In a posture
I thought of moving
Observing each part
Thinking
If I move this
That way
Or bend that
This way
But ended up
Laying still
And falling asleep
Like I was
Month: January 2020
sitting by the fire
A little lick
Of lantern light
Leftover from the furnace
Frolicking
With burning branch
Smoldering in earnest
Warm palms rubbed
Cheeks
Covered up
Sitting
By the fire
re-create
Sometimes I try to re-create a time or place when or where I was creative so I go back to the same coffee shop and drink a cup of coffee and sit in the same seat and look at the same window, but it doesn’t come. Creativity is never the same, otherwise it wouldn’t be creative. So an artist must always be exploring, going to new places with her eyes wide open. Sometimes you can even find creativity in an old place if your eyes are open wide enough. This is why success for an artist is somewhat different than anything else. With most things you can find a routine or a set of repeatable steps define success over and over again. With art you must always be changing
afraid to die
I’m most afraid to die when I feel most alive. And I feel young and full of energy, like all of life is ahead of me, then I am afraid for it to end. When I am closer to death, sick or feeling old and spent, then I am less afraid. Sometimes I am in pain and the pain of death seems like it would be lesser than what I am experiencing. I feel that I have less to lose. The fall would not be as great from an already low state, whereas when I am up high it would be a long way down.
sick day
Laying at home
On a workday
In a suburban
Part of the city
It is loud
In the morning
As everybody
Gets up
To catch the bus
And go downtown
Leaving me here
To lay
Come lunchtime
It grows quiet
don’t fight the seasons
Don’t fight the seasons. Go with the cold depressed wet rain. Run into the gutters and beneath the city like the plastic wrapping on a food item thrown away without any ability to pick itself up like a responsible wrapper and throw itself away just running with the rain. Lay down and let the cool winter air come in your nostrils at night and the muffled city noises come through your walls and into your ears. Let the radiator hiss now, for this is its life, quiet dormant and seemingly dead all through summer. The seasons have been forged over the years of a natural undulation of a frozen slow down sleepiness for things to hold form and stay where they are focused and rigid and indoors if possible while the summer will come to let all those out who have been cooped up and cold and will run amuck for long enough to sweat out hibernated calories and gather new ideas that can be seen in the bright light but only captured in the morning winter dark of a study with paper and pen in hand. Don’t fight the seasons. Let them take you.
untitled
I’m a shell of a human
after I’ve emptied
into my art
outpouring all I’m worth
forgetting
there is still
life to live
after this
untitled
I love that moment
Where I can just forget
And not focus
On anything
For a short while
some things i see
an empty
open
iPhone box
laying
on the ground
next to
a trash can
a neon sign
that says LAUNDRY
with the D
hanging
just slightly off
a man
in a suit
and scarf
walking
while talking
on his phone
a man
with his hood up
walking
on the crosswalk
ignoring
the red hand
telling him
to wait
the snowflakes
on the light poles
lit up white
leftover
from christmas
part of focus is forgetting
My friend describes art as an opportunity to “expel some shit from my mind lol”
speech to text on 1/11/20 walking home after the coffee shop
I go out early in the morning to get nice and caffeinated like most people my age do in the night time out to the bars to get nice and drunk and then stumble home with someone is there for Mozart in love after lock on weekdays at work warehouse for me it’s more about the coffee and the caffeine in the early morning when you can still change to do in the crisp cold dark there and being one of the first people to a coffee shopThen by 10 AM it’s back to a normal world everyone awake and going about their day so I scrambled back home to be on my own and read and write until the early afternoon
Figuring out now that I can talk to my AirPods without even having to pull my phone out of my pocket
Walking home in early January how’s the gas station that’s empty year that I’ve seen it before things have been slow the start of this year it seems holding eggs with bacon in my backpack going home from the coffee shop to cook breakfast with baby glasses slipping down my nose shoes scuffing on the sidewalk one lace hanging out loosely left hand in pocket past peers
use AirPods to make speech to text content. Become an art tech start up yourself. The key is editing. You can mass-produce the content with the technology. It’s just a matter of being discriminatory to find the good content
Siri
I imagine reading this like Siri does, fast and run-on without inflections at the right points in the sentence—but she’s learning, and getting better.
