Conversation with Lake about short prose and negative space 08/23/21

Cole: I am really attracted to moments that are impactful yet brief. Like how could I give the reader all the necessary context of a novel but really just have them read something the length of the climax?

Lake: I think (unsurprisingly) that there is much to be learned from short stories, especially by really powerful authors, in as far as the information they choose to make explicit and that which they let/force the reader assume.

Cole: The letting/forcing the reader to assume is important. With my poetry, some of the editors want me to come out and say the point. They don’t want me to just describe the physical moment. They want me to explicitly state the metaphysical message. It’s a balance, getting the reader close enough, but then letting them make the leap themselves.

Lake: Yeah, and constraining the conclusions the reader can jump to.

Cole: It’s not so much what you say but what you don’t say, not what you write but what you don’t write, not what you paint but what you don’t paint. The impression that any word makes on the reader depends on the words around it. The impression that one splash of color makes on the viewer depends on the colors around it.

The most obvious negative space is silence in song, monochrome in painting, blank space on a page of writing. But negative space is really just one end of the scale. We might say positive space is on the other end. Between them, there are pixels of subject that each participate to varying degrees in subjectness.

Now, is there really such a thing as purely negative space? How can we make such an assumption, on behalf of either the creator or the consumer? How can we decide for them what parts they will consider subject and what parts they will consider background?

Like a little girl who holds her father’s hand while waiting in line for the train. Everyone else is leaning side to side, jumping up and down—trying to get a glimpse of the train, the door, how full it’s getting. The girl is crouched down playing with an ant. Who could have seen the ant in a painting titled “In Line For The Train?”

Some writers talk about “filler.” In the middle of a novel, there may be pages that are not the writer’s best work, but they get the book to a total page count and they progress the story along. Filler is still positive space. It’s words—the main medium for the art form of writing. But might we say that filler is closer to negative space than, say, the climax?

As a writer, what am I letting the reader assume? How much relatively negative space am I giving them to fill with their own imaginations? The reader is not completely loosed. Even blank white pages will confine their thoughts and feelings to a certain section of mental-emotional possibilities. How meticulously can I reduce the number of possibilities?

If I have written a poem to twenty lines and there are three possibilities for the conclusion at which the reader will arrive, should I write a twenty-first line to reduce the possibilities to just one? How does it change the experience of the reader to make the leap on their own? To solve it like a puzzle. I would say there is some joy and sense of achievement to be derived from this independence.

Lake: I agree with some of the things you said. When I was talking about negative space with writing I was not thinking about physically, but more so negative or empty space in the environment you build for the reader, i.e., when you have a 20-line poem that leads to 3 conclusions or a 5-line poem that could lead to the same conclusions, the 5-line poem has more negative space and also more power because it focuses the reader to the same point with less filler. And I think that is what skilled short story writers excel at. Because then you can think of it the other way: what is the most cohesive and specific, even if not well-defined, environment that you can create in the space of a short story? Whether that is like geographic depth, visual detail, character development, plot texture. Imagine a surrealist essay. They paint a very cohesive and specific picture, but not necessarily one you could describe neatly in a few sentences. Like Kafka can make you feel a very specific way, even if you can’t really put your finger on how you feel.

Cole: Yes, but that seems separate. Can Kafka make you feel that specific way using less words?

Lake: Maybe, maybe not. The point I was making was that you can know something without needing words to represent it, which means you can make someone else feel something without making it explicit. And I think that by properly choosing words you can be very precise with the atmosphere you create and what feelings you grow in the reader. And a large part of that is what you allow the reader to assume based on the information you provide and the info you don’t provide.

Cole: Ah, I see more clearly now. Let me regurgitate back to you a bit. Premise: I can feeling something without words to represent it. Conclusion: You can make me feel something without using explicit words. Whence, then, does the feeling come? What DO you use to make me feel it? Maybe just other words. Not the explicit ones that say what I should feel exactly, but other words that make me feel it by some other means. Maybe these means are something like the subconscious, logical conclusion, or imagination. It seems the minimalism / negative space conversation is unessential to this one.

Lake: I don’t think so! The negative space is where the mind is able to make connections between the words you do use that then lets it feel something greater/different than what was explicit.

Cole: Hm, so negative space does not exist only in the art itself. It exists also in the viewer’s mind?

Lake: What is in the viewer’s mind is a function of the art, like if you only give someone 5 words on a blank page, they twist and turn mentally until they figure out how those 5 words all connect to make sense.

Cole: But the reader already has words in their head. Words that didn’t come from the page. The viewer’s mind is a function. But the art isn’t even a variable in that function. It’s just an input.

Lake: A function takes an input and creates an output. Mind is the function. Art is the input. Feeling is the output.

Cole: I still don’t think the negative space exists in the mind. The negative space exists in the art.

Lake: Okay, but I think that’s wrong, or rather is missing the point. Let’s say negative space exists in the art. What impact does that have on viewer?

Cole: It has an impact on the viewer’s functional mind via the input of the art.

Lake: Yes, but like what does it mean. Why is negative space helpful?

Cole: Now we’re back to square one.

Lake: Humor me.

Cole: Negative space is helpful because … (A) It allows the viewer liberty to draw their own conclusions, which are not explicitly concluded by the positive space in the air itself. (B) It preserves the energy and attention of the viewer so that they can focus with more power on the positive space. (C) It allows the positive space to exist. Without negative space, there is only positive space; there is only space, general space, without an opposite, without contrast.

Lake: Yes, so really what we are saying is don’t give the viewer all the pieces to the puzzle and let them find some on their own. If the input is sparse the function has to make more assumptions, yielding a more interesting output.

Cole: I disagree with the word “interesting.” Maybe the output is more personal to them. Or maybe the viewer feels a keener sense of accomplishment.

Lake: I would say “interesting” is correct because it’s actually just a conclusion that isn’t handed to you therefore you have to think a bit therefore you focus more of your active interest in it. But whatever, not gonna die on that one.

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Cole

Idea for a book (inspired by reading “Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac)

Keep a journal. Date entries. Record your actual daily experiences in narrative form. Write well, not just to get it down. Include dialogue.

Then, I can return to the journal and make a book out of it. Maybe some day’s entries were no good—they don’t have to be included. Even whole weeks, months could be cut, but I won’t know what’s good unless I write it all down.

I already have a notebook in Evernote titled “Personal Diary.” I can put the entries there. The title of each note will be the date and a detail from the day.

Currently, I am writing moments—just small snapshots, unrelated to each other. If I’m going to write something longer form, there needs to be continuity, characters, dialogue. I can achieve this by writing in narrative form in a journal, like I’ve said.

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Cole

Mushrooms Trip in Elk, CA 08/21/21

There are
Three parts
Of OM

AHHHH
—Open mouth wide
Release fully
All breath

OHHHH
—Narrows lips
As if to whistle
Focus sound
Drop pitch

MMMMM
—Close lips
Smiling, similar
To satisfaction
After eating

Then silence
Before repeating

>>>

My back starts hurting, usually, when I am seated or standing for a long period.

Why am I seated or standing for a long period? To work.

Why am I heeding the call to work and ignoring the pain in my back?

>>>

Self-conscious

I do
Or say something

As I would
Alone

Without realizing
I am not

>>>

A handle pokes out from under the blanket draped over the daybed. I put the pan beneath the bed before I went to sleep last night, in case of an intruder.

Usually, I write well when I take mushrooms, or at least more creatively. I lie here, on pillows on the floor, having taken them once more, waiting for something to write about.

When I take mushrooms, I sit, lie, lounge, walk in circles, but mostly just wait in between bouts of writing. WHY CAN I NOT DO THIS SOBER?

Mushrooms remind me how to live like a child, but then I go back to living in the adult world. They treat me like one of them because I look like one of them. I often want to do things that are not customary in the adult world, either because they are just not usually done or because the law explicitly forbids it. When walking on the sidewalk the other day, I was curious about a shrub. But I could only see its leaves. I was interested in the trunk and the branches. I thought to get down on my hands and knees there on the sidewalk to have a look, but then these other thoughts came marching one after another into my mind like soldiers. One of the soldiers said, the sidewalk is dirty. The next said, someone will see you. The next said, you are not dressed like a gardener. And so I went, walking on down the sidewalk, not knowing what I would have seen if I had lifted up the skirt of the shrub.

I finish one piece of writing. I want to continue on. I have more to say—things I thought of while writing, but they were unrelated or otherwise wouldn’t fit in the prose, because of the technicality of it, and at the moment I was writing, they wouldn’t fit presently, so I carried on with whatever else and my other thoughts waiting in the queue were forgotten. But I have now remembered some of them! Alas, they are only parts. Their beauty was, and still is, in their belonging to and being placed in each of the appropriate stations inside of the whole. Now, I must forget them, maybe forever. Whether they will return to me, in my mind, is up to forces greater than me. My only choice in the matter is either to hold them and have them as they are for me now, or to let them go and know, twofold—that they may never return to me, but also that new and different others may come to fill their absences. Consistently faced with his choice, how deep shall I go with any one thought? How much time shall I spend with her? Does she have more to teach me, more to say? Or might I learn more from others—different, younger ones? Are my wishes the only ones to be considered in this matter? Now I am thinking no longer of thoughts, but of my relationship with my girlfriend.

On my knees, on the rug, I become aware of the classical music playing. I close my eyes, raise my arms in the air above my head, bend them at the elbow, twirl my fingers, curve the side of my body into a bow, and dance to the music—slowly, softly. I had a thought that someone might be watching. The possibility that someone might be watching made me ask myself, should I be dancing in this way? And now other thoughts come of this. First, we are at a cabin in the woods, just my girlfriend and I, and it is unlikely that anyone is watching. Second, if someone were watching, why should I dance any differently or stop? Third, why is it that someone else watching makes me consider whether I should or should not be doing something? Not even them ACTUALLY watching, just the THOUGHT that they MIGHT be makes me second-guess the way in which I am dancing, alone in a cabin in the woods. Perhaps it is too feminine—the way my side bends into a bow and my fingers twirl. I am a man. Should I, therefore, not be dancing like a woman?

As a writer, I think of myself as such—as being one, a writer. When I write, if it seems like it might be becoming a piece that will be well-received—like a young boy shows early athletic promise and might grow up to become a great baseball player—then the thought that it might be so interrupts me while I have not yet finished with making the piece whole. I think to myself, what if so-and-so reads this, or if they publish me in such-and-such magazine? And then what will that mean for me? Riches, fame, and all the other gifts that are usually given to the main character in a story that ends well. But it interrupts me, this dream of glory, as I am still in the act of making the darn thing.

I worry that I can only write well when I have eaten mushrooms. I don’t believe this is true. I think I write well even when I have not eaten mushrooms. It is the READING that is different after having eaten mushrooms. Everything I read seems to be right and true, fantastic and new. It seems this way whether I have written it or someone else has. When I am writing, I am also reading what I have written. On mushrooms, what I am writing sounds wonderful. I have had this experience several times—eating mushrooms, writing, deeming it well-written. Thusly must the belief, first, and worry, next, have arisen.

Now, as an aside, being an aside because I believe my previous thought has concluded well where it has, still, I might add: I have read, while on mushrooms, what I wrote, while NOT on mushrooms, and found it to be the work, not of a genius but, of one relatively advanced in their craft. I have also read, while NOT on mushrooms, what I wrote, while on mushrooms, and found it to be the work of a lunatic who aspired to write, discovered mushrooms, thought they might aid in his writing process, ate them too often, and never stayed sober long enough to master the intricacies of the craft, which can only be learned by long hours of bored, tedious, and frustrated trying-and-failing, interspersed with reading the greats and wondering—of some of them, why can I not write as well as this myself; of others, are they really as great as everyone says they are?

