Your shadow won’t stick to you
the same way
it used to

Ever mistaking shade for soul
watched over
coolly
by eyes
polar
why must beauty
fail to move the beautiful?

I am fumbling mutely at keys coaxed by silence
I am sucking life from the gap in our connection like a child sipping air through a straw

There are so many people with the same names.
There are so many people who want to be real,
named.
So many people
licking the edges of their syllables
as they pass them across tables
like salt shakers,

plastic sheen of same name condiments
at every single one
at every single one
at every single one
at every single one

              to setting you 

nothing

here

anymore

not  not you
not you    sun no   
nothing
shine   ing   no
not    thing     is left

in place

the day is done   the setting
oh the setting melody to
setting you       yes
you          yes

I am most certainly talking to you,

yes

I wish my vocal chords were a violin. I wish so hard sometimes it’s certainly against some commandment.

one chair
so many faces to fill in the      still
only one chair in the
                 
and it’s occupied
by intentions

I’m in love w/them
mhhmm you & your shorthand

silly   little  syllable,
I am              you
never say    me
if you can help it

oh yes love I do yes
see right through you
yes
but sometimes I stop short
focus
closer
& see into
yes
into you

oblivious you

& I say I love you too much
I love you too much.

If my vocal chords were violins, I would sing & you would understand
voices are meant to-
they are mean too
even when melodious to us

pull and wait for nothing to hold
or let go
the sun will rise if we are lucky
& we are
so lucky still
even when the earth quakes

and it will

so let go

I will
indeed & most certainly try to
forget you
the audience I am writing to
you
oh lover you
who can always & only/
never understand

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To the Dead: Untitled

The old oak was slowly disappearing into the perning mist
The weather was perfect
A mouth fumbling at coattails

For a brief moment, his warmth spreads across your whole face
Then is gone

The wind has dresses
The meaning of fire is lost
The trees burn in Winter

Separated from speech with a fence (that no one understands)

The way we live in our bodies
The difficulty of feelings

How do you ever know one way or the other when it comes to human beings

A jewelry box overflowing with jeweled broaches
A risty tin can filled with cigarette butts

The way man almost always equals madness, but never more.

The memory of a neck
The light shone through the branches
A pelican flew gracefully over the water, then shit into it

Every man, woman, and child, when they stand, sit, or lie down, do so directly over the center of the earth
no wonder Eden is a garden

This is sort of like my shoshin, or Beginner’s Mind. These are the first observations I took down sitting in the rows of chairs set up inside the Zen Center while waiting to see Matthew Dickman and Matthew Zapruder read at the final night of Nothing is Hidden. Waiting and wondering what their poetry had in common with Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and why Evan had told me that I could not miss this event. Not should not, could not. When that man says something like that, I listen. So, I decided to cover it, though I didn’t know much about The Matthews yet, and it was my night off.
Oh, yet. You and your foreshadowing.

Yet, after twelve days, four visits to the poems, two to Roshi’s entire text, three drafts of this article, and one if not two existential crises over fitting the insurmountable mass of meaning and depth contained in the aforementioned into an article during which I penned this gem: “I feel like a bug being squashed slowly and gently,” you’d suppose whatever you’re reading now would be damn well planned out and mind-blowingly insightful though simple and pleasant; a conversation with someone familiar, perhaps, but a beautiful conversation. One that makes you feel “like you’ve been bathing in mescaline and blowjobs” as Matthew Dickman would say. However, that’s not what this is going to be. At least, if you somehow feel that it is, it’s not because of me. Because, after working on this article longer and harder than any before it, I still had nothing at all resembling Zen Buddhism or The Matthews’ poetry in front of me. Except of course for the book on Zen Buddhism and The Matthews’ poetry.

