Incantation (Draft)

Toil toil toil toil
Toil took taken toil
Tools toll time told
Tell the telling, tell the soil
Unfold untold shouldered shivers
Bloody hands tell the soil
Bloodied bodies banish banish

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Incantation (Draft)

Waste break waste
Waste not water waste
Cover cover clover kind
Leaven leaven leave it lies
Family fraught fights in fire
Friendly frames and fines and spines
Like spirals spent or rent or rendered rinds
And then and then and then and then
And now

Location:Little Creek Ter,Ashburn,United States

Sometimes You’re All Like Fuck Everything

Shit’s gonna let you down

Like up it down and East is what it is

And sure, you can roll hard or roll deep or roll out

But Friday Jr. is just that and these hands are these

I mean migrating birds and their giant Vs

I mean the your hands and your days and your ways

What are you gonna do?

And what were you thinking before I asked?

The dog holding a cup, with the picture of a dog holding a cup and you get it

Location:Baltimore Washington Pkwy N,Greenbelt,United States

It’s Gonna Come to Everyone

Black much closer

Hold it in your hand because you’re always holding it

That which is vs. that which was

The can in toucan and the day in yesterday

Because pack animals know what’s going on

And everyone’s not lucky enough to fly

Hollow bones? No shit

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Victor Hugo Did His Thing Most Decembers

All manner of things

Salt boxes before snowdrifts and whiskers on kittens

The original flow neither original nor flowing

Pinecones and peanut butter

Big eyes, big heads, or long legs — life is full of possibilities

The way efficiency admits mortality

All the morals gather around me

A firepit, Amish craftsmanship, AppleCare

A down on her luck reporter and the scoop of the century

You don’t know what it’s like in here

The math can get complex in these parts

All those millions of years a photon spends trying to break free, then a big and vast nothing that’s just short of empty

Once again it’s all about the rounding errors

Some lessons take a while

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

They Lay the Tracks and You’ll Go Where They Go

They lay the tracks and you go where they go
This day and this day and this day

Like that you are feeling curious and what do you look

Like that you don’t have any crushes or whatever

Like that you can get your mind off your chest

Don’t worry about the coming week

And I have no idea what I was

What that what which what now and now and so and now and now

That which was

That which will help

Days and tags and ways and so

They control the stops and they have a little more patience ain’t that the truth

You control the bricks, the stream, the intakes and outputs

Make it any day of the week, put the sun at any angle and draw again

Location:Forbes Blvd,Lanham,United States

Another Day Not Necessarily Anything to Do with Dollars

I guess that is an owl after all

So many things in threes, so many things in so many situations

A basket as a quantity even while a shopping cart is a concept

We’re starting to get what sharing is all about

We see a mess, we see the world

Many learn to swim at a young age, what’s the stat on those that don’t?

Different and able, here’s Sunday

For the hungry we make a meal

For the weary, here’s a blanket, a couch, a pillow

Purpose is mine
Purpose is mine
Purpose will be mine

Closing time isn’t about cute closings
You get yourself home safe, nobody’s watching

Location:S Morris St,Oxford,United States

Because Stretching Is Important

Location:S Morris St,Oxford,United States

It Closes this Way

Type-O Negative
Tell them you got it right here
Telephony at the turn of the century
And the snap-backs to prove it

Something something story
Like this these that but which
When to whenever and so do so so
The water’s fresh and the time times telling

Toughness like tenacity
Terror like waking up too suddenly
Forward like the Monday becomes Tuesday and
Forever like right here right now

When you find what you want you name it
Or maybe you’ve got that backwards this time

Location:Amtrak Way,Linthicum Heights,United States

All the Dangerous Fictions

Sense tense
Sense tension
Torsion torque testament

Tested and retested
Reset and rested
Relish the signals as the day ebbs

What can I say that you haven’t said better
Is the wrong time and place
Velocity carries direction

Weight carries mass with direction many times
Temper, tender, ten cents taken
Tell me, tell me, tell me

Tastes like poison all in my mouth
Wait and that’s one way
Better yet, hire one

Best of all

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

I’m Blind with Something and I’m Not Sure What

Or when I don’t got it in me

The thing about mile 21 of a marathon is that it’s boring af

Or it has a dumb-ass hill where nobody in their right mind would put a hill

But you could say that about any one of a half dozen massive pieces of NYC infrastructure but there you have it and you have it just working out

I have this note on my wallet that says, “We’ve been there and precious and and and dark and mannerist” though that last word is a scant readable mess

I wrote it while I was driving and it makes perfect sense to me

For this autobiographical(ish) thing where I just catalog all the swings and phases and moods of our lives these past 40 years ago

That just made me think of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” lord help me, but that shit ruled the radio like a year

Right around the time of “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” right?

