old_shit warmthofrelease "Title Fights" I could feel my mind becoming septic so I picked a fight with my heart. And maybe the three of us are responsible for me while I sleep in this frying_pan But I'm the only one who set it to boiling and watched myself curdle with vigilance sneaking glances at the fire cause it's where people go when they have no one to admire except for fellow islanders, stupidly falling in love with--out alarm clocks aimed at your fucking skull like a thumbtack hiding behind a subpoena or eviction_notice or a birth_certificate who laughs at your name be cause it's the only thing you have a right to own or build destroy incorporate sell trade cut_into_oragami_snowflakes or rivers or prisons or everything. We caught our breath. Called it a draw. 240220 ... releaseofwarmth ^this was...probably Autumn 2013? if I had to guess? it looks like it was a sort of "warmup" writing prompt from a creative_writing_workshop, just based on the context clues of the pieces of paper adjacent to it in this big ol stack of old_shit I've been going through. y'all will have to bear with me to an extent, when it comes to this old_shit 240220 ... warmthofrelease "Laura Song" frustrated fathers empty wasting like stale hummingbird feeders couldn't see you and me beneath empty hands and I understand picking out our favorite patience like middle of the wives from pulp to station brushing us on and off the shoulder command and I understand stretching cracks into the hourglasses where we grew inside separate spaces too fast to be be proud what we built in the sand and I understand and I've seen you enough to feel you to know how familiar blood gets the lower you go and I hope that you'll see me when you see me when we can because I understand 240220 ... releaseofwarmth ^definitely summer, whether 2014 or 2015 I can't recall but if I had to bet I'd say the former 240220 ... warmthofrelease so rub me down in salt and batter and convict for libel every exit sign I'll be lying awake with my eyes closed put your hands upon me when it comes time I've nowhere to stay this summer I will break my legs to do my best just play the part that you stole from me and I will sew the stories to your chest I'm too tired to be this young buy me little things that shine give me trains and guardian_angels (so I can can send them away) (while_there's_still_time) so begin your family heirlooms offer up your hands and let me read the lines hide with me in my pillow_fortress before any body any one knows or understands it's mine 240221 ... warmthofrelease she was once my ace_in_the_hole now just a dream I can't control I want to hear you sing in your sleep I want it to sound better than me I want you to swim naked I want you to be there with someone beautiful if I only had a clue 240223 ... warmthofrelease "Keep Your Head Down" a pebble in my shoe I would imagine is wearing a lopsided grin as it stares up down up down sideways, on its way to the subway? the apartment complex with the cocktails and assassins who honestly want nothing to do with the pebble it never belonged to them it posed no threat it bore no beauty it was merely stuck like a soldier like an insect in a fire they make no claims they roll they pay no attention 240223 ... warmthofrelease "Blatantly Ripping Off Shawn_Colvin" graze the sky with us, but be careful, be slow the way that father tells you, rummage the way that mother tells you, find a loop is not the same as a circle when one might stop, or need to rest, or how we see you in a ghost of planks or grazing still in a tiny nest I could breathe in place wished that we could find clean hands to pick us up off our asses and go 240224 ... releaseofwarmth ^this didn't have a title, it was added after the fact. I would doodle a lot in these days, lyrics were so often (ok_the_music_was_always) what was swirling in my head, the words on the page were just me_thinking_out_loud_but_in_writing, other people's words would just blend with mine. there's also an Emily Dickinsonian element to this in the sense that it wasn't necessarily written with the intention of being read, or even preserved. the song in question is "If I Were Brave" truly a heartbreaker. "A Few Small Repairs" is so goddamned underappreciated. it is so much more than its place in music history as a one_hit_wonder. oh well, the best of it is obscure that's nothing new. 240224 ... warmthofrelease "October 1st" (2013 I reckon) They tell me about writing, say it can really come from anywhere but should it? some artifacts time_stamps licked envelopes and unsents, unmeant to be so uncovered and so underestimated, feel ridges and wrinkles in me, author you should recognize them by now as you would clothes and skin, swimming and dissolving with a knack for catching sideways glances and abrasions and judgment and tell me what's fair, make it possible for there to be more than one thing out there on the arcs and outskirts that truly does not matter, yes make it so liberate us keychain souvenirs of weightlessness, wastefulness, out of body and mind and pulp and fresh squeezed semen, remind us we are as good as clothes, but tell me do you truly, truly want names? 