
2023 January 25

To stop myself thinking about it I bought an Arches 12 x 12 hot-press watercolor block which, if I’d thought about it instead of thinking I needed to buy it, is too big for the bed of the scanner I use so I can post the squares here and there and too big for the laminator I use so that the squares can be handled without fountain pen ink staining fingers, the above is the 12 x 12 cropped to 11 x 11, fine metajeffphors abound
The red blue yellow tubes of gouache L bought in Baltimore were in the same paper bag as the watercolor brushes I bought in Baltimore, uh-oh, not that I’m going to give up fountain pen and watercolor ink but maybe I don’t have to stain my hands each and every night with them, I broke my gouache duck, laugh!
I am the only Jeff I know.
I meet other Jeffs often
through work or Subaru
service managers who
insist their name is Jeffrey,
please don’t confuse me
with them, I’m not a James
who hates Jim or a Charles
who hates Charlie or a Robert
who hates Bob or a Margaret
who hates Peggy or a William
who hates Billy or a Stephen
Steve or Michael Mike
or David Dave or Edward Ted
or Eddie. Please call me Jeff.
I’m the only one I know.
*
Full disclosure: these *are* watercolor and ink and pencil on either regular graph paper or regular watercolor paper (Arches, yes, fuck me, the block does keep the paper from warping when drying), but to capture a closer image to what they look like wet (versus what they look like dry) I scan the dried on the office scanner/printer and enhance the colors using souped-up saturation and souped-up vividness and souped-up sharpness and souped-up resolution, I don’t consider this cheating given the limited skills of the artist for anything but lines and color but think I should mention it in case *you* think it’s cheating, fine metaphors abound
Now that I sit and type
where I sit and type
I sit and type
and justify buying
more particular model
pens, my vacation
mandated ink
infatuation
timer a tick till BEEP,
I will use them at work
not sitting and typing
on screen that I sit and type
at? in? on?
Two weeks same
house not ours
too much for the two of us
who were not too much
for the two of us
for the two weeks
just the two of us
My new old cobbles
Can’t in front of anyone
Who haven’t I told
we are the black flies
made screened porches required
fuck your expense. welts
DJ, the Bowie song, bleggalgaze anthem three
I didn’t type here yesterday and almost didn’t type here tonight
I disarmed impulse buying collected Jean Valentine
seizures ceased after eleventh poem library’s copy
diapered me
Fast infatuation then LOOK OVER THERE!
I void gold into shit
spit take, never
distill
If I thought my poetry ever be accepted by a big small deal I’dv’d foldered all abandoned haikus but don’t don’t but do but don’t not concession to lack of academic scaffolding laugh I know I type arrhythmic cadence as I talk This criticism and pride I forget what saying get to what new thing I say talking past new thing cause old already me voice mail whisperer lords I serve voice mail listener too re: PD hear myself talk each time I need listen, delete delete delete years since anyone talked to me. Monkeypox, huh
Not type night yet time
running out he taps Wiser
me still stops to think
instead of just typing
this counting to five focuses
abacus
me on beads for praise
Freight trains kettled in my bark
yards abbreviated
Hurtling, me. Outrage
outpaced by duh, paraphrase
daily. Spurtling me
Jeff, | Rule | Number | One: | Don’t | explain | |||||||||
Nothing | fucks | my | judgment | up | more | about | something | I | write | than | ||||
something | I | write | getting | thousands | instead | of | dozens | of | hits, | in | this | |||
case | Napoleon’s | death | announcement. | I | deleted | the | poem | below | this | |||||
one | from | yesterdays’ | BLCKDGRD | post, | for | the | record | I | like | the | poem | below | ||
Installed | static | in | its | place | ||||||||||
© | ® | ≠ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
P | l | e | a | s | e | d | w | i | t | h | t | o | d | a | y’ | s | p | o | o | p | |||||||||||
c | o | n | t | e | n | t | a | n | d | p | r | e | s | e | n | t | a | t | i | o | n | © | |||||||||
b | o | t | h, | f | a | r | t | M | i | c | h | i | g | a | n | ||||||||||||||||
® | © | ® | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© | o | u | t | o | f | m | y | s | y | s | t | e | m | ||||||||||||||||||
F | u | c | k | m | e | a | n | d | p | a | r | a | p | h | r | a | s | i | n | g | |||||||||||
m | e | a | n | d | p | r | e | t | e | n | d | i | n | g | ® | ||||||||||||||||
© | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
© | p | a | r | a | p | h | r | a | s | i | n | g | m | e | |||||||||||||||||
a | n | g | u | i | s | h | e | s | m | e, | m | y | m | o | l | e | s | k | i | n | e | s | © | ||||||||
f | r | o | m | 1 | 9 | 8 | 0 | © | |||||||||||||||||||||||
© | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
m | i | l | d | e | w | i | n | g | u | n | r | e | a | d | |||||||||||||||||