And I don’t need to catalog everything that was going wrong right about then.

Pick up your feet when you’re walking, Jamie

Location:Garden City Dr,Hyattsville,United States

You Have Thumbs, You Have Darkness

It comes back to A machines

It comes back to As You’d Like It

It comes back to Sound and Color

We have things we aren’t proud of

There’s trying to change and changing

Questions of speed and the grand what-for

You can have a balcony in you like

We can flood it with Golden Hours

Vista vs. vantage point

The conditions coming together just so

Location:New Hampshire Ave NW,Washington,United States

Oh + Well + Oh + On

Why do you make it dangerous?

So many bruised pathways
So much bruised fruit

The funny things looking too close again
Make a circle of it or send it packing

I could share something, I could try and convince you of something, I could fool both of us

What are Fridays for?

Location:Southwestern Blvd,Halethorpe,United States

It Just Goes

Attaboy is just steps from this AirBnB — I highly recommend it

The thing about preparation

The thing about all these logged miles

There are so many rules and you follow most all of ‘em

But white sneakers are good any time of year

All the alls and the leather tools, too

Like your little dog, like Sunday, like severance and satisfaction

Because one thing will always follow another and it’s up to you to do any stitching

Like the cat when the box is opened

Like another bank collapsing

Like a search engine just doing it for you

On any given day in any given November

It keeps coming up heads

Thor’s hammer is flawed and it will fail

What then? and

Do you want sugar with that?

Location:Eldridge St,New York,United States

The Front, the Back

Insignias

Do you wanna hear about the basic things?

The grass?

The fox curled up in the neighbors front yard come 4am?

The firepit made heavy with night after night of ash?

The sound of a ridiculously dry fire is sometimes no sound at all

Pull it together s we can pull it all apart

Pull it tighter

Push off

This is the way home even if you’ve never been home before

Location:Woodland Ave,Philadelphia,United States

Bar Top Bar Talk

Because human isn’t good enough

Watches and instant replays and radio telemetry

Soaring glass towers soaring for every season

Let me help you with that and that and that a thousand times over

It’s not all snakes and tails because it’s those things so quickly

Blink blink blink-blink-blink whole generations forward

Faster until nothing faster than a left turn

There was jumping before there were humans. Believe.

I’m here and now and you’re what?

All of me coming and going day by day and all of you, too

Look at the way the sun comes through it all

That motherfucker

Location:S Hope St,Los Angeles,United States

Make Sense of It / I Remember

Make sense of it
I mean make some sense of it
Making sense
Make make make
Trenton River train crosses
Take your time but not too much

I remember
Remember when?
Do you remember?
Remember?
We remember
I remember
Remembering the way that we were

Lock the door and leave
Lights off
Lights on a timer
Street lights
Gas lamps

Historic districts every day

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Yes Yes and You All and Good Night

Like a gun but dependent

Every word like flowers, that is both a noun and a verb, and flipping back and forth from singular to plural

Rabbit-duck; old lady-young lady; vase-two profiles looking at each other

Yes-and yes-and yes-and like I-got I-got I-got

Snapping to and the power of both

Some skulls are gray, I mean

And you can’t buy them in stores, at least not legally

Stuck in that slapback a moment, and a moment longer

For effect

You see that cliff? And that one?

There’s another.

You’re gonna love the Second Act.

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Some Things Small

Sums, tangents, strict adherence
To vetted protocols, Corvettes of every states

Stage managers stage managing
Like Lords around Christmastime

Fellow follies fled failed nations
Grown great we think with all the ending

The thing about amoebas
That thing you do
The prevalent nepotism in the last second of Earth’s history

The role of change and all the other things you squirreled away
I mean I mean I got I got I got
Imagine a circle on the floor around you

Is it chalk or salt or sand?
Ask yourself, regions, relentless

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

There Is a Dance

There is a bend in the road

There is the final touch to a fine drink

There is a candy bar all the way down low

Or a comb and some other something you lost track of

Calling back to your first favorite game

There are opposites that come together every summer

Then every week and even every day if you want it

Grids are the last to fall away and the first to come back

Skewing used to take perspective

Now are the days of sunflares without sun and shutter clicks without shutters but nobody really needs to sweat all that

We’ve been living past need a long time now

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

I See You There with Your Zero Fucks

And I’m the guy with all the fucks

There are so many great dams in the world generating so much power but the Hoover seems the only one I can name so picture it

Those crazy power poles jutting out sideways all the way down have stuck with me

Just like so much of that drive from Virginia to San Diego and so much of the sprint back

