i'm sorry darlings
i hit my snooze button for
another three months

& this sharp corner
morning an unexpected
elbow in my gut

desperate desires:
stay home all day in blankets
watch deer from window

my diligent
avoidances

& i am endlessly
consumed by such
an energetic ennui

what time
i waste
waiting
for when
i'll want it

kissed a ghost
for that moment
it had gravity
stronger than
his conversation

informed yet
deforming & i
didn't deserve a
lustre longer

but i caught
a bit of his tongue
& felt redeemed
like some rogue
jury letting a
scoundrel go

cradled in this cold
crook of winter's long night limb
weaving a few words

a web of
slow notes
cradles but
cannot keep me

slip
skip

2 a.m. trip
through plains
of bored playlists

flirt with insomniac
guide meditation
too light
not right

for crossed wires

a synapse snap
blew my snooze fuse

so buried beneath
this crashwave of
tripped circuit breakers

in the thick
of thin hours
o what viscous
thoughts & what
vast waded spaces

i've laid hold upon
a hideyhole home
halfway

up a mountain
midst woods
& wild wanders

its sentinel calico
dark atop a thin
trunk pedestal
over-shoulder
surveyed me

shadow sphinx
still let me past

& deer desperate
for summer dregs
dare at the doorstep
among a deciduous dusk

twirling

my favorite aunt
starved herself
to death in throes
of acute early
onset alzheimer's

brain & body
inverted
devoured
themselves

we buried her today
but bid goodbye
a ways back

maybe it was
better she looked
so like & unlike herself

i held a barely there
bony hand &

remembered

a beau geste
of bullshit at best

to translate
this world
thru myself

rearrange
little rows
of letters
just so

so surely one
might surmise
i must on

some level
mean
something

a shorter
search term for

how to heap
understanding

or patience
or space
or all

of the above

to be fallible
& human
& real

in real places

a history
of augean
attempts

to achieve
arrival at

a place
where we
feel our feet
under us

enough

to say
what we
wanted to

if not vacation
at least a
swimup desk

lazy float limbs
film a surface
like leftover lily

leaves & i am now
some symbiont
of this too-hot
pool still more

cool than all that
overhead ocean
of desert air

too hot to not
let him logroll &
sink me sans a
shriek or splash

i feel
too much
like less

ultraviolet
revelries writhe atop grit
with saltwet licked limbs

how little
things are
thought on

from september

day's fervid breath
summons sweat
& beads left little
hairs tacky upon
my hot neck like
6 year-old post-
finger-food lunch
fingers vicegrip
in this so-called
adult hand beside
a busy street back
to a highway hotel
on a last gasp (read:
dying fever breath) of
summer september day

