Monday, August 30, 2010

The Rod Stewart of Spoken Word

My friend & former publisher Doug Saretsky bestowed that laurel upon me just about a decade ago.
I immediately embraced it & took it as a compliment precisely because it could be construed as an insult to most people. I knew what he meant, & it was what I was aiming for. I will spare you all my spiel about Rod Stewart in his Faces/Mod days & how bad ass he was. I will let you all continue to believe that The Rod has always been this foggy voiced charicature in leopard print spandex.
I enjoy my lone championing of his early catalog, I don't wish to see it muddled up with hipsters.

 I stopped blogging about the band specifically around the time we started playing our first shows. I had worries about how our live set would come across, how we would react on stage, how an audience would perceive us. It had been ages since I had done a live reading, & the rest of the band wasn't used to being on a stage either.
I was concerned we would freeze up, or stumble in our mistakes. I had never undergone a spoken word project that wasn't heavily reliant on improvisation. I didn't know if we could pull it off.
 It turns out all of my concerns were for naught.  We kill it live & manage to achieve something wholly unique in a city as musically diverse as Seattle.
 Sure, there were a few hiccups to work through at first, but after playing our first 5 shows, we are becoming better & more envisioned with each live performance.
We have 1 more date booked before we take some time off from playing live to concentrate on writing/recording.
The newly resurrected "Rod Stewart of Spoken Word" has to retreat to his chambers for a time, for he is not the persona that writes the material he performs. This dichotomy has to be a constant, what is written with such sorrow & trepidation has to be performed with so much confidence & vigor so the audience remains entertained.

This is a difficult process.
The poems have to remain earnest, the words have to come from the heart. In the end you are creating a product, but you have to use trickery so that it doesn't appear that way.
 I can read a poem live & not worry too much about word placement, but when going to print I tend to obsess over it. Without me being in control of how the syntax of the words are presented, I always have to make sure every metaphor is either hammered home, or remains suitably ambiguous. My 2 most successful chapbooks "Still Life With Drinks" & "Some Girls" each took me a year to edit properly. When I read them now, I want to redo entire pieces of each one. I suppose this is a common thing among writers, always worrying over the placement of 1 single word.
A simple stanza that could have come off better.
Upon sitting down to write for our upcoming recording, I find myself in a similar situation.


 This is my blog, I'm free to use ampersands if I choose & I revel in it. I am lazy after all, & it always seemed to me that getting the words down was always the important part, not the grammar or proper punctuation.
 What worries me the most right now is that I don't write much poetry anymore, I made a choice to write narrative non-fiction & that is what I enjoy.

 Writing poetry to me has always been an irrational art. The only thing that has to make sense in a poem is the emotion, & the poet is free to convey this however they see fit.  This was an easy process when I was depressed, when I was a drug addict, when I was moping about some lost love.
The problem now is that I'm not a depressed drug addict anymore. I don't love anyone, nor would I permit myself that distraction. And though that might sound a bit gloomy, I assure you that I am quite content with my personal life. I enjoy my alone time, & company or a drinking buddy is only really a phone call away.

The new poems are a slow, painful process. A lot like labor & every verse becomes like a maternal birth.
I'll get a stanza, a vignette I like, then sweat over it endlessly.
It's like when you make the decision to masturbate out of sheer boredom instead of neccessity.
& you beat it, & you stroke it for all it's worth & all you end up with is a fistful of perspiration.
Frustrated finally. You turn off the computer & walk to the bar.
your gait a bit askew from the chafe.

Poems are tricky little things. Done correctly they can take a life all their own & end up meaning vastly different things to people other than what the poet had intended. I hold my poetry to high standard & refuse to get on a stage & read crap. I'm not just representing myself up there anymore, I'm also representing 4 talented musicians that happen to also be my best friends.
I now have the time & I'm up to the challenge of writing a spectacular spoken word album. It's almost criminal that we play shows to mostly empty rooms. We all deserve better than that. Writing the material that my band deserves is my one focus at the moment, I have some ideas, we will have a product to better sell ourselves because that's what we are doing in the end.

The Rod Stewart of Spoken Word is a fun persona to inhibit, but he doesn't write the material, he just stands at the microphone stand with a beer in his hand, acting like it was no big deal to write that shit. The Rod Stewart of Spoken Words oozes nonchalant confidence. Michael Crossley sits alone in his room on a beautiful summer day worrying endlessly over a single stanza. Michael Crossley has an extraordinary opportunity that he's not going to blow this time around, so the words simply must come.

