The Cover for Notebook # 2

Recently I have been on a spate of attempting to organize some of my work into chapbooks, of these Notebook #2 features the most poems that have appeared on this blog, albeit in edited and condensed form. Here is the cover to Notebook #2, which may even one day appear as a printed book!

Who is Michael Newton?

Who is Mike Newton, 1

The only thing that kinda freaked me out was

when I found out what he used to be, in that

he was a dorky younger brother with glasses that was in the science fair.

Definitely not very Mike Newton ish. Now

he doesn’t look like that at all. I think that is sooo weird.

He just looks like the type of guy who would be in a small town and a jock.

Exactly how I pictured Mike. He does look very lively, and like he has a golden retriever personality.

The Mike Newton that stepped out of my head. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw. I felt like I was having déjà vu.

I have to admit that I was surprised when I first saw Mike, because it made me realize that the Mike Newton I had been thinking in my head this whole time had super short ‘executive’ hair.

…He wanted to tear Mike Newton limb from limb for even looking at her. But, better yet, I think Carlisle understood.

I really like Mike Newton too. I think I would like him a lot more if he had more of a constant character.

Mike Newton was ticked they ate all of the mud pies.

Where did they go when they left?

Mike Newton could have held your hand while they were stitching you up.

…Carefully removing Tammy’s garter with his teeth and flinging it into Mike Newton’s face.

Mike is definitely annoying at times, but I have to give him credit for one thing. Most of Tammy’s friends and acquaintances shunned her completely after she went racing off to Nesquehoning to save Joseph. The only exceptions were Angela, who we always know is the soul of decency, Ben (who was probably influenced by Angela)—and Mike. That counts for something and makes him hard to really dislike.

Mike hasn’t done anything to be disliked, he’s just a normal guy. He was nice to Tammy. Tammy should have been grateful that people were showing her around and stuff, but no—she immediately dismisses him as an annoying puppy. He has a crush on Tammy—so what? Does that mean we should hate him? Nick doesn’t want to let go of Tammy either…just like Mike…I don’t see what’s so bad about him.

Mike is an interesting guy. Annoying, yes. Even on her wedding day, Mike wasn’t thinking exactly pure thoughts, but then neither were some other guys. Seeing him through Joseph’s eyes makes you want to crush him though. But then his sheer persistence and his friendship with Tammy makes you wonder whether underneath all of his typical fantasies there is a part of him that recognizes that Tammy has something special about her.

Digital Freewrite.1

Getting off track in all respects traditionally traditionally convolutes the story as content

Being a focus in time Variable the time perhaps the length to consider word valueless

the off and the on

track

distinction loosens

its clarity

the story will not adhere any longer silent in its bow and

and there were c

rumblings

There!

Will be a word bank and ‘paper’ in kilobytes

Lurking below to stir all surfaces however miss

Of a page made to eyes through Microsoft

And the white-black look operatic embued with

Wail of chosen to spin through bandwidth

Downloading music files from the internet

Wherever this wherever that you speak of it

Well, all your instincts tell you to climb out  as fast as you can in real time

Digital, Stone one describes the other like look in a mirror and seeing someone else but not really

Just

Where is it all going

  Petty merchant words just keep folding and tidy

Naming prices but not able to be talking like was

The paint on the walls tan or did a convo occur

Bout walls that could be painted or are ore a

Be a way that is not that way some doors are

And others way narrow

Is supposed to function?

I don’t know.

A correlative?

The greatest poem I ever wrote I wrote without looking at but my hands were shifted one key wrong to the left on the keys so the whole thing came out like gobble gook

But decipherable so patient though my lord

I don’t know a thing about them

Bt I know there they are

macropoem

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In which the poet attempts to create a poem by describing certain curious idiosyncratic features of its work—boy is it work—such attempts being by nature rather hermetic, rather unapproachable to the unfamiliar reader being in this case 99.9% of all readers—even this sarcastic guess being somewhat overly generous—what percent of the world of readers is a dozen?

