In my office, with no window, trying to remember the Sea

black, green and purple,
fat, cold clouds and sounds
white noise. the definition of white noise.

motion caught in amber waves
jagged cheeks drooling sleepy
eyes down onto the tared shore

unshaven cliffs with a flattop
of crooked grass that overlooks
the most endless image of life

and of nothing at once, a partial
unison of creation, those currents
that let us live and produce

such Neanderthalic sentences as these
but when you hear those seaguls and you
close your eyes. there is dover.

there is Nagaskai. There is the Sunset.
There is your home, in the middle of
a soup of all of life that, from above

really and truly looks like flat nothings

A Tongue Atop Teeth

On my way home
from a sunrise concert
at the cemetery
in Hollywood,

I stopped to get breakfast
after staying up all night.
I ordered the "Abuelita"
which came with salad
that had onions on it and,
a Cafe con Leche.

a Sunday Morning at the
Grand Casino on Main
in Culver City

so
while grading student's papers
in my sleepless state
I chip, not one but two, of my
front fucking teeth on my fork

can you believe that.
just stick to one thing at a
time Jason. just one thing
at a time.

For Emma, Forever Ago

Latest News, OCT. 2
Hi Everybody and Anyone,

It..s me and I am posting to just let all/some know what is and will be going on (with me). I have been planning to go west from Raleigh, NC for a small while. Plans have changed and re-changed, been modified, sanctified, pooped on, laughed at, etc. But I believe its all happening now.


At first I was waiting to finish a record I have been recording since late March, with a band named Nola, from here in Raleigh. I signed on to work on this project because I really fucking love this band. Their songwriting is what made the transition between home and North Carolina possible, in an emotional context, of course. We recorded 15 or 16 songs, I can..t remember now, and very long story short, we have ended up with 11 and over the last 3 or 4 weeks we have spent many, many full days mixing and making last minute changes. I am putting the last versions to disk today. I, we, are very proud. For about what Nola will be up to, check up with them, at myspace.com/nolaband. They don..t update their news as much as anybody should, but they will be busy trying to talk with labels and such over the next months. Watch out.


I was also working on an EP with a band named Gambling The Muse from Carborro, NC, next to Chapel Hill. This project was really fun and a really good chance to get to know complete strangers and turn them into friends. We finished up their stuff last Friday. Please check up them at myspace.com/gamblingthemuse.


So, the plan was to pack up a uhual trailer and head either to San Fransisco or Northern Wisconsin. Money made The Bay nothing but a impossibility, for now. Shit, I really wanted to see where the craigslist offices were. Anyways, perhaps and most certainly, the latter will prove to be more necessary and meaningful: 80 acres of forest in Dunn County, a cabin my father built in ..79, an outhouse, and another even smaller cabin my family, especially my Father, has been putting work into over 3 years. My dad had a great tumble working on this cabin this summer that put him in the Hospital for 21 days. My mom took him up there the day after he got home, just so he could scribble more plans on napkins and legal pads; plans to finish the fucker. The fucker that is my destination. My place of refuge, from nothing terrible, but refuge nonetheless.


Like I was saying the plan was... to leave around thursday last week. We had pretty much landed on the Gambling The Muse and Nola records and all my shit was packed up and me and my closest friends had worked our way through a few cases of High Life and had a good ..last-night-in-raleigh-for-a-while.. on my porch. But, I got a call from my friend Ivan, who plays guitar and sings in the Rosebuds, from Raleigh and Merge Records, asking if I wouldn..t come in and help out finishing recording their next album. I couldn..t say no, seeing how Ivan and Kelly play in one of the most polished and talented pop bands that I have ever heard. They are fucking great. So, over the next few days, we will be finishing the vocals and guitars on a record that I will feel very proud to have been a part of. My great friend Mark Paulsen (Ticonderoga) will be taking all the stuff and mixing it over the next month or two.


So, for me, I will be ..probably.. be heading out sometime this week. It has been a year in Raleigh that is been both very challenging, hard and even unpleasent for me at times; but the amount of growth, and experience, and positive gain... cannot begin to be measured. I am so thankful to the people that I have encountered, met, befriended, worked with, played with, lived with.


My trip... is not a move. It feels closer to a retreat. I do not plan on playing any shows for a while. I do not plan on having a plan, or second destination. I do not plan on doing much of anything but stomping around in freezing October mud for 6 weeks, or some amount of time. I don..t know what will happen after that. That is really, and truly the first time in my life that I can say that. No idea. I have been meaning to take this trip for a while.



I am sitting in the very coffee shop that Heather, Phil, Keil, Brad (these people, oh my god...so, so important to me ) and I visited in early 2005, prior to moving here, writing about leaving. I am listening to really old favorite of mine; a live Lyle Lovett record where Rickie Lee Jones comes to stage in the middle of the song, and crowd makes it..s proverbial cheer mid-line of Lyle..s. ..Well the boys of North Dakota, they drink Whiskey for thier fun... The cowboys down in Texas polish up their guns... they look across the border... to learn the ways of love...
A guy outside, who was walking pretty fast, slowed down behind a teenage kid with a mustache, who was taking up the whole sidewalk.