Monday September 20th at the High Dive, French Letters will have their last performance for 2010.

Aww, c'mon girl... Just one last time!

Monday, August 9, 2010

Cold Coffee Morning

Give me some semblance of understanding
on this nicotene tinged morning
help me muster the guts
it takes to spark conversation.

No longer naked, yet newly a stranger
eyes dart from ashtray, to window,
to saltshaker
avoiding the contact of my gaze.

I serve you a cup of coffee from across the table
you dabble with the spoon, add more sugar
avoiding the awkward talking
sparking another cigarette & shaking
out your match.

Last night we spoke in tongues
I learned your word for release
& I let it drip there, still warm.

You talked so much my head grew heavy
now a mere good morning
seems to make you demure
You were'nt so shy by the time "Wild horses"
was playing
your bra unlatched
a hand in your panties, diving for pearls.

I guess sometimes in the cold harsh light
of a hungover day
there is never really anything to say.

Monday, August 2, 2010

True Story

Names changed to protect myself.


                  Sweet & Lothario

  Lothario Jones was having a good day. The oppressive Midwestern summer heat was beginning to die down as September gradually surrendered to October. Autumn was his favorite season and the day was a perfect cloudless blue. He had just got paid. He had three days off and his newest poem was a success.
 He had been writing for years, submitting to the quarterlies and the magazines and the journals. At first the editors pushed back against his age, but it seemed lately that his youthful persistence was starting to pay off. The rejection slips had only steeled his desire to make it to print. Since early winter the previous year he had started appearing in the literary supplements. His name up there with the middling greats. Lyn Lyfshin... Robert Medina... Bob Holman... Sonja Sohn. Now Lothario Jones was among them in bold black & white 10 point Times New Roman. He had, as they say, arrived. His reception was better than even he had expected while working away at his Smith Corona night after night. Missed party after alienated girlfriend. Lost job after eviction notice. He knew in his heart he had it, whatever that elusive thing is that writers superstitiously cherish.
"One of the best new writers this decade," read his favorite blurb. And though the critic who heaped this laurel upon him was a relative unknown, he kept that part a secret when he showed the caption off to friends. Once he was in print, he stayed there. Submitting a new poem or prose piece to a certain magazine every month before their deadline and with the critics and the readership on his side it began to seem as if they saved a spot for him in each issue. The letters section in more than one of them had mentioned him and his name and address were always printed on the contributors page on the back.

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Because his name and address were always printed on the contributors page he had begun receiving mail from various readers. Sometimes praise or nit-picky criticism, but mostly unsolicited manuscripts from amateur poets hoping he could somehow get them published. He actually had no ties whatsoever to the publishing side of the business, but didn't mind reading through the manuscripts while on the toilet or drinking his morning coffee. It helped him keep an eye on the competition and gave him some confidence that no new wunderkind young poet was creeping up behind him in the rearview  .
 As he was checking the mail on his way out to get an evening beer at the bar down the block, it was precisely one of these tomes which had greeted him. He could tell by the paperback sized manila envelope plastered with 10-cent stamps, the handwriting a black blocky scrawl etched with a Sharpie like it was a logo for some Norwegian Death Metal band:
Lothario Jones (umlauts over the o's in his name)
138 Destination St.
Sincinnati Ohio (Oh God, Spelling Cincinnati with an "s" was jr. high stuff to him)
He ripped open the top of the envelope & shook out the chapbook. It was a copy shop publishing job that actually looked quite masterfully done production wise.
"DRINKING COFFEE AND MEGADEATH!" was the title that screamed at him from the cover of the zine. A hand drawn Starbucks logo with a skull for the woman's head & a finely detailed pentagram on the background. He tucked it under his arm and began his walk to the bar with something to read when he got there.

 Sweet Sawbuck had been on the road for four hours by the time she finally reached the Cincinnati city limits. She lived just south Of Chicago, a few blocks from Interstate 71 which would take her straight from her suburb to the outskirts of Southern Ohio. Like  one large artery that leads all the way from the heart to the brain and back up again.