Just one finger, just one story, just one hill or one cloud or one night

Find some thread and unspool it

Find a bag and rip it open, rip it up

My beard grows a little everyday and grows a little whiter

I wear what I wanna a little more often

I see a lotta sunrises

I wear what I wanna a little more often

And boulders and chainlink fences and knots, y’all

The winds at my back, the winds in my face, the sun’s up high but shadows all around

I need water and all I have are Sundays stretches out all around me

I need water and

I’m the guy with all the fucks or I wish I was

I wish I were

I wash a lot, I wear a lot, I wind it out

Location:Scott Dr,Baltimore,United States

Can’t Always Be All Blue Skies

I’ve never had it in me to sleep all day

But even with South Beach outside my door, I’m wishing I could in this funny little room with its tiled floor and honest-to-god murphy bed

Yesterday the clouds and the piers and the rock jetties and the kids fishing and the men fishing and all the Miami clothes

Yesterday all the hurricane damage remnants in piles along the streets and fencing

Yesterday the humidity and whatever is wrong with my heel or my Achilles’ tendon and that whole situation worrying me

Yesterday with aromatic Dutch-Indonesian food that reminds you why this is a perfect corner of the country and the only other group in the place was this family and their child’s laugh so much like my child’s laugh at that younger age and yet it was the flavors giving me deja vu for something that distinctly never happened and I still don’t know what

So many of the streetlights out

So many of the walks dark

So many Benzes so many black so many gleaming

Margaret talks about how when she gets behind on drinking water some days she feels like she can never catch up

But eventually she’ll sleep and eventually she’ll start over

I can’t tell if I’m never here or if I’ve always been here

Something like, thanks for playing

That’s where I’m at

Location:Ocean Dr,Miami Beach,United States

Before You Find It

The first I know, there were parties
Sometimes people holding hands across a measure
People fanned out in the woods
A boy's backpack, an orphaned shoe

Grids were invented
Maps were invented
Compasses, GPS beacons, signal flares, all invented

This part wasn't a straight line

Find a letter pick it up
Or a phrase or a sentence

Next I knew helicopters and small recon teams
Side-mounted machine guns, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers
And things of that nature
Maybe a demolitions expert, maybe night-vision goggles
The skies the limit but admittedly the sky was much lower back when

Now equations, or algorithms rather
Now all the times and places falling all over themselves
Now reduction is a good thing and
Now reduction is a bad thing and
You see how this thing works?

Back to marches but a different sort
And as your head dips below the surface we find ourselves back at the beginning

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Good night, Mr. Ashbery.

You made so much difference / You made so much different. Thanks.

Location:Benoni Point Rd,Royal Oak,United States

Everybody or Every Way

Every name
Every angle

The stars in the sky and the planet Earth

Every night's rest and every corner of every room

You'll get it together

Refresh, refresh, refresh
Fresh, fresher, freshest

What do I see vs. all the things I see
And everything that can be seen

The shape of the day or the week
Mostly arcs, mostly spheres

Location:S Morris St,Oxford,United States

Performer Is a Software Application

Informer is a song by Canadian Hip Hop Artist Snow

Reformer, transformer, barnstormer, etc

The title of this poems was going to be about strings or include strings but I couldn't work it out without it just being a hack of some obvious title, like

Something with Strings; or

Strings All The Way Down; or

It coming off like I was talking about Brian Greene strings, which is what shit-canned "Strings All the Way Down" which is a great title except for that

The way some people hear "hep cats" when you say "cats"

No dude, just cats

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Let the Sun Do What It Will

Let the tide come in and go back out

Let the thunder roll in the distance

Fluids are all the things that flow, repeated in my head with my eyes closed

Edges are only something you see from far away -- clouds, bodies of water, etc. -- so does that make them real or not?

Knots in wood are another thing to think about

And then plastic or biomass or diffusion

That things keep coming apart and coming together

And to pull way back or jump all the way in

We wanted hovercraft and they've been here the whole time

More water, an amount of salt, and always trace elements

This is not the eclipse

Nor is this, nor is this

Birds fighting or warning ahead of fighting or just plain talking

Talk it out, walk it out, and so on

I mean, you take things and you bend them

I did as a child, I do now, and I guess I'll keep doing

I don't eat eggs anymore

And many other stories

Location:E Ashley Ave,Folly Beach,United States

Whoever Said "The Hum of Cicadas in the Trees" Doesn't Really Get What Hum Means

My boundaries are blurring; or

My boundaries are overflowing; or

Vibration, extension, random quick and random movements

You can be a patent clerk and still everything will move about

You can sit in a chair on a porch and the gentle machine-gunning of the cicadas will flow

Poems are full of words like staccato because the Modern Age

Because the Modern Age started more than a hundred years ago and didn't see many machine guns and is long gone