sexual art
An artist’s art ain’t as good when there’s a good-looking girl around. His sexual and creative energy gets into thinking about that instead of into what he’s making.
untitled
this white building
dressed pink this morning
from the red stop light
and the rising sun
left ear louder
i feel a little off center
like my left ear lags
my right hearing louder
leaking out sound somehow
past the bud before the drum
i take out my AirPods
and case them to check
but upon re-inserting
realize it is just me
side sleeping
as i try to lay
flat and orthodox
looking up
at the ceiling
breathing
through my nose
i lay abstract
and off-center
spine twisted
like a wet rag
ringing out water
with one shin
straight
the other bent
and crossed over
shin bones
crossed over
hand over
half of heart
sloping down
rib cage
pelvis slanting
to the side
forearm slipping
underneath skull
other hand
between thighs
can only sleep
on my side
as hard as i try
to lay flat
her roar (1/7/20)
i put my ear
to her back
and hear
at night
what i can only describe
as a roaring
going on inside
it seems
all the time
like you would
put your ear
to a sea shell
and hear the ocean
inside
but with her
is the fiery inside
of a furnace
like a train engine
that a brusque man
with his sleeves rolled up
feeds coal
with a shovel
or the white noise
of space
if you were hurtling
very fast forward
and wind was whipping
past your ears
all this energy
inside
of her sweet silent
sleeping small body
high highs (1/6/20)
i know now not to ride the highs too high holding on past stratosphere onto space where i’m alone smiling looking around wondering who’s here in the black silence only do i realize after the bright light of the booster flare fades that i’m all alone in my ascent and look earthward for who i left already falling
a poem that rhymes
a little late up at night feeling light and lifted dreaming dreams of prior scenes i didn’t know existed hoping though that see and sew sad stories still be told since dreams of life from younger years now fearing to get old
a dream of childhood
in a dream, i was in class with my little brother’s childhood friend, christian. i was still the age i am now, while christian was the age i remember him—about 7 or 8 years old. i must have been acting as a teacher’s aide in his kindergarten class. at first, he was asking me whether he could bring a baggie or cookies to school. i told him that he should ask his mom or his teacher. he said they already told him no. they wanted him to eat healthier snacks like raisins and nuts. i told him he should probably listen. then he told me that he would just bring the cookies anyway and just sneak them at his desk when nobody was looking. i thought of telling him that’s what i would do when i was his age, but decided against it. next, the class was taking a spelling test. i was seated at one of the desks next to christian. there were about twenty other kids in the class. they all had their eyes closed. the teacher was going around the room taping up cards with letters on them. i gathered that she was spelling out a word that the class had attempted to spell on their tests (this way they could see if they had gotten it right). i watched this like a person out of place, bewildered at first, and then studying, trying to understand. when christian opened his eyes, he looked at the cards that were taped up. “got that one,” he said. i watched him make a check mark next to the word on his test paper. at that point, i wasn’t sure who i was anymore. was i christian’s age? was i a student in this class? the table’s turned and i started to ask christian questions. “should i be taking this test?” i asked him. “probably,” he said. and pointed with the pink eraser end of his pencil to a stack of papers in the middle of our desks. i grabbed one and a pencil, and then started listening to the teacher and looking around to try and gather what the words were that i had missed. it was right then that i started to feel out of place. i wondered, wait, who am i? what day is today? i remembered that i own an iPhone. and i thought, “oh shoot, what day is today?” i reached in my pocket to check my digital calendar. a feeling of dread came over me as i feared i might have missed my flight back to san francisco. then i woke up, back into my adult life, at 2:25am on monday morning. i felt relieved that i hadn’t missed my flight and wasn’t late to anything or out of place. i was just in bed waiting to go to work in the morning.