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When she left south Chicago the day had been hot. The humidity was starting to leave the air, so it was more like being baked from straight sunlight. "Cooks more like an oven than a microwave," her ex-husband would say. Her ex-husband was always saying something, usually something stupid like that too. That's why he was her ex- husband. Sweet Sawbuck was a literary girl. Very literary. She needed a man of letters, a man who appreciated art over baseball. Books over motorcycles. A well-read man that could lie in bed after sex, spooning her and tousling her hair, reciting some poem the moment reminded him of. She was 27 years old and had been married for the last eight of them. Wasting away in that house with her ex. She only had so much time left. Besides, she deserved some excitement, some romance.
Sweet hit the blinker to pass into the exit lane and slowed down from a steady 85. Chicago to Cincinnati in four hours, she had made good time.
Early in the marriage her ex's motorcycle had excited her. She had a wanton notion that being behind him on that steel behemoth would sate her for the rest of her days, she was naive then, just out of high school. All of those years fell away like the miles on the road riding behind him on that bike. Things got predictable, her ex got predictable, for all of the excitement of having the wind in her hair while holding on to his ribs offered, she eventually figured out he never took it past 70 mph. Ever. That pussy, all of those nights on the open highway with not another car in sight. She'd dig her fingernails deeper and deeper into the flesh of his sides like it was a throttle. Praying for speed, hoping for collision.All of those years, waiting on a thrill that was always promised in the mail, but never came.
 



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 She pulled her little blue Honda into the Shell station off I-71. She needed to get some gas and another pack of Newports, maybe a snack or something. She'd driven straight through in a blank haze of determination and had forgotten to stop to eat. Well, at any rate she needed directions. She picked up her copy of Seasons Literary Quarterly from the front seat, flipped back to the contributors page and walked inside the service station.

 Not only had it been a good day for Lothario Jones, the night wasn't turning out half bad either. He had arrived at Junkers Tavern before happy hour was over and well before the place filled up for the evening.
 Junkers was a tavern like any other in Cincinnati's Northside Neighborhood. It was working class, built for function not luster. The jukebox had un-ironic country songs, the only neon lights to be seen on the whole strip was a simple orange OPEN sign that buzzed in it's ancient circuits every time the door was closed too hard. The walls were wood panel, the bumper on the bar a burgundy naughahide with brass rivets that ran it's length. This tavern had watered the Appalachians when they settled in droves around Cincinnati after coal went bust for oil during World War II. The surrounding auto factories kept their families here for generations. Undercutting labor had kept the cost of living low for decades, and when Ohio's creative class got pushed out of studios elsewhere in the city due to rising rents. They all began to move to Northside, the artists had an authenticity that seemed to blend right in. The working class bars were the hipster bars and vice versa.

 Lothario and the bartender took turns reading stanzas to one another from "DRINKING COFFEE AND MEGADEATH!"  Riffing over one in particular that became their theme for the next hour or so: 
 "I can never let go of my grasp on your soul. My hands are like Iron Spiders."

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 "What can that even mean?" The bartender would ask in indignation, seriously trying to decipher the metaphor.
Lothario, giggling through his pint glass could only shrug "Why did he capitalize Iron Spiders?"
And they would set off laughing again. Singing the stanza of the poem as if it were a British Invasion heavy metal song.
 When a customer down at the far end of the bar would order a drink, the bartender would pop the top off the bottle, holding it just out of reach, the customer grabbing, the bartender unyielding. Lothario would shout out, "He can't let go... His hands are Iron Spiders!" And they would both break into fresh peals of laughter as the customer, not in on the joke, walked away insulted.
 The late night crowd had started to flicker in. Glancing across the room Lothario counted four mechanics, still in their grease- stained blues and baseball caps with billeted bills. There were three girls in leather jackets, one with a fake fox stole around her neck and cowboy  boots. The other two wore several gold chains laced about with various pendants and sideways trucker hats. The effect was rockabilly hip-hop. Lothario admired all of these styles but he wasn't drunk enough to mingle with strangers; he wanted to get some writing done. The deadline for Seasons Literary Quarterly was coming up in a week. So he paid his tab & bade the bartender farewell. One final Iron Spider cast into the bar light as a friendly rejoinder.
 Lothario only lived a short jaunt from the bar. The night was so full, the concrete of the street still warm from the days heat mixing with the first hints of a chill in the early evening air. It seemed romantic, full of possibility. nights like this made the blood rush up into his head, he became instantly more aware as his senses quickened. He could taste the autumn

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ozone, feel the cloud dampened moon. He stopped in a tiny bodega for a six pack and some matches, then walked the few blocks back home.