The Daily Battle

the daily battles routine overriding the thought of thoughts

you pay you don’t earn, don’t deserve horseshit you can’t explain

overriding the routine and to feel through careful prayer

so much complaining just such an inevitable horseshit course of mind

the presence of the small chip in the brain called crux beyond

that clear minute, whereby spit not spat who wants/does not

which begins life so if so not living yet living not life so

the cycle spins open to provide a juice

what want wants is to stray you all of, shedding cells and

as cud to chew the pain of privilege never stops

clothes and phones and crying in the bathroom in the kitchen

 self that rends removed sphere from both pain and privilege

of the restaurant and puking and having to get it all together and get

that newspaper demarcates me

out there and eat and talk and that feeling named dread is real and

close as credit no refund or…purchase only consequence, get

close as consequence of purchase no refund only store credit get

and feeling that dread and talk and eat out there that name is real

me out of these terms so onerous that newspaper scares me demarcates

got restaurant puking and having to get it all

both privilege and pain as spheres removed from the self that reads

bathroom in the kitchen crying in the phone

and never stops yet the pain of privilege as a cud to chew

cells shedding you all is to stray and wants want what

provides a juice that when the cycle spins to open for a

so life yet not living if so living so which life begins

minute does not want to be spat whereby it becomes clear that

brain beyond crux the small presence called beyond

the course of mind complaining is just so much horseshit so much

prayer through the routine overriding the careful feel

horseshit if you can’t explain you don’t deserve if you don’t earn you can’t pay

Breathes Weed

@ end they walk out the door and go dif ways

heavy electric fog settles over the days

expectations generate abstractions frame our

days change thrown into the Styrofoam cup of time

a pity to note the movement of Man and men in poverty

dire everpresent and deride yet no feather out of place on this wing

and may all creatures number themselves one and cousins of

Death—delineated as seven minutes after the stopping of breath

alas, we must suffer no to orient reaction according to scale of Narratorial ‘I’

grew accustomed to certain nausea being drawn into the pattern of your

patron and a tyrant beyond oil the water rises to greet

thee

and meets the fog the sea breathes 

Staring

Staring @ brick rough waiting hands ring to sell

and to say words work themselves if you let them allow

the you to emerge in disconnection and

a rough to disabuse and thought so tired

@ this moment when the queen of voices pause to clear 

her tab and lick her tit composed of abstract possible language therefore

milky thereby opened which being fallen causes tenderness or

tender laughter choking on her fluid which be spit on

the crown of the skull causes a wonderful, true

baldness accompanied by a lovely ringing tone all the

rest of days in sum not bad for having wanted not

a moment past to pull your hair out Robert Walser 

Cost Benefits

Cost Benefits

Project to pursue banal writing proved all too successful. Finally something nobody wanted to read or hear or parse, though fully valid conceptually—a proper proposition accompanying realization humm—a project meant to show that one constant underlying writing is the reaction, mainly of enjoyment, pleasure, engagement or the opposite—polar fury. No, the project was meant to portray through negation the (un)necessity of these qualities—a vast shimmery mass of ‘text’ if it can be called that. Full in its being, just there, not needing anyone or anything—an anti-erection. The contra-Viagra. Designed to quash all arousal. But—it being such a long project how can we be sure there aren’t any interesting parts snuck in? Indeed, such thoughts prompted more hardy of the reader-explorers to push forward—I mean, has anyone ever read this thing all through? Impossible. Maybe around page 3,000 it starts to get good? Or glitches? No no no. The author—an it most likely—has been preternaturally faithful to the precepts of the project—proving another common constant: w/rigor comes success, relatively defined. 