Because equations are necessary fantasies

Because seagulls in South Carolina are nothing like birds in Virginia but are also birds

Marshland is the best land like a pound for pound world champion

It's a show

As in it's all a show

It's August

As in it's no longer July and not yet September and you can think all you want about the once-were giants or all the things bees are up to this time of year or how fast melons and gourds are doing their thing because Autumn is right around the next bend

This is a good seat

Location:E Ashley Ave,Folly Beach,United States

And They'll Make a Lighter Mouse

And they'll hold onto that ledge by their fingerprints

And they'll judge us kindly

From on high or a distant past or quite differently

Splayed or laid out or laid up

On the lam, a turkey sandwich, waxed cloth

The rain across all sorts of terrain

A little container of potted meats shows up all over literature

Would pâté count?
I love it, I really do

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Scatter This as You Go

Scent senseless severed sold
Then than though, thought thinking tough

You useless you'll yell ever after

Sounds sounding sound sometimes
Charlatan sham shills shaken shots

Leaky leaky days

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Dyes and Gauls

I'm nothing if I'm not the ruins of Roman encampments

All the disbelief that comes with the things that matter

The direction of time vs. the bend of a saw

Bowed legs, broken backs, galvanized steel and steam and steak dinner dreams

Someone came to America and invented Siracha

Someone else put it in mayo

Location:1st St NE,Washington,United States

I Mean Keep It

The thing about pencils
Cliff edges
All the painted ceilings of all the painted chapels
Two people holding hands
Hillsides and patches of clover
Family friends
A sweatshirt just before it's past its prime
That thing you recently lost
Ring sizes
Baby just about anything
An ache between your shoulder blades
Nowhere fur, nowhere sharp objects
It's a whole n'other century
And it feels all right

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

What Scratches Scratches Dirt

What scratches scratches dirt
What tears stings and flows
What forges forgets

There will always be walls to build

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Trip Wires Are for Tripping

Day becomes night
And we trade handshakes for hugs
Grade A everything
Bank holidays and brake jobs
Forever forever

Frank exchanges
Current corrective currency
Situational, counter-factual, conviction
I don't do eye-spots

And we pick it up again
Grating, greater, groundswelled
The edge of an ocean
All the things you think about the moon
And here we are, going back and forth and back back and forth

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Cover Cover Cover

Red jackets and headlights and the month of June

Like history like whoah like all the cats and all the bedtimes

The ways we think now

That hill or town

That horse or tariff

Tavern tarry tarnished till

I mean or I said or I thought or I did

As in you expected or at least I did

As in a very special connection because it's so simple and boredom ain't a thing no more no more no more no more

Like a Triumph put into a garage a smidge before closing time

And elevators have doors

And so on

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Transit Trust Trainers

Lollipops that are fantasies.

Taking care of yourself and those that don't.

Walls between walls between places.

Caricatures and crutches and crushes.

Counting as you get older.

Goals that aren't what you thought.

What equals what vs. equality.

All the things I wrestle with vs. all the things I believe.

A good story told over drinks.

When the lights are low vs. when the days are long.

We weren't the first to fish this river and hardly the last.

Location:Scott Dr,Baltimore,United States

Foot Drop

I'm down I'm down I'm down I'm down

A flood of salt and a weight and a board across your chest

Reception and receiving

Doors, dowels, drive shafts, and dancing

Shattered Saturdays

Trances

Tried and true and truancy

Pride and proof then fluency

Flatter not, flaunt not

First forgotten, last won

Any number of things will trace an arc

But where will you be standing?

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

The World We Live In

Hovercraft vs. overland

Re-tread vs. retreat

Old growth vs. barbershop

Fantasy vs. fantastic

Philanthropic vs. fill in the blank

Music vs. amusing

Attraction vs. reaction

Wait times vs. weight limits

All in vs. all in the family

Calling vs. living

Location:Dulaney Valley Rd,Towson,United States

All Day All Day

I see you Metro preacher

And you twenty years ago doppelgänger; I've never wondered if you're dead

And robot friends and fellow travelers and all the things we leave out

I see you piles and piles

I see you too long list

I see you blood pressure and daylight and day-long training sessions

I see you grand-daddy of distractions

I see you anxiety and despair

I see you fresh Fall fashions

Humidity before that, decay after that, delays shot through

What're you gonna do with a major American city when nobody agrees on major anymore?

Whaddya say in the face of the faceless?

Faceful? Fateful? Faithful?

Sometimes a straight line is just a straight line

And you still have place to be

I'm Not Quite Sure Where You're Going with This

Burned is burned is burned is not better

Butter, bedsheets, beef, beverages

Bouillon is as bouillon does along with all the words you've misread in your life

Spectrums everywhere you look will bump you out of that rut

Lane, silo, crutch, and so on

What do you want to eat?

