Read_me.doc

2012-02-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

this is what we call a catch up post. why is it a catch up post? because i'll catch you up with all the exciting (read: boring) stuff that has been happening with me lately.

first, i was offered a contract for how they strike a balance between calligraphy and death metal. after much debating, and by debating i mean jumping up and down and yelling, i signed the contract. the press will remain a secret until the book is published, but rest assured avid reader, big things are in the works. expect to see the book early to mid 2013.

second, i've had a bunch of poems published since we last spoke. there is new work in dogzplot (francis and sarah poems), kill author (francis and sarah poems) and, again, in NAP (poems from my forthcoming NAP chap i tried to bear the elephants and lost). i'm excited and honored to be in these three journals. the links are on the right hand side of this page. read them!! beach sloth is cool always, but seems to be extra cool whenever a new NAP comes out. he did a small write up of NAP 2.3, read it here. he likes me. i like him. we can go to california and get married! will you marry me beach sloth? also i have a poem forthcoming from word riot. i racked up three healthy rejections from them before getting this poem accepted, so i'm just a bit psyched.

third, i had three poems published at thirteen myna birds (again, a link is on the right hand side of the page). the way that thirteen myna birds works is that they feature thirteen works at a time. as new pieces are added the old ones are shuffled off to die alone in a nursing home. it's sad, i know. i actually really like this idea and method of publishing. however, i'm also vain as fuck. i want people to be able to always read my wonderful poems. so i am going to post all three here! they're all, again, from my NAP chap, coming out this summer! enjoy!

lines on the highway going south

her thoughts winter, early evening.

a lucky strike tucked behind her ear

whistling show tunes and crawling south,

she steers my body like a pickup truck

covered in dents, a real barebones ford.

drifters pick strawberries from the tires,

nap in the transmission.

she shifts with my spinal cord,

the roof of my mouth, the clutch.

i ride a silver bicycle made of metal from her cavities.

a porch chair weathers the storm

rooms hidden within rooms, placed behind cobblestone walls.

there is sour water collected in my basement.

some would call this puddle a flood,

insist it be pumped out before the old bathroom sputters

an accusation in guttural tones:

your cousin shot heroin with bent knees on my bitter floor.

with soggy money i cannot afford this hurricane.

kindling: a photograph of the way you extend your neck,

a carnival of wasp stingers, parched as circuits.

the water must ruin crowded boxes

which have not been opened since before the doctors

thought to give me medication.

my house has doors that gasp cardboard.

apprehension, a whirlpool sucking in new water

like balsa wood and shop class finger shavings.

i put on soaked corduroy legs. my basement

will stay a dark swimming hole.

in the backroom is a waterproof gun case and i wonder

if my children will find the baked and cracked play-doh.

red spray on the wall in the pattern of a hand waving

i am underwater or thrashing on a carousel

or defeated in a chair while ants swarm over fingertips.

i play hangman with anton chekhov

in an abandoned storefront. charred roof beams,

cinder, gritted fists. a bit like gravity tied to a balloon,

all electric noise and sparks.

with vertebrae bent out of shape

he looks at me like folded paper, declares

this word does not contain the letter p.

he leaks like a faucet removing both shoes,

sketches the jungle inside a mason jar.

no plants, just dreadful bodies

covered in gashes and bright orange filament

keeps them tethered to the ground.

anton chekhov is lost in this jungle.

for the word, i guess shaving. he mutters

about rats and shooting himself in the thigh:

how the cartridge burrows through raw flesh, howling.

will the letter p emerge in the final act,

drape a plastic bag around my neckline,

gentle as sunburn flaking skin?

the hangman, drunk on warm pig’s blood and human meat.

i will not make the front page, instead newspapers read:

the dog’s fur contains battery acid, a stray nucleus.

best of

2012-01-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

so i've been reading a lot of blogs and they all seem to be doing a best of 2011 list. fuck that noise. i'm going to do a best of ever list. ever really means 23 years which really means like 13 years.

best books
(picking one is obviously too hard, so here are a few)

the redwall series by brian jaques
these books were my childhood. they also made me want to be a wolf who carries an axe. i think i'm coming close to achieving my goal.

ghost machine by ben mirov
i just got this book recently, but it confirms something i have long (read: months) suspected - the best poetry makes little to no sense while making complete sense. the best poetry is visceral and intellectual at once. the best poetry is written by ben mirov

heavy petting by gregory sherl
i would still be an ignorant poetry slammer who thinks a metaphor about childbirth is groundbreaking, if it wasn't for greg. he told me "you're not a slam poet, submit to journals and stop being a dick." this lead to me discovering an amazing community and finding out that i like writing for the sake of writing a hell of a lot more than writing for the sake of slamming. also, this book is sweet. it feels like xanax in a good way.

best music

nirvana unplugged
this cd is the most relaxing substance known to man. it is haunted and haunting and horribly good. when i originally typed that sentence, i typed god instead of good. that describes nirvana unplugged, horribly god.

sing sing death house by the distillers
this is the cd that sparked me wanting to do a best of ever list. i keep coming back to it time and time again. energy is the best way to describe the distillers. so much fucking energy. this cd is loud and sloppy and fast and angry and loud and perfect. i've also written quite a few poems about sing sing death house, or brody dalle (the distiller's lead singer). none get published, but i have hope.

best friend

juliana steen
my better half. the only reason i haven't committed a murder, suicide (YET). i love you.

best movies

the wackness
basically, this movie is about a middle class, white, jewish, teenage drug dealer in manhatten in 1994 (maybe 1992?) who falls in love with this girl and gets his heart broken. COME ON. do you know me? this is pretty much my life, minus the selling drugs part

igby goes down
catcher in the rye for those born in the 1980s. plus, you get to see amanada peet's boobs. although this happens in most of her movies, igby goes down was the first place i saw her boobs. they are majestic.

best lit mag

pank
i can always count on thinking "i should just stop writing" after reading an issue of pank (print or online). just so good.

best kiss

sylvia murray
we kissed on the corner of laurel and walnut after eating at the laurel luncheonette when i was 17 and she was 16. she was wearing white shoes and it was sort of raining, lightly. i was sober despite having a raging drug addiction at the time.

TO BE CONTINUED AS I THINK OF MORE BESTS

new years

2012-01-02T23:58:00.000-08:00

staying up late pays off. just minutes ago i saw a post from the red lightbulbs facebook page saying issue 6 is live! i have six poems in there! read them here. i haven't read through the issue yet, but there are some killer names in there. jason teal (one of the editors of the new journal heavy feather review) has a story. so does robert vaughan. nick sturm has an other. that's going to be awesome.

issue 18 of mud luscious is up also! it's good as shit. it has some poems from me (from the same series as the red lightbulb poems) and other sweetness! troubadour kaul has some poem things that are strange and awesome. read mud luscious here.

so it's 2012 as my new years resolutions are as follows

**be a better father to annette (my pet rat). i don't spend a lot of time with her, but i make sure to play with her nonstop in the time i do spend. so maybe i should say spend more time with annette.

**write more real stuff (read- video games) on this blog. i don't really like blogging. it takes a lot of my energy and seems way harder than it is. i read a bunch of writer's blogs that rock though. lately i've been cracking out on roxane gay. she writes great movie reviews.

**for that matter, play some of the new games i've downloaded. i've been playing through zenonia 4. it might be the best zenonia yet, although the in app purchase system is way overloaded. you need to spend real money to make the game enjoyable. well, you don't NEED to, but it helps a lot. i've gotten back into archetype and leveled my player up to 'major.' that comes after 'master sergeant' but before '???' i hope to find out what it comes before. there are two other rpgs i need to play.