240224 ... warmthofrelease this is a long list of poems, just the titles, from a workshop back in the day. the leader would announce out loud the order in which things were presented and reviewed. I elected to write them as a list as they were called out and then organize the papers afterwards according to the list. it was dictation/interpretation writing, so these are just representations based on what the actual titles of these poems were. they are prone to my mishearing, and also to my abbreviations, and also to my misspellings which I will not be correcting for posterity. because is anything more overrated than posterity? especially when dealing with nostalgia. I mean old_shit. (part one) Psalm Insecurity Amaya Living_Room_Wall Sick Withers Crito Reaches Basics Spirits Aneurysm Baby Tails Den_Boy Montana Technology Leukemia Heaven's Mauer Ohio Four_Parts Loretta List Itinerary Joe Rhetorical 2033 Ashley, Explanatory (16) School Hard_To_Get Valedictorian Golden_Bones Helmet Design 21 Eden 240228 ... warmthofrelease (part two one slight rewind and continue) Silent_Cinema_/_Gonzalo Couple's Little_Brother Whelm Gake_Kay Fallen_Angel_/_My_City Nightmares_/_Consciousness Clay_/_Thieves Robbins San_Francisco (this was revision week, in case that's not clear) Vessel Priceless Sonnet -----------------Pencil (squeezed in between ^v those two which had no line break between but should've) I-10 Pavement Not_have_been Growing_up Post_wave Entwined Habits Creatures Neuro 26 Tech Heart Fire_Escape Foursome White_(light?_Nights? I_Hate_You Felipe NM Headrush White Sunk Scotch Said Grow_Up Lo-Fi 22 God Deserts Devastation Swan Kiss Hungry Baby Mother Any Park Quality Autumn Boy Death_Plunge Mansion Alchemy Maine Ohio Fish Symphony 240228 ... warmthofrelease (part three) Coral Machines Gordon_M Kissing_Stars Water_Panama Parking_Lot Witchcraft Benign Speech Aisle_3 Brain Wine_Bottles Grated Death_Blanket Summer Sky Po_Boy Getting_it Significance Dream GM2 Octupi Tube Coffer Missed_Train_(Wine_Bottles) (Justin) Beach Safety Temples Noise Inspiration Earwax Downstairs Grain Hey Doctor Years Rhetoric Mother Holi Unwilling Irma Pisces Shorty Suicide Drummers Dusk Blues Bayou Tuesday Romance Incriminating Vampire Siphon Filament Gang_Bang Road Down (Whatever)_Dark_Chocolate... Night_Doesn't Dream Bad_Music Tickets Twisted Creature Bill Oceanic Meat Slacker Romanian Tire_Swing What_Are_You Still_Life Song Petrified Keeping_Nervous Bad_Music Parallel Chicken Stars Rift Heart_Whale Impulses Blanket Octopi Incriminating Bill 240229 ... warmthofrelease September 17, 2013 That I could be my own apostate abandoned twice would I eat the food that was left in this house I now occupy? what abandoned deserves either or both to be divorced from its obligation? what endless pasteurization would tell us which lost ornaments deserve to be taken advantage of by another, by guardianship and which should be left to rot secure and immaculate touched only ever by one hand alone? 240301 ... releaseofwarmth ^sheesh the old me was prone to drunken ramblings. and to not making sensible ideas with words. just making cool words. kinda like the first 2 R.E.M. albums. it's the sound of the words, not what the words say. I guess? was a long time ago. I wrote a first strophe of the poem that I didn't include. it contained some ignorance, in ways I didn't see or intend. I'm sober now. 240301 ... warmthofrelease Taking my time up here Those bottle_caps bent from where you pried a twist_off oars for a canoe you haven't used since you lived near the river The balcony of your father's estate sealed on the mountain at the hammer of a typewriter's key seen but not touched you canoed down that steep_and_narrow only once like a museum to joy we observe all these ornaments of pleasure as post-apocalyptians, scholars and earnest we take down notes wasting no time 240303 ... warmthofrelease (lecture doodle) - Getting old is bowling where you have 10 pins of pride and the more you strike down the better but it still hurts, you are demolishing parts of yourself, even if they are the vices. It still hurts. - Beauty's relationship to the concept, is it a manifestation, or a participation? If the latter, does this imply that it is voluntary? Or even the former? But either way, Plato will tell you that art is twice separated from beauty through this. (through perspective, I assume. eye_of_the_beholder right?) - "And, fools, adore in the temple of our heart" (Sydney 5) can this be reinterpreted without commas? 240303 ... warmthofrelease January 21, 2014 Tonight you were a balloon trapped in the straits between universes clawing your way with your messy strings at the walls of the channels hoping to make a tear* make a hope see what the true black really is whether you could float (even there) and you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between stasis and motion if you ever made it out there but I appreciate you as a waste of time with an irrational purpose and that's better than most anything else gets treated 240308 ... releaseofwarmth (editor's note: 'tear' rhymes with 'bear' not with 'fear') 240308 ... warmthofrelease (part one) ok this piece of paper is kind of a mess. another untitled unnamed thing. no discernible date. 2013 or 14 probably. it has literal music references littered throughout: Tedeschi-Trucks_Band: "Midnight_in_Harlem" (live, "everybody's_talkin'") American_Football: "The_Summer_Ends" Joe_Henry: "Ohio_Air_Show_Plane_Crash" The_National: "Lemonworld" Indio: "The_Grinding_Wheel" Pavement: "Gold_Soundz" also a movie listed, "The_Great_Waldo_Pepper" an overlooked gem that I watched in my high_school shop class that I barely passed. starring Robert_Redford directed by the same guy who made The_Sting critically panned but I think it's beautifully tragic, tragically beautiful. there are some other random things I'm choosing to exclude. 240308 ... releaseofwarmth (part two) here's my attempt to build something with the other words on that page (bucket of fried_chicken that) we didn't eat Mostly drunk, mostly naked, from a hill Like an interruption. submerging? or being lifted above the surface of the water? back into a reality, clarity of things. Guilt by dissociation spectator_mode to just stare, and be who we are, uninvolved small_town_stuff Even when it was too surreal to feel I remember thinking how easy it will be for you to haunt me some day. For now it feels confusing enough to stay lost. But I will always keep you somewhere either way. 240308 ... warmthofrelease If I needed fortune none of me or you or breakfast or earlobes would taste so familiar like a motor oil's heavy sag from the end of our tonsils peeling smearing, carnivalistic cannibalistic do-si-do, keep going but do not tell us about your momentum, who you've passed, chandelier thief, porcelain portent portly, ashes for pants and balloons connected to bridges with movie_theater credentials he even has the lapel, he even has the complimentary crucifix-shaped cigarettes crossed over an obsidian hotel bar counter with one stroke of a feather twine he's kept on his keychain. He is perfect. He culls the meek. He even has high, starchy yellow oilbreath. Where is his home? 240311 ... warmthofrelease November 5 (2013 probably) Melons? Impromptu lunch break in a well-lit room, fading green paint the sun shines out every piece of cotton, of room of perfect, private, calm disinterest The feeling is not negotiated, this is natural, our wagon wheel, our Jackson square why would we need a script? or someone to save, we are all in between, it is not like we have never started, we all start in darkness, we have all merely graduated patiently to nothing, to our old friend 19th century to light and melons unintimidated The drip of time, is not...pressure 240315 ... warmthofrelease so we've got down to the part of the stack where the old_shit is going to start to get really weird. I have no discernible plan on what to do with any of the rest of this shit, I'm just going to look at it and type out what I can formulate into some semblance of cohesion. which is all I can do. "Nonfiction" How much conviction and closure in your decisions can you get from just pride an spite? And no one cares to talk about it. None of the 4 of us. We never did. Tell the story of the bear, traveling East in cursive, but also tell about the story of the coyote. Talk about the knowledge of the land, that he taught you at least half of what you know. The old schools. You were a fool for liking the wrong kind of soup. When we would take a trip back to our old school to visit friends he would bring a book so he could stand off to the side and look bored if he needed to. Now I'm falling for more and more girls who would probably be in love with him but who entirely overlook me. (in retrospect: don't even concern yourself with those females and what they think they want. If all they know about attraction is what they can see at a glance then they don't know a thing. The same thing applies to males of course. "Well you wouldn't even know a diamond if you held it in your hand. The things you think are precious I can't understand.") 