 She had arrived at the three story brownstone around six in the evening. Cross referencing the address from the quarterly with the numbers on the surrounding buildings, she had found it with little effort. Parking her little blue Honda on a corner across the street she got out and walked to the door. There was a row of buzzers inlaid in a faux-brass plaque, the names of the residents listed in masking tape with their corresponding unit numbers.
She anxiously scanned the line, her heart giving a little jump of excitement when her eyes finally ran across the only one of interest to her: Jones, L. #308. Written out in blue ball point pen. That handwriting is the same as most of the others on the plaque, of course that's not his handwriting. He wrote in all caps and would always use black ink, that must of been the landlords illiterate scrawl. Without over thinking the situation, she took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer next to his name. She let go of the button and exhaled slowly through her mouth, the world didn't explode. She looked around with trepidation, nothing happened at all. She backed up a few paces and scanned the windows of the third floor. Nothing. She pressed the buzzer again, longer this time because she realized there was no intercom system, he would have to come down to answer the door. He would probably open up a window in his apartment first, stick his head out and look down at who was calling on him. He'd probably shout, "Hold on a minute, I'll be right down."
No, he'd say something much more clever than that. He just had to. She waited with a flagging anticipation for a few more moments before walking around the front of the brownstone to check it out.  It was a very writerly type of residence, dingy red bricks with an ornate white wooden trim around the windows. She could imagine the stories this building could tell, being so old. The lives of it's residents calling out from the fixtures

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Like old ghosts. She realized she could see every window on the third floor from the corner where her car was parked. If she waited for him to come home, she would see him when he got here. She walked back across the street to wait.
 Sitting in the passenger side of her little blue Honda, she began flipping through the literary quarterlies to pass the time. re-reading her favorite one two or three times to let it really sink in. It was one of Lothario's sex poems entitled "Undulations(Sweet & Low)". She lilted into her favorite daydream, where the title is an anagram of both of their names and the both of them are together at a dinner party with all of these literary folks, professors, publishers, and other writers. Lothario begins telling the story of how he met her, and she always interrupts at the same time in the story to explain how it was this poem that had given her the guts to just do it... Just drive to his house and meet him one day. Of course they fell in love and one thing led to another and now here they are "Just like Tess and Raymond Carver" Lothario always finished, "She really saved my life."  The male party guests always laughing with hearty snorts, their wives fawning like it was the most romantic thing ever imagined.
Sweet must have dozed off in the passenger seat, because the next thing she knew the street lamps were on and there was still no light from the third story windows. She suddenly felt self conscious sitting in the passenger seat of her own car, and switched back over to the drivers side. Where the Hell could he be? Hopefully not with a girl. Why hadn't she even considered that? She cursed her poor planning, she cursed her rotten luck. Maybe her ex was right after all. She "wasn't realistic. didn't take other peoples feelings into consideration when she wanted something." God, she hated that speech. She hated her ex, and she wasn't that fond of herself either. She was going to go get something to eat, maybe think this whole situation through a little more when a young man wearing a black leather jacket

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And carrying a six pack of beer strutted by, took a right turn at the corner and started reaching for keys. Was that him? Her heart jumped into her throat, then both her heart and her throat beat their way to her head. Any clarity of the last few moments was suddenly gone. What should she do? Make sure the third floor lights go on? Run the risk of him not answering? Was that even him?
She made a decision right then, it colluded with the decision she had made that morning when she got in her car and drove to Ohio. I am going to make this happen. She got out of the car and hurried over to the door where the young man was reaching for the lock.
Hi.
Hey.
Do you know Lothario Jones?
I... Am Lothario Jones.
Wow. Really? Okay... This is going to sound crazy but. I gotta just say it. I started reading your poems in Seasons, then in Hearth, then I started seeing you in Burning Sun. I love your writing. I really wanted to meet you. That doesn't sound too crazy does it? I mean, I'm just a fan, you can't have many. Oh, don't take that the wrong way. I just meant because you're new. I'm certain you have lots of fans.
Okay, cool. Do you want to come in? I mean I have a few beers...
Yes please!
Cool.

 Lothario holds open the door for her, she steps in gingerly. Following him up the staircase she notices his walk, world weary yet confident. Exactly how she knew he would walk. He's cute too. A little dirty and he could use a shave, but she likes fixer-uppers, it makes it like a project. She likes projects. They get to apartment #308 and Lothario lets her in.

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 The hallway leads into the kitchen. The fixtures are early twentieth century, a steam radiator sits out from the wall. Fruit flies cast a crazy halo above a garbage can overflowing with beer cans. There are piles of pen and ink drawings, half finished canvas' lean against the wall. on the kitchen table is an empty mason jar and a Smith Corona typewriter. Lothario hands her a beer and leads her into the living room/bedroom.
Sweet scans the room with eyes the size of radar dishes. There are bookcases full of films, bookcases full of records laid cover to cover, bookcases full of books and magazines. There are milk crates overflowing with cassette tapes, stacks of cd's leaning on one another like rummies, little caches of weapons, and pens. Every corner in the room has a pen, for when you need to jot down an important thought, and you can do it right there. Why hadn't she thought of that? The room is like a living museum of popular culture and she wants to get in and explore. She takes a seat next to him on the sofa. Pulls the tab on her can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and searches for something to say now that she's here.