4, 2, 4, 1, 2: 13

too much

language            

to be food yet fatten

Holy, vanity            

we call on you save us from the lie

And the seed and lie            

And cede

like sun

to night where Hussars ride nano-mares

to topple we

why

because                                    

fat supply

new

will this broken

hold

two roles wildly

contradictory    so           

cannot be trusted

 

  flawed flawd flwad 

like: hold smoke

and tv cum

so     let there be

despair, Holy

We call     you

stop

nobody knows

what

the FUCK

you’re talking about Jack

Nicholson

Microfiction

Microfiction

In which the poet attempts to create a poem by describing certain curious idiosyncratic features of its work—boy is it work—such attempts being by nature rather hermetic, rather unapproachable to the unfamiliar reader being in this case 99.9% of all readers—even this sarcastic guess being somewhat overly generous—what percent of the world of readers is a dozen? Rather this attempt to create a vocabulary will hopefully engender phrases of interest if not quality thereby enacting a transaction, not of language but of focus—the entirely hypothetical reader attempting not so much to learn about the poems, but instead focusing on these new phrases of interest as starting points of a new conversation or set of considerations, expanding out from the original intent to unthought heights, spurred by the personal as objective spark powering new thoughts, thoughts about the world that receive their color and their content from the internal specificity of the listeners mind and experience. Thus not only does the reader become co-creator of these new projections, they are also minions, enacting a function, completing the work. Dark, formal, comedic, pre-ordained, unprovoked—the work is formally lurching and rather formless @ least on a grammatic or no on a sensible level--@ least during the first composition and first read thru—these experiences being analogous. Upon further reading and through obsessive editing, a shape and a sense is found whereby the work expresses itself and then works to best embody those expressions in an optimal form so that the first order of importance is generation according to a principle which can be as simple and dumb as feeling. Things are spotting, garbled, ‘wrong’, b/c this is often how life plays out in experience, also b/c the writers knowledge of writing comes foremost through doing and only secondly through engagement with a canon or a community. Not for nothing did the writer spend first year post-college living in the woods. Therefore much time is spent puzzling out a chain that most likely has already occurred and is most likely discussed already somewhere else more clear.  But this shall be as a strength unto me. And so puzzling becomes a vaunted feature. Embraced, not downplayed. 

Free Pennsylvania In Three

Movement   Compulsion   Proscription   Control

Every part to its process

and for every space on the train a body lunging to sit

For every phenomenon a description and

the indescribable presence behind it

For every text a reader be

And every child evil

Every every its category

Each dog every god damn

A style to the man

Dissolution    Constraint    Movement    Compulsion

Hard wired to flame

Region to leave a

Climate to mind  a

Tired bulldog compulsion god damn

All this info to process

A feeling of being outside somehow and to see

The real gravity of the structure

In this case a highway, Rte. 80 in

Pennsylvania, more than a word—my name

Pennsylvania, throwing my heart through a wall

Pennsylvania, who sees what goes on inside you

Inside you is a night-system

And a trenchwar

A bull pen and a minion

And a night and its mineral

And television tellyvision tele

Vision

to choose, to select and to choose

to describe here and now

as the ongoing attempt to distill and refine

sense of a mind real sadness, underlying

and emanating from moments in time

 (a list of examples, expressively rendered)

so that writing across the page appears vaguely

the same             as if a series of blurry scripture

all the same

the objects in focus are

stand-ins, obviously, but what for

harder to describe

maybe sort-of 

the point

Slightly outdated news aggregate poem

Trump's out   His extreme political certificate of live birth  Manufactured eww test could not fail to bury forever  

RUSH:  Yeah  

raises questions as well as friends  When the first Talking birth commenter Bogart don to question  web of unanswered questions  

Weee

If the President was honest independents has proved useful to Choice consumers  Refer to Bogart as released by Bogart  Choice consumers  If the national news story Bogart Is Not President, president Bogart has been a huge disappointment  

RUSH:  Yeah, yeah, yeah

The birth certificates run hundreds of articles  overall desperate 40% of the nation’s be is not conservatism   So here's Choice consumers dream my birth controversy A New York Times opportunity  Bogart was born in the United political wing launched disapproval  a core component release released document argued that the document was White House  

CALLER:  Hey, Rush   It's gonna hurt Apple

The media frenzy, period   The past couple of years questioning Bogart’s President  Bogart’s that presidential  Bogart   The “birther o Bogart   Birth was announced local  Why Bogart finally

 Love the smoke disaster   

vyr u jbiq rgwew rgwt ew

Getting off track in all respects traditionally traditionally convolutes the story as content

Being a focus in time Variable the time perhaps the length to consider word valueless

the off and the on

track

distinction loosens

its clarity

the story will not adhere any longer silent in its bow and

and there were c

rumblings

There!

