[a few from the old first notebook]

"Carlo"

A.
A man holds all his hope in a bottle
in his hand, standing in the middle
of a street, in the middle of a battle.
In the middle of his chest brews
an ending, beginning with the bottle.

Z.
A man lies in the street, all his hope unfolding
around his head in a crimson halo... dreams drunk
from a hole by asphalt... a pistol-round shell-casing
lies yards away, satisfied with its pop, it's punch
... spit and spent and aspirations still
spilling from the man's face. Face down or face up,
face it, this face-off fakes out fists unthrown.
This is not the final argument. Not all have flown
from this fight. Some still stay. Some still stand,
and all will still scream until this dream finds
something other to sip... something sweeter
than sanguine and Molotov cocktails... some water
perhaps... some blood that stays blue..
Carlo, our comrade... we have still not forgotten.

...

"The Eyes of Czolgosz"

And the cries come from the observation bleachers, "Kill this Anarchist!"
Leon, they may ask why you didn't save a bullet for yourself
but that question never reflected upon itself
in your eyes.
Leon, they may say you murdered an innocent, benevolent,
heaven-sent President
but that statement never had to pay rent while bent
on the knee of a tyrant.
Leon, now your hope's spent and the barrel's gone cold
your throat, dry.
Friends call you "traitor"
Comrades come to your cell to grin closed teeth
like prison bars
and blink tearless eyes like electric chair farewells.
Leon, I feel your gunshot filling my lungs
with every chamber-loading breath.
My heart revolves, my tongue clicks.
Leon, I never doubted you.
Emma and Max and I never doubted you.
Let McKinley be only the beginning
let our cries reload and fire again
and again and again and again and again
and again and again and again and again
and AGAIN!
Let them all fall as we exhale.
Leon, we knew your name was not Nieman.
Leon, your pulse brought us Sacco
and Vanzetti and Durruti and Spain and Paris
and Seattle and Carlo and petrol bombs
and bricks leaving hands
like invocations leaving mouths
bodies leaving feet
feet leaving ground
blood leaving holes punched by
bullets leaving pistols.
Leon, your time is our time
and our time is all time
and all time is now.
Right. Fucking. Now.
Revenge for Valliant, Leon!
Long Live Anarchy, Leon!
Attentat, Leon! Attentat!
Czolgosz! Open Your Eyes!

...

"I Am Talking About Fucking Up Our Sundays"

We turn drums & rotors
tear the fucking tag off this mattress
erase the FBI from this video.

We trouble this square.
Instead of asking,
"Why can't I see pictures in these clouds?"
Like smoke between teeth
fingers between ribs.

We rake the flats of our knife blades
across the bars, like smoke between teeth.
The escape
is in the cafeteria riot.
It is inevitable.
We trouble this square.
We turn drums & rotors.

Because
We drove like a barricade
to protect the schoolbus.
And then another one came.
And we had to get aggressive.

...

"I see you..."

I see you. You see me.
And someone else may see us.
Else may be a wall that
we may, or may not,
bounce a ball off.

...
okay. so, i was looking through my very first notebook for something to use for my next editing experiment post. i figured it would offer the greatest challenge, as it is quite painful for me to look at the stuff i wrote during that period. really. most of it ranges from cringe-inducing to atrociously inexcusable. it is bad writing.

it is crawling at its lowest and most awkward.

however, while trudging around in that poorly-lit sewer, i found a few gems that i'm actually a little proud of, or at least find kinda interesting. "Carlo" is a piece i wrote about Carlo Giuliani, an Italian anarchist who was killed by riot police during the G8 protest on January 19, 2001. it is one of VERY few political poems in that notebook that doesn't obnoxiously or desperately rhyme, and of those, i think it's one of the two most sincere. tied for that honor is "The Eyes of Czolgosz," about McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz. i had just read Emma Goldman's autobiography, and was very moved by her brief, haunted relationship with that dude. as you can probably tell, i considered myself an anarchist at that time and was very into the militant aspect of the movement and its colorful, often violent history. i think i was maybe more just fascinated with the imagery, dynamism and drama of it all, and i had a strong affinity for tragic figures. i'm still very much a socially liberal dude who thinks the vague tenets of anarchism are a pretty awesome notion, but i understand the limitations and have long since denounced the idea of holding onto isms and specific scopes of belief. and i shouldn't have to offer this disclaimer, but i will, for the cheap seats: NO, i do not believe that political assassination is a viable or practical means of protest in this age of complexity.