I..ll hear from you and you..ll hear from me, I..m sure.

so much love to all,

Justin

Cup O.. Joe, Monday October, 2nd, 2006, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Fairly Early

4 hours of sleep.
a class to teach in 19 minutes.
72 degrees.
60 students.
1375 hairs on the back of my left hand.
no time.
18 minutes left before class
10 minutes before I head to the room.
26 steps from my office to the class.
47 times I've blinked while writing this.
5 feedbags for the horse on Pershing ave, beside the
country store, with the large metal chicken on the roof,
across (well a few miles) from the church, in Tuscany,
Pennsylvania.
87 travelers waiting to take off there shoes
in Heathrows terminal 4, most on the way to Dubai
for Holiday, trying to catch the slippery tail of
a sunset summer.
9032 records in there sleeves and dust jackets,
sitting in a warehouse in Hollywood, without a
needle for miles.
5 golden rings
2 minutes before I stand up and turn off this dumbfounding
machine to teach private university students how to be
good, successful college students. Something they might know
better than I do.
1 single solitary voice that scratches like a weasel from
these electrically spaced pages. That man who is like the fourth
character in the Wizard of Oz. Courage, Heart, Brains and friends.
where were you today? why didn't you call?

Literally, the same number of people will read this. I chant in the dark.

From Dust to Digital or The High-Jump

that's a quick way to make
a poem smell. like a waddling
black and white skunk under
the deck while you duskly
sip your sweet tea.
sweet tea like you.
the reverse video image of
eating an over-rip peach
where the pieces of flesh
reattach from the corners
of your teeth. the brown
syrup strings back into
your lips and against the
feverish fruit skin. a kiss
released.

now, you, pick up
your hand and place two fingers
against your lips and slide
slide them down toward your chin.
feel the sweet dance of ridges on
your fingers against the lip's outer
rim. and close your eyes because life
life doesn't give you much more
than this.

On Letting Go

Letting go of a weekend day
like releasing the rope holding the treasure
chest into the sea. You can hear the wish
of those brown-braids slipping your grasp
and then a "KahPlush" that the precious
moment-filled chest makes, confirming its
descent.

sprint to the ship's side and watch
the flattened image of that heavy golden box
get more and more blue and darkened black
and shudder into that saline abyss.

How do you dive after a weekend day
and try to save it?
Do you try to do nothing and wait around
with the chest tied to the mast
or do you open it and let all the contents
out, spending all your time at once.

My chest of golden moments is being loosely
held with one hand and the other is jerking
the pen across the page trying to arouse
a little impotent moment before the lid
lifts open and it's priceless life/contents
pour into your sea and I am left with an
empty chest, a new week and this poem.

creamland

jinks
a tongue twisted talking talcum
licking lapped-up hub
a bathwater silt
time's itching inch
an alleycat answer awkwardly
scratching the pond-skimmer's
plankton. a toothed film
12mm of decay and film
of sludge. filth and sick.

janks
dead and dried hair
in seaweeded strands
pulled up the esophagus
slitting the whale's dangling
voice with insect ropes and
brown protein floss. surfing up
the pallet's walls to rub and
tickle like knives
or leaves of grass right
on the roof inside
that pink and purple mouth

(with no time at all,
you will find that jonks
and junks would come,
but that time has
sanded out and i've found
much more important things
to do. Like catch up with
old friends. Not new ones
like you. we will talk
again soon. cough cough.)

I'll Let That One Slide

When I see God
peering down from my eight-year old
vision of him. The golden constellation
that sunlight cumulus cloud. He sees me
in the dark with the spider-
man nightlite praying to him
to bring me a friend that
wouln't tease me. Who wouldn't
make fun of my wussy swing
at the plate. the kind that would
make a grappling hook out of
string and paperclips.
the kind that would sneak
into the older brother's
room to steal his playboys
and tuck them into my underwear
elastic to crawl army-style
back to the lamp-lit glow
of un-understood sex. The kind you
know you are supposed to like
but you honestly don't really care. not yet.
I want the kind of friend who will never care,
the kind who will look at me
like I was supposed to look at those 80s-haired
magazines. The kind of friend who I will hug
and won't hug me back because
of gnawing; too afraid and too new.
The kind that would ask
"If you had to kiss a boy, like actually
really had to, or else... would you kiss me?"
The kind who would play-fight with me
at the top of the ferriswheel over looking
the pacific. The kind who would tackle me
on the playground and lick
my face if I got caught. the kind I would dare
to kiss me while underwater in
my grandparent's pool, blue-bottomed.
The kind, in junior high, would be the first
to yell "faggot" at the theaterkids in gymclass.
The kind I could dance with and laugh with and love and
not be afraid. for once, I wouldn't need the nightlite. The
kind who could stay over with me and we would talk about pretend
girls, but really be talking about eachother.
The kind that would get to the top of the roop
and look down at me and wink. at me. just at me.

God. Let my eight-year-old self have that. then maybe,
just maybe, I could be myself.

Glass

"I am a man traveling down a road
leading to nowhere.
A man lost in a cold and stupid
dream and still I dream openly."

is it escape or is it liberation? an escape to become sane?
which is the escape. I don't know.

applause. cheers. laughter. taking a bow.

and he steps onto the stage for a standing ovation.



the sea for the shore of nova scotia. his pant leg like a flag.

roll credits.

-

4 wives! operas! 4 children! continents! Ravi Shankar! A documentary!

Philip! WAKE UP. wake up Philip.

those poor sleepless nights
that your son Zach has thinking about you
and how you won't call him
or anyone.

Your office is still a mess and your music
your pounds and pounds of sheetmusic
for woody allen, even.

don't mean shit if you don't
call your son. and listen.
let him talk and actually
i mean really get into the
grit or listening. be
joyful for your son and
show him you care by asking
him about his life. Your
grandkids for godsake.
where the fuck have you
been. and whatever dream
you need to live, imagine
a way to die. you've created
your whole world from listening
ask it. HOW DO I DIE?