notte

Today I took some pictures that didn't turn out so hot. It was quite disappointing. Here is a poem I've been working on:

Witness (in progress)

the chuches on broadway glitter in neon lights
that echo dark catholic hums that you can cash in
for heroines on heroin anyday of the week.
They shoot up and make noise.

There is one good resturant and a bar
that, try as though they might, they cannot
wipe away the boredom that has spewed these streets
from the death of chief joseph, back in the late 1960's.

hey dad, you said to me crossing the street holding my hand,
does it ever stop raining?
and son, i said it will stop raining the moment empty churchs
stop ringing bells on sunday mornings.

he was too young to know the difference
I took out a smoke and he asked me to stop.

(snapshots)

Elegy for 2nd Avenue Pizza

In Belltown
there is a hole
where a pizzeria used to be.

We would sit outside
from 4 to 6pm,

Passing time with 40oz of social grace,
drifting in and out of cheese soaked dreams
and mourning passerbys who had no mercy
for loose change.

Standing next to the oven
we saw them bake personal hearts
into the dough with pesto sauce
and chicken alfredo.

There was a jukebox,
which i'm sure is on a grave right now,
that played only early grunge music
and dixie blues.

Moments lost there
whistled and blink in high scores
chasing reveries
that hovered above the 50,000 point zone.

Closing one night
after 2am and counting
leaving rumnates
of small chunks of heaven
besides an out of business sign.

In Belltown
there is a hole
where a pizzeria used to be.
(and somenights I think it's still there)


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I've been working on that all week, considering where it came from I think it is going in a good direction.

Photographs and Things Happening this week.

Things have been quiet around here, small moments of coffee in the morning and writing and editing and reading. I'm reading "Tegami" by Mac Crary. He's a seattle writer and well worth the read. I would try to explain it, but I am feeling mighty inarticulate right now.

I'm also working through old pictures that I forgot I had. I used to be good at shots of minutes where people looked honest. I'd like to see eyes through viewfinders again. This is Bobby-Raddboy from too many years ago.

---

Monday:

Homeland at On the House
Every Monday night from 7:30 to 10:00 pm.

Feature TBA. Open mic. Poets and musicians welcome.

No cover charge, but donations gladly accepted.

On The House

1205 E Pike Street

Seattle, WA

Tuesday:

The Visiting Writer Series, hosted by Pacific Lutheran University, presents Mary Oliver

Tuesday April 22, 2008

"The Writer’s Story": 5PM,

Reading: 7:30 PM

Wednesday:

SEATTLE POETRY SLAM

8pm, Wednesdays at ToST

513 N. 36th St. Seattle, Wa 98103

$5 cover, 21 and over, ID required

info@seattlepoetryslam.org

Thursday:

"Cheap Wine and Poetry"

A special all-poetry "Cheap Wine and Poetry" celebrating National Poetry Month.

Featured readers: Roberto Ascalon, Elizabeth Austen, Rebecca Loudon and Cody Walker. Hosted by Charla Grenz.
Open mic; wine is $1 a glass.
FREE. Co-sponsored by Richard Hugo House.

http://www.cheapwineandpoetry.com/

Cabaret
Thursday, April 24th, 2008, 7:00 PM

In remembrance of a man who is not here anymore.

I saw a man pursuing the horizon
by Stephen Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,"
You can never -"

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.

Poem in your pocket day

Today was poem in your pocket day. Today, in my pocket, I carried this poem.

My Papa's Waltz
by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Mountain Graveyard

Spore Prose

stone notes
slate tales
sacred cedars
heart earth
asleep please
hated death

Robert Morgan

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People I would like to be like.

So, I've been reading too many poems lately (Sylvia Plath, Richard Hugo, Robert Bly, Robert Morgan, Elizabath Bishop, Raymond Carver) and while are all very good (I'll leave one of my favourites by Richard Hugo) nothing beats the spoken word of Stephen Jesse Bernstein. I recently started listening to (again) is his sub-pop album Prison which was released posthumorously after he killed himself by stabbing himself three times in this throat. Here is a track called "No No Man (part 2)":

Also, here is the Hugo poem I mentioned earlier:

Degrees of Gray in Philipsberg

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he's done.

The principal supporting business now
is rage. Hatred of the various grays
the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
who leave each year for Butte. One good
restaurant and bars can't wipe the boredom out.
The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,
a dance floor built on springs--
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse
for fifty years that won't fall finally down.

Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat
so accurate, the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?

Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I'll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You're talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it's mined, is silver
and the girl who serves your food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

Documentaries and Poetry

So I watched this documentary the other night. It's really good, well shot and just fasinating. This is how Jim White came into the spotlight, so to speak. After his album Wrong Eyed Jesus (Mysterious Tale Of How I Shouted!) After director Andrew Douglas got his hands on this album he decided to go searching himself for the wrong eyed jesus. He brought Jim White along for the ride and they created a really fantastic film.

We have this book Poetry: an introduction 4th edition by Michael Meyer for my Intro to Poetry course and it has all sorts of intriguing poetry and not to intriguing poetry in it and how to compare, constrast and analyze poetry. While most of my classmates barely read the poetry for the course I have a tendancy to, well, read the entire book. It makes it difficult when trying to remember specific poems but on the whole I feel as if I have been able to grasp a larger concept of the different forms, styles and craft of poetry. While usually I hate anthologies like this I have to admit that it is a rather good resouce to use in the beginning of analyzing poetry.

I also remembered the other day that it is, indeed, April. This means it is national poetry month. This month is really not celebrated as much as it should be.

and this is how I am planning on spending the rest of my weekend:

Tales from the triumph

So I have been reading this book:

And it is mighty good. Tom Barbash referred me to it right before I left CCA and I bought it a while ago (oh back in the days when I had money to spend on 80 dollar books) but have been too swamped to read it until now. Not to say I am not swamped now but my writing is not going anywhere so I thought this will help me get out of this awful fiction block I am in. I like this book because it focuses on craft as well as classic stuff and whatnot. I really need to improve my writing craft and try to become a more literate writer as opposed to being an amature knock-off.

I also have been listening to this album a lot:

Which is Low's The Great Destroyer. Every track in this album is pretty solid, can't think of one that isn't worth listening to. Highlights are California, Death Of A Salesman and Cue the Strings. I started listening to low on Secret Name (which is a great album, for your information) and I would listen to that and Things We Lost In The Fire pretty exclusively until I found The Great Destroyer and Guns and Drums. What I am really getting at here is that Low is great band and you should check them out.

All that said, I'll leave with some Doormat Poems.

Doormat Poem (#46)

The rain expands the door.

My shoe has a hole.

I need milk.

Doormat Poem (#360)

Girl, your butt

makes you

and turns me.

Doormat Poem (#100)

While at the supermarket,

Waiting for passing thunderstorms

A pair of tripping wellingtons

Realized their problems.

I want this book.

I could tell you but then you would have to be destroyed by me by Trevor Paglen

By submitting hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, the author has assembled an extensive guide featuring 75 patches — icons that represent CIA projects known by peculiar names and illustrated with occult symbols and cartoons — to reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon.

In other news: I am still awaiting the great return of the Little Gray Books series. Since Hodgman has become popular there has been a serious lack in updating of the Little Gray Book series. There are still some in the backlogs of the webpage. I do still enjoy those.

Tonight I was meant to be going to The Richard Hugo House to read some poetry at the open mic by since I am a pansy and can't go alone and all my friends bailed on me I didn't go. I'm sorta really regretting that now, but hey. What can you do? I'll make it next month. There are still a bunch of awesome things coming up, like the Poetry Performance Contest and the Cheap Wine and Poetry night. It is national poetry month, after all, so this month should be all about the poetry.

I just stumbled across a website called Washington Poets Association that has all sorts of fun goodies.

I've been working on some Doormat Poems. I'll leave you with one.

Doormat Poem (#71)

I went shopping
to find hearts.
artichoke hearts.

Doormat Poem (#9)

The ashtray tells me
that he is planning
on leaving me
as soon as he grows legs.

Doormat Poem (#8)

Watching from
sea.
It's the cargo
that needs
its hand held.

ABC3D is neat.

That said, I ran across a dream last night in which I met a man I thought I had know in real life but thinking about I'm pretty sure I hadn't. His name was Daniel and was gay but not overly gay. He wore a navy blue peacoat and had blue eyes and sandy blonde hair. He sat ourside an art gallery in which a play was taking place and we talked about things that I had long forgotten.

I need to get out more.

Naïveté Strikes Again

Yesterday, instead of winding down as perscribed, I followed my heart to the end of the islands and found love in the arms of a man with a blue line down his head shaped like hair. He gave me kisses and told me he would never leave me but after about six hours he did leave.

Before hand there was karaoke and champagne and gin and a bartender with a smile that could melt icebergs. You sunk titantic, i told him. He smiled and gave me another drink. Motioning back to the sea of blinding drunks I saw a man who broke my heart, he was old and I could see the years creeping up on him so I avoided him and danced with Randy.

Later is when I found the mo-hawk and the cigarette. We shared a beer and that was the end of the night.