**don't fuck up this new relationship i have going on. she's a nice girl (and probably way out of my league).

**find homes for the two chapbook manuscripts that are homeless. one is out in the world and awaiting reply. the other is still being worked on. once (fingers crossed!) those two are published, i'm going to pick the best poems from the three manuscripts i have and make them into a full length. i figure if the worlds going to end in december, i should at least have a full length poetry collection manuscript, right??

just another case of blatant self promotion

2011-12-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

this zine will change your life published an old poem of mine. of course, old is relative. i wrote this poem about nine months ago. that's not really old. Ben Tanzer is a pretty cool dude. this zine is rad because they pair up each poem, or fiction, with a piece of music and some art.

i just took a nap

2011-12-15T13:06:00.000-08:00

NAP is just so good to me. They make me hot coco after sex. Check out their new issue, NAP 2.1. I have a poem in there, two poems in their next issue, and a NAP chap coming out in the summer. Also the infamous Beach Sloth writes nice things about the issue, and me!!, in a blog post here. For the record, I am not Alan Greenspan's son - I am Alan Greenspan, himself.

I'm in New York for two weeks. If anyone from NY reads this (if anyone at all reads this) tell me where some readings are at. Holla at ya boy.

Also, check out this review I wrote! It's up at the Heavy Feather Review blog. Heavy Feather Review is a bad ass new lit journal. They're dropping their first issue at the start of 2012 and have some heavy hitters lined up (including yours truly). Jason Teal is a pretty rad editor and deserves to be "shouted-out."

good news

2011-11-20T13:55:00.000-08:00

so so so so
NAP will be publishing i tried to bear the elephants and lost as a free e-chapbook in april 2012. theres nothing else to say but, that shit is cool!
i'm already about halfway done with my next ms (working titled how they strike a balance between calligraphy and death metal). six of the poems from this are coming out in the next issue of Red Lightbulbs (so new, so great) and three are coming out in the january issue of Mud Luscious (so cool, so cool).
i'm started up a third ms about pick up lines. we'll see where it goes. busy is better than lazy.

best music ever made

2011-11-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

i think this may be the best song ever recorded. i've been listening to it for years now and can't think of one negative thing to say. and goretex's verse, COME ON!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPYOOLznBR0

short fast and heavy

2011-10-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

I have a poem dressed up as a piece of micro fiction at Short, Fast and Deadly. I think that's pretty cool, do you? http://www.shortfastanddeadly.com/issue-98-23-october-2011/

happy halloween

2011-10-24T18:07:00.000-07:00

Very exciting stuff is happening in the world. I have decided that I don't like blogging, so let's just cut to the chase. I have two poems up in the Halloween issue of Thirteen Myna Birds. Thirteen Myna Birds is the brain-child of Juliet Cook, who seems to have a book out on every press ever. She rocks and her journal is pretty cool. Dark, very dark. I fuks wit it, as they say. The lay out of the journal is rad. They have thirteen (sixteen for Halloween) pieces, ordered from thirteen to one. When a new piece is published, the piece numbered one gets pushed off the journal. Keeps things temporary, urgent maybe? Read my poems here while you can. http://13myna.blogspot.com/. What else is going on, you ask? A fair amount of rejections. Elimae - I will make sweet, sweet love to you one day, but not today. Some acceptances also. I'll link something later that I have in Short, Fast and Deadly. My chapbook is done, time to start sending that out. This little fucker was fun to put together. I will start another one soon. Personal things have been going on, alas poor reader, those are personal.

video games and writing but mostly video games

2011-10-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

so the last couple weeks have been kind to my poems. i have a bunch of pieces forthcoming from a few magazines and i'm very excited. i'm not going to name names, but i'll link once they come out. i've also gotten more than a few rejections, however all the editors have been very nice. a personal rejection is almost as good as an acceptance. it makes the fire burn harder, i think. here is a link to the new issue of Vinyl Poetry (it came out today!). i'm in there along with some (other) fucking breathtaking writers. http://vinylpoetry.com/. now onto the fun part - video games!

