
2023 May Awoogahexsix

I glue these back to back, one object with two rotating sides (so eight awoogahexes), this is the other side of the previous awoogahex
Excrutiating,
waiting for saturated
cold press block to dry
Exasperating
warping then saturated
happy accidents
I claim my idea
Bliss. I’ve three canvases sop
pingwet, teaching my
self blue so I can
teach myself green, awooga
my cataclysmic
pacifier, boop, thumb
in my canary elbow
of weathervane an
kle of cassandra
merkin of fool. Digit
al type while gouache dries
The other side of the below
It doesn’t occur
to me to write poetry
when I can paint. I
bliss watching paint dry:
shit will never be better
than wettest. I
see me finger-painting
ten-thirty to eleven
every other week
Saturdays struggling
to remember my name. I’m
not writing but should
I can’t be a cir
cle, I try, lose the haiku
pushing it at you
Above, what my right eye sees, below, my left
A vomit is an extreme burp
I once consoled Billy Wayne
busy extreme burping on my shoe
I need to start a new elephant
note page for March but was
afraid I’d forget this poem’s first
sentence formatting another
month in a platform I’d rather
paint bricks than use. No
abacuses were used in the how
old are you Jeff the gimmick
rictus of this poem. I’m growing
ON MY FIRST CHAPTER
FAULKNER’S *AS I LAY DYING*
INFATUATION
Adze: needed google
preindustrial handheld
tool’s meaning, he types
Strongest proof of god
is that I can’t sing, second
proof I can’t draw shit
I not only can
nap now I need nap or I’m
feebler than new borns
I lose my balance
opening the dishwasher
Still love steep mountains
up but steep mountains
down now no, fucking hurts, knees
yes, eyes more, can’t see
where feet go, will I
kill myself deliberately
or “stumble” to my
death, a soccer team’s
shirt has joint you can bet my
death over/under
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 | ||||
⇌ |