240316 ... warmthofrelease "Stark Reality Persists pt 1" sinister shroud trapped and tangled in piano_wire on the seventh floor stirring our noodles with a crucifix slicing our bread in liberal portions eating apples made of jesus falling into crystalline pools of jesus we don't insist on misunderstanding the_one_book_we'll_ever_know 240319 ... warmthofrelease "Stark Reality Persists pt 2" muscle in as many suicides as you can handle grin widely through the fury santeria break the forms and the lines of these dances and touch the one who couldn't reach you let us saturate until we're warm our icy castling comfort of eden rolling along in the gardens with my beautiful harvest's daughter I could never remove from here no matter what I did kicking smoking and basking in the living withsharing the same sentiment: "It's only dirt" 240319 ... releaseofwarmth ^these both came from the same piece of paper. I felt the need to split them up. It was untitled, I took the title from the one strophe that I didn't use. I gathered it into stanzas and made a few word changes. but it kinda mostly said what it used to. just better? I think that "withsharing" is like a counterpart to withholding? maybe? I've_slept_since_then. 240319 ... warmthofrelease Call Out - shunned away with my psycho-neurotic as fuck writing on the couch in your living room kicking myself to tears which I can't poetically justify - leaning over your kitchen table chair staring at some masks you made ironically, you always felt alone - convincing myself that they don't care they're not listening - redeteriorate my composure, plateau where I am septic, preparing for decomposure where does one end and the_other begin throwing derisive tomatoes at my instability you bring out my worst fucking poetry - I CALL OUT 240320 ... warmthofrelease that civil_war ain't in my bones and I won't sing it up to you like a cough but hearing some insights and reading some epitaphs I guess what has past has taught me comes a time when your only fight is the fight you know you'll lose it's not always pride but it's contagious enough it's all I feel like I can do bad imitations a bad_reputation but we never knew where to begin cards and checkers and red double deckers don't take us anywhere we've never been I won't punish myself for retribution but I'm keeping the_song_of_myself at bay how can I convince you that you want to protect me I can't even make you come or stay 240320 ... warmthofrelease when you bury your dead it's an accident your meals and your feelings are coincidence your fingers spread like worms and dig through my eyes upon pages of impotence so send your little boy to school comb his hair and birth him at the door stare at the kitchen and brace for the waves the wine the phone calls the san_francisco floor I'll trade you patterns for examples of change but we have to use euphemisms and pseudonyms don't ever ask me what I'm wasting on words when I could labor over pearls and gems I see the swine and they know it's mine when I've run out of things to say I can't 240320 ... warmthofrelease she stuck a fork into his shoulder. "ow!" he screamed, and twisted back in his chair. playfully smiling. she was grinning back sheepishly, sinking down into her chair. "I knew I could love you" he said out loud. He'd be sinking into her soul later that afternoon. Milking anything warm he could find. Mining her like he was working for commission. She would wait for a good opportunity to ask something about herself. Then she'd go back to her small travel bag of scalpels and tweezers and other toys. And think of how to bruise without bleeding. To let herself be smothered by broken arms into a sleep. They don't mind the pain. It's the ridicule that hurts them. The scorn of the world, because the world wants something different. They keep to themselves. To tell the truth they're just grateful that they found-- 240325 ... warmthofrelease "Shapes and Sizes..." you got: micro-organisms the smaller animals the giants the sun child and all its other sibling stars, threaded but then there's you, at a size I can't find agreeable, and I will enjoy you now that I've found you proportions geometry et cetera 240331 ... warmthofrelease "Social Influenza" by and by, creepingly both inside and alongside this petty pace nose upturning, upending our strategies correcting cartology and saving face prayed upon so impolitely never to place in danger's way your big dumb dog's kind of big dumb heart the last one to love the last one to waste 240331 ... releaseofwarmth ^ one stanza short of a sonnet. yeah I did usedta write a lot of sonnets. like a starter pack form. a gateway. sonnets were my AC/DC or they must have been...hard to know sometimes, looking back. sometimes you can only frame the past from the perspective of the future, there is no "these days" or if they are they're no different than any other day. 240331 ... warmthofrelease I lost you. Civilians in Brooklyn. Pray. (she would like it, hahahaha) The absolution of value system (as you get higher (in society)) The relativism of value system (as you get lower (in society)) I've nearly rubbed you intelligent Six billion