Fun Fact: for anyone who may be familiar with the poet Jose Araguz, "The Eyes of Czolgosz" was his favorite of my work while we were in college, even after i started writing better.

those last two are just little things i found in my digging that i think are WAY better than about 99.9% of the actual completed "poems" that beat up, purple Mead composition book holds. a prize to anyone who can tell me where i got the title for that first one. the second is about a weird, term-free relationship i found myself in, long before i realized that "term-free" isn't so much a reality as an excuse.
-andy

He Straightens His Tie

And he straightens his tie
and adjusts his collar like
he's got X-Ray Vision but wishes
he didn't
like he's made of steel but would
rather know what it feels like
to get cut
just to at least know he's got
some blood swishing around
inside him.
The X-Ray Vision doesn't work
on mirrors
and you can tell he doesn't
listen to Hip Hop
and he probably calls it
"Rap Music" like he doesn't
even know nor care what "rap" means
like he's never actually thought about it
and he doesn't actually consider it to be "music."
He probably calls it "Rap Music" like
he might as well be putting scary pictures
on magazine covers and
knocking over tenements
maybe with people still inside them.

And he thinks this whole
thing he's got going on is
a burden because maybe
he doesn't believe in blessings
at all - mixed, sacred or
otherwise.

And he'll never be the Man of Tomorrow.
No matter how much we need him to be.


...
another sorta recent one.
-andy

All Just the Same to the Chessboard

If it's all just the same to the Chessboard
then it doesn't really matter how many moves it takes
for all the everything you have in your hands
to get took away or tipped over and
sobbed about.
And the kids who say they're pawning you off
at the bar ain't never had to hawk a saxophone
for the five or fifteen minutes it took
to get fixed and then fucked
on the Far Side of a Bum Horse anyway.
All maybe just squawking junkies
without the genius.
So what does it matter
if the Board don't care?
Those Birds ain't never tasted True Blue
so fuck 'em.
Like it's all just the same to Paris
to Kasparov
to the Deepest Color of the Ocean or any simple sea
named after Whoever
where there's all that swimming and
all that sinking.
Where there's all those moves without
any fucker or computer keeping count
no clock to slap
aside from the sandy bottom you hit
or the crisp surface you break
or the reef that scrapes blood from your belly
to stink up the whole place and get it crazy
like it's all the just the same to space


...
decided to combat all that old with a little new. this is my most recent piece. i wrote it in a mad dash the other night at a bar (4100 in Silver Lake, to be precise) after a day of junk food and beer and whiskey with my brother and some friends. Not sure if any of that's relevant, but full disclosure seems to fit the theme of the poem, i suppose. so, in that spirit: we also went to Cha Cha Lounge and had Hungry Howie's pizza for lunch. and played Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 on the xbox. i mostly alternated between Thor and Luke Cage.

-andy

[An Experiment in Editing]: Ambassadors

[2003]:

Wrapped up in syntax and soap-bubble birth
vexed by spiders and sapphire blitzkrieg
in spirals
and some people drive through the
Midwest and get the fucked-up idea
that space is nothing more than
absence and lack
but voids attract activity with vacuous
velocity and i don't see too many
of you moving to Iowa.
So maybe the black hole is the coastal cityscape
skyscraper starships sucked
in and stuck
because the plains are so full
that mountains that try to reside there
are flattened and swallowed.
The Dakotas, Ojibwe, Oglala, Lakota
occupancy firecode
packed more than just passing through
can bite off and chew.
Their whole highway haunted
because celebrities are just
ghosts kept from leaving
the flesh by flashbulbs
and trapped motion
simulated by repetitive imagery
and the certainty of isolation may be
a murderous cretin
but what's more certain than steam under
streets and stories stacked statically above?
What's more bloodthirsty than that
concrete fact?
Displacement and misappropriation perhaps
but we spill and embezzle ourselves
like the guilty little fucks we are
and leave our homes empty
skeletons with only the memory of the
organs they held.
We hit those wormholes
and suffer whiplash at every attempt
to look back while leaving.
Maybe we are like the mountains and forests
that place doesn't need
or maybe we're all headed back there in
the end somehow anyway and just don't
notice
too concentrated on the step to be
concerned with the walk.
Expatriates, ambassadors, tourists, and



