There's a little bit of poetry in it, and lots of blood.
I found the work of Shen Plum via the Juxtapoz Magazine website a while ago. The playfulness of her anthropomorphic critters, use of neon colors in her detail, and creative use of whitespace in her design bring a sense of wonder and curiosity that is ever-present among my favorite works. Check out some of her work below.
Knit and Purl
I talk through you & filter subjects
Little sunsets flare out from your wings
Our words burn out
Pondering surface tension
Kicking eggs into oxygen
A new fragmented experience
They talk through you - abrasive notions
Your wings fold back
Having no home
Gravity guides freefall
Reason can be a string of logical ideas
Or a person perched above an oyster’s pearl
Walkman
My poems mosey wayward
Order a double whiskey
Dousing flames with petrodollars
A canon of words
Feuds with the jukebox
I spur
When the poems start stumbling
Preferring a Walkman to talking
Musical Notes
Everyone says they have the best sex
Like they’ve planned a grand opera
Speaking in symphonies
Are little crumpled up musical notes
Lying beneath your crumpled up clothes
Waiting to be used – incompletely decomposed
Like most years ending in odd numbers, 2009 was a fun year to exist within the space-time continuum, but hardly represented the universal paradigm shift of human enlightenment so many of us are awaiting.
2010, with its aesthetically-sound round numbers and new decade-bringing ways, will be another difficult year financially, politically, and socially for all of us human critters circumnavigating our courses through the labyrinthine machinations of modern life. But I’m still excited, if nothing else, to just exist.
Less talk. More rock in 2010!
This year, I plan on:
- Cutting down our own trees and chopping them into firewood
- Traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina to see my friends Jonah and Katrin
- Purchasing some drum microphones to ease the recording process
- Becoming financially solvent and responsible
Among other things. Time gets away from us and the next thing you know, it’s 2011. However this year marks a personal shift in which I’ve become more comfortable with my surroundings here in Vermont – more acclimated to the culture, my job, my friends – more in tune with the harmonies of this wonderful place. That said, I think I should take more pictures this year too.
The Culture of Make-Believe – Derrick Jensen
Exploring the manifestations of social hatred (from lynchings to the Holocaust to Iraq and beyond) from a deep ecology-minded perspective, Derrick Jensen condemns the current System in a fast-paced narrative. It is critical to understand the deeper, questionable machinations that control social patterns and impact the well-being of ourselves and our planet. This book also explores the problem of an apathetic populace and the corporate domination of every sector of life as humanity stumbles onwards towards its great cosmic destiny.
Free Cell -Anselm Berrigan Anselm Berrigan’s free radical poetry chops your hands off mid-line, drops the book into your lap, and caresses you with disquiet indie pop allusions and echoes of ubiquitous advertising absurdities as it cheers on that last ill-intentioned pint before the crestfallen exit from the pub on a Monday night while ambitiously and unambiguously telling you it might not be OK, but I wouldn’t know anyway. This small tome, published by City Lights Press, features three poems worthy of multiple sittings. All of Anselm Berrigan’s work is highly recommended; Integrity & Dramatic Life and Some Notes on My Programming are essential must-haves.
Free Cell at City Lights Press
The Last Man (series) This comic book series imagines a future where half of the population immediately drops dead…leaving only women behind the wheel of Spaceship Earth. There remains, however, one man and his male pet monkey to save/perpetuate the world as they knew it. Israeli spies, Amazon women, mad scientists, government agents, and women, many women, comprise some of the cast of this engaging graphic novel adventure.
The Brake Lights, 2007
I started The Brake Lights as a band of revolving friends in the New Jersey and Philadelphia area sometime in the autumn of 2007. I had sold my drum set and bought a Telecaster, and started writing songs between shifts at Whole Foods.
It was the summer of 2007 when I moved to Vermont. My girlfriend and I bought a nice little house and some land. We planted some little gardens and brought our pets with us. I became a husband; she became my wife. I am now planning the construction of a sustainable recording studio on our land. Anyway, here are some places you can listen to my recordings through the years:
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