While writing on mushrooms, many thoughts come to mind while I am already engaged with writing a specific one. Some of these I can forget easily, as they showed a little promise of extraordinariness. Others, those that show more promise, make it difficult for me to decide—between cutting short my current engagement (writing a thought that, before, what the same as this other one than I now consider, a question mark) and ignoring it to delve deeper where I am already standing, up to my knees in disturbed dirt, digging deeper still, to find any stones unturned. They linger, like a first taste that forbids a full bite. With one hand they wag a finger in front of my face that says “no, not yet.” The other hand they hold out, palm facing up. They are asking for something. A price. The price I must pay if I wish to bite into, chew, and mull over the thought to which I have not yet committed. The price is the one with whom I am already. Both, I cannot have. I must place the one I have, still an infant, into the upturned palm. I will never know what the youngling might have grown up to be. But, oh! Here is another, newer, brighter. If only shining its light to attract, if the flame cannot stay lit, if it proves to be no better than the one I had before, then I will go searching once more, and again—the two hands: one, wagging its finger; the other, an upturned palm.

I feel that one of us will win, and the other must then lose. Why must it be this way? I read recently that, based on our evolutionary predispositions, the man desires to spread his seed far and wide, while the woman wants to retain a man to provide for and protect herself and any children they may have together. Is this true? How can I say? But let’s pretend that it is. The desires of the man and the woman are opposing. The women cannot retain the man while he continues to spread his seed. Or, maybe … Already I see margins of possibility in which the man and the woman, in the context of a monogamous relationship between them, must not necessarily be opposing forces. Alas, here I am on the ground floor, writing my own thoughts, while my girlfriend is upstairs writing hers (I can hear the keys clacking on her keyboard), and we are breaking up. It’s not a surprise. We’ve been talking about it. At one point, she wanted me to pack my things and leave that same day. Somehow we ended up here together in this beautiful cabin nestled in the forest of Northern California outside of town called Elk. And I return to my beginning question: if we are to separate, why must it feel like one side is winning and the other is losing? Because one side chooses to end it while the other wants it to continue. There is the opposition: one wants it to end while the other wants to continue. In this situation, both cannot have what they want. Unless, maybe the relationship can transform. One wants it to end, but maybe it doesn’t need to end on the whole. Would the other be okay with a few modifications, in part? Could the relationship still live on, after the modifications? This makes me realize: relationships are always transforming. Because they involve individuals who are always changing. What happens when one changes in a way that the other doesn’t want them to? Then it becomes complicated. She asks, were you this way when I met you? How could I not have seen it? All my other relationships were the same way. Blaming—me, herself, past boyfriends. But the facts remain: people change, relationships transform. Now, the question is: how do we navigate the transformation?

I thought I heard her crying. I couldn’t tell if it was just the music or if she really were up there whimpering, sniffling. I got up and walked over to the steep steps (almost a ladder) of the old-water-tower-turned-cabin. I grabbed the railing and climbed up. There she was—her caramel skin in contrast to the white sheets, her curly hair slightly frizzy (as it gets when she’s been rolling around in bed). I asked how she was doing, if she was okay, or something like that (I forget exactly what I said). We skated, as we tend to, like those water bugs, along the surface, before descending. Then she told me that she HAD been crying. I told her, oh, I’m sorry, well, that is why I came up here. Then she said oh, did you hear me? You couldn’t have. It was only a tear. I wasn’t sobbing. I told her about how I thought I had heard crying in the music. We marveled. I must have FELT her crying, somehow, even though I wasn’t actually hearing her. She was crying because she read a few pages out of a book she found on the steps by a Vietnamese author about how he was thankful for his mother and for memories of when she would take him to the mall. My girlfriend’s mother is Vietnamese. I suspect that is why she felt a closeness to this particular book. She said, “I realized I want to cry more. I want to have things in my life that make me cry. Not just shallow melodrama. You know? Like (and she preceded to describe what she meant and how she felt in words that were perfect, but all I can remember is …) things that make you feel like you’re on the brink of being alive.” The moment was sublime, terribly so. I, knowing our relationship was ending, one tear already on my cheek and more welling. Her, being beautiful in her body as she always is, but then also the depths and intricacies of her emotions, as well as her lexical prowess to communicate them. The trees through the window behind her, bending in the wind, a glint on the glass making their green look red. Ah! What is a man to do? Other than audibly call for his deity, cry more than he already has, and shield his eyes, only to pry them back open, unveiling the portal to his heart, inviting in the moment that is more than can be captured by any artist, no matter how skilled, nor how numerous his forms. Only I, as I was in that moment, the material world as it was, chakras balancing, energy fields in opposition, formless feelings floating, angels singing—all conspiring to torture me, as if all the potency of life were distilled down into one drink, one swallow. As soon as it touched my lips I sputtered and spat. If it were spread out and watered down, so that I could have had time to process, make rational, cram into my own understanding—then I could have taken it. As it was—me, her, and the trees through the window behind her—I had to run. In this case, I slowly descended the steep steps, holding onto the railing. It took some willpower and a great deal more conditioned concern for my bodily well-being not to suddenly fling myself down them as fast and as recklessly as my heart and soul were fleeing. But no matter the manner in which I did, I ran, nonetheless. I ran like I always do. I ran like a thief into a field clutching above my head the bouquet of flowers she had given me, petals flying off of them as I went. See, I’ve never been able to stay put there and just listen to her. As soon as she starts being beautiful (which is immediately, and always) I run away with derivatives, hand-me-downs of her to render into my heart, so that others will pay me, praise me, or whatever will validate the male equivalent of female beauty. I do this, even as I am somewhat aware that I am running in a wide circle, the path of which is laden with obstacles, deceits, let-downs, repetitious exhaustion, self-loathing, and various other trials which must be faced by a man working his way up through the world to be worthy of a woman at the top—all of this, I persist in putting myself through, even as the woman of my dreams lies here in bed asking me, why will you not listen to me? Why will you not come to bed? Why will you not stay?

*** This prose above has the same idea as the poem, HER HONEY. I need to return to that poem. The idea is there. It is true. But it is not yet well-written.

When I forget to breathe, I cannot make up for it by taking rapid deep breaths, which is my habit. I failed, was resultantly worse off, may even suffer lasting damage, but there are some mistakes in the past that I can’t set right presently. I can only learn from them and avoid making the mistake again.

I am realizing, now that I’ve come down from the mushrooms high but still writing, that STAYING PRESENT is important for writing well. This is a partial answer to a recurring question: why do I write better on shrooms, compared to being sober? When I write sober, it usually goes like this: I am inspired by some sensory input, thought, or feeling, and then I formulate an IDEA thereof. I thus interrupt the otherwise seamless flow from stimulation to words, by having an IDEA of the stimulation before I begin to write. I end up writing about an impostor, the intermediary idea. While on shrooms, I stay present. I write about whatever comes up. And I write honestly, rarely second-guessing.

Posted on August 23, 2021August 23, 2021 by Cole

REMINDER: When I can start pulling content for my next book: June 10, 2021

I don’t think I added any content to The Art of Sidewalking that was written any time after June 10, 2021. The last content I added was “Drench warfare,” I think.

It was basically after my trip to Big Sky, Montana with Kyle, Lake, and Krys that I stopped adding new content to The Art of Sidewalking.

As I’ve gone back through a lot of my content from the past two years, I realize my next book should be SHORT PROSE. I have a lot of good content in the format of 50-to-200-word prose pieces.

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Cole

I am writing, I am, me

I am writing
The way
I know how

Which has changed
As I’ve
Gone on

When I read
And enjoy, a writer
Who writes differently

I think to myself,
“Gee, maybe
I should write like that”

But then I read
Another writer
Who writes like me

I think, “Well,
The way I write
Is just fine”

But neither
Should affect me
I know

I should just write
The way
That I do

August 12, 2021 at 12:14PM

Posted on August 12, 2021August 19, 2021 by Cole

At least not suicide

It’s not that complicated
The emotion is real
Complicating it with words
Won’t get you any closer
To the original emotion

If these authors
Of thousand-page volumes
Were honest with themselves
About why they write
In the first place

God, I don’t know what they would do
Maybe they would just kill themselves
So maybe they are
Better off just writing
And maybe someone will read it

But it doesn’t matter
What matters is the writer
Did something for a while
Other than kill themselves

August 08, 2021 at 03:32PM

Posted on August 8, 2021August 19, 2021 by Cole

Raw consciousness

Did I capture
Consciousness
In its rawest

She asks me
Sarcastically
After I’ve written

I know
She really means,
“Pay attention to me!”

She won’t admit
She doesn’t like when I write
When I’m with her

But her question
In the first place
Was rather apt

I go back
And read what I wrote
To give her an answer

August 08, 2021 at 02:14PM

Posted on August 8, 2021August 19, 2021 by Cole

Linguistic jab

I want that word
To hit

No adjective
Need modify
Such a noun

With strength
To say
What it will

On its own

July 22, 2021 at 10:52AM

Posted on July 22, 2021August 19, 2021 by Cole

Brief

I want it
To pack a quick punch

There are too many people in the world
Too much to read
Too much distraction

People don’t read novels anymore
If you only had one sentence
What would it be?

July 18, 2021 at 10:52AM

Posted on July 18, 2021August 18, 2021 by Cole

Grandpa

As if there weren’t
Any other way
Of seeing things

My grandpa talked to me
About work and money

And asked whether
What I had been doing
Since quitting my job
Made any

If it didn’t
Then he didn’t
Want to hear about it

Writing,
Especially poetry,
Doesn’t make much

So we didn’t have
Much to talk about

July 13, 2021 at 02:25PM

Posted on July 13, 2021August 18, 2021 by Cole

What’s the point?

There is no point. First, what does have a point? Survival seems to be the most widely accepted point of doing anything. For a long time, there was no point in doing anything other than what was required to survive because, if we did not, then we would have died and we would not have been able to carry on much longer with the pointless activity upon dying. But we are past that now. Can we now begin to spend our time on pointless activities?

My parents would feel better if I get a job. They would prefer that to me being a poet. Where does this obsession with working come from?

I myself feel a little guilt when I spend an entire day and all I have to show for it is maybe twenty or thirty lines of poetry. It seems like very little compared to the economic production of which I know I am capable from having worked a job before.