b | y | m | e, | t | h | a | n | k | y | o | u | f | o | r | p | i | n | g | i | n | g | ||||||||||
m | y | s | c | r | e | a | m | ! | W | o | r | l | d | d | y | i | n | g | |||||||||||||
® | © | ® | ≠ |
* | * | * | * | * | * | * | |||||
Kensington to Frederick to Hagerstown to Hancock to Breezewood to Toledo to Ann Arbor to Jackson | I divided my backpack to bring twice as much stuff including books I will not read and pens I will not use | I just received Jonathan Crary’s *Scorched Earth,* it’s his previous 24/7 capitalism theory on Are You Paying Attention! | do I need someone w proper academic scaffolding referring back to names I haven’t thought of since grad school | to confirm our species as fucked up as I’ve fucking yodeled since the last time you told me to shut the fuck up? | |||||||
* | * | * | * | * | * | * |
🡭 | ▨ | |||||||
why | not | try | to | get | ||||
a | few | published? | On | other | ||||
hand | why | not | not | yes | ? | |||
⇌ | 🡭 | |||||||
Incrimination? | ▨ | |||||||
what | a | daydream | of | success! | ||||
🡭 | ||||||||
arrested | haiku | |||||||
▨ | 🡭 | |||||||
I | abbreviate | |||||||
evaporate | abandon | |||||||
O | to | hear | you | clap | ||||
⇌ |
My let’s stay in touch with all past workers except Alexa now on them next
Let me make it on me please. I could be their dad, played one at work
My daughter’s birthday today, she moved away too
The minute you don’t work there you never worked there ever
An app called Classmates badgers me my 45th GHS reunion
approaching rapidly, see who’s RSVPeed
I’d not recognize the names of most, not greet the names I know
I choose not to give them $29.95 to see if I’m right
No one besides those that like
to be kind will kind any of the songs
I tweeted nor bump the album’s 40th
notice. I’ve been reading Carl
Phillips, this path out of haikus
does not preclude new haikus,
my not tapping knuckles and knuckle
valleys for thirty-one day months
I ask you to give the album a listen
if it doesn’t change your world I won’t
brain you with a garden shovel, I daydream
of braining certain people but so far
no one in real life, fart. I am programmed
to daydream I want to brain certain
people with a garden shovel so I don’t
brain anyone with any say over my life
Me in a Robert Serra at Glenstone, a rich fuck’s private art collection as laundromat but free, just need a reservation, usually need to make months in advance, it was Sunday morning an hour short because of clocks and the wind chill factor in the lows teens I was told on the eights so I what the fuck tried and got us in at 10AM, only slot open, Saul to Parkwood to Knowles turns to Strathmore to Rockville Pike to Tuckerman to Falls to Glen (the bridge over Watts Branch where Glen, South Glen, and Glen Mills meet still magic) to there | ||||||||||
Humanity cannot outgrow its death drive! | ||||||||||
Waltzing towards Armageddon | ||||||||||
This is a fossil-fuel war | ||||||||||
The epidemic of covid complacency | ||||||||||
Death of a political animal | ||||||||||
Not only the first museum we visited since plague and then not-plague plague, the only shitlord showoff laundromat I’ve ever visited that *didn’t* charge me for the privilege of admiring shitlord’s collection | ||||||||||
Low pay, no advancement opportunities | ||||||||||
⤋ | In which I jinx my reading of Wings | ⤋ | ||||||||
Henry James reviews America upon his return from self-exile | ||||||||||
I read Ohle’s *Motorman* and loved and ordered the next Mordenke novel but weirdest the sherbet I thought between the two *another* attempt at Henry James, so here I am jinxing not only the having fun! read of Wings of the Dove I am jinxing my reading of the next Mordenke of Ohle | ||||||||||
Shitlord loyal to their rubes, MLB edition | ||||||||||
Maggie’s weekly | { feuilleton }’s weekly | |||||||||
I will write about work here but for now I’m burying it in grids not because anyone who’d object reads but here is the Kids in the Hall allusion | ||||||||||
The cats and dogs of Istanbul | ||||||||||
Lynn Emanuel | Covering Ishiguro | |||||||||
Subaru hate and desperate I own a new Subaru |
a base model 2022 Impreza sedan one of only two new cars available |
plus Fitz did me right on the trade-in for fucked-up service on recall |
Too, try walk into a car dealership and buy a new car, cash in hand |
there will not be another new car in America until 2025 |
Bluetooth works there’s no CD-player |
console not a casino slot machine |
It made it to 70 on 270 today without shuddering |
I thought life in bro | ken kayfabe would be more fun | ||
idiot admits | |||
Nothing to say doesn’t stop me from saying something
Just because I say it out loud doesn’t mean I have to say it to you, here I am
Nothing to say is telling you something that you already know, nod
Everyone agrees we’re being reprogrammed I don’t tell you three times anymore
Disclaimer: I’ve no
academic scaffolding
so stop reading now
you want allusions
beyond those I discover
after abandon