Then, when I was feeling the most discouraged by the whole thing, I read the Daily Rumpus in which Stephen talks about an idea he got from Matthew Zapruder:

“I don’t think poetry should be fit into the confines of capitalism. I think poets should spend a lot of time lying on their backs, contemplating the clouds. People that think hard work is the highest virtue aren’t going to put much of a premium on that but we don’t need to prove anything to those people. The work will speak for itself, will speak to people, or it won’t. The hard work that went into it is an irrelevancy. Calling poetry hard work is capitulating, surrendering to someone else’s ideals. The art exists outside of the effort, is more often borne from suffering than labor.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, the clouds:

Matthew Dickman

Matthew Zapruder

Read more about this event here.

that is     in error
that is     a mouth fumbling
at coattails

the highest criticism backwash

and I way off
off mighty
casting light not crafted directly
magestic in sky
dreaming of life, quiet and blind
sucked, stuck to earth by my shine
gravitational pull, pulled back into
this curious pestilence of colorful emptiness

a new creation, eclipsed, grown weary of passions not known
or known too well
falling like a madness: heads or fails
sickened suddenly with unlimited possibility
expressing nothing, seeing the object as it is: heads
whispering without words
1000 things not present
bearing the resemblance of my face in yours
and one message to deliver
to the critic:

I wanted to have something beautiful to say to you,
but great things less noble take its place

life cheats us with shadows.

Some people are caught up in ignorance. Others are caught up ignoring.

Jonathan Hirsch, founder and host of the Tenderloin Reading Series, is not one of those people. Neither are Paul Corman-Roberts, Joel Landfield, Julie Michelle, William Taylor Jr., or Michael Warren Grant. People like this, people who pay attention, are dangerous, especially in numbers. People like this turn their focus outward, speak softly and find that others listen. They acknowledge the secret joys of that which most never speak of and gather in support of one another. There is a strange sort of community on these Tender streets. As I watched the above writers and artists say goodbye to Koko Cocktails, home and supporter of the series for over two years, I understood I was watching them say goodbye to a close friend. Some moments can’t be explained to those not witness to them, felt only fleetingly, though the memory sticks to the corners of thoughts for years. As they took to the mic to express their bittersweet love for the streets of this, the city’s most taboo district, I felt a strange sort of joy and disgust, terror and inspiration, that is impossible to understand or describe as the streets themselves. This vile honesty, honestly, could save us all. If we only paid more attention. Take a lesson:

Paul Corman-Roberts

“I have seen the end, and the end is, yes, a vagina.”

(Sorry Paul, for the disruption near the middle. Standing by the bar was both a good and bad idea.)

Jonathan Hirsch

“He would wander toward the edges of union square and the corporate portrait of the city would be enlarged long enough for him to grow weary of the tourists who also wandered around, their heads all detached from their bodies as though they were searching for a sign from a place beyond The Cheesecake Factory”

Joel Landfield

“Sitting in a dark cafe sipping espresso and underlining passages in a book by a french philosopher and historian, about to get up for a poetry reading, I felt so pathetically, revoltingly bohemian, so very fucking precious, that I wanted to drag myself out to the alley and beat my own ass.”

Julie Michelle

“I bring a tray to a blind man, he moves his cane for me. ‘What’s on the menu today? Smells good.” He pats my hand. My eyes tear up, but he can’t see them… a line of hunger snakes out the door and around the corner and down the block.”

Michael Warren Grant

“There actually is community out here, but it comes in a different shape… there are no walls here”

William Taylor Jr.

“but still we dream that all the bodies and all the graves will bloom into love letters never burned and that the gaping wound of existence will pour forth desperate joy instead of blood or forgive all the pretty things that never loved us and love them all the more.”

And what an experience it was; Meltzer is the real deal. You could see that even before he began to speak, it was apparent in the way everyone in the room reacted to his arrival. You could see it in the way his facial expressions never seemed forced, only thoughtful. Watching him read was like watching a time capsule open itself, sipping a glass of some old world vintage. They said it had been 56 years before Ferlinghetti decided to publish a book of poetry written by Meltzer. Why had it taken so long? Garret Caples, who edits the Pocket Poets Series, said they had both been too discrete to proposition the other to do it. I liked that idea, though Ferlinghetti certainly doesn’t have a reputation for being a discrete sort of anything, so I wondered… “It just goes to show it can happen. Don’t give up!” Meltzer interjected with a laugh. He was right. It happens all the time.