 Lothario looks at the girl seated beside him. She's cute. Not really his type, a bit too mousy, a bit too safe. Safe might not be the word, she did come to his house to meet him after all. He figured on getting some writing done tonight, but he does suppose that you always need to do research too. To be a good writer. He just figured that she'd be more outgoing, that's how she seemed out on the sidewalk when he had let her in. She's just sitting here, staring at the walls looking real uncomfortable. It's probably all of the knives, he thinks, got to remember to put these things away. Think of something to say to her, she is your only fan. That should make it easy. Somehow it makes it harder.
He finishes his beer, asks her if she would like another as he rises from the sofa.
She finishes it in one long swallow and nods yes... Yes she would please.


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 Opening the refrigerator, he goes down on one knee, trying desperately to pull himself together. What does she expect of me? I'm supposed to be saying all of these brilliant things. I'm just sitting there letting this all go by. I'm going to blow it. This might be the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. A stranger finding me on the merit of my writing. I have to say something. We can't just sit there silent on the couch. You created this persona man, now you have to realize it.
 upon walking back in the room he asks,
So. Are you a writer too?
  The tension was too much. The pressure too much among all of the tiny hairline fractures along it's structure. The floodgates burst. Sweet erupts as Lothario hands her another beer.
She divulges, and the more she tells the better she feels so she just goes with it.
 The divorce, from a lifelong lover, ever since high school. The writing classes, the nitwit classmates, the worthless workshops. And always, always this unrequited passion. This desire for romance, authenticity, abandon. After separating from her husband, deciding she was going to start submitting work. Did some research, but never got the guts. She did come across Lothario though. Thought at first he was okay at best. Kept reading as he gained confidence. It's like she knew him all her life, grew with him in those pages. Now that nothing is holding her back any longer, she's taking another chance. Chance taking is the new theme in her life these days. She just wanted to do it. So she could say she had.
Now she can say she drove four hundred and fifty miles to meet her favorite poet, wasn't that something after all? Then she got her and got in and she suddenly doesn't know how to act. What to say. Who's your favorite writer anyway?



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 Lothario was a little tipsy at this point to be sure. He was not however drunk enough to consider taking advantage of this girl that was now in his apartment for the night. She obviously didn't have any place to stay, and he couldn't let her drive home to Chicago after the day she'd just detailed to him. A persona could just stay a persona he reasoned to himself. This lady is  unhappy and sort of lonely.
 He watched the profile of her lower lip in the lamplight as they drank more beers. It shuddered more often than not. It kept giving him the impression she was going to break into sobs. He needed to get her off of the life story. He went to put on a record. They agreed on Let It Bleed. She asked if she could look at his notebooks since they were lying there anyway. He admitted his favorite writer was Steinbeck and he steeled himself for the usual scolding that usually accompanied such a phrase but it never came. He enjoyed her company, mostly because she mollycoddled even what he knew to be banal stanzas from his notebook. They had a good discussion about Sylvia Plath. Sweet even shared one of her own verses recited from memory about the Bell Jar and he was talking about Robert Lowell when the record ended and he got up to flip it over.

 When he turned back around to go back to the sofa, Sweet had already taken her shirt off and was working on the button of her jeans.
"Oh, girl I don't know. I think maybe we ought to just keep talking."
She slid her pants off from the ankle and stood up. Walking towards him.
He attempted to back up, but he was up against a wall and he knew it.
She pulled him to her by his belt and started fumbling with the buckle, tried to resist but she was so soft. Her hair smelled like apples. The plateau's and valleys of her body pressing through his T-shirt.


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And holding her like a wounded sparrow in the cup of his hands. He found himself aroused.

 Lothario Jones woke up alone the next morning. Sweater tongued and dry. The record player was spinning in an endless procession on a tiny flaw it had found. Mick Jaggers voice saying "You Got...You Got...You Got" on an infinite loop.
Sweet Sawbuck was nowhere to be found. He walked into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. He smacked the fruit flies out of his face as he turned on the faucet and sat down behind the Smith Corona.
It was a good day. He had two more days off, he had just got paid, and he was finally in the quarterlies.