speech-to-text back and forth between apartment and laundromat 1/4/20
walking so fast I can’t say one way or another what I see clearly wanting for some clarity supposed to be separating safe from dangerous getting somewhere to satisfy hunger finding love of forcing me on primal being the main driver but being able just briefly on a Saturday like today to walk on Fillmore Street before noon sun shining in every darn thing looking gosh darn perfect that dog leashed to a traffic meter majestic that bookstore with all the books I would never want to read on its shelves each restaurant and café serving all the foods that I would want to eat every person I passed smiling seeming like they want to have a conversation with me and having all these thoughts that I wish I could share with the moments when my creativity Waynes But needing now just to get down as much as I can and bottle up this feeling or at least put it in art to remember a gosh darn great Saturday like today
I want to find her gray hairs fondly for her to see that there’s not much time and understand why I believe it now is the time to live and we must press on and not relax too much laying in bed all day need to get out and go while we still can for what seems good and satisfying on its face is sticky and alluring slowing you down seeming to go slowWhile really proceeding quickly to old age
I like a little let loose crazy longing for the void only after some time structured set in my ways and nailed down long enough to let sit like clay in the oven or metal in the mold just to be cast back into the fire and barely kept form melting to reshape refusing to stay same sending forth like a god trying to be many and eventually all once obliteratedAnd nothing anymore
swearing to myself to stay sober so as to avoid a sudden left off like last night leaving earth so suddenly that I look down it is only a marble not even the oceans able to be distinguished from the land forgetting everything I knew out here in the black space void truly creative having nothing to draw from like God before originClosing my eyes and making something out of nothing but if I am truly being honest what comes behind the black clothes dies was for another life still like the God that came before ours
Pumped full of fumes filling my Freudian with fear feeling that it is really the end this time having run on planes for so long looking up towards the sky not expecting to step and land on soil no longer falling framed by the cliff face falling is all that is leftAfter plane running and before jagged rock crashing
Knowing when to stop not the morning no that is the time to go after a restful night for the energy rise with the sun at work getting into it and excited waiting to go on even for getting lunch but at some point must slow down must eat rest and relax and get ready for nightfall when the natural energy leaves and must slope down into sleep if the same cycle is to repeat itself tomorrow
if you get to work producing too much at once then Sam gets lost and might have even been better off not produced in the first place the two worlds work together preservation and production producing when energy is available to be spent and even benefits the system as a whole to be spent rather than conserved but sometimes need to conserve like needing to rest at night If only we had something as simple as the sun rising and setting to instruct us went to work and went to rest and all other areas of life
it should be done by now having had ample time to dry the timer telling me this chiming in go and check it says someone may be there waiting with their wet clothes counting on you to come timely like I say what I said a timer if you were going to wait anyway
crosswalk
walking across
a wide street
weary
the whole way
seeing
seeing clearly
i have to stare
for some time
to make sure
what i’m seeing
is really there
washing machine
something soap
subtle sudsy
watching washy
waiting
twenty-four minutes
making excuses
like poetry
to stay and watch
the machine wash
washing my hands
shaking my hands
washed
spattering drops
in the metal basin
making music
rain
all at once
stop
then spatter
and start again
two machines, one broken
the one with my sweatpants
wasn’t working
two washers going
side by side
one clearly working
wet water splashing
suds bubbling
while the other
its brother to the left
spinning uselessly
waterless
wasting
four dollars
and seventy five cents
speech-to-text after walking home from the coffee shop 1/4/20
I think I have to relax I’ve worked too much then relax and lay in bed all day and realize why I work avoiding lethargy boring listlessness in the idle dark and quiet with only my thoughts that get to go too far on their own and need to get back to work again to think of something other than nothing
I’ve got a good coffee high going so I can’t stop myself from running on the way home just to see new things faster I startle an old man walking with his hands Behind his back slow spooked to see me turning every which way at the street corner bouncing up and down waiting for the light to change
That’s just not true what you repeat to yourself having heard once and at some point believing From the repeating having forgotten the original lie Intel a collision with what’s really reminds you
getting older
on a stool at the coffee shop
sharing a wooden table
with an older man
next to me
drumming my fingers
and bobbing my head to music
he glances sideways
disapprovingly
