Denver, Colorado

it feels like we weren’t even there, as if nothing happened.
like we stayed in a hotel and then rode on out. right now there’s only four of us in the van, mike had to fly out to a naca conference so he’ll meet up with us in flagstaff, and derrick rejoins us this evening in amarillo, so it’s just me, baz, buddy, and dan. our family is so small right now.

the show last night was a little disappointing. we had rented out a space called the bug theatre. we showed up and it’s a lovely space, 100-150, longer than it is wider, the stage is a just a big black box, 3 feet high and deep, with a tall red curtained entranceway at the back of it. “like i’m in a david lynch movie” buddy said. it cost us 250 to rent out. at 10 bucks a head, we made out with 50 dollars. yup. in a community of poetry like denver, and on top of that a community in which all of us are known pretty well, and a community all of us hold dear, we only had a 30 person audience. and in regards to a showing from the poetry community, maybe ten of that audience were of that. i love denver and i don’t slight anyone anything, i know i dropped the ball on my own word of mouth, and the show was only cemented down a week or so ago, but it’s still a little disappointing to leave one of one’s favorite places with feeling like you were never even there.

we stayed outside of denver in aurora. dan and i went downtown to go to the bank and scope for shoes and dan delaney joined up with us. he’s a cool kid, good people. we joined us back at the hotel when we all went to chipotle. he also opened for us, along with ken arkind. dan did a piece about a deaf girl that serves him coffee and ken did a piece about los angeles, a personafied love poem to that city. i love ken. that’s a beautiful man. he’s going through some stuff right now.
it’ll be alright though ken. remember and always do: you are loved.

it was good to see him as it always is. also good to see katie, matty z., jenn rinaldi, mr. delaney, brendan from youth speaks and the other youth speaks kids. this kid brendan gave me a copy of his book, i first met him when i toured through denver two years ago with sarah.he’s a precious and sometime awkward kid with poetry in his eyes and a strong voice that knows how to write. good to see him.
also, there was a girl oceana there, who i had met a few years ago at green acre Baha’i school out in maine, after the black men’s gathering. turns out she moved to denver from salt lake city a month ago and somehow met dan, he told her about the show and she came out. small world. after the show, dan and mikey went out to some tavern with the denver crew, but me and the other two went back to retire. i talked to sarah and went to sleep where i dreamed about playing ping pong at the black men’s gathering, joking around and playing ping pong with a basketball.

i was also shown that in the passenger side sunvisor, trapped inside the vanity mirror’s clasped flap, are several bunny grahams, crammed in there by buddy, waiting for an unsuspecting derrick brown to open and be filled with bunniness. just now, driving down I-25 south, baz turned to buddy and said: “did you shave this morning? cuz you have a cut or something right there?” motioning to buddy’s cheek. buddy lifted his head to check it out in the vanity mirror and was filled with bunniness.

we have the new radiohead playing and the desert outside of us. the mountains small and the clouds large flat and smiling larger. there are pancakes out there to be eaten.

Omaha, Nebraska

last night was the omaha show at the omaha healing arts center. it was good. after my first poem, i was backstage transcribing my poem milos to read it, as without derrick we are all doing extra poems. while doing that, there was a guy from the audience back there on his phone. he came over to me and asked if i would say hello to the girl he was talking to and handed me the phone, she was in prison serving a life sentence. i didn’t really know what to say with that information.
“hello”
“hi”
“how’re..you.. doing?” ?
“hanging in there”
“you do that”

i felt like an idiot. but the guy eric, thought that it would be cool and that she might like, so.

with no derrick, we played one of his tracks off of cd, kurosawa champagne, which we all come in towards the end to sing with him and to pantomime typewriting, which we did last night too with his disembodied voice. the fucker wasn’t even there and he still sold more then a hundred dollars of merch.

afterwards a bunch of us went to old chicago and mike and i split a tai pizza, which was pretty good. it was very sweet tasting. then dan and mike went to stay with dan’s folks and buddy, baz and i went with sarahliz to stay at her folks. baz, sarahliz and i stayed up a bit talking, talked to sarah on the phone, she’s thinking of leaving her job and heading back to portland, she is terribly lonely down there. she may come up to the bay and ride with us up to oregon, if it’s alright with the guys.

last night i slept in a room with my choice of two beds. i chose the one that had bedsheets with the Shirt Tails on them, it was a cartoon from the early part of my childhood, circa 1980-82.
woke to the sun outside my window and wind in the trees. it’s finally starting to feel a little like fall.

