cold clay

Humor is a way to defamiliarize experience, just like a poem. What a poem does is makes what is familiar to us feel new again, and that’s what a stand-up comedian does too, right? A stand-up comedian says, you know, this thing that you do every day that feels very normal and mundane to you is, in fact, actually absurd. That’s what a poem is doing. I think humor is native to poetry and probably a closer cousin to poetry than even prose or non-fiction, because of that core impulse.

When you left I walked into the ocean. Not to drown but to be held by something reluctant to let go.

Well, I do think I was aware, when making those recordings and I continue to be aware, every time I play these songs - that they drum up something particular for me. It’s like playing Bloody Mary as a little kid, standing in the dark bathroom, staring at the mirror, saying her name three times and promising yourself that you’re not gonna get scared… but every fool time, like clockwork, you get so scared. With these songs, every time I play them, a particular mood and a particular set of thoughts wells right up and sits there lumping in my throat. Not bad thoughts or bad feelings… just sort of, very strong I guess.

Despite what they say, I believe poetry is in good hands, mostly because it is in our hands.

To the ditch lily I say I am in love. To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow street I am in love. To the roses, white petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am in love.

she dies in April 2019 of alcohol and indescribable longing most people blush before death she just steps off

like the sky I’ve been too quiet everyone’s forgotten I’m here

You will come away bruised. You will come away bruised but this will give you poetry.

i’m trying to love the shattered window of myself: the hands: the rocks: the broken religion left behind: my inheritance is a body of vandalized cathedrals: light me on fire: strip my god from my breath: watch as i dance amidst the flames: