April Fool's Eve

at the portland airport:
heading to new orleans.
show on saturday.
austin on tuesday. show tuesday night for their slamoff.
arkansas on wednesday. show at hendrix that evening.
returning on thursday, april 10th.

pumped to spend the week home in the south. sit at the rue. work on poster and t-shirt stuff for the junkyard tour, as well as booking shows for that. also work on some writing and on the screenplay. also ride bikes and dance at 80's night.
come to me, sun and crawfish.

Amarillo, Texas

we enter texas and with it the flies enter our van. suns of bitches.
amarillos’ show is in this community type center on the land of this giant church complex. the promoter is this great guy by the name of kelly. decent turnout. derrick is huge in amarillo, he’s swarmed after the show. there’s also this woman there i met at nationals who in austin informed me that even though she’s married, she’s in love with me. she’s my number one texas fan.

after the show, a bunch of us hang out in the room off of the space where we performed. there’s like 3 pool tables, a fooz and ping pong table, some basketball cages, a fenced off skate ramp area and multi monitor video game console. it was nuts. we played a lot. then headed out to our hotel 2 hours away to get a jump on our long drive to flagstaff the following day.

outside it is flat and black. it smells like hay. we arrive at the hotel. outside it feels magical. a strong breeze. feels like the kind of wind that comes in off the coast into the arms of a city like morocco or tangiers or someplace down south, straddling the worlds of north south and central america. the kind of wind that brings something with it, danger, intrigue, espionage, adventure...i don’t know. stars. there’s none in the sky, but the kind of breeze you wanna stand in until one comes walking up to you to ask for a cigarette. you hand it one, it walks off. you wonder if you’re awake asleep or dreaming. maybe all three. i feel like running forever.

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.

Worcester and Jamaica Plains, Massachusets

in worcester. awesome. fucking great show. we remembered to have fun again, and upped the ante. we’re starting to find our groove i feel, it’s falling into place. mike cried after the show. brian ellis and simone came from boston for the show which was pretty sweet. i wanted to hang out afterwards, cool folks, cute girls but i had to leave the gang and ride back to boston with brian so i could fly out to charleston the following day for the naca south conference. brian and i spent the ride talking about poetry and him telling me about his job at this gourmet grocery store where one of the guys is an wine and cheese enthusiast and was so pumped about brian being a poet that he had brian share work at the wine/cheese class he teaches, to add to the experience for the participants. it was pretty funny. also brian shared with me about how with truffles, truffle buyers keep secret the truffle hunters of tiny truffle towns from other truffle buyers and there is all this intrigue with it. i’m relatively anti-foodi, but that sounds so fascinating i want to research and write a story about it.
upon arrival in boston, we headed to jamaican plains and to brian’s home, the Whitehaus, which is a 3 story abode houses 11 individuals and a shitload of instruments, musicmaking, creativity, and love.
i slept on one of the several couches, in the main living room that houses the house’s weekly event “The Hoot,” short for hootenanny, where crowds of folks show up to participate and enjoy and share a myriad of things from music playing to poetry to fire breathing to puppetry to whatever, sky writing. in the cradle of a drum kit, a rhodes organ, 4 electric guitars, two acoustics, a couple basses, some toy pianos and a glockenspiel, and under a white comforter i fell into a lovely sleep.

the next morning brian was already gone for work so i walked into the kitchen and met kate, adam, brian, and john deuce. kate was making french toast out of old scones and they invited me to join them for breakfast, which i did, which was delicious, and which amongst that john had a guitar and kate a ukulele and the two of them started harmonizing on a song of john’s called don’t cry mama which was beautiful and which adam came in later on a flute. we then moved into the big room and kate jumped on the rhodes piano and the started working on a different song of john’s. unfortunately i needed to hightail it out of there to catch a plane, so i packed up my bag walked to the train and rode it to the logan airport to fly to charleston, completely in love with my first experience of the whitehaus.

Oneonta, New York

again gorgeous countryside we drove through. huge sweeping valleys to the left of the van as we curved through the land, withe mountains scattered with orange and red leaves through the green trees. upon arrival at the school we headed to the house we were staying in. it was sweet. next to the dean’s house, it’s an old school place filled with lime green shag carpeting across the bottom floor, and cute rooms upstairs, everything decorated from with fifities furniture, and a world map painted on the upstairs wall.








my room.


good show. we remembered to have fun and we scrapped the story transitions and smoothed out the show and brought the energy and handclaps to the opening. shorter show, cuz of time restraints but still successful. afterwards we went to a party at somebody’s house and the fellas got snackered. we also had a freestyle session in the van consisting of the chorus: balls balls he sucks his own balls.

it was interesting, the party. the bathroom was filled with pictures of jeff goldblum.

one forgets that there are kids out there that really respect and adore one’s work. we’re all just, as derrick puts it, guys trying to make the rent. and we were just chilling post show with some cool kids, but these kids were telling us thanks for one of the best and happiest nights of their live and it was “thanks” but we’re all just folks hanging out. but i realized that if when in college after i first heard jeffrey mcdaniel read, if jeff had come out and hung with me and my friends afterwards, yes that night would have been forever ingrained in my head as mad rulage. it’s just weird to realize that to some people out there, one is their j. mcdaniel. that feels weird to write that down.

when we left the party and headed home, there was a drizzle in the air, shine on the streets and between the sky and the streetlights, the night was an orange blanket, still. a whisper. a closed library with no walls. a sleeping book, a stack of them. we are all growing up.

the following day we went to the baseball hall of fame. our friend ben couch works there and got us in for free. i'm not a big baseball fan but it was still pretty interesting.



honus wagner, one of the first five inductees said:
"There ain't much to being a ballplayer, if you're a ballplayer."

Hiram, Ohio

driving to hiram was gorgeous. the sloping green banking the roads. i wanted to buy a house and some land out there and stay and eat and write and stare and live.
a big blocky house with white paint peeling and the bones of wood scraping out from underneath its skin, keep company with ghosts. pick apples. play the guitar. run through the rain kiss outside climb trees stay up till dawn getting drunk on candles and pots catching leaks. build a fence around nothing.

our show was way off. it was in a small ballroom for crowd of maybe 30. in an attempt to craft a story of solomon sparrow to weave through the evening, we have shaved off time for so much poetry, and the energy lags, and felt like sloppy community theatre, and with a low energy crowd, we weren’t too happy with our show, but we learned a lot from it, and folks still enjoyed it.
after bringing stuff down to the van, the sky opened up and poured it iself all over the streets. POURED itself. buckets. we sat in the van and three shirtless jocks jogged past like smiling phantoms while a man stood across the street from us, still as a statue which we thought he was till he turned and freaked us out, standing there getting soaked. we went and got some grub with a couple of teh student organizers, will and jenn. burgers for a buck with a beverage purchase. sweet.
we stayed in the hiram inn, supposedly haunted. a sweet house inn with tasty old school dark wood four post beds and robes. derrick and i pimped out in them. baz and dan's room however looked like the beach house room of a seven year old girl decorated by her grandparents, with one large bed with a pink peach bedspread, yellow pastel walls, and white wicker chairs. our room however had beautiful victorian looking wallpaper with green illustrations of crests and huntsmen and lions and hounds. slept beautifully.

West Virginia

day off today. we headed to ohio by way of west virginia. stopped at cracker barrel adn stayed the night in charleston. last time i stayed in charleston west virginia, it was after one of the worst nights of my life.

two years ago i was on tour and sarah was with me. we were in west virginia and we were planning on calling an early evening, staying in the hotel and watching tv till we fell asleep. it was gonna rule.
so we stopped probably 100-150 miles before charleston but we couldn't find a room at the exit we took, and could not find a hotel room anywhere at said exit cuz there was some car race in the area that night. so we hopped back on the highway and took the opposite side of the exit which took us way off the interstate, still couldn't find a room, so we continued on one of those small highways like 19 or 20 that took us to another small town and another hotel that was full. by this time it was 2 hours after where we originally wanted to be and we weren't quite sure where we even were.

we then tried to find our way back to the road but couldn't, winding deeper into deep w virginia, came across a convenience store that seemed like some shady shit was about to go down in right before we came in. they gave us directions, telling us the entrance for the highway was just down the road 15-20 minutes away. we thanked them then proceeded to drive for the next 45 minutes through the dark ass hills curving through lightless black with no signs and nothing to tell us we were going the right way except for the hope of that man's directions, while wondering if they were faulty directions in order to be waylayed. it was a horrible hour of fear and tears and confusion and not having any fucking idea if we were heading straight or further into the abyss. we finally came upon the highway hopped on and kept on driving till we made it to charleston, saw a motel 6 lied about how many people were in our room, stumbled into it and feeling like little pieces of tired shit, fell asleep.
the following morning we did have a great and cheap breakfast though.

nothing like that this time. we stopped at the cracker barrel for dinner. drove a little further to charleston and called it a night.

