everyone's got something to hide

except for me and my poetry. More reminiscent poems from yesteryear. Enjoy. Also, writing groups sure are swell. If you're not in one now, get in one tomorrow, hate one the day after tomorrow, reconcile with the group the day after the day after tomorrow, then go on a steady alimony check with said group years from now. Then fall in love with the group again. Then travel to Mars and find a new group, cheat, establish a new family, and die a happy sad bastard. Whoa! ! Anyway, poems from my years of growth: go.

2006

Okay, here is something from a few years ago. I work in an art gallery, so hence the title. The form, if I can truly recall, reflects back on my earliest stuff (ee Cummings spacing and all), and I believe this series of poems was my attempt to reconcile the difference between what I had adopted at that time and what I did back when I first started righting. I'm not sure if I even like this, but c'est la vie.

gallery girls 3 (kinetic gallery, two girls)


the yin -
yang
girls
looked
a t all
the spin
ning
object
s
of
the world.

they matched in
dark
and light.

checker
board
s
k
i
r
t
s

and

maligned dirty tops.
haircuts
thatwerepuzzlepiece
s.

they
both drank
that night
,
fi
ll
ed
themselves
with
pseudo
intellectual
w i n e
and

dashed
dashed
dashed dashed
dasheddashed
da
sheddas
heddas
h
edda
shed

off
in high
heeled shoes
.
they
were
loose
,
they were
clum
s
y
.
they
wanted
tofallover
,
des per ate ly,
one
atop
the
other
,

so
thatthey
might laughloudly
and
CalL
the attention of
every
o n e
else

around
.
sex
sexsex
sex

kittens
.
.
. .
.



2007

Hey, this next piece finds me in the throws of my narrative discovery period. I can say, most of my writing is influenced by my strong reliance on narrative, but during this period of my writing, I was heavily into exploring the possibility of narrative and mere narration. Also, this scene is influence by Jesus' Son, where he goes to the laundromat and sees a guy he thinks is divine, but in my mind, represents the devil. Go!

lucifer


he had red pants and a buttoned shirt ripped open;
a tattoo of a heart pierced that flesh.
his mustache, a thing of miracle,
hung loose above his thin lips.
I wanted to see him charge a taxi in midday and stomp it into the ground.
he leaned in to me and whispered
that he was merely a myth.
do you want it that bad,
he asked,
and lit the last cigarette in a pack.
I watched the smoke lift gently to the ceiling of the Laundromat.
how evil, how cool,
he had a leather jacket sat in the corner upon a fading polyester
upholstered chair.
go fuck yourself, he hissed with a snake tongue, then turned
to stare down a young
pretty woman just entering view.
run run, I needed to command,
but I coughed from the smoke and sunk into my seat.



2008

Okay, shit just got real. Here is a piece I performed at Domy Books back when AustinNewBlog was really starting to gain traction. It was a fun night, and reading this again brings me back. Also, the character of John Johnson was some fabrication given rise by my and Jeff (Daily's) exploration around the beginning of this blog. We rented a shitty hotel room and I made the character and his life up on the spot. I'm done with the character now, but it was an interesting poetic persona to put on for a while. He really fit my concrete period of poetry.

John Johnson’s prayer


let us go

now,
poets full of night,
lust adventurers,

great seers
of future teeth,

good architects
of
semen and pink
corvettes.

let us remove
our
flesh
and sing in praise:
yes I will
be a red
wheelbarrow
cob-webbed
and upturned.

I am beautiful,
o
we too,
blue lights
strung
on
evening
banisters,

we too are beautiful.
let
us be dreams
let us
be
hunters,
let us
return
return return
to
dust bowl
cities
slumbering.
let
us be firecrackers,
dizzy
Roman candles
and
the smoke.

let us be children
touched
by ocean
waves.

let us be small,

and
brave and
listless.

bramble tree,
broken glass
steel rod.
amen.



2009


Well, it is tempting to post some poem from a new series I've been working on, but I figured instead to post the latest non-series titled work I've done. After I stopped with my untitled poems, I really became interested in series poems. Still, every once in a while, a specific stand alone poem will come out of me. Here's the latest. Thanks for reading.

dream day


I had a dream
where

the whole world was

open
doors

and smiling
faces.

later,
I woke
up,
went to work, chatted with
some co-workers,
ate my
lunch,

went to night school,
learned about some stars,
came home,

ate dinner, hugged my girlfriend,
read
some comic books,
looked at pornography,
watched my cat sleep,
listened to music,
and fought sleep.