[2010]:

Some people drive through the Midwest
and get the fucked-up idea
that space is nothing more than
absence and lack
but voids attract activity with speed
and danger and
i don't see too many of you moving to Iowa.
So maybe the black hole is the coastal cityscape.
Skyscraper starships sucked in
and stuck.
Crashed in a vaccum inhaling
an infinite density and a collection of wreckage.
Maybe the plains are so full and thick
that mountains that try to reside there
are flattened and swallowed and
become the rich earth, become the wall
or get thrown out like there's a bottomless centrifuge.
Bounced like they violated the firecode of
the Ojibwe, the Dakotas, the Lakota, the Chippewa
the Oglala
and somebody had to go. We all had to go.
Maybe the occupancy is packed more than just-passing-through
can bite off and chew up and digest.
Those greedy jaws have eyes that dwarf their stomachs and
they don't get it. Don't eat healthy.
They gorge and choke - guts splitting at seams imagined
into place.
The Midwest knows when to say when
when to burp and excuse itself and catch a nap.
And the certainty of isolation may be
a murderous cretin, indeed
but what's more certain than steam under
streets and stories stacked statically atop
one after the other after another?
What's more inevitable than the fall?
What's more bloodthirsty than that
concrete fact?
Displacement and misappropriation perhaps
but we spill and embezzle ourselves
like the guilty fucks we are, like
somebody's gonna measure us by the markings
by the spaces we can fill elsewhere.
We leave our homes empty
skeletons with only the memory of the
organs they held.
We hit those wormholes
and suffer whiplash for every attempt
at backward glance, considering
our speed and our danger.
Maybe we are like the Mountains
who that place doesn't need.
Maybe we fucked around and got spit out
our wonderings too deadly and fast.
Too much to move around in a space already so full
of space itself. And we set to wandering
not because we wanted to.
But because the Midwest wanted to teach us a lesson
about sharing alike
and how to make room.
All piles lock arms with gravity.
All heaps struggle like all trajectories arc back
to the windless ground.
Maybe we're all headed back there in
the end anyway and just don't
notice
too concentrated on the step to be
concerned with the walk.
Expatriates, ambassadors, tourists, and


...
you may have noticed that i've been posting a lot of older pieces lately. in the process, as i type them in this little box here, i've been editing them - adding little fluorishes and cutting bits of fat. but i thought i'd try something a little different with this one. the seven-year-old version remains intact, exactly as one would find it in the notebook in which i originally scribbled it. for the remix, i just copied and pasted and then went through and fucked around with it. how does the comparison look? personally, i'm partial to the second version, but i still think it needs some work. it's a little chunky in some places, while a touch too frail in others. like popeye's arms, perhaps.

a note about the last line: whenever i read this one aloud, i would have a last noun after that "and"... i tried to improvise it, see how i was feeling that night, about that particular performance, etc. most often it was "corpses." i think once it was "insects" (which i rather like now) and only one time did i just leave it at the "and." some others i'm thinking of now include "attractions", "soulmates", "widows", and "carnivals."

oh, and about that beginning in the original version: i used to have this really annoying habit of just writing down random shit to get started on something. a lot of my poems from that era have these opening lines that have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the piece - subject or style. just verbal masturbation to get me warmed up, i guess.

-andy

An Ode to Chow Yun Fat

He's the Chinese Steve McQueen,
Pirouetting 'round bullets on my screen,
A concerned hitman,
A gun in each hand,
He washes his tortured soul clean.

He looks real cool in a suit and tie,
Maintaining panache as bullets fly,
He takes a deep breath,
As he's sized up by death,
And that badass spits right in its eye.


...
i wrote that when i was 17. for AP English. in High School. it's one of four or five poems i wrote for that class (including Haiku). the class that made me decide to start writing poetry. the class that made me want to be a poet. the other three that i can remember were about a break-up, with the death of blues legend Junior Wells as a backdrop, and my trombone - both sonnets (elizabethan and petrarchan), and a technopagnia about man's relationship with religion (in the shape of the Crucifixion).
one day, i will find and post the first poem i remember ever writing (i was 8-years-old and it was about Halloween).

thanks to Eneasz Brodski for randomly posting this thing on my facebook wall immediately after i updated with the "Under the Starzzzzz" piece. strange, indeed.