Greenville, South Carolina

good show in greenville.
the space was little and felt like a one room church in the south. partially the crowd partially the pews for seating.
it felt like it was beginning to be a revival, handclaps, umhms, shadows of amens scurrying through us all.
there was also a q and a afterwards.
fun was had.

soooooooo.... there are these dares that we do.
they are not spoken of. whoever is in the postition to pass on the next dare, writes it down and passes it to someone. the dares are more subtle then one's usual dare, they are not to be justified, not terribly crazy, done so it may be something tht actually happened. derrick taking off his shirt in the savannah bar was a dare. in atlanta, dan took off his shirt and lotioned his chest in the middle of a conversation. backstage before the show, derrick passed me one that said i had to ask some people where the belt shop is and talk about how loose my pants on and i need to eat more, then in the conversation my pants have to drop, i am embarassed and apologize. noted

afterwards we went to this sweet basement bar named meathead’s that had OFFICIAL paper football, with the football triangle actually stitched leather and tables with a football field on them and portable end zone goal posts.



people come in there in the afternoons to practice for their leagues apparently. also super cheap and super good food.
i went upstairs to talk to sarah, she got a tarot card deck and is going to read my future over the phone. also across the street at the karaoke bar, sounds of someone that seemed like they may be a frat broh was belting out jump by kriss kross.

back downstairs, mike karate chopped buddy's chilli dog. it went everywhere.
before we left i talked with some folks and asked them where the belt shop was. they knew of none, one of them suggested, bless his heart taking twine from the bar and using that. i had difficulty with the pant droppage, asi don't wear baggy pants anymore, so i had to have them sit below my ass holding them up wiht my hand and wiggle my body out of them till they fell, i sheepishly apologized and pulled them up. then we left.
on the street dan derrick and buddy dropped their pants and walked the block in said state. we hopped in the van and headed to the hotel.

Savannah, Georgia

instilled on the road today was roadstop buddies where we each have a buddy that we trade off each roadstop buying gifts for. mine is dan.







it started with mike getting derrick a hackeysack hat












and then derrick getting mike an FBI cap.
Firm Believer In JESUS.

our original show here in savannah was cancelled due to lack of ticket sales and/or promotion, but the promoter got us a show at a smaller venue, the coffeehouse the sentient bean, which incidentally was the place i had my last and farewell show before i moved away from savannah five years ago, and was also the place that i last read in savannah when last i stopped through 3 years ago.

when we hit savannah my heart was beating and warming turning smiling and slowly dancing, opening it’s eyes with smiles to enter a city that i know where to turn and to see what and know directions through and i recognize as arms that held me though long ago, for o so long. the trees dripping low and the familiar streets i biked through for hours that bled into days letting the ink of that city soak into me, writing what is was all over my insides. how i love this city.

though a smaller show, it was great, we had a lot of fun, warm audience, sold merch, got free good food. hallie, allyson’s friend, was able to come out for the show, which was nice as she’s cool. and funny. and cute.
also ray and barbara rudolph, two Baha’is of the savannah community, came out with their granddaughter lily, who’s father martin had only just been married, when i left. it would have been nice to see martin, but i got to meet his wife the following day at devotionals.
after the show the sparrows met up with an old high school friend of dan’s and her friends, who all go to savannah state or armstrong, i forget.
got a cold slice from vinnie’s and this made me very happy! !!!
then i remembered that my friend tiffany lives here and i had forgotten to call her. i left a message, we headed to a bar, then i got a text from tiffany asking where i was, told her, she called me, told me she was in the alley coming towards the bar i was at, i went outside, saw a silhouette approaching a couple hundred feet away, i ran towards it and there was my old friend tiffany reising, who i worked at the mellow mushroom and who i went on a date with and who would spend many a talk with thinking and talking about art and what it meant to us and how we were trying to find it and we hugged and it was wonderful to see her, particularly as i found out, she no longer lives in georgia but in nyc and only happened to be in savannah only for tonight and was flying out at 7 am back to ny, how deliciously serendipitous! we talked in the alley, and then she went back to join her friend and i went back to join mine. this thing we stumble through is sometimes so nice.