Posted on July 9, 2021August 18, 2021 by Cole

Write like that

In most of what
Has been written
And deemed worthy
To have been read
By others before me

I can see how firmly
They must have pressed
Their pens into the paper
By the boldness of the font
Even though it is printed

So clear
Their editing
And obsessing over
The punctuation

What is it like
To sit in a room with someone
And watch them be
Who they truly are

Write, like that
I wish they would have
Like they would talk
If they were right here
On the couch with me

So that I could meet them
Instead
Of this castrated form
Into which
They crammed themselves

July 02, 2021 at 02:59PM

Posted on July 2, 2021July 7, 2021 by Cole

Breakfast

In the morning
I work on my writing
For as long as I can
Before I eat

Because eating
Is the only thing
I know for sure
I’m doing right

June 07, 2021 at 10:41AM

Posted on June 7, 2021June 7, 2021 by Cole

When it comes

I wrote some poems
On the plane
Even after I said I wouldn’t
Write on this trip
I wonder
If other writers
Know
When they are going to write
Or if
They are like me
And sometimes
It just comes

Originally written: Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 10:44 AM

Posted on June 6, 2021 by Cole

Writing in the city

San Francisco is a lot
For a writer
Trying to get down
The small stuff

You see
A piece break off
From the whole
When you’re
In the right place
And time
To see the break

The wheel
Of a mail truck
Pulls up and over
A curb
And you think
To write it

But then
Another car honks
And you’re distracted
Which would be fine
You could return
To the wheel
And the curb

If not
For the other sounds
And sights
That come one
After another

One moment can’t
Hold up against
All the others
Attacking
The outside walls
Which define it

When they
Eventually crumble
And all the other
Surrounding moments
Invade
And mix
The moments
Breed
And assimilate

So you can’t remember
What the moment
Was before
And it changes
All the time

May 31, 2021 at 01:51PM

Posted on May 31, 2021June 6, 2021 by Cole

Escaping authorship

How far can I
As the writer
Get away from
The subject
Of my writing
If I must sense
See, hear, smell
Something first
In order to write it
Where can I
Cram myself away
So that
The subject
Can be what it is
Independent of me
Sensing it

May 31, 2021 at 11:21AM

Posted on May 31, 2021June 6, 2021 by Cole

Hard words

The hard words are too hard. They are too specific. How can you really mean what you say when you are using them? Maybe I say this just because I’ve never read a dictionary cover to cover. Maybe the exactness is necessary in some cases. But do we really experience life so specific, exact, and precise? I am happy and that is it. I don’t unpack it any further than that. Especially not in the moment. In the moment, I usually have no words at all. It just is what it is and I am in it and that is it. This relates to what I have said before about there being one word to describe everything. What do we gain by being more exact with our words? One of the experiences that I have tried to describe over and over as a writer is the experience of euphoria. And there I go, using the word “euphoria.” Breaking my own rule already. What is it then? What am I trying to describe? Maybe the exactness is necessary. But I just can’t help feeling that more is the wrong direction. If I could just sit with you and hold your hand and not say a word that might mean more to you than a thousand written pages.

Why do I write at all? Why do I not just go out and live if there is more communication in the wordless moment? Maybe because I am polyamorous and I want to commune with many instead of just one in one moment. Maybe because I want to live on in some form after I die. Maybe because words are what I was taught in school and I am still breaking out of this way of interpreting the world. Maybe I don’t know enough of the specific words to say that they are not good. Maybe I need to go further in the direction of more before I can say that less is the way.

Originally written: April 15, 2021 @ 10:02 a.m.

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Cole

Force

I carry with me
Force
When I write
Walking
To the bathroom
For a break
I bump
The door frame
With my hip bone
And almost
Knock
The house down

Posted on April 19, 2021April 30, 2021 by Cole

Writing without ego

When they find me, when I make it, when I get lucky—they’ll box me in right then and there. So maybe it won’t be so lucky. Maybe I never want to be found. They’ll take me as I am, and then thereafter, I’ll have to work very hard to break out and become anything else. I might even have to work harder than I did to become something in the first place. Because to become something in the first place is just that—become it, and that’s it. But to become something else when you are something already requires an extra step—you must first break free of what you are already, and only then can you start to become something else. At first, I thought only of the social problem: what “they” will call you, what “they” will say you are. But the other, more subtle, and probably more dangerous part is what I call myself and what I say that I am. Because then I will build up an internal identity for myself and start to behave that way, just the same as society would build up an identity for me externally. And I think this matters for my writing. Because I don’t want to be boxed in. I don’t want to write just one way, from just one perspective. I want to write it all. And, of course, I know that I can’t. But I still want to try to get as much of it down as I can. And in order to do that, it seems that I need to stay loose and alone, being nothing more than a vessel through which experiences can pass and in their passing be quickly recorded before they shoot out the other end. I needn’t retain any of their details as parts of my own identity. I need only to study them like a scientist, let my senses record their findings, and then avoid them like snakes in the grass.

Posted on April 5, 2021April 30, 2021 by Cole

What brings me joy

I was watching a movie about a jazz musician and there was a scene where he wins the role of piano player in a band that he admires. It made me think of my writing and how excited I would be to publish a best-seller. And then I compared that to the excitement I would feel if I were to make a lot of money from a more traditional job. I think I would be way more excited about the best-seller, which is an interesting perspective for how I’m spending my time. I spend a lot of my time working and not as much time writing. But if writing is truly what’s bringing me joy, then why am I not spending more time doing that?

Posted on March 23, 2021 by Cole

Damn editing

I really touch it light like, afraid to overwhelm the original with too may edits. Like coming into a museum and looking upon the work of another, I wouldn’t dare step over the partition and reach inside the glass container, ignoring the “Do Not Touch” signs. The piece is beautiful for my eyes as it is, and there is nothing more for me to add by putting my hands on it. I have as much respect for my former self as the artist. I come now as the editor to do the necessary evil. It is my own, even the mistakes, and that is what makes it art, I believe. Everything that happens afterwards, with editing especially, is a derivation of the original. I am thinking of rules and the opinions of others when I edit. I am no longer thinking of the source of inspiration, which can only once be passed through the lens of my perception and, in that moment, recorded.

Originally written on: December 13, 2020

Posted on March 22, 2021 by Cole

What is essential?

I was editing a paragraph and remembered what I once read from another writer about how you can only keep what’s essential. Remembering this, I sculpted the paragraph with hungry scrapes. With each scrape, I asked myself, “Is this essential?” And the answer was always no. I would look at a whole clause, answer no, and delete it all. The paragraph started as, I don’t know, maybe ten or fifteen lines. And I kept backspacing and backspacing and the paragraph was down to about five lines. And then I asked myself the same question, “Is this essential?” And I wanted to say yes, but the answer was still no. And I thought to myself, there is not much of this paragraph left. If I take out too much, it will cease to be itself. And then the paragraph will be more like a creation of the editing itself, and none of the original creation will be left—which could be said, I am realizing now, of even the first touch of editing as well. Only a virgin piece of writing, as it was born and unmolested by editing, is real. All else is editing. But still, I was asking myself, “Where is the essential?” Say I take this paragraph down to three lines, and then two, one. Will I be getting any closer? And on that last line: I take out the punctuation, I abbreviate each word, I take out the spaces. What if somehow I could get down to one letter? And then what? I was not taught in school about how to edit one letter. Or, maybe I was. I learned in art class about how to change what I was seeing. Not just the brute binary of add and subtract; art class was about seeing the void in the middle. And in that void lies the answer to how to edit a single letter. Think of any letter in your mind. Do you see it? Okay good. Now think of your letter as a drawing. Draw it and erase it. Once you have done that a couple of times, now start to remove as much of the letter as possible, while still being able to identify the letter as itself. Once you have gone as far as you can, now you can break the rule about identifying the letter as itself. What does it become? A slanted line? A circle? Even simpler—a straight line. And simpler—a dot. And then what? I do not know what, or when. But I am pretty sure that is where the essential will be.

Posted on February 28, 2021March 22, 2021 by Cole

Where does writing rank?

As a writer, I am often between wondering if what I want to say can even be worded, or if I just do not have the words in my vocabulary to say it. I do believe that words are limited to describe our experience. I also believe that, in some cases, other art forms are more successful, such that a really talented artist might have a few different art forms in their bag of tricks, to be able to switch, say, to painting, when sight is the best sense to capture the moment, and then to song, when right in the middle of the landscape, a bird chirps, and even though the bird can be painted, its sound cannot be captured, unless by song. This makes me realize the beauty of film, as it combines so many different art forms. In my pursuit to grow as a writer, if my goal is to depict and describe experiences, at some point that goal might find its means of achievement in art more generally, and not just writing. It takes a great deal of time to become talented at even one art form, even to be just mediocre at one takes time. If I were very intelligent and knew the exact moment, I wonder when I would change over from learning writing to learning another art form, in the interest of being able to describe more holistically (because words are limited, like we said earlier). And which art form would be next in the hierarchy? Where does writing even rank in the first place?

Posted on February 2, 2021March 22, 2021 by Cole

Head space

I know things now
But I fear to forget
So I write them, recite them
Read them over and over
And carry a head on my shoulders
Full of the past
Like a traveler’s trunk
With too many things from home
On a journey to a place
Where there is no return
Back to how
Things were before

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Cole

Inspiration from sensory experience

Changes in my sensory experience are a main source of my inspiration.

Sitting at my desk in my apartment, I am experiencing the same senses. I can hear the sound of traffic on the street outside. I can see my computer screen and the white wall behind it. I can feel the cushion under my bum and the wood against my back. I can taste my saliva. I can smell the bland air. I am experiencing the same senses. I am bored. I am not inspired.

So I get up and put on my sneakers and go for a run. Now my sensory experience is changing. I see new storefronts every block. I see new people and new cars. I hear conversations and children laughing. I smell the pollen from the summer trees. I feel the wind and the sun and the cement beneath my feet. My taste is about the same—just saliva.

Now, this is not to say I could not have changed my sensory experience in my apartment. I could have turned on some music. I could have taken a heroic dose of acid. I could have punched myself bloody. I could have sat down and tried my best to enter a deep meditation.

What comes in through your senses is already art. Life itself is art. What you see is a painting. What you hear is music. What you feel is dance.

As an artist, I am more of a translator than a creator. My life, my sensory experience—this is already the art. It is like clay given to a sculptor. I take the sound or music and the sight of the sky and turn those experiences into words. But in some sense, they are already words.

I am like a kaleidoscope or a prism. The experience of life is light. I am not the creator of light. Nor am I the creator of myself. I am merely a vessel.

It is still work. It is not as passive as standing there and letting light pass through. But it is work already set into motion by forces greater than me, and I must merely play along.

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Cole

untitled

I get nothing done

All day

At my desk

Double guessing

And triple checking

Like I’m still in school

So I get up

And go outside

To run

And clear my head

And all my problems

Solve themselves

One after another

Somewhere

In the back of my mind

While I focus

On not getting hit

By a car

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Cole

untitled

I run all over town
Without a notebook
Practicing
How to hold
A hundred poems
In my head

I pick favorites
And sometimes
Have to forget one
To remember another

The trouble is
I get a full head
Halfway through
As I’m still out and about
And seeing and smelling
And so poems
Keep pouring in

Which is when
I have to run
As fast as I can
Repeating every poem
Silently in my head
And looking down
Until I can get home
And start writing
To make some space

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Cole

Getting drunk and writing poetry

Getting drunk

And listening to music

I start to write poetry again

And think to myself

It’s no wonder

I haven’t been able to write

As of late

Because I’ve been too sober

And without music

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Cole

Seven things that inspire poetry

1. Reading

2. Meditation

3. Dreams

4. Nature

5. Travel

6. Sex

7. Drugs

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Cole

Why writers must travel

In search

Of different

Travelling

And changing scenery

Smoking

And drinking

To move his body

Or at least his mind

A writer

Must always be

On the move

Lest he find

New ways

Of writing the same

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Cole

Her poetry

I asked her to recite some poetry for me, and she did, easily and brilliantly. She created poems completely on her own and right there on the spot as if she were saving them in her head and waiting for me to ask.

I was a bit taken aback, to be honest. Not by her poems being brilliant—if course they were brilliant. But more so by the ease she displayed when creating them instantaneously, without even appearing to be trying.

This confirmed for me my belief that she holds all the poetry. I dance around her all day and try to make her smile, which is all just another way of kneeling in front of her with my face turned down and my cupped hands held up and open, begging for her poetry.