he cannot take away
my energy
other than
by my becoming
him someday
your name
I hear your name called
at a coffee shop
by the barista
waiting for someone else
that is not you
to pick up their order
though i wish it was
you
can’t possibly be you
I know that
but still can’t resist
turning around in my chair
hopefully
more SOC at the coffee shop 1/4/20
You start to say things like surely more sure of yourself with the unspoken seal of certainty granted to those that have grown older or for some other reason regarded by society as being more sure of themselves like a child regards her parents
blue slug bug
an old light blue slug bug
(and i mean old
like 20 or 30 years)
waits at the lights on sacramento
hoping to cross fillmore
if this light will ever change
moving back and forth
over the thick white line
that is supposed to separate
cars waiting at the light
from pedestrians crossing
the slug bug moves
back and forth like this
i presume because
its transmission is manual
unable to press on the brake
i don’t know
how manual works
owing to this bug
being older than me
having grown up with automatic
and never learned manual
like my dad told me
now far away from that
watching this
through the window
of the coffee shop
where i work on my laptop
more modern than my dad ever imagined
watching the manual transmission slug bug
through the window
stream of consciousness at Peet’s coffee shop on Fillmore 10:08am 1/4/20
i think there’s something about it being strung out and straight on so you can’t catch your breath reading until you gasp and choke for air trying to get on to one more word and then once you think you can’t go no more then one more still because it’s that good and will cease to all be the same run-on if you stop to breathe (i’d like to write a piece one day that runs on so good i’ll get lost and read it run on like this and overcome even my instinct to breathe and lay there on my deathbed reading it right to the end)
everything collided so perfectly in that time after which now it is only worthwhile looking back longing with less to be gotten from the present it seems compared to thinking back in my imagination on that past good time which may be me getting older and the best behind me so i wonder if this in between turning twenty five is the time to start looking back or if there is still more to look forward to
I published this in the moment I wish I would have because I don’t think art happens over time more editing overthinking less of what was once natural coming out as art in the first place because that is what you thought or felt and that is the art right there as soon as it comes out like a live performance and anything after that is manufactured
friendly knife
a knife
is less scary
if it’s cutting
fruit
tea affecting me
I think its when I start to think that I’m supposed to feel something that I feel at all otherwise just going along thinking mostly and acting instinctually unless I do something like drink a tea that’s supposed to affect me and all of a sudden I’m wondering has it hit me yet looking at my hands more closely and putting my palm over my chest to feel my heart beat asking am I sad happy excited calm when it’s really just an herbal non-caffeinated tea and I’m doing this all on my own
how i write
I don’t usually write sitting down, and I almost always write on my iPhone, by sending text messages to myself. I’ll write on the bus on the way to work, in line waiting for lunch, at a concert holding my phone above the crowd—pretty much anywhere I’m inspired. I write in that very moment.
blunt tooth
v1:
i tongue this tooth
in my top row
touching
its blunted point
worn down
by my crooked bite
v2:
i tongue this tooth
in my top row
blunted by
my crooked bite
tonguing over
its point
sharp previously
now worn
new year’s eve trip 12/31/19
already i feel it fall away on the outside; or, rather, the need to call it outside, other than myself for my skin has melted away joining my true inside with everything else k and i clear away the teardrop tables from the rug in the living room so we can play while we take apple on new year's eve childish things matter less to me than seemingly is so as the adults say starting to see visuals on my phone screen shadows seem to me striking my face feels like a picasso you just can't capture the trip; i wish we could, but i can't i have to get my art and hold it within myself long enough until i can give it to her I used to think I needed fruit for inspiration and creativity. Now, tripping, I realize I have developed a creative system for my sober life. I like apple because it's a fair fruit. On oranges, there's only up, until one big down. On apples, there are ups and downs throughout. I think deeply about the need to spend time with others. How many others? Just one? Just your love. Or more? How many then? Family too? And friends? How many are needed to make a man happy? More than just himself? As I sit here, having chosen to stay inside and trip, on New Year's Eve, instead of going to a concert with my friend Zach. senses that feel the foam edge of pillow where does my hand meet start and stop stretching feet yellow streaks on white paper the distinct drop of water from bath faucet amid classical playing from the speakers streaking all colors clear at once then jumbled eyes closed off into anywhere the pen rolls off of the notepad paper laying on my lap startling me as the pen rap-rap rolled across paper with the clip rap tapping it could be anyone me and you you me playing parts 'parently another stepping in unbeknownst to the other instead of homeless we could say streetmore scribbling i need some inspiration to get started so i just start to scribble and if i keep scribbling words will eventually form all these emotions experienced on apple show to me the heights of what's possible you see some things that are real and others that aren't convincing yourself that it's just because you're tripping i look at things a little more closely when i have the time noticing finer details like small imperfections in white paper or the perforation along the edge sometimes my legs shrug to say 'oh well' just like my shoulders do