What do you want to care about?

32 flavors of the Uncertainty Principle

Eat and care; need and want; hope and dream; paint and draw; truck and drive; pull and push, of course and so and so and pain and pained

Sometimes the grass grows up and what you going to do with it?

Do you see the sun?

Can You Tell Me Something

Fallen water
One spell, two spell
Frankly, mightily, swimmingly

Forgotten lines
Friendly fire on a Tuesday
Given over to giving in

A circle that's a special square
Better pinned here than pinned anywhere
Look here, look real close

When the sun's coming up
And the street sweepers are done with their sweeping
And all the tickets have found new homes

Patience Is a Spell that Might Not Look Like This

Placement über television with outright rigged decision systems together, online, growing, ether-tethered, hitting every register.

String them out. String them along. Paint them into corners. Build houses. Build houses of cards.

Attorney general. White privilege. Pride and Prejudice. Free like freestyle vs. free like freedom.

Fee-based services. Settle for nothing vs. settle for less. More is more is more is more. Time is time is time is time.

Every time something good happens, you end up with new ways to say Survivor's Guilt.

Location:N Smallwood St,Baltimore,United States

The Recovery Is a Spell

The Jump Off
The Get Up
The Get Down
Jump in

It's not that you fall down
It's not that you fall down
It's not that you fall down
It's that you pick it back up

Everything is inconsistent and jittery
Everything inside out
Everything closing down

Close your eyes
Breathe
Repeat

#Persist

Stay hungry
Stay present
Stay curious
Stay vigilant

Keep moving
Keep eating
Keep breathing
Keep ready

Stay interested
Stay open
Stay forgiving
Stay awake

Keep talking
Keep fighting
Keep loving
Keep living

Stay human
Stay human

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

I Live in Baltimore, Now

I live in Baltimore now
With the squirrels and the bunnies
The deer and the woodpeckers
The dogwoods and dogs
Foxes, raccoons, butterflies, and birds

I'm living in Baltimore
With the folks planting annuals out in front of the Presbyterian Church down the street
And the people bringing in the shopping carts from the parking lots
And the ones making deliveries night and day
People getting by, people not getting by, people figuring it out

I live in Baltimore around houses
And apartments and new construction
Buildings buttressed with wooden joints
Buildings falling apart and falling down
Condos, restaurants, and hotels
Universities and high schools and parking lots and more

I live in Baltimore where it rains
And the sun shines and rises and sets
And the moon is full on the regular
And the clouds are amazing with the ocean right there

---

After being here 13 years, yesterday was the first time I got ugh about my living in Baltimore and The Wire coming fast upon one another in conversation. Don't get me wrong, I love The Wire. I'll talk about the great trajectory of cop shows from Car 54 to Hill Street Blues to NYPD Blue to The Wire. I'll talk about the good guys being the bad guys and the bad guys being the good guys and everyone just living. I'll talk about it being the best TV ever made at its time or damn near it.

But then this morning I was tooling around the neighborhood and saw all the green and the wildlife around me -- sure my current neighborhood is pretty suburban for being inside city limits but whatever.

I'm not high-horsing it here. It's just Baltimore is like everywhere and Baltimore is everywhere. Just better. ;)

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Size Medium T-Shirts in the 90s

There's a lot of things you can do in one-hundred and twenty seconds

Even more things you can get started

Minds changed, damns broken, feathers and camels, etc.

This is what I care about
And so it this

It's Friday and the weather turned out great by the time I was home

It might all break

Second comes second best

Sunsets, subsets, sentinels

Why not?

One bit's not more

Count the cracks

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

The Scathing and the Scathed

Collapsed just right
The blind history of fish
Lightning bugs and final offers
Foundering, forgotten, or focused
Forged in mistakes and half truths
You say farmer where I see no hope at all

Let the sun set, I am already home

To begin with
To see through
To settle like it's sold
Newfoundland

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Don't Be Ashamed, We All Get Caught Up in the Spell from Time to Time

The latest vs. the last and that's why context matters

All the misses overlapping and we're shooting the beach scene

There is no Pulitzer for cue cards

Friendship, magic, boardwalk fries, the kind of cold you feel when you've been in the sun too long

Never, you say, whipping your scarf around your neck and draining the last of your beer

We should'a got the convertible

Location:Connecticut Ave NW,Washington,United States

Formerly, Formally, Flattery

Sometimes it all comes down to people, places, things and I get that

You can paint the outside of a house
Walls meet
Pavement spreads out in every direction