-andy

Under the Starzzzzz

I want to wake up to find myself
pissing off a helicopter who hovers
above Mt. Rushmore.
I want to fall asleep and
hit the forest floor running desperately
from the Huntress Ghosts of Long-Dead Loves
who try as they might, can't snort enough
antihistamines
or coke
to force my scent from their faces
I want a shitty U2 song blasting from a boombox
that I throw mercilessly against the
concrete knife-hand of a highway divider
surrounded by the burning rubber
twisted metal wreckage of a thousand brake pedals
pressed down just a fraction of a hesitated moment
too late to walk away from
while a mass choir candlelight vigil stands
in a semicircle, seventeen mouths deep
humming the elegiac chorus to
"Season of the Witch" by Donovan.

Fuck Dreams.
I want the waking world to be splashed
and peppered with hot sauce wrung from
the charred skeletons of burnt offerings
in sacrifice to a god too fat on tragedy
to fuck around with appetizers

But too often sunlight finds me taking
cold showers in the torrent of bad blood
gushing from the faucet-head slashed wrists and
throats of all the girls I've dated.
Or speaking about change, not proactively
not with confidence
but with all the hushed, remorseful dynamism
of eulogies for miscarriages
and abortions
to the arrhythmic din of a dozen hundred keyboards
clacking away without the slightest shred of consciousness
most notes in the symphony ghosted with
fluorescent sighs of defeat.

Bravo. Bravo. Author. Encore.
Encore.
White lie time sheets serving maximum sentences
on deathless stands.
Most mornings I'm a witness
heaving forged testimonies onto piles begging for the torch.
Most mornings I need to be swimming in whiskey & cola
just to gasp for air.
And if any of this seems pathetic, Congratulations.
You must not live with your parents.
You must not work a job that hates you.


...
i think this one is about three years old. maybe more. yeah. more. i've tweaked it by a word or two here or there. it's one of approximately five poems i wrote in the almost-two-year period that i last lived in Denver. the notebook i pulled the piece from is mostly large chunks of blank white, and i don't think i'll ever fill it. i leave it empty to remind me that late-2005-to-mid-2007 was not a prolific nor particularly proud time for me. i'm glad to be gone from there, though there are plenty of things about that time-and/or-place that i love. i'm glad i no longer live with my parents (though i do miss them often). and i'm glad i no longer work in a cubicle in an office building that acts like it wants me dead.

-andy

Crazy Brain & Skin

It's Crazy how
my Brain can still remember her Skin
how soft it feels, like
right down to the dead dust mites
the micrometer
It's fucking crazy.

It flips through the files quicker
than anything
and brings up her name and
there it is, right in the folder.
The Soft, Crazy Skin.
It points and clicks and drags and double-clicks and maximizes.
And all this while the rest of me doesn't work
lies limp like it never did anything
or just did way too much.
Like death, maybe, but barely breathing
through congestion and a crumbling atmosphere.

It's crazy how
it just runs through those stacks like
a library long after closing.
At Midnight, even.
It runs through those stacks, racing time
playing Hide'n'Seek with Dewey Decimal.
My Brain, forever It
grabbing titles from shelves
shuffling index cards and
listening to hollering
"Olly Olly Oxen Free" and
opening little drawers and
there's her Skin.
It finds her like research.

And it's true.
It's Crazy how I reach
through sleep
and touch a shoulder - a specific shoulder
under the covers and it's warm
but not hot
and there's a coolness in one area like
it didn't get quite covered completely.
But i knead there, and massage there
and that Skin responds and the coolness fades
under my fingerprints.
And she says something, smiling.
I can hear her giggle, even with her face full of pillow.

Crazy how that tangled mess of wires
soaked in slime and spackled gray and
pinched into my skull like that.
Crazy how it got that right.
The things fired and the other things fired back
and there were maybe some lights flashing
or sparks
and then, while i snored with my right arm like a chicken wing
under my head and the rest of me wrapped like a burrito in blankets
and then there was her Skin.
And I woke up with a Hard-On.