untitled
i often had
to settle down
and listen
to what i was
being told
or else
i would let loose
into a mess
acid orange
religious
is all i can say
to describe
opening that orange
on acid
wind radio
instead
of the radio
i prefer
a little wind
whipping through
the car window
barely cracked
final approach
we are on
our final approach
to san francisco
says the pilot
as the plane
slants downward
and my stomach
presses into
my seatbelt
i get
a little scared
beautiful sunset
a beautiful sky
passed through
all colors
of the unspeakable palette
unwriteable red
right there
on the window
phosphorescent
between white clouds
and unseen upward
blue sky
that meld in the middle
neon orange
yellow in the center
glowing
gets me
shimmering golden
like it can’t be
at a time
when i am most glad
not to be blind
cut at odd
perfect angles
by cloud coverage
red ready
to wage light war
on the white
purple battleground
some turquoise even
i think it’s turquoise
made by what two colors
i don’t know
like a life giving light
all colors i swear
that i’ve ever seen
too shy
a poem i write
while sitting next to
a lady on the plane
as her and i both
admire the sunset
at six in the evening
landing in san francisco
i think of showing
the poem to her
but decide not to
dome sky
above the clouds
the sky
opens upward
like a dome
large enough
to see only one side
and no top
but a dome
certainly
for the fact that i
can look all around
and up
and still see
calm
calm
palms resting
hands folded
on my
belly breathing
reclined
in my chair
relaxing
untitled
faltering forward
from one fear
to the next
for lack
of some
satisfaction
short-lived
between fears
right the first time
i start in the night
wondering
if i wrote it that way
repeating
the write way
in my mind
out of bed
leafing through pages
looking
for the one
to scribble out
and write correctly
what came to me
in a dream
only to find
the one already
written correctly
like my future self
traveled back
before
or my present self
now past
was right
from the start
turbulence
the airplane shakes
and the woman in front of me
lifts up the window cover
hoping to see land close below
then shuts the cover quickly
—i presume because …
with my own cover closed
i cannot know for sure,
but i presume because
she did not see land
as close as she had hoped
and i feel some fear too
for her and i both
as the plane
continues to shake
untitled
i didn’t write much
looking back
through the log
and start to worry
that i won’t write
anymore—
which is when
it’ll really be over
a nice man
a nice man
from colorado
sits next to me
on the plane
says he can’t
stand the broncos
but can’t root
for his chiefs
on account of
his denver friends
readsy wordsy
a little readsy
gets me wordsy
and back into
the note-taking mood
many more
mind’s eye
fleeting thoughts
fly by
paper birds
with words written
of where they’ve been
caught
by the tail feather
with branch fingers
grown
from readsy roots
turbulence
opening the window cover
on the plane
to see
what shakes us so
untitled
the sun reflects
hot off the wing
through the window
onto my cheek
change
you change
you don’t think so
but you do
a thin string
ties it all together
loosely
loose enough
that new you
might mistake
a stranger
in a lineup
for old you
non-joy
Moments of nervousness
Interspersed with joys
Enjoyed briefly
Forgetting so soon
The non-joy that came before
Until thrust back into it
Forgetting to remember
Forced near-sighted
by emotion
an analogy for balance
there is a balance between pain and pleasure. i have been taking cold showers for about four years now. it’s not cold for the whole time. i wash for about 10 minutes in hot water, and then turn the water to cold for just a minute or two at the end. one time i decided to skip the cold shower at the end. i was enjoying the hot shower and thought it would be nice to avoid the pain of the cold shower at the end, just this once. but then i realized, as soon as i got out of the shower, the air felt cold to me. i had to put on clothes quickly to get warm. once you’ve enjoyed the warmth, you can’t escape the cold. whether i chose to turn the water cold by my own hand, or feel the contrast of the cold air after opening the shower door—either way, there would be an inevitable cold after the warmth. pain is inevitable after pleasure.
it is like my muay thai trainer once told me, “fighting is fair. if you choose to attack, then you put yourself at risk of counter-attack. if you choose not to attack, then you are not fighting.”
the universe is fair. balance is the rule of fairness. pain is the counter-attack after pleasure.
untitled
i love to have a thing to do
an action
a direction for my forward leaning
which would lean anyway
listless
without a list
bullet points
that must be purposed
or else any direction
i would surely go