but I only really (need) one, misuse of the word irony, but if we take this for granted then what difference does it make? A mental template for expectations 240403 ... releaseofwarmth ^ No fuckin idea V here's the other part 240403 ... warmthofrelease So. I never called for peace Never declared war Never read any Tolstoy I have poisoned, lungs, livers, reputations though no more than two of each I've never waded in a hotel pool the night the Reich took Paris Encaged, surrendered in a towering room full sky of panes with god's microscope in every one Floating next to an absurd bandage and a bottle which fell While you waded selectively in your seat on the side looking lookable reading clean through a long book ignoring a long Russian businessman in your ear And I never thought about whether that night would be the night we could lose our box of paradise we could lose our license to love in waste on these silly lovethings in this flat silly town merely a series of images, our Paris is No real growth, no story only images that we can only value arbitrarily depending on how we choose to pervert them with nostalgia and sentiment This glass of god can be shattered with a single stone A single brandishing of fire and we will not let ourselves be dogs for tails and tales to chase cyclically, passively abusing each other flints and tips cut from a stone of silly little lovethings and I never took the time to feel superstitious Tonight would be the night we would acknowledge our suicide pact was not stronger than our flesh our muscle mind and memory survivalism we found it In a pool of waste and war In god's ceiling The night they took our only chance to be cursed and hateful and happy The night we lost Paris 240403 ... warmthofrelease dichotomy. duality. eventually equilibrium. diametrics? division? delineation might be overly convenient, ignoring the problem. difference between opposition and enemy, keep changing, circle's (sphere's) adaptation. geometrics, measurability. Talk about unwantedness' influence. Talk about the mushroom. Throwing shit at the wall, process of trial, and... misappropriation doom & dominate you by logic cause it's what you respect to fight. but it doesn't mean anything to any one soul Just because you've defined and sorted the discrepancies does not mean that you have clarity, or even necessarily understanding. 240404 ... warmthofrelease Comic Sans Ambitious friends, elaborate You'd do pretty well to not mock my accent Legacy? Archiving? Indexing? Resources? Save it up, man...or temporary indulgence. I think I'm finding that balance somehow "Tears falling from repentant heaviness of thy most vile and loathsome filthiness" 240404 ... warmthofrelease Increasingly disinvited Sustainably offended Complete lack of direction We are finally living by ourselves, man. I'm not really comfortable either. I can't feel like I can stay. Embracing your shins as you dangle from the limb The darkness and silence of the loneliness simplifies you 240404 ... warmthofrelease Finally quit carrying around that pack of smokes You should see how proud of me you are I tell you every day Quit drinking Skin and bones Carnival You weren't trying Gotta be strong for her or whatever I feel really far If there was any song I could sing to save your soul it wouldn't help 240404 ... releaseofwarmth ^nonono vthis instead 240404 ... warmthofrelease Finally quit carrying around that pack of smokes-you should see how proud of me you are I tell you every day Quit drinking Skin and bones Carnival You weren't trying Gotta be strong for her or whatever I feel really far If there was any song I could sing to save your soul it wouldn't help 240404 ... warmthofrelease I am not at all calm, I am performing an arbitrary dream, I require no audience, do not demand amusement but I will gladly invite others to the stage, let them play out the gross life chaos alongside me and if I were to ask any tethered victim how they'll remember me I want them to say "it was your wings" 240411 ... releaseofwarmth ^definitely stole aspects of this from myself and used it in other things which might be found in other places. don'worryaboudit 240411 ... warmthofrelease Well, guess what? Even if it was all just a game, there's still a way to win, and there's still a way to lose. So, play by the rules? The 3 minute conversation I had with Ashley (no relation) about breast advantages and cane's was a better story, more inspiring, and more interesting and would have been a better-written piece of work if it were transcribed verbatim than anything I experienced in the lecture shortly following that conversation. Fuck being a critic. This is one time I will refuse to use my strengths to my advantage, because it will turn me into something that I don't want to be. That's a lesson that a lot of people have to learn, but that a lot of them can't, or just simply don't want to. If it's something that you rely on, it's not something you can go exploring too deeply. For safety purposes. 