We've know pattern wants to get fucked as long as we've known the world loves a pattern

Out in front, lagging behind
Turned up, turned out
Tuned in, end of day

Sidewalk cracks at the end of a long day
The cafés filling up and then emptying

The way you take note before heading home

Location:US-50 E,Hyattsville,United States

We Have a New Champion

Double up vs. double down
Challenge and challenger and the Seychelles
Sea shore memories
More more more memories
Your arm around my shoulders
Knocking into a table
Sliding through the front door
When the wind picks up
Rain or snow or fallen leaves
There's the sun
There's another wall
There's a guy changing a flat tire

Signal theories
Color guard
Canopy
Out

Location:Little Creek Ter,Ashburn,United States

When They Ask if You're Ready to Go

FTR I don't know what to tell you
But I'm trying and I'm surviving and I know that sounds stupid
But you stand on a ledge and I stand on a ledge and here we are
The thoughts, the actions, a whole buncha emojis, rules and regulations as in terms and conditions as in what's expected

It's Sunday and I'm far from home but not for long

And everything gets boiled down from a distance

All the various trucks become one trick

All the moments become one day

All the places at the mercy of satellite platforms and perspective and interpretation

Then cookies, then videogames, then walks among columns and there and there and there

Follow me anywhere, I'm full of red wine and favors

I'll do what I can, the sun is angling, and and and the music

Location:International Pkwy,Portland,United States

The Work as in the Getting

Certain leg-covers and coverage
Illegal means of catching illegal fish
Only one of us can be the fastest
And no one is the best

The bar splits into three
And you'll make a choice
The road splits into two
And domestic assault remains a problem

All the things you can do with potatoes
And two pigs and weather patterns
Gather up the numbers and crunch them
The sun shining down on what's left

The countdown to the shooting
The last chord ringing in the air

Location:Baylanding Ln,Boothbay Harbor,United States

In the Vicinity of the Moose Lottery

You can save all your life
It's a celebration
People come and go
Divet vs. rivulet vs. sunset
Less than the whole but still something
Seasons change, said everybody
Big on bigger
Streets that matter
Lost wallets and scarves
Pocket change when that was a thing
Employment, employment, employment

A kerchunk you can believe in
Until a wall you can't ignore

The thing about facts
Air temperature, pressure, patterns
Leave a comment in the box then get back on your bike up outta here

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

They You We Watch Where This Which Is Going

What's obvious and what's doing
Never fails, never flaunting

Always moving always weather
When you fly or flee or flail or fire

This mother, that mother
That open field, this sense of purpose

A path is implied, so you walk it
A day is desired, so you live it

A siren attacks a wall or a shout attacks a cliff side or maybe dells and valley and peaks and all that

The picture is a pedal
The purpose is some wires

They build a tower and they smash it

Location:Franklin Pl,Lanham,United States

The Things You Add Up, the Sun when It Sets

That that that which
When when where after when
With forever with with now

The Ways and Means Committee
Things come to mind
Days go by and you're standing there and I'm sitting here and all around us the flowers

I could feel the air hit my eyes when I got off the train this morning
I'm always trying to tell you what I mean
I have days and you have days
Car batteries are a thing
Just like Sunday and Threat Levels and Barbara Streisand

We can put thing in rows or boxes or matrices
I really don't care
What's gonna work for you?

What makes what scenes what fellows

I'd pay just as much for my phone if it was just the map and that's it

Location:Garden City Dr,Hyattsville,United States

Even in This, We Are Wonder

Just one hand
A pen cap and other artifacts
Cradles, kitchens, nations
A line of lights and another in paint
A third of people
A fifth of gin
This monkey, that steering wheel
Biomass vs. ballast, take your pick

Stand here
Eyes up, but used up
Tie a string to it and call it a day
Let it all run out
Watch the ocean become the sky become the sand become the sea
Or something like that

You're the box and the prize and the mouth and the peanuts
And this is the dream where we forgive you

Location:Massachusetts Ave NE,Washington,United States

Sideways Through Forgotten Slips

You can only see the four legs of the water tower from where you're sitting, and they're painted at angles

The Earth doesn't turn under you -- we're all turning together

You were born to platforms and parking lots

A reservoir? Don't be scared

You'll always find something bigger and something smaller
Something better and something worse

Every moment a center
Every moment an edge

You can build a wall of becauses and you still won't have gotten anywhere

All the thing you'll want
All the things you'll run across your teeth

Location:Washington Blvd N,Laurel,United States

It's All Folk Music Ever After

Because you work with what's in front of you

Because it's all journalism
It's all dictation
It's all in your head
It's all reception

Because it's all perspective

Because you're a kid that drew the city corner or down the boulevard

Because rulers and then compasses and then protractors
Stencils and how-tos and how's today?