Chicago: Day 3

the next day ann takes me to the conservatory and we walk amongst pretty and unique plants, some giant dinosaur ones. there’s a cactus room. it rules.there’s also a bunch of mosaic sculptures from a french artist whose name i can’t remember; they’re amazing. they’re beautiful and large and are people and creatures and whole such weight to them. they are glorious. afterwards we go get sandwiches and lemon tea and sit down at the five corners near the damen stop and eat, then get up and walk to quimby’s. i get a unicorn zine for sarah. ann than drops me off at the restaurant that joel, beth, derrick, and amanda are eating breakfast at, adn drives to the airport to see our friend billy there on a layover. the five of us go see the darjeeling limited. it was alright. not bad but nothing amazing. felt like a short story, like wes anderson maybe just wanted to make something while working on something else or to not be bored. then we headed to the biograph for the show.

it was good, a lot of fun. 60-70 people. nice space. there was a set on stage, so as buddy mentioned, it felt like def jam. hehe. samandar and andalib were there which was great to see them. as well as the chicago community: molly, kay, alvin. robbie and tim came late as they had a show at the mill. also frank bonam! whoo hoo! shake dust frank! shake dust!

afterwards we all went to clark’s and i ate eggs and potatoes and toast and a chocolate milkshake. i would have liked to stay in the city another night, but to avoid morning traffic we headed to baz’s folks’ house in the burbs. mike and i camped on the office floor, where baz’s dad has a wall sized book shelf continuing a giant marx brother’s collection. baz said it used to fill a room.
it's awe some.

Chicago: Day 2

the next day dan, buddy and i jump in a canoe and row on the lake. i share with the m about crew in college. onshore i work on music and poetry. i come up with some music to go behind a recording of mine. i like it. outside is perfect. empty. clear. their are trees and birds and air and the world sits calmly. i jump in the can with dan and derrick to drive to chicago. derrick’s lady friend amanda and a girl named alyssa that we met in oneonta is are both coming into town, so while the rest of the gang stays at the lake until our show on sunday, i accompany the boys into the city.
we take derrick to joel’s. joel and beth made shirts to wear to greet us. beth’s says: show us your tits. with the tits scratched out and words instead. we see their new apartment. it’s really cute with dark wood and a sun room. i ride with dan to pick up alyssa and then we meet the gang for sushi, my friend ann and her friend sara join us. i have my first “delicious” piece of sushi: a california crunch roll, crab, rice, avocado with fried batter around it. after dinner, dan and alyssa decide to head back to the cabin but i don’t feel like driving three hours back to nature, just to sleep, so i go with ann to crash at her house. it’s good to see her. i haven’t seen her since new orleans, probably three years ago, maybe two, regardless, it’s been a spell. we used to sometimes ride bikes around town at night and watch movies. new orleans is a warm place.

ann lives in a giant warehouse in the middle of nowhere. it’s awesome. i walk up the stairs with her and am greeted with a large office floor where all the doors have wrinkled windows in them. it’s not zoned for living but has been converted. rent is less than 400 bucks a month. i wanna move in.

Chicago: Day 1

we left buffalo.
we drove till michigan. we stopped for dinner so buddy could see his best friend and her husband and hold his brand new godchild.
derrick’s not doing too good. he spent the better part of this drive laying in the back seat with his head in my lap. outside the window this land lays dark.

we leave michigan and keep driving until we’re a few hours away from the chi-town. we’re going to a cottage on the lake that our boy sully is staying at and has invited us out. we drive down small roads and make each other scared by talking about what is out there and if it will kill us. buddy and i are in the back back and look out the window to suddenly see nothing but a pair of headlights right behind us. we turn wideyed at one another and almost poop in fear but just laugh because we have the same thought. five minutes later we look behind us, the car is gone. nothing. raaarrgghhh......

we turn into the woods, it’s as black as a cat.
we pull up to two cabins.
it smells like leaves burning.
i stay up till 3 and go to sleep on the couch
while outside
sully and his friends stand around a fire drinking and jumping through the flames.