She does not care to write it because that is not how she lives her life. She is the poetry. This is why she as able to recite a few poems so easily when I asked. It is already within her, and always will be. So why would she go through the trouble of writing it down and giving it away? That is no the way she interacts with the world. She goes about living, and that is her poetry.

As for me, I am a taker. Whether that is because I am a man or I am me or because I live in America, I do not know. But at least I have realized the relationship for what it is. My baby is my poetry, all of it. I am a taker, and I am lucky for what I can get.

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Cole

I write when

I write in the shower
With my eyes closed

I write at work
When my mind wanders

I write during conversation
When my friend writes for me

I write at the park
Laying in the sun

I write in the middle of a run
When it gets hard to breathe

I write after a dream
That I can barely remember

I write when I read
Stealing words for myself

I write at night
When I can’t go back to sleep

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Cole

Run to write

I run to the park

To pick a poem

Like a leaf

From a low-hanging

Tree branch

Or a lyric

From a bird’s song

And then run home

To write it down

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Cole

my masterpiece

A masterpiece

I once wrote

On a computer screen

That did not save

Or on a piece of paper

That blew away—

Such stories I would tell

Of how my brilliance

Managed to elude me

For so long

As a lifetime

Rather than face the fact

That I was never

Good enough

To write a masterpiece

Posted on April 19, 2020 by Cole

an old book

Sometimes you see the same book on a different shelf; the same book that you have on your own shelf back at home.

It’s been sitting there collecting dust, as its binding has become commonplace among the other books that you haven’t opened for a while. Their bindings become usual, like a painting is drawn across the face of your bookshelf, for long enough that it becomes like a barrier, dissuading you from taking any of the books off of the shelf, thus breaking the barrier.

And here is this same book, the same one that you have on your shelf at home. But here it is—the same book, on a different shelf, so there is no barrier. You take it and open it and, oh, the knowledge that you once knew. You rediscover a chapter of your life that has been closed for some time, almost as clearly as if it were yesterday.

Posted on April 19, 2020 by Cole

Write what escapes

What I see once

On my walk home

And exclaim at

As a thing

Which ought be written

Though I can’t

In that moment

Muster the words

So I write nothing

And walk by

For days on end

Until finally

The sight strikes

With the right odds

When I can write

What has escaped me

All the days before

Posted on March 21, 2020 by Cole

Writing my dreams

A daytime nap

Marries the motion

And light

Of the waking world

With the wonder

And formlessness

Of dream

Wherein the middle

Poetry lives

Dancing

Back and forth

In wheelbarrows

Full of dream

Dug up in sleep

And delivered

To be re-planted

Here in my bed

Brain tree

Putting down roots

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Cole

Whatever waxes

I reckless write

What comes at night

Waking lately

Makes me wobble

Whatever waxes

Wanes tomorrow

When I one time

See for three

So I learned to

Sleep with ease

Posted on March 1, 2020March 1, 2020 by Cole

Need to sleep

I cover up

My colored soul

With sheets

To sleep

In the night

Woken

Wanting to

Start the day

But it’s too early

Needing to

Defer to dream

A little longer

Posted on February 15, 2020 by Cole

Woken to write

I wake up

To write poetry

Like that must be

Why I’ve woken

With a full subconscious

Spilling over

Out of my ears

And onto my pillow

Wetting my cheeks

Waking me

Posted on February 15, 2020 by Cole

Writing makes things make sense

Putting things into words makes thoughts or feelings makes sense in a way you didn’t even know they could. In your mind I think feelings take on a form in a language that is only yours in your own heart or head. Writing forces you to translate those feelings into language that is common and relates to others and the rest of the world around you—and therefore makes your feelings seem immediately more rational and objectively understandable, or at least more fleshed out.

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Cole

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

Posted on January 18, 2020 by Cole

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.

Posted on January 18, 2020 by Cole

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

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Cole

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

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Cole

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.

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Cole

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

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Cole

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

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Cole

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

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Cole

media room

i try to read

right before bed

ready with words

waiting

in my head

mixing and matching

meeting each other

making magic

in the midnight

like a media room

rushing

to go to press

in the morning

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Cole

reading seeing

most

will read it once

as they would

naturally

going

at their own pace

and then

again

this time

placing punctuation

according to

often

unnatural notions;

it is the same

when you look

at something

and for

a split second

see it

for what

it actually is

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Cole

coffee author

i think

for the name

of the author

on the cover

of any

of my future works

it should just

say “coffee”

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Cole

i write anywhere

i stop anywhere

to write

on the street corner

in the rain

on my phone

on the bus

in conversation

on the move

anytime

i’m in the mood

coming to me

only so often

i can’t afford

to let it go

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Cole

i start a poem

walking

trying to remember

the first few lines

repeating them

over and over

still walking

to where i can find

a place to stop

and write

and another line

so now four

repeating them

and five

still a ways away

at risk of forgetting

the beginning

to remember the end

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Cole

a body of work

it becomes

a body of work

gaining value

and creating fear

of loss

like a notebook

filled with notes

just a notebook

before

but now the result

of hours of work

on its face cover

just the same

as any other

but flipped through

and read

like hemingway’s

lost manuscript

what a notebook

could be

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Cole

can’t write sober

the poetry

is there

latent

laying

waiting for me

worrying

as i have

that it had gone

as the lifestyle

i’ve been living

working

focusing

staying sober

had snuffed it out

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Cole

common words

in an educated democracy, why write in words that are not commonly used? to sound more intelligent? at the expense of alienating a percentage of your potential reader base. better to write with common words, i think, and reach most of the masses.

Posted on December 1, 2019 by Cole

creative chaos

my art benefits from my work and vice verse. chaos crispier structure and structure controls chaos. sitting focused on structure an artistic idea will occur in my subconscious. creative trying to make my work experience will move the ball forward.

Posted on December 1, 2019 by Cole

body of work

I have an idea of my body of work the rest in my mind always stretching it self and trying on new limbs. meeting other bodies there in my mind and comparing itself taking from others to add and sometimes subtracting out of self-consciousness the body of work is imagined as its whole at onceSo that I can close my eyes and edit apart or move pieces around or have a sudden realization waking up in The Morning Show how to fix something I’ve been stumped on the body of work lives in my mind

Posted on December 1, 2019 by Cole

writing is like space travel

writing a moment is like an astronaut observing a new planet. you have traveled all this distance to get here, and will only have this one chance to observe what you came to see, passing by. in that time, it is best to do no thinking and only recording. then, later on, endless analysis and editing can be done with the raw content captured from the moment of observation, which cannot be re-lived.

Posted on December 1, 2019 by Cole

saturday

i wait all week

for this one moment

on saturday morning

when the drone

of dribble from work

dies down

in my latent mind

cleansed by

a friday sleep

knowing there is no

office tomorrow

sitting down now

at a desk wherever

a coffee shop

to open my writing

and have all

flow forth

what was pent up

and refining itself

like a diamond under pressure

myself mining above

now descended

to the depths

to collect

Posted on December 1, 2019 by Cole

radiator rain

listening to the rain
in a sheet metal gutter
on the side of the building
making a hollow sound
dropping from the top
to the bottom
then flowing
like a city stream
over sidewalk
and to sewer eventually

(turns out
this poem i wrote
laying, hearing, imagining
was a lie
or a fiction at least
as i discovered
getting out of bed
for a glass of water
that the sound
which i thought was rain
was actually the radiator)

Posted on October 28, 2019 by Cole

can’t let the beauty go

sometimes

just laying here

there’s no art

to be gotten from it

necessarily

with a forearm

behind my head

laying on the couch

looking out the window

wishing i had a typewriter

on my lap

to write what i am feeling now

suddenly

not expecting to

or looking for

this tree that i can see

through the window screen

moving so slowly

in an imperceptibly

soft breeze

that catches me

here laying

not expecting anything

from this moment

that has become so beautiful

all of a sudden

that i am forced

to get up and grab my phone

and come back quickly

to the couch

back under the covers

to resume right into

what struck me suddenly

and tried to enjoy

alone and unwritten

but couldn’t

just too beautiful

and had to

start writing

robbing me

of these moments

just to be enjoyed

silently, wordlessly

i can’t

have to capture

something in me

can’t let the beauty go

and can’t see the value

in keeping it for myself

Posted on October 28, 2019 by Cole

shower thoughts

i stood here

and dripped

in my shower towel

writing

my wet hair

on my forehead

seeing as

i sprung from

the still spitting shower

with a thought in mind

and only now

with it down

realize i am standing

in a puddle

and the shower

still going

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Cole

poetry muse

poetry i can write only

once

not before or after

that very moment

which gives birth

like a stubborn

truth-telling muse

refusing to repeat herself

and shaking her finger

for the ones i can’t remember

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Cole

self-critique

if i can forget

quickly

that i am a writer

reading

my own work

i can almost

offer criticism

outside of

my fragile ego

Posted on October 13, 2019 by Cole

rhyme scheme

night

rhymes with

light

which rhymes

with right

—such

is the profound

rhyme scheme

around which

all my poetry

revolves

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Cole

relax

it makes me nervous

to fly

when i’ve work

unfinished

i tell baby

before i go

just in case

to publish everything

i’d honestly

rather stay

and not even sleep

until i finish

but i must relax

both because

there will be

what there will

and i have

no control

Posted on September 28, 2019 by Cole

diamond (09/14/19)

It’s like a diamond with the pressure from my work and the poetry gets crystallized in the middle when I thought it was all gone and was forcing it only getting out some that wasn’t really that good so it decided to take break which is when it was allowed to crystallize as it did in my subconscious and become more naturally those slightly less more quality coming from what I actually felt as opposed to what I attempted to manufactureAnd the pressure of being helpful so to stay energized and motivated working on something more of the world less creative but I have that energy mat by the equal and opposite reaction of art so the harder I work the more I create

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Cole

violet beauregarde

nettles nay say

no regard

sounds like

violet beauregarde

a movie character

fictional

who i mentioned

to baby last night

about eating

too many blueberries

and turning blue

now creeping

this morning

into my

writing rhyming

subconscious

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Cole

midweek motivation

needing to get into

this particular place

where no one need

overwhelms my

motivation

making it easier

to step off

of the curb

and not land

on the street

but rise up

even above

the building tops

even on

a wednesday

when i worked today

and will work tomorrow

but can

still stay lifted

in a midweek

of moments like this

leaving

and not coming back

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Cole

half a poem

my brain is always

trying to write

but i have to

hold it back

and only write

when it’s right

when it gets to me

in a moment

all at once

so i don’t start in

and end up

with just

half a poem

hanging off

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Cole

self-reminder

you don’t need

to write it all

i remind myself

—write some

and leave the rest

for later

Posted on September 14, 2019 by Cole

writing poetry

when i write poetry i don’t sit down and employ a creative strategy or exercise to first get an idea and then open a dictionary or other index of words to figure out what will fit the rhyme scheme and meter—going along like this slowly spending time to think between words and building slowly brick by brick like a house. when i write poetry i’m often standing up in an experience that is making me feel or think something and start my fingers typing on my phone with what i can only identify as the energy of the experience itself that comes so fast my fingers can barely keep up and sometimes i don’t recognize what i’ve written until after it’s done

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Cole

drunk 5am

a little drunk off of it in the bed at night or morning in between hour at 5am taking this opportunity with the normal connection of my brain to body to reality slightly distorted as drinking will do so laying here writing some and seeing what will come out that wouldn’t normally

Posted on August 24, 2019 by Cole

most creative

i’m most creative when i wake up early in the morning around 6am and have one cup of coffee and don’t eat anything and just see how long i can go before i get light headed from not eating because once i eat the creativity stops

Posted on August 24, 2019 by Cole

my style of poetry recently

each line is shorter, forcing the reader to pause and think deeper into simple subject matter that doesn’t require any deep thought in its face

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Cole

what’s wordless

sometimes

there is

what’s wordless

to carry

a moment

and relieve me

of the need

to write

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Cole

can’t sleep

putting away

trying

to sleep

my phone

into the drawer

of the nightstand

then thinking

of another

poem

and having

to pull my phone

back out

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Cole

write drunk, edit sober

what saves

is written

on the up

and survives

through editing

on the down

Posted on August 7, 2019 by Cole

gone for good this time

reaching into a thoughtless mind wondering again if the poetry has gone like i know i have thought before and without fail the poems return but for some reason like before i think again that this time is different—that it has really gone for good this time.