What's the first mistake you remember?

And the first time you tried something on only to realize that wasn't you?

Because the delete key is always at the ready

Because auto-correct is your friend most the time so much so you don't even notice it

And the sirens breaks down
The warnings wear out

The sun hangs in the sky and advertises a warmer day on the other side
But the wind is whipping
The lambs are somewhere
And there's your reflection

Location:Rokeby Rd,Baltimore,United States

Absent the Tools

Low and latter days
Later ladders lift you up

The turn, the last push, much more

Sunshine, emails sent, shush

Your finger traces the edge
The wrong number but the right town

What they mean when they say "hometown"
Stacks and stacks of advantages

That place on the hill where you see it all
That time of day you love most

All the things that come to you and here they come

Location:Dryden Dr,Baltimore,United States

What Your Remember When You Remember

Darkened windows all the way around
An oversized orange shopping bag

Knitting time together and away
Carts, cards, cardamom, carried away

Clouds in ribbons
Minutes or moments, doesn't matter

What's young is young again
And moving left
And checking the mail
And making all kinds of promises

Gravel does what gravels gonna do
When the rain comes down

Location:US-50 E,Hyattsville,United States

Action, Scales, Hues, Returns

How Brits say garage
Your first Nintendo
Frozen garbage
Pace and pacing
Bullets that glow
Intended outcomes
Rainbow sherbet
The Volkswagen Bug and the Bus, too
When the sky doesn't even look real
Tiny tiny films
What comes after what
The way a train slows
Fish in a river
High notes
Noontime napping
Nail files and more

Location:Range Rd,Odenton,United States

Travel Ritual Poem #3

When in doubt
When looking out a window

As one put upon to put it on the altar
As anger, as bloodshed, as long as you're asking

What voices and interruptions and meaning it when it matters
What averages, what wandering, what wonder

And they beg pardon or indifference
And then silenced at the border.

Every day finds its end
Every echo finds a cliff

Conserve your energy, the clouds are gathering

Location:H St NE,Washington,United States

Something Like Swimming Lessons from the Last Person that Should Be Giving Them

There is an Angry God
But that doesn't make it your Angry God

There are days in every week
There are sayings and doors and all manner of vestibules

There are diamonds balanced just so
And rocks that will guide you home

There are helpful birds and hateful birds and bitter birds
Dead deer carcasses on the side of the road

Highways everywhere
The sun, the rain, everything green

Today and today and today and today

Get a grip on anything and tell us you are here
I am here
I am here

Location:N Capitol St NW,Washington,United States

Found Desk Poem 4/3/17 (Opening Day, Camden Yards)

Thanks to Ryan Walker

We did what we had to to make the sound we needed

We climbed the sunshine
We forgot our names

All things much open outward and upward or die
Stack up the day where you can see it

Everything is the first here
Everything is dipped in the moment
Everything is in the book and by the book

Like what you heard about Inuit, we should have 40 different words to take us from want to need as the sun sets on bedroom communities across the land

Somewhere someone is praying for something

Say goodbye to the things that brought us together

I Don't Want to Waste It

what's the matter what matters it doesn't matter
to who to his is great greater sounds

the world warped and warded

on as in onward in as in inward inland inlet integers and then the magic parts

set the pins up
sign in vs. sign on
certain cities and certainty

celebrate and celebrations
certain cinders

because one thought won't line up with another
and the sun still sets

Location:Nottingham Rd,Baltimore,United States

Look Closely Looking Too Close

All the sounds in all the places
Meet up with what's what or
Walk into a bar or what have you vs.
Even though even while

The things you burn when you're cold
The things you take with you when you take
The things the things the things most of all

That which when something
That core that if if when withdrawn
That that which when which do you see see

Oh say
Oh say it ain't so

It's spring and even the puddles are drowning

Look to all the excuses laid out to the horizon
I say coast, you say potato

Let's go get ice cream
It ain't gonna get any better than this

Location:Jefferson Ave,Towson,United States

I've Been Writing Everyday This Year

Less so here.

But here for instance (I don't know if that'll work).

And I've been writing more on a laptop keyboard (though I wrote all this on my phone) and not always just posting straight-to-blog like this piece I workshopped at Gin & Ink back at the beginning of the year that I had been working on for a while and submitted to Babe Press who I know have a website but I can't find it proper right now so there's their FB... and now realizing I went right from that workshop to submitting it late that night.

And I'm not going to pretend for a second that I'm getting out a ton re poetry and writing right now -- but that day was super helpful and it was a Ink Press Productions to Babe Press in 12 hours kinda day and that's all Baltimore and people being up to things. And that poem will come out in that mag along the way and it's all witchy.