this secret
sometimes
setback is
i never plan
a poem

this cold
contraction
of autumn days

our diminish
anxiety begets
a sort of scrap
& scramble

number supplies
name demons

we hoard & hide
a winterworth of
what may warm us

heated arguments
hot tears & a forge
full of all our irons
left unstruck

turn tossed
& insomnia's
attenuate fingers
tangle intent
in my intestines

i unwind three
quilts to half-
covered one
leg free finds
& fixates on

each chill still
curling around
these confused
corners of a
chaos bed

earworm

There's a sky full of lights
And none of them stars
But each white, silvery flicker's
A faithful reminder to us
Of a weight that's in youth
That makes a dick of us all
If it happened today
Then it's probably happened before
In a crowd unfamiliar
I just wanna touch a familiar face
And make friends at the parties I've feared
The likes of an age
To be wanted with truth
And make formidable love
See light in myself
That I see inside everyone else I know
It's not a lacking of spine
Nor of physical pulse
It's just a feeling of distance
Akin to a feeling of loss
Of love in the youth
Of my limited life
That passed in a violent
And ritual screwing inside
And the years unfamiliar
Are made of increasingly digital days
And I am grieving the loss of myself
With frightening malaise
When there's weightless in youth
And the sum of it's small
Just stand in the darkness
And laugh with your heel on its throat
'Cause not everything means something, honey
So say the unsayable
Say the most human of things
And if everything is temporary
I will bear the unbearable
Terrible triteness of being
Alone in my house
Frozen in time
But don't get me wrong now, honey
I am trying
There's a warmth in the eyes
And a clearness of thought
When the deepest of sighs
And the frankest of shadows are gone
We're pushing a stone
Up a mountainous waste
And the lines at the store
Look like lines on a beautiful face
See, I'm not so assured
Nor unusually strong
Or outstandingly brave
I'm more just fumbling around in the dark
For the bulk of my day
When there's weight that's in youth
And the sum of it's small
I will stand in the darkness
And laugh with my heel on its throat
And not everything means something, honey
So say the unsayable
Say the most human of things
And if everything is temporary
I will bear the unbearable
Terrible triteness of being
Alone in my house
Frozen away
But don't get me wrong now, honey
I'm okay
Ah, cast me a line
Ah honey, cast me a line
Won't you fear me tonight?
Goddamn, do you fear me tonight?
Ah, pass me a light
Ah honey, pass me a light
Won't you feel me tonight?
Goddamn do you feel me tonight?
'Cause not everything means something, honey
So say the unsayable
Say the most human of things
If everything is temporary
I will bear the unbearable
Terrible triteness of being

a decade's ghost
hangs immediate
before my eyes for
some 4 a.m. reason

pulls memories like
breath from my lungs

my lost familiar
tigerstriped & untame
on some plane

on walkabout forever
he waits for my
mind made up

or he finally mauls
us both in a cage
we might've called home

today's brittle edges
flake away follow

ticks through
moments

moments through
hours & i shuffle

ginger through
onionskin pages

of purplebled
typewriter ink
trailing bygone

names through
bygone legalese
leases & sales

& their deals
& their bodies
bygone

but the land
remains

awoke to my
skull in vicegrip

morning's jaw
clenched tight

every minute
another tooth

& sunlight its
fetid breath

i summit
page piques
of curiosity

improv iotas

observe
each rivulet
ramble each
eluvial epithet

what words
will withstand
wind & a wash

accumulations
of weather
plus gravity

unsui
in situ

o how each
dry driftwood bone
in my limbs

at summer's onset

flares lavender with
a saltburn longing
for lost seas

maybe chaos
is just what
nature ordered

soothsung notes
reverberate on
familiar wavelengths

cup & pearlesce
dark half-shell days

a comfort drown
in such depths
of sound

to disjoint
a few lines
reaction
mined

or a voice i'll
ever only half-hear

& regret

all i want to listen to lately is jason molina and his music. he was so, so talented. his music speaks to me, reverberates on familiar wavelengths, cups and pearlesces dark half-shell feelings. if i could only listen to one album for the rest of my life, right now, it would probably be his album "let me go let me go let me go."

so.

this week's non-shuffle is marooned by pink floyd on repeat forever

daily fury
i futile
carve spaces
for silence

out of black
smother
walls made

out of all
this unnecessary
noise this
new world way

of everyone
with so much
nothing
to say

ghosted my poet
in lieu of escape
in view of landscape

no room in a rut
for more than morose
halfhung heart blips

a decrescendo
of no more words tho

my bitty
word blurbs
burbling

skip not slip knots

can't drive feat. mammals by l d r u

peach (onono remix) by broods

gotta go by kelso

cold by the northern folk

i fed the horse by broads

shuffle full play on delay

hoodlum by dallas woods feat. jerome farah

future loser by upsidedownhead feat. e^st

here we go again by sahara beck

we all die young by the decemberists

premonition by eels

oh my darlings
these ruts &
troughs
daily
divots of
deprecation

let this pen or
finger be a
shovel
&
scoop
out perfect
page holes to

hold how
little
we
think
of ourselves

up all night
watching vids
of other people
sleepwalking

neural pathways
twistwine & i
am sunk in snow
out for a walk

shiver testing
that thin ice of
warm thoughts

pathetically cold
consigned to life in
boomerang limbo

always oscillating
twixt poles & pulls
emotional magnet
-ism or a wait
of wavelengths

top tracks of 2018

here it is... the ever unanticipated top tracks of 2018 list. all my newfound favorites from the past year, with the highest rate of play, in alphabetical order by song title this year...