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Cole

where words get their meaning

words make you feel because you use them. if you heard a word, but had never used words to mean anything yourself, i wonder if you would hear anything. words are fat with the weight of past experience. different words are more important to different people. the reason that writing can be so emotional for me is that when i write a poem or make up a story, the words i use are inevitably defined by how i’ve used them in my personal life.

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Cole

two ways to write poetry

there are two ways to write poetry. one is to write words as they come to you, somewhat randomly. the other is to try to think of what makes sense or what is true or what people will like—and then write that. even when i use the second method, however, i find that sometimes it will doesn’t work anyway. and on the contrary, with the first method, i can write something random, in a sort of stream of consciousness, and it turns out great. so with my poetry at least, i’ve given up control, and resolved to just keep writing.

Posted on August 3, 2019August 3, 2019 by Cole

mumbo jumbo

if the writers

keep writing

on the other side

of the muffled voices

apartment wall

and late afternoon

brunchers

and bakery

line waiters

all saying

some words

that spill into

my dreams

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Cole

cocktail poem

i write it

again and again

learning

nothing new

shaking

my head

like a cocktail shaker

with the same

few ingredients

Posted on July 30, 2019 by Cole

sound over meaning

a lot of the time

it’s just how

the words sound

and not

what they mean

just like

it’s the light

and not

the object

Posted on July 30, 2019July 30, 2019 by Cole

productive

thinking

if i can just

put out

this much

and then

i don’t know

but at least

i’ll have

put out

that much

until now

i’m realizing

there’s no end

and you have

to keep

putting out

Posted on July 30, 2019 by Cole

uncomfortable writing

this is where

i can write

albeit

uncomfortable

it is the

discomfort

in fact

that picks up

the pen

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

grocery poem

walking home

with groceries

so i have to stop

every half block

and put down

the bags

to write

some poetry

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

method writing

being in

whatever

you’re writing

so when

you forget

what to say

you can

look up

and listen

to what

it’s telling you

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

old lines

writing what i’ve

written before

because it’s safe

like a freestyle rapper

using old lines

without courage

to risk a mistake

and let everything

come out, as it will

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

temper tantrum

if expecting

to write

not being

able to

because trying

to prepare

like making

the bed

for a child

that will sleep

on the floor

anyways

and so needing

to look away

and act

surprised

when another

comes

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

night shift

working

in the night

as long as

i am

breathing

working

creating

is what

it is

for me

to be

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

rational poetry

keeping

(or at least

trying to)

a certain

rationality

so even if

a poem doesn’t

sound good

it will

at least

make sense

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

dream poem fishing

writing best

between naps

like fishing

going under

to dream

and reeling

one in

above the surface

to unhook

and place

in the boat

then drop

the line

and re-enter

into

dream waters

and wake

with another

on the line

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

two classes of words

words to classify sort and name specifically:

Tom

Lots Angeles

Copper

Twenty-Four

and words to group evoke feeling and express generally:

love

people

movement

time

i tend to find myself using the second class when poetic and the first when story telling

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

write the naked moment

looking this

and that way

for a piece willing

and confident enough

to present itself

all at once

and completely naked

so there is nothing

left to invent

as long as i can

keep my eyes open

and write quickly

before

the moment redresses

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

writing on my phone in bed at night with baby

writing at night

on my phone

with baby

in my arms

and only

the light

of the screen

in the dark

and my fingers

noiselessly

tapping

baby breathes

and i can focus

comfortably

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Cole

each sense has an art

Sitting waiting seeing for it all to be written even though it is always written. All sensory inputs could be described with words. Some inputs we don’t have words for. Imagine looking out at a scene and being able to describe it perfectly with words. So much so that the person seeing the words could see the scene perfectly just as you see it. Or the same for a sound. Imagine being able to describe it with words so the person reading the words could hear the sound perfectly. I suppose that is why we have music. Which makes me think that there is an art best suited for each sense. Music for hearing, painting and drawing for seeing, dance for movement and feeling, culinary arts for tasting. But what sense then is writing for? For imagination? For mental capacity?

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Cole

writing is like exploring

there are only so many combinations of words, punctuation, and spacing. only so many letters in the alphabet. so the set of things that can possibly be written is finite. it is like our physical earth. there are only so many possible combinations of DNA. a presumably finite number of elements present on earth, combined in different ways. the only difference is that they are already all rendered and out there and the difficulty for an explorer is to go and find them. whereas the difficulty for a writer is that some writings, while possible, have not yet been written.

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Cole

writing depends on my feeling

i write something

when i feel bad

even though

it might be

the same thing

i would have written

feeling good

i’ll throw it out

and only if

my good feeling self

digs in the trash

uncrumpling and

exclaiming, framing

everything that my

bad feeling self

threw out

but the point is

the lens is more

for both reader

and writer

than the writing

itself

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

word sex

an idea starts as a word

which then multiplies

further describing

its original self

with more words

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

sad writing

sometimes

when i’m happy

i wonder why

have i not

written any

when i’m sad

now that i’m sad

i know i can’t

write like this

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

too many arts

trying to see too much art

and your lens gets muddled

looking at a tree stuck between

being painted and written

same as between a world

being worked or recreated

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

writing what i feel

writing

what i feel

sometimes

results in

not understanding

what i wrote

when i read it

later on

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

words can’t be trusted

you read into words

too much

which is when

they mean more

than they were

meant to

limited as they are

they can only

be trusted

so far

to convey

what is trying

to be said

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

birth of speech to text

my lips are faster

than my hands

as a medium

between my mind

and my words,

so i started

to speak my poetry

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

fuck

where to place the word

fuck, or fucking

to add emphasis

is a word that means

nothing, other than

pure emotion

as if to put the word

that follows, in ALL CAPS

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

train hopping

nascent never tells me

about itself until it’s already

halfway down the road

and surely a good one

i can see clearly now

but now so far past

i wonder whether to

run on after

or wait here patiently

watching cars counting

drops from the faucet

seeing when the next nascent

will rear its head

and hopefully catch on

early enough this time

to hop on like a train bum

making the leap

just to get on board

then laying back and

lacing my fingers

behind my head

as the right nascent ripens

and i’m just

along for the ride

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

deeper

when to stay

and when to

float away

to some-

thing new

how to tell

if it is written

and dug out

deep down

so fully explained

and all told

so there is nothing

more here

like an empty

gold mine

for a miner

or a dry glass

for a drinker

but wondering if

it is ever this way

for a writer

or if one thing

can really be written

over and over

and never

running out

of things to say

if you write

deep enough

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Cole

parentheses

perfectly placed

parentheses punctuate

a thought within

another thought

impregnated

and unable to live

on its own

Posted on July 9, 2019 by Cole

the word “so”

opposite of

the comma

is the word “so”

letting reader eyes

pass on like

a green light

Posted on July 9, 2019 by Cole

eyes wide writing

in the dark

sensing

by touch

i realize

it is the cause

of light

that i have

been writing

with my eyes

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Cole

accidental style

It is interesting when the line breaks are set by a poet in a certain way, but then one or two lines are too long when put into type, and they spill over onto the next line—such that you wonder if the poet was correct in his line placements in the first place, or if it’s even better with the words accidentally forced onto the next line by the formatting.

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Cole

writing outward as you get older

young people spend so much time looking inward. people want to read what is outward. it is easier to look outward and write outward as you get older.

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Cole

eavesdrop

As a writer I hear words very loud; by “loud” I mean clearly no matter what else is going on. Like everything else disappears and I live only through my ears and sometimes see images that the words create. I can’t help but listen to conversations that aren’t meant for me. Because I think of words constantly and describe all of my own experiences this way, I can’t help but eavesdrop when other people are talking.

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Cole

banal statement about poetry

“Poetry is the closest language gets to feeling” – a statement like this is banal because the person stating it is claiming a truth which barely belongs to him. An eight-word statement comprised of common words could almost be said accidentally, such that there seems obviously to be little skill involved in crafting it, and by extension, little mark of the crafter’s identity. It takes something wider and longer to truly test a statement so there is more room to make a mistake.

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Cole

poetry vs. novel

with poetry

i throw out less

than i would

with a novel

strictly because

each and

every poem

doesn’t

have to fit

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Cole

productive flood

all that time

i could have been

a little more productive

if i could have

channeled the flood

between river banks

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Cole

something i read from a critic that i should emulate

“keeps his focus not on the man who speaks the poems … but on what that man sees and on what he can hear”

Posted on June 23, 2019 by Cole

how i started writing poetry

Honestly, I tried writing a novel. Tried a couple times actually. But I was too young and impatient. Even now that I’m a little older I’m still impatient.

I kept trying to write scenes and character descriptions in short amounts of time. When I was out at a bar in between conversations, on the bus on the way home, in the middle of cooking dinner. And then I’d sit down on a Saturday and try to put all the puzzle pieces together into a novel. But it wasn’t working.

Until I realized the puzzle pieces were actually pretty good on their own. So instead of trying to cram them together into a novel, I just left them alone and started calling them poems.

Posted on June 23, 2019 by Cole

six or seven letter words

common enough

to be just barely beyond

possibly accidental

or universally replicable

but not so esoteric

as to be inevitably alone

or impossibly accessible

so picking words

with six or seven letters

right in the middle

for the masses

to know just enough

continuing on after

lagging barely behind

satisfied enough to stay

but still wonder about

what one doesn’t know

Posted on June 23, 2019 by Cole

three sources of poetry

there are three sources of my poetry: my surroundings and what my senses are telling me about them. myself and what my mind is telling me. or nonsense that comes from my subconscious or somewhere else.

Posted on June 21, 2019 by Cole

poetry as micro fiction

poetry taught me about the music of a sentence, a word even, making my fiction better on the micro-level

Posted on June 16, 2019 by Cole

language art

half of being a poet for me was unlearning the rules from grade school language arts; knowing just enough about words to feel how others will feel but also knowing nothing at all so as to not be afraid of putting words together in new ways

Posted on June 10, 2019June 12, 2019 by Cole

i am therefore i should

i am what i am.

i am human.

of all things, ideas and intellect are highly human.

language is our tool for communicating ideas and intellect.

writing is the art of language.

i am a writer.

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Cole

writing when

writing is best done

when doing

whatever it is

that you’re writing about

only that

stopping to write

about the thing

would stop the thing

from being done

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Cole

Editing poetry

They are subtle the things that make a poem good. So when you edit for something like grammar, you can take away the good thing by accident. Like when someone is healthy according to all physical standards, but their mind or soul aren’t in it—so they really aren’t healthy at all.

