'm coming back around to Chicago
and you can teach me how to use the trains.

2029 [January 3rd | 4/365]

I was sitting in my computer room with Sam
when I suddenly saw that it was 1 p.m.
Immediately I became hungry,
so I hit "lunch" on my iHome,
but nothing happened.

So I hit "lunch" again.
Again, nothing happened.

I had it set to "chicken sandwich."
I figured maybe it was out of chicken,
so I changed it to "tuna sandwich"
and hit lunch a third time.
Again, nothing happened

and Sam told me that fish
had gone extinct last Tuesday
(he checked it on his BlackBerry)
so I cahnged it to "egg sandwich"
and hit lunch one more time.
Nothing happened.

At this point, I was starving.
I felt like I could kill someone.
I killed Sam.
He was right there.
I ate his arms.
I would have cooked him first,
but I didn't know how.

So I think that that's how I got sick.

SAVE SOME FRTH KIDS [January 3rd | 3/365]

whoo told yuth atol
amer ican sbel eevv
rhub arbs pois unus
unle ssit issk ookd

ithi nkit coms from
some poem alli know
begi nsso mwer inna
poem ihav forg ottn

poem sare elec tric
curr ents inmy head
atom icpa tern sand
chem icls baln sing

asah kidi woul deat
rhub arbu ntil itss
sour ness beek aima
numb wait onmy tung

The Break-up of the Universe [January 2nd | 2/365]

Sometimes I think that the only way to understand all that has happened since is to assume that the World ended and we are experiencing a shared non-world as the last second of existence is drawn ceaselessly out as Time unthreads the Universe.

I also believe that I am making a category mistake by falling into metaphor and I will always be ceaselessly wrong while I keep falling into metaphor because I am human and a human brain will liken one thing to another automatically even though no one thing is like anything else.

My brain has the capacity to bury truth in the clearly wrong and disinter the truth from my senses as if it thinks that I am unable to handle the obvious but that is a mistake because the brain does not think it is only I that think and I think ceaselessly about what I know truly happened.

Artist's Statement [Januarly 2nd | 3/365]

a "13 ways"*

Admittedly, New York City doesn't really want to hear it.
Obviously, Nashville doesn't really want to hear it.
MySpace will pretend its listening while jacking off to movie ads.
I am linking to my video blog on Facebook, pretending its not important to me.
I am going to sing at every open mic in this weird country until my songs feels like part-time jobs.
I am not the act of applying for a job.
I am not interested in business casual Fridays.
I am not interested in making a burrito that is too spicy for God to eat.
A city is a worksite for a tower up to God.
A city is a bad dream that the architects couldn't wake up from.
Every time a band gets popular on MySpace, it becomes less possible for songwriters to call themselves architects.
The philosophers used to be the scientists.
I used to play my guitar like it could hurt silence's feelings.




*An exercise borrowed from Tara Betts of 30/30 fame. Write the same sentence 13 times. I personally interpret this very liberally, and I try not to get caught up on being consistent with it, but taking a longish sentence and rewriting it word-by-word could also pay off in spades, I'm sure.

In Jetpacks We Fight Entropy [January 1st | 1/365]

You are an implausible promise to myself
Like a jetpack in the sixties swooping across a child's imagination
Back then my father lived in Houston and Albany
And my aunt was born a U. S. Citizen but I am not a citizen and I
Have been waiting eighteen months to find out whether the government
Will renew my Green Card which is yet another reason why you
Are a jetpack strapped to my imagination held to the ground only by
The knowledge that the one job more dangerous than piloting a jetpack
Is being President of the United States of America and my aunt was no
Future first woman president but she was a childhood friend
To future superstars and a jetpack is not like a comet or meteor but like
A star it's destined to run out of fuel and die.

2009 [January 1st | 2/365]

I want whatever company whose fault it is to own up,
this constant need to self-market,
why the people we were born recognizing are never nearly enough.

I want the sport jackets to come off and the sport fucking to stop.
I want the webvertisements to die.

I want to know the bosses of me.
I want to know my food.

I want my clothes to have stories.
I want her smell on my scarf to come back from the street-smoke.

I want the cities to be strange again
and the stupid children sitting in rows all along the highway
to stop raising their hands when they don't know the answer.