There’s a pecking order, and I often forget that I’m part of it. Today I picked up two bantam (“small”) Serama roosters. Unlike Arjuna the Duck, these brothers are very familiar with humans and have displayed zero fear at my presence.
My typewriter carries so much history and meaning and symbolism that I’m not surprised it hasn’t found a stable “place” to quietly sit. There’s this desk on the bus I’ve been keeping out of the way. I’m afraid that guests might not like it, or that it might get in the way.
A huge thanks to Moisés for giving me this amazing onionskin typewriter paper last year for my birthday…this was the first time I’ve used it. Love at first feel. The translucent, texturized, fragile essence made for a perfect poem this Valentine’s Day.
Today’s feature is a Custom Typewriter Poem called “Irrigation,” written as a gift for Mimi–a tech sustainability expert.
A poem for my friend Natacha, who gave me this prompt: “the butterflies of new beginnings”
What is art? Here’s a poem about art.
Underneath it all, there’s a poem. “Lady Palabra” is an abstract, original acrylic painting on an 8×10 canvas. Prints are available for sale in the Typewriter Poetry shop.
This poem is for Kelly. She had her artwork up in one of the galleries during last night’s art walk, and asked me to create a poem that might serve as a title for one of her pieces.
Sahar sent me this picture of the poem I typed for her at the Canoga Park Art Walk. We talked about the color orange and carrots and art 🙂
You may have caught on to the tongue-in-cheek nature of some of these poems. Here’s one I wrote on the theme of “community.”
I still remember the moment I wrote this. As I fed my typewriter some paper, a person walked by. I remember looking up, glancing at them. They were looking at me funny…
Most of the people I typed for at last year’s Artisanal LA event have blurred together in memory. Even still, there is one fellow I have no intention of ever forgetting. He came over with a friend. She wandered off to take pictures as he and I began to talk. At first, we did the basic Typewriter Poetry dance. He asked about the project, I answered with my usual bases covered. Soon, something shifted. He sat down on the floor. I halted my work on another person’s poem. We dove into our hitchhiking and traveling stories; afterward, he shared his love of robotics and electronics with me.
Richard once commented that he was surprised most of my poems are fiction-based. Here is one that is about an actual experience.
Some performances were long. We raged past the show and burrowed furiously into the night. Other performances were lonely and quiet, intimate, with soft conversation and relaxed acceptance of letting the flow be. On the last night, our voices rose and fell in play with one another, harmonizing at their own accord to the perfect pitches, intervals, frequencies.
I remember feeling strange, to be in the town but not of the town. I came across Shaughnessy’s Our Andromeda while quietly stacking inventory for Princeton students in need of textbooks. She was a local poet, working with the Princeton MFA’s Emerging Writers series and teaching at Rutgers. Now, returning back to the east coast, to New Jersey, to Newark–it seemed like the perfect time to read Shaughnessy’s newest poetry book, So Much Synth, during the five hour flight from Los Angeles.