The rules of poetry cannot contain the idiosyncrasies of human taste for interplay between words and rhythm; this interplay, at its most subtle depths, can only be felt. You can hear it in the crowd at a poetry reading when everyone says “ah” or lets out a sigh at the same time. Words said differently—slower, choked, quietly—mean something different. This is why, when I try to edit a poem that has come to me in a dream, by applying rules of grammar, it loses the beauty that I don’t completely understand, which has come from my subconscious.

A poem is like a complex math problem—instead of two variables, an independent and a dependent (like all the two-dimensional graphs that we learned in grade school algebra)—there are hundreds of dependent variables: the complexity of a thought, the amount of syllables in a stanza, a natural pause denoted by a comma in the middle of a line, the formatting and how it looks on a page. All these, if independent, might be solvable. But they’re dependent, and changing one changes the other.

If you were a very smart mathematician, you could figure it out. Or you could take the musician’s approach and get blasted drunk and feel your way, stumbling to the solution. These are two separate ways to arrive at the same place. I believe the musician is doing the exact same thing as the mathematician by different means. I also believe that this is a duality which applies to more than just poetry.

Posted on May 20, 2019May 20, 2019 by Cole

Hand writing in the dark

Return to the passions of sea that shape your soul / Drink from the plentiful water there and even drown and lose yourself if you need to / Leave some strength to swim back to shore where wild water passions find direction in river banks / Stand on land that holds strong and firm without moving in the short term unless you really dig your shovel in to separate the form it clings to

Where water takes only the small sleight of hand to empty a glass and have it all splash or spill out / Let the water hydrate your soil and birth your plans without drowning all life there / Passions of water that know no limits in nature, but in human form can only excite so much before we remember there is a code to survival

We can dance in the waves and swim out but only so far, not beyond a possible swim back to shore / And not so deep, longer than the rope that tethers us to the surface

We are amphibious creatures of both passionate waters and structured lands / Completely without one or the other, we would die

Passions of a dream, a dance, a night love in the dark—are beyond our defining / (illegible) that move and inspire action it has nothing to do with what we see cosmetically everyday—the buildings erected, cars driving, people going to work

—man living and doing what he needs to survive. None of this would exists without the dance in the dirt that we came from and the desires for more than just to go on surviving but to live in the moment in passions of ecstasy

—these are the short ephemeral moments that cause us to go on living and also to give our children the opportunity to do so; otherwise what would be the point?

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Cole

Good writing bad

I have an urge
to write something bad 
just to prove 
that all language is good.

Posted on May 4, 2019June 12, 2019 by Cole

simple writing

simple, straight-forward writing is more naked. it can’t hide behind misunderstandings and words unknown to most readers.

Posted on April 14, 2019 by Cole

a writer’s work

it’s a writer’s work to articulate the forces that move us implicitly and wordlessly in our daily lives. while our economy works to answer for everything that is worth something and our religions seek to answer for what means something and philosophy seeks to answer for what is true; art seeks to answer for whatever is left over—just what is.

it’s a writer’s work to name what hasn’t been and to sometimes challenge what has.

Posted on April 14, 2019April 14, 2019 by Cole

dreams within a dream

I had a dream that I was sleeping coming in and out of dreaming and after each dream it would appear good to me like something that should be in writing and I would think of how to write it But I was so tired so I would fall back asleep before I could get up to write anything down and then wake up again having had another dream that seemed to me like it would be good in wiring – Only sometimes did i know, in my stupor, that i had forgotten the dreams before, while other times i would unconsciously descend into another bout of sleep while conjuring up the thought in words to be written and at the same time mustering the energy to get out of bed and grab my phone from the kitchen counter and having something to write it but not making it and falling back asleep.

all of this, happening and wondering – one, why could i not formulate the thought and get up to write it before falling asleep again, and starting to feel loss and disappointment that I could capture none of it while feeling that some of these dreams should have been captured; two, and this was a particularly peculiar part, upon the fifth or sixth or seventh or maybe 100th dream and really feeling A frustration at this point having forgotten so much and if it it had just been forgotten no worries fucking van combined with the fact that there had been something good that I had missed either because I could not write it and share it later on or because I could not even remember it myself and maybe relive it for even having seemed to have lived at once if only just by remembering it once; but now, I digress again, because what really happened is this.

I awoke this time differently still laying in my bed and trying to think of the words only to realize that this time I had awoken into my actual bed and a reality that is more real in each of the times and walking after the sixth or seventh or hundred dreams for you to realize that this time was the first time then I actually work in all the times before were dreams within a dream of me sleeping and going to sleep and dreaming and experiencing something that is very familiar to me which is living a dream wanting to write it and then forgetting it over and over again so now is the only time that I am in reality real enough where I can actually get out of bed and grab my phone off the kitchen counter and actually write it only now I can write nothing specific about all the changes and dreams and can only write generally – not specifically about any of the six or seven or 100 dreams that were each stories or ideas or things that needed to be put down into words that people have not found yet to formulate ideas that are you and everyone would explain are yes I have thought that before I just didn’t know how to say it this is what a writer really tries to get after after all. So explaining my disappointment for having lost all of it and feeling this to be not unlike living mini lives and dying and not remembering your former lives and not only having lost the memory to recall the life clinic 30 but sometimes not even having remembered it in the first place such that it is questionable whether you can even say what it was lived at all if you can’t remember it or another words if you never met entered your mind with any clarity at least once there is a tragedy here that is at the core of my motivation to write in the first place and that is the desire that things should be written down, recorded, preserved, allowed to live on, or in some cases allowed to live at all even just once.

Conversely the tragedy I feel as a writer is having lost. Having forgotten, having never gotten something in the first place having let something pass by or die or not otherwise made something live and be shared in touch first my own mind at least once but then many other moments and have lived in many other lives caring on it written word And creating imagination, fantasy idea, story, ideas the minds of others that are in someways each lives that are given the hour to need to live again again with each reader.

Posted on April 13, 2019 by Cole

why i poem

i write poetry to make others feel how Hesse novels make me feel.

Posted on April 13, 2019 by Cole

write fast, edit slow

you don’t want to do too much of your editing at once; you need to space it out so you can become as many different versions of yourself, closer to the general reading public.

if there’s too much ego in writing it can be bad, just because it’s not inclusive enough for the general reading public.

Posted on April 13, 2019April 14, 2019 by Cole

none

I have no ability to edit my own work; it has everything to do with how I feel.

Posted on April 13, 2019 by Cole

deleted from the book, leaving here

I walked by a beautiful church on ninth street and saw, through the stained-glass windows, the high ceilings. I stopped there on the sidewalk and thought about it to see if I could come up with something.

I thought to myself, “There is something about those high ceilings.” It is something similar to this that I think right before I write, usually.

“There is something about …” But I am stumped, sometimes, as I was when I stood on ninth street trying to write about the angels in the high ceilings or the music that echoed from the choir

—ideas from my childhood of churchgoing, which are like splotches of oil in artistic waters,

as if the divine words I was looking for were tucked into the missals (that I refused to open) in the pews (that I refused to kneel in).

I could not write about anything other than how I could not write—and so I wrote this.

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Cole

writing outside of myself

when i’m sober and anxious, things are more specific and less hazy and time slows down – i realize immediately that i made a promise to start writing “outside of myself” after this last book. i need to start looking outside of the feelings of my ego and into my experience of the world around. i think this will be therapeutic but also full of more material.

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Cole

less editing

funny how many times
i’ve deleted a much edited poem
and just supplanted the original
messy as it was;
after much editing
you end up removing
its idiosyncrasies
that make it what it was

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Cole

typewriter monkeys

it is a curious thing that a man who has written for so long should not have written anything good, at least for what they say about enough monkeys and their typewriters.

Posted on January 5, 2019January 5, 2019 by Cole

adverbs are heavier than nouns

adverbs have more conceptual weight than nouns. for example, the words “much” or “more” – if you make them into nouns, muchness and moreness. those concepts are much richer than any noun, say, “flamingo” or “teapot.” those nouns are very much themselves and just themselves.

Posted on January 2, 2019January 2, 2019 by Cole

writing while living

being in an experience and simultaneously writing about it is impossible. like the principle of the observer changing the observed just by observing.

Posted on January 2, 2019January 2, 2019 by Cole

a writer

i have been many things, but always a writer. even before i told myself i was, and even when i wish i wasn’t. less so when i’m happy, because it is hard to do anything else when you’re happy other than be that way, let alone to write.

Posted on December 26, 2018December 26, 2018 by Cole

My words

I don’t read into your words too much; I had my own English teacher.

Posted on December 25, 2018December 25, 2018 by Cole

look out more

can i resist doing drugs when i’m bored? i test myself. my poetry continues to be egotistical. look out more, i tell myself. forget about yourself.

Posted on November 24, 2018 by Cole

A hundred poems

I wrote a hundred poems and tried to have meaning in every one but there’s just not that much meaning in the world; so I learned to write about ordinary things and inanimate objects and wouldn’t you know I found all the missing meaning.

Posted on November 23, 2018 by Cole

I’ve got one

I say that has meaning but am timid for what I’ve called out before that didn’t mean much so I let it pass but it persists and tugs like a child on my pant leg and cries or coos or otherwise says, look at me, I matter. Still, I shake it out of my head to make space for what might come with real meaning—something that other people will read and say, ah, yes, yes indeed, that means something. But on the third time as I try to push it out I find it has put down roots and not only is it still there but now it’s grown. So I scramble for my pen and paper like a fisherman with one on the line, cursing and murmuring to myself—I’ve got one, this one means something.

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Cole

How I write

With my writing I’m first a sponge, soaking up through my pores as much as I can. Then a splatter painter, getting it all out and down on paper as I feel it. Then I am a puzzle maker, cutting out pieces with jagged edges, sometimes cutting a big piece in half, straight through the middle of something that might have seemed cohesive. I put it all together, take it apart, and put it together again. Finally I am a sculptor. Preparing the work to be seen. Trimming excess at the edges. Once it’s complete, I make sure it’s really complete forever, and then I can’t look at it anymore. I move on and won’t come back no matter what.

Posted on October 28, 2018 by Cole

Language is a rose with thorns

Language, like a thorned rose, shows me so much, at the same time as it hides much else; brings certain things into focus, and blurs others.

Posted on October 28, 2018June 12, 2019 by Cole

Wide enough work

I used to throw out what wouldn’t fit, until it became a wide enough work that there was a place for everything.

Posted on October 28, 2018 by Cole

Poetry

Poetry does something to you. It changes your mind and makes you consider more.

I go out to get a poem. I meet people and shake hands and dance. I look at things and tilt my head to change my perspective. I lean off the edge and feel danger and see if new words pop into my head to describe the feeling. I let myself dabble in love if only to get a poem of pain out of it in the end. I hold a leaf and let it scratch down some words on my palm. I get home and go to sleep, too drunk to think of poetry, then wake up with a mind full of it at four in the morning. There are no poems I won’t consider. There are many parts of the world I haven’t seen.

Posted on October 22, 2018 by Cole

Mixing things up

Recently I’ve noticed I use words at the wrong times. I am self-conscious about sounding unintelligent. But sometimes I still can’t help but think it sounds musical, or that it makes sense in some odd way. When I look up the word in the dictionary, I’m usually wrong. I know what I’m trying to say, but we’ve agreed on the dictionary, so I have to abide by that if my intention is communication. I consider a world my only intention is communicating with myself. What would that sound like? I’m sure that crazy people sound perfectly sensical to themselves. They’ve just stopped checking themselves with the dictionary, so their words are only their own.

