poet, interviewer, musician, traveler
Four Rooms
Each month I pay nearly half my income
to a rich person I’ve never met
for the privilege of four rooms:
a living room/kitchen, a bathroom,
a laundry closet, a bedroom.
We evolved in a garden.
We built a concrete box.
/ / /
4 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
Waiting To Write At Night
means pulling lines from a foggy brain
via weary eyeballs, tired fingers,
down to an indistinct page.
means scrawled handwriting,
a puzzle to figure out
in the indifferent light of morning.
means trading the hopeful muse of day
for the crafty, destructive
muse of darkness.
And now: to sleep,
hoping in the morning to connect
with a version of the writer
already lost to time.
/ / /
3 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
Devices
You’d probably never see me again,
left to my own devices.
Those being books and records
and movies and TV shows.
I’d brick up the door,
close the blinds,
put on my comfy pants,
snuggle the cat,
wait for the storm.
In the world as it is,
there are too many other people
to learn how to mix mortar.
In the world as it is,
I am a shield, a sword, a megaphone.
Those are my devices.
I am duty bound to use them.
/ / /
2 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
The Next Pretty Note
Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding”
plays on a loop in my head,
even as Stephanie and I
pause
to diagnose what the kitten
might have just knocked over
out in the living room.
Chet Baker, late in life,
approaching the fall
that would kill him,
plays the most incredible solo
on “Shipbuilding” – including,
at one point, a delay pedal
that makes him sound
like a choir of trumpets.
I used to know a guy
who played with Chet:
“Everybody always wondered
what he was thinking to play
as beautifully as he did.
He once told me: ‘I’m just looking
for the next pretty note.’”
Meanwhile, in the living room,
Something else falls.
/ / /
1 January 2025
Charlottesville VA