And I'm working on something else for Infinity Kitchen. Also not typing-to-posting-to-here... and again that one is largely written on my laptop (but only after a bunch of failed somethings written on my phone that I'll cannibalize into something else some day).

And I've been writing a D&D module, too. A side adventure in Justin Sirois's INVERT world and playtesting it with friends which has been a blast and eye-opening and invigorating as a writer and an experience-maker. Playtesting a game puts your sense of audience as a writer on a whole different playing field. And I got to name a boat "The Loving Boulder" which might be the worst boat name ever. And embracing my inner nerd which sounds whatever, but really is tying a line back to my past where I read a lot of that stuff and didn't have a crew to play with -- I was that RPG nerd... at 8 and 10 and 14. But FTR it made me SLAY at the myth stuff whenever that floated into lit classes.

And I'm writing morning pages everyday because I believe in that, but those are private and I'd say they are "just for me" but they are barely that in the way you'd normally say that. Morning pages for me are about exercise. Like athletes staying limber. But also the way athletes learn new things about their craft when they work out or practice. (Yes, I am talking about practice, Allen.)

So I'm writing a ton right now. Even if life is busy and up to my eyes at times.

And robots are very much on my mind. And the way the world is going right now -- which has been whiplashy and then some. And the new job is still new and of course a lot of a lot.

And we did TOAST at AWP in DC and raised a bunch of money for Writers in the Baltimore Schools AND had a great time doing it and I met all kinds of great people, including a partner-in-bar tending-crime-for-the-evening Sam Slaughter. And I'm not going to namecheck everyone that made it all possible and made it wonderful so please forgive me that laziness of typing this morning.

But I'm keeping on. And I have no idea why I'm putting all this here and now.

But hey, in a couple weeks NaPoWriMo will start up again (April 1, naturally) and I'll be putting poems here everyday again, so there's that.

And would you believe me if I told you that all this was written pretty much the same way as all the poems? Except with link-looking-up.

Be well.

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

What the Continuation

One button, two buttons, three buttons, four.

Mathematical perceptions-insights-intentions meet constant awe and unintentional gendered preference, some say. Then photography and all its chemistry and Marie Curie and all her hands and countless other stories countless because we forgot to tell them and remember them and write them down but we're not done.

Bright eyes the thing not the guy, good lighting, turn of the century wall paper, wall hangings, low-slung couches and other couches, too. Piles of things surrounded by piles of people with piles of thoughts.

Views from high places.
Street-level views.
360-degree photography and shoot I don't have the degree symbol on this keyboard because that little circle woulda been perfect just there.

Sunday is in motion on the edge of the edge of the edge. Carbs are a good idea at times like these

as in, Eat 'em if you got 'em.

Location:N St NW,Washington,United States

The Things I Would Say

I mean the noise

I mean a taste in your throat you just can't run from

Baggage claim, ticket stubs, the bad kind of Saturday morning however rare it is or was

Motion on top of motion on top of motion

And then friends all around

No. No.

Tuesday

Location:Seabrook Rd,Lanham,United States

I Mean

So many of me
So so many of me

So many of you
So so many of youz

Your hair
Your car
Your diamond rings

You're real
You're there
You're what you mean

The weather, the weasel, the westward wind

The winches, the witches, the when you win

My friend Taylor
My friend Justin
And then Houston and New Orleans

There's something
There's nothing
That's what I mean

Location:I-195 E,Hanover,United States

What You Take Where

Animal husbandry picked winners and losers

What happens on an island stays surrounded by water

A flag can bear any number of messages

There you go again with your Scottish trumpet down the only road I've ever known

A seed, a water bear, certain fungal spores

A wind, the tides, polar drift

My kingdom for a Prince?

Whatever happens from here vs. whatever

Whatever ever after

Watch it bend around the atmosphere

Watch it break and you'll be waiting a long time

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Again the Sun, Always the Sun

Give me battery life
Give me cheesecloth

The perfect pour
The interrupted huddle

Hidden driveway signs
Sign language line of sight

Fact: treads wear
Fact: tastes can be acquired

High fidelity recordings
Fields frown into the distance

Drizzle paving the way for fog
Country roads ebb in the brush

Don't worry the marine layer
You will be home before you know it

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States

Is this app working yet?

I haven't abandoned this blog. It's just my standard posting utility crapped out and I've been searching for what's next.

Still been writing.
Been doing a lil bit of Instagram poetry-posting in the meantime.
Been thinking about transitioning all this to a new platform, but not so seriously.
Been busy with a new job and a hella buncha adjusting.

I'll get back on top of things and get this sorted.

Location:Glen Allen Dr,Baltimore,United States