At some point soon I need to return to using language the right way. I’m too young to go so deep into poetry like this. I need to stay close to everyone else and their language. I love humans too much to go off on my own. Not yet.

Posted on October 22, 2018 by Cole

Cooking up some good mind

I feed contents into my mind like ingredients into a pot of stew. They mix and mingle and seep into one another. As long as the ingredients are each individually appetizing, the whole stew will turn out.

Similarly, poetry that visits me in the night or whole stories that tell themselves in a daydream or bits of arguments in philosophy that make sense all of a sudden—these are composites of my readings, experiences, and thoughts.

The order in which these regurgitate in my writings doesn’t so much matter as does the quality of each individual mental input so that no matter what combination, my writings are composites of ingredients that are high-quality individually.

Posted on October 22, 2018 by Cole

Lazy poems

I don’t know enough words to write a novel. That’s why I write the same words over and over, just in different orders. I call them poems.

Posted on October 21, 2018 by Cole

Why I love nonsense

I like nonsense because I don’t have to worry about being wrong. It’s the closest thing I can get to being completely myself without apologizing, filtering, or being careful in any way. I go recklessly in whatever direction no matter what. You learn a lot about yourself this way.

Posted on October 15, 2018 by Cole

Bus trip

Wow, so much on the bus, trying to think of words for this but I don’t think there are any. Even my fingers streak across the screen. So many thoughts that don’t have words to express them. I’m doing my best just to write this and saying to myself, “Okay, okay, you got this.” I want to try writing poetry.

Glass out the window. Cold flakes yet to hail. I really think I’m too lost for this. It’s all garble. Nothing that makes sense comes out. All I can keep saying is ‘oh god, oh god’ and marvel at how my fingers feel.

My mind isn’t putting together what is spatially available to my body. I thought in my head that there was fruit in the fridge at home. I reached out in the present world where I’m just sitting in a bus and I tried to take the fruit out of my fridge. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me that I could reach out and grab something that wasn’t there. Everyone on this bus is thinking the same thing. It’s like we all share the same mind.

I want to take mental snapshots, to remember this somehow. The height of my life. I think the same thing every time. But eventually I forget and go back to living normally.

I feel the soreness in my brain like a muscle tired after a workout.

Posted on October 15, 2018 by Cole

Multi-directional art

I used to write and want to keep it going in the same direction no matter what. I’d have the initial idea and no matter what else occurred to me I wouldn’t veer off; I was limited in this way. Not to mention the cultural norms that were really barriers to my creativity, only allowing me to access so much in the first place. Now that I have access to more and I’m more willing to go off in another direction, my possibilities for artistic direction have multiplied.

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Cole

Written memories

“I have a bad memory,” I tell people. Nowadays I’m better at organizing my writing than my own memory. I have to write everything down or I forget. So when I need to remember something I search my phone or my notebooks instead of my own mind.

Posted on October 8, 2018 by Cole

Method writing

I bend myself like a method actor to get into a certain style of writing. Sexed and drugged to write poetry with an honestly dumbed-down vocabulary and more emotion. Alone for weeks with coffee and exercise to write academically. Holding my breath and watching characters out the window to write a novel.

Posted on October 8, 2018 by Cole

Found out

After I’ve “found out” it’s like the gates open and everything pours out so I’m writing all night on my iPhone with her asleep in bed next to me.

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Cole

Describing the whole thing (writing)

For the sake of my writing I try to stay focused for as long as I can where I’m at. I can look at something once and write about what I see. But if I look at it again and again and hear it and feel it and smell it and wait to see what it does and how it reacts to me being there and experiencing it—all this can only be gotten from stopping and staying put for a little while.

You’ve got to let it work its whole self out otherwise you only end up describing one point on the surface rather than the whole shape. You’ve got to stick around to get all the other points like pieces of a puzzle until the whole image is displayed. Otherwise your reader will only have one thing to go off of and it’s more likely that their subjectivity will show it to them as something different instead of what you were trying to describe objectively. On the other hand, if you can give them more points on the surface, more data points, then your description can trend towards objectivity with less of a chance of your reader guessing wrong.

Posted on October 3, 2018October 7, 2018 by Cole

Dream writings

In the middle of the night, I can’t control my intellect. Healthier, I’ve found, just to follow along where my dreams and subconscious ideas have gone on their own throughout the sleeping night, like a child with my hand held by my parent, I don’t tantrum or run in another direction.

Often what is there is already there so that when I wake up in the middle of the night and start to write something exactly like this, all I’ve to do is start with the first words in my mind and the rest come tumbling out after due to no extra effort of my own. It’s all from what’s been done in my subconscious between 10pm and 4:30am.

Whereas the weirdest part, irksome even for a writer that tries to get down what’s good, is just how much I don’t recall upon waking, how many dreams I don’t remember but lived like my real waking life nonetheless. These forgotten dreams affect me surely but I do not know them firsthand. All I can do is write what there is and go back to sleep and wait for my parent to wake me again with her wisdom.

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Cole

Political words

When I just start a sentence and it makes at least some sort of sense it’s like rolling a ball down a hill where I really only need that first push and then the momentum takes over where I’m not even thinking of the real world anymore and I’ve lifted off into this elevated plane where the words all still exist but they don’t have to be used like usual anymore.

They’re free to relate to one another like they’re all meeting for the first time and being polite and not trying to make assumptions where each of them belongs so you end up with run-on sentences and too many conjunctions and in a sense you’ve wasted all your time up there on the elevated plane but in another sense it’s the only time worth spending, where you’re saying everything for the first time and actually experiencing whatever it is before you say it instead of the other way around.

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Cole

Read something other than myself

In my writing I hit a creative block and my instinct is to read what I’ve written before to get an idea, but then I think: why not read something new? I’m afraid because I forget easily and don’t want to lose what I have from before. This is limiting, holding on to the past. I probably will forget, but no matter. I’ll replace it with something new.

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Cole

Command+F

I pour out all of myself and all of my thoughts into words and I put the words in the computer. There is a function in the computer, Command+F. It allows you to search. I can search inside myself (I think that’s funny), when I’ve forgotten what I once knew, or when I need an old light in a new darkness.

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Cole

Static art, dynamic me

I don’t like to over-identify myself. I am dynamic and changing. The only time I like permanence is with my art. I want to permanently achieve in the sense that I have written something down and I want it to last forever. It is what it is and I don’t have to think about it anymore.

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Cole

Poetry on drugs

It’s much easier to get excited about poetry on the drug high. Working on the novel requires more precision like an exact science.

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Cole

There’s love and there’s novels

When I’m in love, I write poetry. When I’m alone, I write novels.

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Cole

Other-worldly

While I’m tripping, I want to write. I want to take advantage of the good feelings and creativity. But I realize writing is a worldly thing. Words are worldly. Characters and plots are worldly. Tripping is other-worldly. All you can do is be in the present and enjoy it.

Posted on August 12, 2018 by Cole

Writers’ best friends

The best friends for writers are not other writers, but characters. Writers are world creators, you can’t have more than one world being created at the same time.

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Cole

I wrote this book

I wrote this book because I’m afraid of dying.

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Cole

Bad memory

I do not have a good memory so whenever I write I only have a short time to take it in and get it back out all at once.

Posted on July 21, 2018 by Cole

World eater

I eat taste and consider old worlds, then chew them up, mash the bits together with my tongue, and spit out new worlds.

Posted on July 21, 2018 by Cole

Recent words

I don’t have all my words. I have the most recent ones. So my recent reading and conversing greatly affect my writing.

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Cole

Writing’s mind of its own

I let my writing go where it wants. And then build the structure around it after the fact. I throw the words in my mind onto paper like a drip painter throws paint onto canvas. Then after that I see what I’ve got in my head and how it looks rendered in the real world and if it makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t need to make sense and comes out beautiful and I leave it. Maybe it needs a little adjustment at the edges to make it digestible by a general audience, if that’s my goal. Maybe it’s garbage and I leave it alone and move on.

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Cole

Themes and characters

Part of me wants you to just come right out and say it. But then I don’t believe you unless you’ve given me some context. So a story needs themes and characters. Just themes is too cerebral to a point of being non-humanist. Just characters is catering to emotion to a point of being base.

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Cole

Big words

The long and pedantic words are not really the big ones. It is the words that are short and simple and well-known that are big, swollen with the meaning of a thousand tongues that have touched them. I read a word “pulviscular” recently. When i looked it up online, the only evidence of the word being used was from the original text where I found it. How is this supposed to mean anything to a reader? Other than what she finds when she opens up the dictionary to seek out the word and then defines it in terms of the other smaller, simpler words that she has known from mnemonic context. It is these short and stubby words most often used that have swollen fat and convey the most meaning. It is the complex and haughty words that are rarely used which must draw their meaning from the short and stubby words that are truly the big ones.

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Cole

Characters

It’s therapeutic, too. Because I forget so much, and sometimes feel guilty about it. Growing up going to school and studying for exams it was always so important that I remembered what I had learned. It was often the students that could remember the most that did the best on exams. I wanted to be a good student so I would take my study guides everywhere with me, reading them over and over, not paying attention at all to where I was or who I was with. It can become the same way with maintaining your identity. If you are constantly worried about who you are, and making it seem like you are this person, then all the new inputs from your present cannot get in and flow through and affect you.

Like Borges said, “One publishes a book to forget it.” I write my characters to forget them. I used to think so utilitarian about my experiences and worry about how they were adding to I-at-large, the holistic concept I had of myself. I worried when I got so deeply involved in something and “forgot who I was.” Like a Western-colonial-capitalist, I was trying to swell, get bigger, have more. I wanted each book, memory, skill, experience to be an addition to my sum. But my natural capacities for memory were slightly-above-average at best and worsening all the while due to my drug habits. So I was working so hard to add what I would shortly lose anyway as it would simply be forgotten or else displaced by whatever else I would add. The things I remember best are whatever I’m presently experiencing.

Writing my characters allowed me to deposit my memories somewhere outside of myself. I could forget them and not feel guilty about losing them forever. So now I am more comfortable as just a conduit of the present. I put it down on paper and send it wherever it needs to go, which is sometimes the waste basket, but even then I don’t have to carry it with me, weighing me down. I’m lighter and empty for new and full experiences.

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Cole

Context

Part of me wants you to just come right out and say it. But then I don’t believe you unless you’ve given me some context. So a story needs themes and characters. Just themes is non-humanist. Just characters is base.

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Cole

Drunk writing

When I’m drinking I can’t ever write anything coherent but I like to see what spills out of me.

Posted on June 30, 2018 by Cole

Steam-of-nonsense

I went to walk along but when I did it wasn’t enough just to come and go as I pleased so when it broke down and the rough and tumble cut my teeth then I knew it was time to go like before all the nonsense of the flood that overtook my life in those days and left out all the parts of me that I thought mattered so I didn’t know anymore what to do with all the purpose-driven decisions now broken open by the emotional feelings and art that I didn’t understand but loved so much; I guess the true problem was that I wanted so badly to be God or at least not to die so that anytime I was confronted with my weaknesses or evidence of my mortality then I started to run in the opposite directions and away from my problems where I could at least get some satisfaction from my pursuit of the meta and existential Truth that I wouldn’t ever get and really only ever landed and dressed it in a worldly motivation for girls to love me and read my poetry and fuck away my fear of dying.