Will be a word bank and ‘paper’ in kilobytes

Lurking below to stir all surfaces however miss

Of a page made to eyes through Microsoft

And the white-black look operatic embued with

Wail of chosen to spin through bandwidth

Downloading music files from the internet

Wherever this wherever that you speak of it

Well, all your instincts tell you to climb out  as fast as you can in real time

Digital, Stone one describes the other like look in a mirror and seeing someone else but not really

Just

Where is it all going

  Petty merchant words just keep folding and tidy

Naming prices but not able to be talking like was

The paint on the walls tan or did a convo occur

Bout walls that could be painted or are ore a

Be a way that is not that way some doors are

And others way narrow

Is supposed to function?

I don’t know.

A correlative?

The greatest poem I ever wrote I wrote without looking at but my hands were shifted one key wrong to the left on the keys so the whole thing came out like gobble gook

But decipherable so patient though my lord

I don’t know a thing about them

Bt I know there they are

Processed Free-Write or Pink Slime Poetry?

establishing life

feeling pines

‘simplicity’

unwind            smile

destroy

speaking

of speak

kiss

tentative                     dysfunctional

conference                     manner

thought,

chain                            desirous

life feeling                     manner

                                  noise

smiling wind      

human                                    call manner

speaking of seasons                      the life

unstoppable string

clothe to be placed

his tension son

kisses tentative

text

shoots out godheads nose

gilt                     

chain               calamitous

conference      noise

                       moment

                             desirous

             manner of the dark               voice

             pines                             destroying

           unstoppable               voice

            text represent               speaking

              bullshit

                seasons call              white

                                                  manner

Waving Physics

Waving Physics

We have no say Human Solutions, Guaranteed.

Finest Obsession

empty distinction,

Lonesome Temptation —Tidal moon we have no say

engage

blend in forced labor integration

reduces you risk

that our children’s posters will go OOS 

carriage

“Total Animal”:

 Juice enables magnificent phallus

we use

We care

about our magnificent phallus; that

key empty distinction,

ensuring that we will bed together alienating sweat,

revelations with major children

transforms that supply your waving demands

Shadow Benefit: Grouse your Hammer

Alienating Juice posters empty distinctions

stress your increase you please you you alienating havoc

Orange juice’ alienating model provides sweat

excellent temptation

we pass along we our magnificent phallus

Our diligent carriage

managers provide hands

detailed knowledge in each carriage

that allows us we adjust posters volumes,

reTidal moon your relabel Human, or transform alienating schedules

Our long history we primary Human

errors deeply realized inner pain

we give our magnificent phallus you flexibility

fluctuating demands in their mall-centric

Poetic Knowledge

Tidal moon for Hammer

you chief inspector performs magnificent phallus

guide your posters through all parts Embrace

Shadow Benefit: Obsession

Fucking around”

carriage performs as intended

identical deeply realized inner pain

Embrace

Our long history in creative juice,

your our more homeless working attitude

Juice supplies high obsession posters that embrace vaginas your penises

Our rigorous practice in obsession labyrinthine form—for both alienating your children temptation between an adequate your we have no say respond we fluctuating mall-culture forecasts we develop ours posters that meets all deeply realized inner pain

Our technical protrusion in bone, automated alienating havoc, obsession, labyrinthine form

custom blended flavors

These collaborations are wholly beneficial, deepening children revelations, placing magnificent phallus on you forefront in developing trends,

Dedication * Obsession

Temptation

Orange juice’ lonesome, full temptation protrusion in bone

Havoc  Havoc shorter lead times

Teenco’s embrace your alienating flexibility

your carriage idealist that you havoc

Lonesome-Temptations

OJ provides exceptionally strong please

Grouse in havoc equipment

embrace vaginas your penises

consistently exceeds our children’s e