240411 ... releaseofwarmth ^absolutely autumn 2013, I vaguely remember both the lecture and the conversation. hope she's doing well. 240411 ... warmthofrelease "So it doesn't really hurt you none. Except in your own mind." "That's where it all hurts boss." 240411 ... warmthofrelease "Social Cyanide" Displacement (do you remember me that way?) talk to me about your fucking twig empire (not really my choice) My mind...is a story that I don't think I can give you (the mind, or the story) Hmm. More entropy. It's like a shadow. Even here. Well, it was worth the trip. Either way. Now let's get back on the bus and get ready for a big clumsy dumb ride home. This is becoming...scarier as it's becoming more green. More natural, more of what we're used to, more trustworthy, more likely to be a person who would just stab us in the back so easily and just, wow. Just wow. Look at this. And you downplay your problem about paranoia? This is your problem. 240411 ... warmthofrelease So you start on my street. You walk it down, through campus, all the way to the spiderweb. The problem house. You stop in to see who's around. They're not. Keep moving. Three more blocks, take a right down the street she lives. Pass it on the right. Stop, say a prayer, whatever you feel like you need to do. But no matter what don't ask around about her. Keep going south. Before you hit the tracks there's a street whose name I don't like very much. It makes me think of dogs making noise primal carnal smalltown this is not what I'm here for you only have to be on this street for half a block. Where an almost friend of an almost spider is playing, playing her part, performing performance art, and all she asks and all they ask is to watch her quietly, and be enamored, well I can't help but feel it's so crass and classless to print out your objectives so obviously and receive them under such obligation. There is no play. Only show and tell. But not before you stop, dead stop after the spiderweb. Before you turn on the street where she lives. Sit yourself down on concrete under streetlight. Write out your walk. Your hope, your people. Your streets. Settle it down as you settle for someone else's settlement sentiment sediment. And then change your mind. Back it up turn round go exactly the way you came from. A guy steps out of his house, or his half. Walks his bicycle down the front stairs. But before he pedals off in the direction you were going he says "Are you alright?" You should tell him "yeah" incredulously. What could be wrong here? -04/11/2013 (a Thursday, rained in the morning but clear and cloudless by 16:00 and on.) 240411 ... warmthofrelease (found at the back of a black notebook which mostly, almost entirely, contained sheet music. this probably dates it to 2013, give or take a year.) It's not to preserve the idea, to preserve the past, it is to perpetuate that first impression. It acknowledges the decay, the entropy, and it is to immortalize itself through first impressions from fresh minds. To let that art be refreshed and renewed in its most ideal form, before the storm, before the entropy, before the loss of the innocence. To catch what you can before it's too late. After that? If you're still trying to feel it like you used to? To use it again as your relationship with the beauty decays? Well... (The beauty, it doesn't change, but we do. Forgotten what makes us, what made us, in place of what we've become. And the beauty just doesn't seem the same as it was to what we used to be. That's time.) 240630 ... warmthofrelease (casually and vaguely offloading some trauma. could've been written anywhere from mid 2014 to late 2016) shiver shick and shing a dark green chain is hung from a fist the slack is shaking like an instrument an ornament keeping time in the mist shimmer shing and shick the warden is waving his hand across as if he was clearing a path that tells me that it's time for us to begin convulsions, violent I could not feel my tumble answer my bruises and blood but all I could see was maps - clearly maps and grid and territory and points in colors, greens and reds and connections made and safeguards broken keeps and motion so tell me how was I to know you that you were not seeing the life the mind as the game that you were watching and holding down panic, madness, thrashing through your house in the shouts that your parents would have called upon god to fight when was I to know you that you were pinning cotton, control to rendezvous floorboards that you were never inside me the whole time guiding the fights and the colors waiting for my parachutes for my own safety, waiting for conversation, waiting for "remember me?" and if you could ever have me back 240707 what's it to you? who go blather from