• 1+1(feat. zoe randell) by ryan downey
• all your love by flight facilities & dustin tebbutt
• challenger by the kite string tangle
• chasing gold by dustin tebbutt
• city looks pretty by courtney barnett
• cry me a river by methyl ethyl
• dinosaurs by ruby fields
• evergreen by the kite string tangle & dustin tebbutt
• falling apart by emma louise
• famous (2.0 dan the automator on the magic fader) by superorganism
• freakin' out by safia
• give it time by the kite string tangle
• a hard rain's a-gonna fall by laura marling
• heart breath magik by amnion
• the heights of trees by the kite string tangle
• hesitate by golden vessel & emerson leif
• i haven't been taking care of myself by alex lahey
• i said hi by amy shark
• i'm good by wafia
• judy garland by frog
• listening in by dr. dog
• livin' by keep shelly in athens
• love is blind by dustin tebbutt
• (lover) you don't treat me no good by chet faker
• make me uncomfortable by seavera
• mistake by middle kids
• new slang by vallis alps
• no place by rufus del sol
• once in my life by the decemberists
• only love by wafia
• pay no mind by beach house
• the perfect life does not exist by ball park music
• praise you (the kite string tangle remix) by fatboy slim
• running by ryan downey
• single, no return by ten fé
• society by ainslie willis
• stuck in orbit (feat. buoy) by what so not
• sucker's prayer by the decemberists
• sweet release by hockey dad
• take it to heart by odette
• this thing we got by the kite string tangle
• those eyes that answer by ryan downey
• through the night by vancouver sleep clinic
• time by gretta ray
• utopia by vancouver sleep clinic
• we all die young by the decemberists
• weekends by amy shark
• when i am old by augie march
• wish you well by emma louise

a new new year's shuffle

a resolution i can accomplish. give the skip button back & leave the tune turns to the void. this week, survey says:

the nosebleed section by hilltop hoods

this life turned out
nothing like i had planned
why not? By now
i should’ve had some land
some money in my hand,
'round about fifty grand
but i got nothing,
i write rhymes on the bus
i keep suffering;
f--- the lines of the dust
you keep sniffing,
that shit is for the punk hoes
this shit is for my bros,
my people in the front row



waiting room by fugazi

i wait, i wait, i wait, i wait
my time is like water down a drain
everybody's moving,
everybody's moving,
everybody's moving, moving, moving, moving
please don't leave me to remain
i'm in the waiting room, i don't want the news
i cannot use it
i don't want the news
i won't live by it



and she was by talking heads

and she was lying in the grass
and she could hear the highway breathing
and she could see a nearby factory
she's making sure she is not dreaming
see the lights of a neighbor's house
now she's starting to rise
take a minute to concentrate
and she opens up her eyes
the world was moving
she was right there with it
and she was



fall underneath by snakadaktal

home is lost
walk into dark
we feel the past
from under
we take our heads and hold our hearts
from this light
it's not over now
well i don't know if this treasure's in the ocean
or if death will whisk me far away
i'd like to think that we live in a kind of motion
where our hands and feet are here to stay



o my heart by mother mother

o my heart it's a rocking great bolder and stuck in the gutter
and i throw my heart back to the ocean
but it don't go far it come back floating
and i watch it wash up with the dead fish
but it ain't quite dead it just is lifeless
o my heart it's a house in tornado
o my heart it's a house in the sky in the eye of tornado
o my heart it's a roof in el nino
o my heart it's a roof made of straw in the jaw of el niño