video games are about the only thing i do as consistently as write. i mean there's eating and sleeping and all that but who cares? i've played three great games recently. hitman two: silent assassin, destinia and aurum blade. i'm sure i misspelled the last two. game by game breakdown, commence.

hitman two is so fucking fun. let me start by saying that i have an xbox. not an xbox 360, a xbox. so most of the games i play are old. i have a feeling that hitman two would give the newest metal gear solid games a run for their money. the whole idea is to be a silent assassin (as the name so eloquently implies), but you dont have to be. i think that's the best part of the game. you can chose to be sneaky and use garrote wire to kill guards without anyone noticing. you can also chose to go on a rampage. either way works and they both seem to be effective. also the save system is pretty neat. you can only save a certain number of times per map. i think most are seven. so you have to concentrate your efforts and not waste a single bullet.

destinia is a great game. it's an iphone rpg (my favorite kind of game!), that's basically a zenonia ripoff. however the graphics are smoother, in a 16bit way, and the movement system is better, in my opinion. one of my biggest problems with most rpgs is that you can get lost in the map so easily (maybe i'm just an idiot). not the case in destinia. you can only go to a map, or dungeon, or whatever, that you need to be going to.

aurum blade is the best game i have ever played. it's another iphone rpg, but this time it's a diablo II ripoff. this game is literally diablo II ported onto an iphone. i've had it for like three days and am already hooked. i've probably sunk ten hours into it at this point and am nowhere near done. fuckkkkk i love a good rpg. zenonia 3 was my gold standard for the last six months or so, but aurum blade blows it out of the water. one of the great things about this game is that it doesn't focus on the story line. there is some dumb ass, typical krpg story ,but it doesn't matter. the emphasis is much more on leveling, looting, and upgrading equips. also the power dungeon is a nice add-on. basically once a day you get to fight in a multi leveled dungeon and get insanely good gear. the only beef i have with this game is the inventory system, it's hard to navigate and small. that being said - the game is free! so i'll deal with the inventory bs.

video games and writing. yes.

here's the problem

2011-09-04T20:25:00.000-07:00

I think of all these witty things to say. I really do. Then I start to think "hey man I should have a blog! I can list all the publications that are lucky enough to have me submit to them, and all the witty banter that runs through my head!" What happens is, I play NHL video games instead. Plus I'm borderline internet retarded, and can't really figure out how to work this blog anyway. This must be what people mean when they say First World Problems.

No reason to post this

2011-08-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

I just submitted the fuck outta 8 poems. And I do mean- the fuck outta. Also, every romance language since you sounds the same.

ear bolts?

2011-08-18T19:04:00.003-07:00

Issue number four of Vinyl Poetry should be up very soon. I have a poem appearing in there, and I am very honored to. For now check out their site Vinyl Poetry. They have published some great work so far, and are run by the nicest editor one could ever hope to meet! Also I’m very excited to be doing a show with one of the co-founding editors very soon. Gregory Sherl is having a book release party on September 15th at the Funky Buddha in Boca. The Panda Platypus Poets (aka my ‘crew’) are opening the show for him. This is page meets stage, at its best.
Onto other things. The National Poetry Slam 2011. What a cruel mistress you were. I had one of the best, and worst, weeks of my life there. I was repping Delray Beach, Florida (Team Dada), and we placed 42nd out of 76 teams. We brought our heart and soul to the tournament and got shit on by the judges. Oh well, they say it’s about the poetry, anyway, and there was lots of that. More performance than poetry, but either way it was very entertaining. I also had an opportunity to take part in a rookie showcase before a semi-final bout. Out of all the rookies at Nats three were chosen for the showcase. It was very cool. I also met a shit load of awesome people. This probably should have been first. Most everyone I met was welcoming, and very nice. Can’t wait for Charlotte. That is all.

The start

2011-08-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

Blogging seems important to the world of indie publishing. So here ya go. I had a livejournal in highschool. I wish I remembered the password to it. Expect musings, and links to publications I like, or that like me. For now, check out www.panda-poets.com. Those cats are live