Buffalo, New York

never been to buffalo. i only think of vincent gallo when i think of it.
it was pretty. we arrived at gabrielle’s home, her street is lovely with lovely homes on it. the show was a lot of fun. it was set for 8 but there were maybe five people there. we couldn’t really understand it, then we looked again at the paper’s write up, it said october tenth as opposed to the fifth. when we started the show we had 17 people in the crowd. and it ruled. we gave them all that we had and we had a really great great time. the guys had been fed drinks from the bartender eric throughout the show, so they were a litttle drunken by the time we left the venue. eric shared with us his profuse thanks, he wouldn’t except any money from anyone in the bar the whole night. he told me that he had come into work today like any other, a little hungover, expecting to just make some drinks, make a few bucks, he knew something was happening tonight but he figured it’d be whatever. what he got he said, was a religious experience. he’s a writer as well, and the night’s show changed him, was a spiritual happening and he couldn’t bring himself to ask for any money after having something like that surrounding him. it was really sweet and really nice to hear.

we all went back to gabrielle’s afterwards. this cat james that i had met when i passed through ithaca a month ago, came up from his school about an hour and a half away from buffalo, and he hung as well. we sat around making my dick is so big jokes.*
once folks left, we crashed in the livingroom on couches and floors, popped in the 40 year old virgin and fell asleep.

*said in a voice that's a mix of elvis and jesse jackson, and utterly cocky:
My dick is so big, I had sex with the Grand Canyon and lubed it with history.

Westechester, New York

morning gig at the westchester community college, arranged by our good pal zork. we did two one hour sessions, performing a stack of poems and taking questions afterwards. it went really well, a lot better than we were expecting.
it was in a lecture hall, with the chairs going up stadium style, and us performing at the bottom. the wings were two short staircases going down. while waiting dan was attacked kissy face style by a fan of his and during the set, derrick, hidden in the stairwell, showed mike his “brain.”
afterwards, unfortunately, we had to hustle the shit out as we had a gig way in fredonia located in way north new york.

Circle of Hope, Philly

the space was in a church located upstairs off the streets in the city. it’s a really lovely space. very unassuming and unimposing and welcoming. hardwood floors, white walls, it looks like a loft gallery. it feels tolerant. most of the crowd were high schoolers that came courtesy of a teacher friend of i believe derrick’s. andrea (gibson) was there.

my boy aaron also came on out. we went to SCAD together and he was part of the couch crew in portland before moving back home to philly. he has a website called interview-press.com, which houses his interview records record label, that puts out his crazy wild interviews of different themes and subjects, and his cartoons, which include his sketch-reporting and amongst those, the sketches he took of the sparrows during our show.
also there, my old friend jessie bowley, now schlabach, a girl i dated back in savannah, ga, who incidentally dated aaron right before me (amongst the craziness of THE CONTEST, a competition between aaron and myself to see who was the bigger ladies man, as in proving that the other one was said bigger ladies man. we each wanted to prove to the other that we were the bigger dweeb). so it was interesting that the three of us were chilling there talking it up after the show. would have liked to have hung out more, but we needed to get a jump on the road and start heading to westchester so we would be there in the morning for our AM gig the following day.
so after saying bye to aaron and jessie, i joined the guys as we rocked out with the cold war kids’ hospital bed, with derrick on drums, buddy on keyboard, dan on a bongo drum, mike on tambourine, and me doing something. following that jam session, we screamed our way through 1947 by neutral milk hotel while playing bumper cars with the metal chairs of the room, pushing them speedily across the room, ramming them into one another.

let’s roll.

Providence, Rhode Island

400+ kids came.

been wanting to visit providence for five years now and i finally got to see it. it totally is the savannah of the north. we pulled up to brown university there was a line in front of the door curling down the walkway an hour before the show started. on a sunday. and most of the kids there never having gone to a spoken word event. it ruled. it really was a great show, one of the best so far (and as i write this more then a week after the show, still is). put on by sarah kay and phillip kaye (both japanese-jewish poets of the same age with family from orange county and both with siblings respectively named phillip and sarah. wtf. they’re best friends and are awesome.)

before the show we ate thanksgiving sandwiches at the meeting st. cafe and i got a brown shirt, a german winter flap cap, and a blue and white striped long sleeved russian navy shirt at a cheap surplus store.

after the show the wonderful and amazing kit cooked dinner for us the. a bunch of the boston kids came up, so we dined with kate, brian ellis, casey, and eamon was there as well. i love these northbeasters. love them. utterly. they are beautiful songs that will always sound good when you hear them on the radio, bringing beautifuller pictures of tener memories into you.

in the morning we had breakfast with the kay(e)s. i had raspberry pancakes. time to go to philly.