I can dream tonight of a giant
waterslide

with heaven waiting at the bottom.

we now take a break from our regularly scheduled poetic program...part one

Hey fellows, I was reorganizing my writing files and decided I'd post one poem from every year that I have on my computer. Enjoy (and boy, sometimes looking at old stuff can be really embarrassing; hopefully we're all good enough writers now that we can smile at it instead of cry).

2002
First we have a poem I wrote for a poetry class. The assignment was to write in the style of a famous poet. This one is based on William Carlos William's style (one of my favorite poets!).

purple


It was in winter – probably –
she came walking by
in a purple coat.

Can you imagine?

Her arm stretched out too much -
she must have had a lot
of purpose in her mind.

But she marched past me,
no reason for us to speak.

Why should strangers converse
about purple anyway?
What would I have said?



2003

Next we have a bio I wrote for a zine that never happened. The zine was going to be done by myself and some friends in Charleston, SC, and it was called 'The New City Set.' Unfortunately, we kind of all lost interest in it (and to our inexperienced selves, it seemed very daunting).

Christopher Savage dreams of tall steel buildings with bright lights and waits for someone happy to shout out loud. His favorite thing is hope and his strengths and weaknesses are still optimism and impatience. When he gets old, he’ll be invisible to all the negatives of a dried up world.



2004
Here is a poem from one of my very first serialized sets of poems. The first set was called 'City Times,' the next set was 'Wonder Times,' and this one is called 'Personal Times.' Way back in these days I would try to empathize a style I wasn't using in other poems with each series. 'Personal Times,' features the use of quotation marks and speaking through the characters.

Personal Times 1


Vincent Obtuse is the father
of
time
and he says
,

“in the beginning
,
things weren’t all that different
.

I remember
…I remember

Molly would play with
Rebecca
,
in the noonday sun

,

and they’d act like they were
dandelions blowing around
,
twirling their arms freely
.

Yeah I remember that
,

like it was yesterday
.

But now it’s the end
,

funny, hunh?

I’m still here
and everything else is fading away
;
but it was all so
beautiful.”



2005

Next is a poem I don't really remember much of, I just chose it at random.

meltdown


the age of restlessness
has
bitten upon me and
I am here for
as
nothing can
ever be.
the last time I rode a bicycle
was
in eleventh grade; the sky
was
wonderful in that
silvery age.
but
far gone. away.
all girls
have come to eat up
my
good soul.
and
now,

meltdown.
in
sixty seconds, all is lost. I will
climb out of my bedroom window and
escape.
It
is all that is left
for
an adventurer
and
his lonely will.

I write tonight with eyes closed and
trust close behind, stalking me. it
is not you and I, perfection,
it isn’t
in anything we’ll ever know.
grow up
already.

we roll across plains of humanity
unknown and
forever
unbound.
all my life I’ve just been
trying to shine. to smile.
and
to escape.



part two coming soon...

destroy the things you love, destroy the things you hate

More poems about being a prematurely old grump! Hooray! Dig!


celebrate destruction: of a taxi cab


destroy the cab
while

you are around the block;
cave the lamppost,
let it’s gravity
do the trick,

lick your thumbs, speed the air
yourself,

assail a subway car and toss a bottle atop
the yellow scarabs and
beetles and

grow old knowing
you’ve killed
the consort of the drunk

and delightful.

a taxi cab made rich
only once

while spinning madly into the mouth of the
river
,

oh joy, splash
and
wonder where.




celebrate destruction: of a jaw


the jaw tugs
away

jagged and as it unclenches
and loosens
and grins,

one moment is spent spying the

tower in the distance;
this city

will have that jaw kicked in the cupboards,
down in the sewers,
drenched in rain,

because it is right to find use
where
once a destroyer
now

is left
as
refuse.

some animal will play a game with it;
the blue light of a liquor store
shines evenly,

destroy that jaw and shove
a bottle
in

your mouth.