How Long Are You

There are worms inside the walls.

Two songs.

how-long-are-you

may-16

Towers are as tall as you

I recorded this tonight. I wouldn’t say that I wrote it, because I just played and sung and only remember trying to hear you. Your voice goes like this:

Please Your Arms

United States Barista Championship 2009

USBC 2009

I’m taking a moment away from polishing my stage direction for the competition coming up this week. It is snowing, we bought a couch today, and we are sitting doing work together. I am listening to the opening track to my music accompaniment, a song by the Chemical Brothers with Midlake, called “The Pills Won’t Help You Now.”

I’ve been thinking about what I want to say, where I want to say it and most importantly, why. To me, there is nothing I can say that will take away from how special this coffee is. A single Typica, one of the purest varietals known to man, a genetic step or two away from being without any hybridization. From a farm that has separate lots for varietal. This coffee is no accident.

I leave on Wednesday. Kristen is coming with me.

We move Tuesday. Goodrich is helping. Thank you Goodrich.

I’m very thankful for the people in my life that have been helping me with this competition. Alex, Sarah, Mike Phillips and Mike Kearby, Talya, Kristen, Doug, Matt, the list could go on. Stephen has been a gigantic help too. I don’t understand how he helps me so much, but he manages to push me to forget my nerves and to dissect the task ahead of me. It is wonderful to have such people in my life. The roasters in LA, thank you. I want to wish everyone luck and great success this next week. I look forward to seeing all of my friends in Portland.

-Jesse

Sick in the overhead

Kristen has come away from the flu shot with what looks like the flu. Hopefully a very small version. She is in bed. I gave her the flu for her birthday. We ate Oysters.

I’ve been starting a few book length poems. This one is not even a page yet. Nor do I think it has an idea yet.

Notes on Solitude

Traverse of land. Slight draw formed ice—frost—parade.

Nothing can be trampled. There are books in characters’
eyelets. The pages in eyelets, the pages in parade before
there were times left to risk blessing the frosted ground.

There are pages in mines, waiting to erupt, task forward.

Here are hands I’ve been working on for some time.

A patch of grass sewn to your shirt, turn to me. Now look to me.

There is only waiting in the pages crest, the cloud formed
because we created steam with our bodies, our babies.

The soft tuft of of an s. Sweater pill in silence abound.
I want to say less is the man I could become potentially.

Listen to a crackle. Think about what has happened to you.
Your ears were made for backed mammals, the hills,
the ones who have air frozen over their eyes.

map with/without map

            The river stopped
               running
            at night. Seen
            somewhere close.

The sun hits
here in a few

hours.

I never remember if I
placed you in the river. Holding hand signals. Your whisper
called morning. Smoke stacks. A rolling.

Review for the Seminary Coop

My review of the Best American Poetry series is now up on the Seminary Co-op’s blog. Charles Wright is the guest editor for the series this year. Check it out.

http://blog.semcoop.com/2008/11/06/the-best-american-poetry-2008/

On a brighter note;

map with/without map

   The moments are sitting.
    These are trying days.
    In some one’s breath.
    These are wakeful hours.

           There were not any
           notes to play, just a
           hand in the ear, a
           whistle off the tongue.

Do you remember
seeing only mountains?

                  The river banks
                   stayed just
                 a wandering place.
                  I remember
                  falling in.
                  Your arms in
An            vague memory
idol            of appetite.
-like
statue.
A loved one.

Mapa Mundi

I am going to try to write/draw a collection of maps with text. I would like to consider them all mapa mundi, some sort of map of the world. I will post the text as appears on page, but without any drawings that may happen with the text.

With no harm to others

I am trying to find more Tomas Transtromer. I have only read his Windows and Stones I would like more.

I.

I can only barely see water
through trees. A blue
like a mother’s, something used,
or thought to be arthritic,
the place in human
evolution
outside frost, where we first buried
our dead. A human past being alive,
but without movement.
Circulation without circles under eyes.
Dry spots on palms.

II.

You are dimmer than I.
You have hands
but yours have water beneath
them.

In an atmosphere located

I have no sense of balance. The pressure in my head is flight. I see out of my right eye like a right eye sees itself. I think this is due to the mold growing in my apartment. Kristen is worried. She throws her hands on her head. She says words of thanks to the air. I don’t think that the water damage will ever be fixed, even if it is patched up. Our windows have stretched so much now that it feels like winter inside. I am scared for the cold months.

This post will be a song.

Maybe I Remember You

maybe-i-remember-you