we hung out for a spell, derrick took off his shirt and swung it around, we headed out, ran into tiffany again and walked her part of the way to her hotel, jumped in the van and headed to my boy darrell’s house. he’s a savannah Baha’i and my brother. we went to brazil together and he opened his home to all of us. it’s so great to see him holding it down, he’s a real estate entrepreneur and has 10-14 properties now, but more then that he’s doing it by helping out impoverished folks in danger of losing their homes.

the next morning he, and i along with derrick and buddy went to devotionals at the Baha’i center. it was so wonderful to be there. derrick was feeling under, so buddy and i shared a couple of poems each, and when i did shake the dust, i could barely make it through it, i had started crying so much from giving it to a body of people who were so important to me for so very long and after so very long, it felt like i was coming home, but for only a short while, as right after we had to book it and get on the road.


the sun is out. we are driving through the south. there are small highways and telephone wires kissing the sky. this thing i love. warm breeze like a naked arm. a window down. trees bleeding behind us,

Atlanta, Georgia

first show
a little clunky, pretty good, some work is needed though
saw stephanie, which was nice
hung out with allyson and slept on the couch at hers and jay’s house. it was fantabulous getting to see them.
their house and dog are super cute.



derrick introduces us to sandwich karate: any “sandwich” or rather any main course you eat with your hands, burger, burrito, taco, fried chicken, pizza, etc., is open for chopping and punching. once the eater touches any part of it, it is fair game for Hiyahs, unless the eater has shielded it. a shield can consist of anything, a napkin, a bottlecap, whatever, so long as it has been vocally dubbed a shield and placed on part of the meal. this protects the food from being chopped when not in the eater’s hands.

Seventh Day

Tuesday

1. with derrick at work, the four of us, after getting groceries, started working shake the dust and searching at midnight group pieces, and trying to figure out the show’s transitions. buddy and i worked some on a little ditty with the piano.

2. derrick came home, we played horseshoes, and went to dinner. had catfish, mashed potatoes, and sweet tea. awesome. derrick and buddy on d’s motorcycle led the way through the beautiful nashville countryside, with dan, mike, and i following in derrick’s car. it was gorgeous out there; rolling slopes, pastures, winding road and telephone poles, the pink orange of the setting sun spilling through the woods, cresting over the hills, bleeding in the blueclay sky, i filmed a lot, following the lines of telephone wires speeding through the sky point to point, pole to pole.

3. came home and stayed up late figuring this show’s order. it’s a mind fuck, balancing all these poems and balancing and varying the poets, the themes and feel of the different acts. sigh. we almost have it.

4. stayed up later talking with sarah, i have decisions i need to make. double sigh.

Sixth Day

Monday

1. kim took me to LAX. (as a side note, kim rules for her super graciousness and hospitality, it was really nice getting to see her) turns out i forgot my phone in the car. snaps.

2. flight: a moment of the worst turbulence i’ve ever had. the plane suddenly dropped, like it felt like we were falling, it was brief but then kept going, tilting and flying to the side and falling some more, people out of their seats flailing and scrambling for their chairs, the girl next to me clutching the armrest in an iron grip. i expected the masks to fall. the captain said it was just a patch of wonkiness. still gave me weird dreams of us landing crashing through treetops with some old woman sitting in a chair on a snow covered tarmac regardless of us landing there.

3. layover in charlotte: a woman sits down across from me. she’s on a phone, all of a sudden she’s screaming as this guy comes up to her, telling him to get the hell away from her, like belting the shit. they exchanged words, him telling her she was a dram queen and fake, and her going back to her phone call telling either a person or a voicemail how much she loved him and that he was her true love soulmate. she and the other guy got back into it at the ticket counter. seemed like maybe they vacationed together and it didn’t work out between them, and he was pissed that maybe he had purchased her ticket? when i was getting on my plan, i overheard the workers at the other ticket counter say something like: if i had gotten a girls’ name tattooed on me on vacation i’d be upset too.

4. with no phone, i had no idea what the pick up plan was in nashville and no way to contact my boys. all i could do was wait and call my pops to have him email the guys to let them know i didn’t have my phone. sat until thankfully the gang pulled up, derrick, mike, dan and buddy. we’re all finally here and together. we drove out to derrick’s old house in the country. derrick is moving so he’s at the new place and this house is empty, so after talking some about the show derrick went home, the four of us hung and retired. this is really exciting, i can’t believe this is actually happening.