Posted on June 30, 2018 by Cole

Sci-fi as a device

It’s amazing how the sci-fi functions as a device to allow us to consider the concept that “this reality that we know isn’t all there is.” But if this were delivered to an audience via religion or philosophy, then people would disregard it. People disregard ideas about afterlifes and reincarnation and ideas about other realities that are present in religion and philosophy. They disregard because it has to do with their identities and beliefs. But the sci-fi devices of a brain in a vat or a computer-created world—these we can experience safely just as stories, without having to involve our philosophies and religions.

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Cole

Chasing after the great book

I am chasing after the great book. I wonder about what the world would be if Homer or Aquinas or Voltaire or Hemingway had not written. And I am arrogant enough to wonder to myself, what if the great book is within me? And who am I to thieve the world of it and not pull it out of myself. Miles I have to go, indeed!

I am still catching up to the greats. I can feel myself understanding more of Nietzsche. Even writing some of his ideas, only to discover that he had already written them before. I read Nietzsche and discover what I have only fumbled with in my own mind, articulated so clearly!

Yet I have one advantage: I have come after these great minds. I have the distinct advantage of being born at such a time that it is possible for me to read them, as well as the greats before them. Whereas they only had the advantage of reading their own predecessors. So if we assume that at least some knowledge is passed along and built upon in human history, then I have just slightly more intellectual wealth to draw from. Thank god it has been recorded! And woe for what has not.

And I cannot skip ahead. There are still things that can only be understood in the present lifetime, things that must be felt and seen and experienced in the real present. So that it is not possible just to read the last great and understand everything. Still I must read everything. So in this way I have a disadvantage, or, a greater challenge rather! In that I have more to read, more greats before me than had Nietzsche, owing to the addition of the few greats after his lifetime and before mine.

Tragic, that it is necessarily an individual endeavor. For even if I do write the great book that I am chasing after. It will only contain a fraction of the truths. The other truths must already be present in the heart of the reader. So that the great book that I hope to write is really only the key to a larger enigma. The key alone is a beautiful work of art. Like looking upon the peak of a tall mountain. But only the actual climb partaken in, only therein does the whole truth reveal itself.

Posted on June 17, 2018June 17, 2018 by Cole

Sci-fi hero

Fantasy and sci-fi provide solid frames for the hero. In realist fiction, by contrast, the setting is presumed to be one very like the reader’s. So that heroes in realist fiction seem to be better than the reader, even though they were given the same circumstances to begin with. The reader must swallow the hard pill for himself or herself when regarding the hero, “He or she is like me, yet he or she is so much greater than me. What have I done to be inferior?”

On the other hand, fantasy and sci-fi are explicitly non-realist. So that characters in fantasy and sci-fi are not presumed to begin with the same circumstances as the reader. The characters are different enough so that the reader will identify with them to a lesser degree, but still “human” enough to teach lessons and carry themes that the reader will be interested in. This way, the heroes in fantasy and sci-fi are able to go above and beyond normal human standards, exemplifying the height of human aspirations, without upsetting the reader for his or her own inferiority.

For example, a story in the future can have a hero that has more knowledge than the modern reader. The modern reader won’t take offense to this because the hero is in the future and human civilization “has had more time.” Another example, an alien hero from another planet can be stronger than the physical reader. The physical reader won’t take offense to the alien hero because the alien hero is literally a different species and “has a different body.”

Of course, a major task the fiction writer undertakes is to make her characters seem real. In this respect, sci-fi and fantasy also give a great answer. For if the reader is to say, “That character is not realistic!” And the reader feels uneasy because of it. “Well, of course not,” the writer would say. “I’ve been explicit about that! This is a different time and different world about which I am writing. It is only tangentially similar to the world you know.”

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Cole

Life and writing

I live and I write. I live because I have this lifetime, no matter what. I write because I can’t shake the need to do something more. I do not live to write. I do not spend my time to achieve some earthly goal. I spend my time for itself, for enjoyment and curiosity. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking I spend it just for writing, or for something else ulterior.

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Cole

Satisfied

I haven’t written much lately because I’ve been so sedated and satisfied with the city. Funny, that even satisfaction becomes dissatisfying. I can’t write without a reason to put my pen to the paper. And when my hands and eyes and heart and mind are so preoccupied with what brings me joy, I think to myself I could live on like this and die and never write again. But then I wake up on Sunday morning with blank pages and not even memories of the last couple days. I am dissatisfied and so completes the circle; I pick up my pen and begin to write again.

Posted on April 19, 2018April 21, 2018 by Cole

San Francisco

I moved to San Francisco to collect stories, and in doing so, became my characters.

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Cole

Writer

A writer is what is, because language is what is, as we perceive and communicate it.

A writer is the character in his own story, as he lives and sees other live. He is the dreamer in his own poetry, as his subconscious mind wanders. He is the lover in his own romance, as his heart feels. He is the trees and the river in his own landscape, as his eyes see. He is the prophet of his own scripture, foreseeing as his soul receives.

I am a writer because of my god complex. I could never decide on any one thing to be, rebelling against my spatiotemporal conditioning in this particularity; this lifetime. I only ever wanted to be everything at all times. So I am a writer, and thus, here and everywhere, I have written.

Posted on April 15, 2018 by Cole

Gasp

I try to write whole pieces with exclusively the parts that make the reader gasp, so that the reader has to get on reading the whole thing without taking a breath.

Posted on March 25, 2018 by Cole

Ability and desire

My abilities are not so much determined by the ones I have as they are by which desires happen to call upon them. This makes it very difficult to write a consistent novel, as my desires change and so too do my abilities, specifically my style of writing.

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Cole

Before

I think of something and say to myself, “Surely I have written that before.” But when I start to write, and am halfway through, I realize I have never written it before. What a shame it would have been if I just let that slip.

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Cole

Characters

I have to go out and meet my characters before I can write them, or I will write them all from within myself.

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Cole

Creativity

His creativity comes from somewhere else and visits him at night. It works on it own and knocks on the door when it has something. His only job is to keep reading and experiencing and meeting interesting people and feeding all this through the door to his subconscious so that the creativity wizards have more materials to work with.

Posted on March 3, 2018 by Cole

Poetry

Poetry is best read with courage and a bit of coffee. Not only must it be studied and require a certain amount of intellectual work form the reader (hence, the coffee). But it must also be emotionally invested in, and allowed to play in one’s own past experiences, and so the courage. It is not like an entertaining novel, easily lighted through before bed; nor is it like a thesis, requiring only the powers of the mind.

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Cole

A general claim

I have dribbled on enough about certain particulars so that I may now make one or two general claims without the reader thinking I am a generalist. I dare say, life is …

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Cole

Documenting

I’m still at a point, both as a writer and in life, where I’m just documenting; I haven’t seen enough to make any claims yet.

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Cole

Period

The period is my favorite punctuation mark lately. I like to end things resolutely, rather than leave it open like it could begin again or not. It allows me to start a new sentence with confidence.

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Cole

Ode

Any good writing is an ode to the language itself.

Posted on February 3, 2018 by Cole

Characters

Any writer has all her characters within her. Ironically, she writes the writer better than any other character.

Posted on January 18, 2018January 18, 2018 by Cole

My own character

I am constantly trying to live up to my writing.

Posted on January 16, 2018 by Cole

Book

It gets to be
like a sickness
at the end;
you eat yourself
from the inside
and must get out.

Posted on January 6, 2018 by Cole

Better

I can feel it fail, 
see where it breaks down, 
and invent up the tool to fix it.

Posted on December 26, 2017January 6, 2018 by Cole

Almost done

There’s a point where you need to let a work rest so that you can come back later and read it anew; I always end up drinking and going out and partying to distract myself from it, then a month later I’m a new person and can read it again and bring it to a more objective popularity.

Posted on December 16, 2017 by Cole

Feel

The verb “feel” has two meanings. In one way, it describes one of the five senses—the sensation of touch—alongside the other sensory verbs: see, hear, taste, and smell.

In another, it is emotion—which has everything, and nothing, to do with the five senses, touch especially.

Posted on December 16, 2017 by Cole

Every way

I’ve written the same thing every possible way.

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Cole

Bad writing

I must take my hyper-self-awareness, and turn it on others; if I’m ever to write, anything other, than loves stories, to myself.

Posted on November 4, 2017 by Cole

Words

I like to let each word do heavy lifting in a short sentence; meaning a whole lot, all alone. There are certain common words that have so much meaning, so that when you toss them in with each other they cannibalize their neighbors. One word all alone on a blank page, like one barracuda in a big fish tank.

Posted on September 30, 2017 by Cole

Write

I write as I’ve read.

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Cole

Writing feelings

When I write, I am not thinking of rules of grammar and definitions; I am thinking only of how certain sounds put together and spoke aloud or read silently, of how they make you feel. I think only of the former rules insofar as the latter reader feels about them.

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Cole

Literary nonsense

It is precisely all the sense wound up in language that empowers literary non-sense. Like all the memory and meaning of life is contrasted by the instantaneous chaos and confusion of death. And, like all the science of the real world is just so slightly undone in a piece of art.

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Cole

I

I was the first character i ever wrote … and still am.

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Cole

To think and write

First I am a classic thinker, and then a contemporary american writer as a natural consequence.

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Cole

Original

A grasp of originality comes from knowing what’s already been said; for many, there is still a great deal that is very original.

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Cole

Auto type

I see in words. When I look out at a scene a typewriter plays across the middle describing it. I have thought so much about how can I put this into English? Now it happens automatically.

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Cole

Puzzle

Writers are puzzle-put-togetherers. We experience the world through the lens of a language. We hear a word and see its descriptee. I say a word to find out what it means to you. A child sifting through puzzle pieces. I lose some under the couch. And find ones in the rug. And friends bring over new ones. Each piece gets bigger and more colorful. For example my pieces for ‘love’ and ‘energy’ swell and blossom. More than half the pieces are still missing. On top the coffee table is a pile of pieces and a few islands of connected pieces; one is the biggest and forms a corner but still jagged at its hypotenuse. I’m starting to think there are not enough pieces in the pile to complete the puzzle. I might go back to the store and ask for a complete set. Or just cut them myself. A friend comes over and I show her the puzzle. She says “i like this corner.” And pulls out a piece from her pocket and adds to the jagged hypotenuse. “Do you mind?” “Not at all.” I started to reconsider cutting pieces myself.

Posted on August 7, 2017 by Cole

Pinched

To be creative and write a good story I have to be “pinched”—in between uncomfortable enough to be inspired and motivated and comfortable enough to be physically able to write.

Posted on July 30, 2017 by Cole

Writing

I tried to write a novel and it didn’t work out so I let flow more naturally the style you’re reading now. I started writing on my phone in the streets. Something tells me this requires less talent, but maybe talent was only a selfish aim.

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Cole

Title

I thought I’d remove the titles of each poem before I published this, but when I did the poems weren’t the same, especially the ones that are only one sentence. Which made me think there is something important about a title, like when you decide to read a book you make a judgment about its content based in large part on its title, along with some other content on the front and back covers. You have an expectation about what the book will contain like a sign above a doorway that says “welcome home” or “please take off your shoes.” And so I decided to leave the titles because it makes for a dynamic micro-experience of each poem, splitting the reader into two of herself, one who reads the title and sets an expectation in her mind and the other who reads the poem and wrestles with her former self if it is not what she expected or feels smug consonance with her former self. And so i decided to leave the titles.

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Cole

a daydream journal