Wrinkly Yan pants? Check. Thor boyshorts? Check. Shitty delicious beer marketed to stargoons? Check, check, check. Just that kinda day, I guess.

I threw my trust to the birds, and my faith into the sea

Don't talk to the bear.
The bear isn't interested in you.
The bear thinks you're rebel Valley scum.

I'll never be a southern messenger poet

what was beyond us, or what came before us,
or what town we lived in, or where the money came from,
or what new night might leave us hungry and reeling,
we were simply going forward, riotous and windswept,
and all too willing to be struck by something shining
and mad, and so furiously hot it could kill us.

-"Oh Please Let it Be Lightning" by Ada Limon


Her book Bright Dead Things might kill me when it comes out in September.

I miss this water

I was cut open on the way down

Lot of pic posts these days, huh? I guess I've been a little one note. There's change and smoke in the dry late summer air and I'm feeling like something is coming on. One of my girlfriends told me, in the casual feminine way, that she wanted me to know that she always had my back and I heard myself telling her "Thank God, I'm sure going to need that coming up" before I even knew what I was talking about. Maybe the end of Legends, maybe a certain Saturnine twist in myself, maybe just my bullshit meter being finally full up. 

I've been working on my dumb book. I'm working on a new poem about mountains and violence and men and Confederates and it's pretty good. Here's my best tercet from it so far, a mix of imagery and actual quotes I heard:

Storm clouds screening in like so much cavalry, 

south along the bruise-blue Allegany.

I’m going to say it until you fucking love me.

I don't know. I feel okay. Beach next week.

all the while this heart was forgetting how to love like that

I tell you what, honestly? I just feel kinda sad and bad tonight.

fuck the fiercest fables

When I say that ecstatic baby skunks lurch out of the undergrowth and chase me a while on my runs, sometimes I think people don't believe me. These little guys were the size of my hand and looked and acted like kittens. When I stopped to take the picture, they seemed mad that I wasn't running to chase and started fighting with each other instead.

Thornrose is like a Spirited Away landscape in the evening. Kicking up hares and skunks and dodging crows, trying not to trip when the landscape abruptly jerks downward, careening around beeches that are three times the size of me. As dusk falls, the fireflies come out, and there are so many, it reminds me of South Boston. There are so many that they hit my body as I run through them.

*

It was a good weekend to be camping under the full blue moon. When it rose, it turned on like a spotlight. The whole woods lit up bone white. One of my friends brought out a telescope and we took turns peeping at it. It was bright enough that after you looked, you had to reel back and rub your eye. A little moon blind, I guess.

If I was going to ruminate on my reflections for this cycle, I did have that sense of feeling the fullest of something, seeing clearly. Talk about your moon-blind; I guess it made me wonder if I was not getting a little tired of always coming on so strong in...I dunno, my whole life.

*

Lithics, though, darling.