Whatever the reason for it taking so long, Meltzer deserved it; his reading was incredible. A classy and animated reader, he seemed to be continually grinning, nodding, and gesturing with his hands. Watching him, I understood what it was to read one’s work with utter familiarity. It was like he was simply showing us another tangible part of him, his hand or his arm, something he had grown with over time, something he understood the function of. Though the crowd would have sat listening much longer, Meltzer concluded on time, conscious of his “limit” as though anyone in the room would impose one on him. When he finished, people rushed to the counter to buy his book.

After the reading, there was only one place to go. Someone invited me to a table to have a drink and meet Meltzer and the rest of the folks who had been with him at City Lights. I wasn’t nearly enough whiskeys deep to feel comfortable joining a group of friends, especially this one—a move I assume is pulled all too commonly by strangers and tourists looking to catch a glimpse of “the beat generation” or what have you. I imagine that type of voyeruism gets old fast, especially at Specs. I preferred to stay apart from it and watch.

Old patrons are old friends at Specs and get topped off extra by their smirking bartenders, who come around the counter to welcome them in the door with hugs. Many old patrons are old poets, nicer than some of the young poets I’ve met because they mean it when they’re nice. It’s not some silly game to them anymore, people trying to prove something. It’s done, proven. With such a welcoming air about the group, I can see how it could be tempting to pull up a chair and pretend to be a part of it all before it’s gone. Somehow, after watching Meltzer and the others, I felt much older and still so far removed from my era. People in their 70′s discussed facebook next to me as I caught the bartender’s eye and ordered a drink, a nightcap on an evening that had reminded me why I came to this city in the first place. Cheers.

Julie Rogers

David Meltzer

In this January 2011 article, Why There Are Words won Litseen’s first (and only) award for Classiest Reading Series. For those of you who have never been to this monthly, Sausalito-based series, we’re not being sarcastic. Though, it’s true, Litseen doesn’t give out awards, (yet!) and I am sort of wary of using that word to describe it, Evan was right: the series is classy. It’s just that when I hear “classy,” part of me thinks “bourgeois.” I can’t help but picture stodgy, affected poise and upturned noses, and I assume I can’t afford it—whatever it is.

However, my experience at July 14th’s show, Culpable, proved just how far-removed WTAW is from any of that nonsense. Series creator Peg Alford Pursell has found the right combination of elements to create an instant classic and restore classy’s good name. Perhaps, this success has something to do with her assertion in this January 2010 article that it is “encouragement that is really honest and interested, authentically interested” that is truly valuable in helping others and, in turn, ourselves. Maybe it’s the way the lineup is composed of a balanced number of published and, as of yet, unpublished writers that draws such a down to earth crowd and therefore contributor (or vice versa). Or, it could be the spacious and airy atmosphere of Studio 333, the series’ regular venue, which allows both performer and crowd to subconsciously feel more open and receptive. My guess is that it’s some winning combination of all three of these things.

However, whatever it is, the series evokes an air of mutual respect that defines class to me. I couldn’t help but feel that the readers of the evening seemed eager to speak with their audience, not to them, in a way I haven’t seen done so emphatically almost anywhere else. This conversation is why there are words and creates a rare opportunity for everyone involved to share an experience that seems, in some regards, more personal, if not more personalized, and is one reason why so many people return again and again as I definitely plan to.

If you missed the full experience, there’s always next month! In the meantime, here are the videos from last week’s show:

Graham Gremore

Kristen Tracy

Evan Karp

James Warner

Agatha Hoff

K.M. Soehnlein

prolific enough.

your ___ doesn’t touch people, even those you love, even those who try to take an interest in your ___.

even when your ___ feels stranded in a crowd.
even when your ___ isn’t yours.
even when your ___ is repetitive.
even when your ___ is repetitive.
even when your ___ is wrong.

even when your ___ is supposed to be having the best time ever.
even when your ___ is only a part of a program.

keep on ___.
keep on ___.
keep on ___.

even when your ___ can’t distinguish between the many voices speaking.
even when your ___ is sorry.

especially when it isn’t.

even when your ____ is stored in broken bottles.
even when your ___ says “some day” too often and isn’t sure when.
even when your ___ is last in line.

keep ____.

it will happen.
it will happen.
at least, it has before.