nothing much. just hanging out at my desk. drinking a red hook long hammer IPA. never was an IPA person until I met this one. it’s perfect. it’s the cheese.

so. how are you doing? do you still find this sort of thing amusing? I have to be perfectly honest. I do. it’s not close.

a lot of people use kaplan’s phanopoeia thing. I get weirdos from all over the place — have to assume they’re weirdos — from phanopoeia. they don’t stay long. today, someone in Gary, Indiana (or thereabouts). someone in Charlotte, NC. but that could somehow be kaplan. not sure. weird shit with devices. you don’t know.

nothing much. just hanging out at my desk. drinking a red hook long hammer IPA.

my team won. but I was somehow not very included in the victory. I am getting a vibe from them. they don’t really trust me. don’t want me to have the disk. it’s like 7th grade gym class. my team is kinda testosterone. kinda male cheese. perhaps we will all grow as people as the season progresses, and I will come to see them in a different light.

I’ve been thinking about my vault. I know I always threaten to open it then never do. it’s a lot like me and writing an epic poem. always the threat, never the do. you still accept me.

well, poop. any requests? I dunno. oh. huh.

ok. of course I don’t really know who I’m dealing with yet. that’s what makes life special. but. hi. it’s not worth thinking, but think we do, I assuuuume. oh, I’m starting to feel like a poser. about poetry. because I was reading some poems the other day, yesterday. and it was like a whole different kind of consciousness that I rarely have, because I haven’t been reading poetry in recent weeks. but I do read poetry sometimes, as you know. and I know we all know about the ebb and flow of these things. but yesterday I was reading Midnight on Your Left, which is one of those books where you have to be like, my usual brain isn’t going to get it, I have to have another, different brain, to read this. I had almost totally forgotten what it was like to have a different brain. hmm. and I wondered if other people have a different brain all the time. fool talk.

do you trust poets when you’re reading their poems? do you trust that they’re not just fluffing things up? that it’s quality if you’re patient? not that some kind of miraculous thing is going to happen later in time just because you’re patient.

I wonder about trust and poetry. I recall a prof in grad school saying something like, “of course all poetry books contain a lot of filler.” that sucks. why would anyone do that? it’s not like you’re making money on your poetry book. so why would a poet put filler in just to fill out a book? (unless academic expectations teaching job stuff or general ego stuff). is it true that poets commonly have that attitude about the acceptability of filler?

it’s tricky because sometimes you do have to just let things fly and not cripple yourself thinking about some idea of absolute quality. I figure most poets, when they put together a book, think that basically all or probably all of what they’re putting in there is good. some are occasionally wrong, not that I can always say with a high degree of confidence when that’s the case. yeah I guess I can. sometimes. better than basically everyone.

this is a weird voice in this post. once I get in a voice I’m sometimes stuck with it, better or worse, for the post. any requests?

the baltimore people, some a dem, were in my apartment saturday night. lauren, jamie and justin. after lauren did her oreos. and these dc people: buck and kevin. that was fun. none of them had been here except buck. neither had kevin. well that makes sense! we ordered pizza from Al’s, which was surprisingly, very very good. I’ve always said that there are no good pizza delivery places around here but I was wrong! ya know what. oh crap. I don’t think I’ve ever let myself write a post quite like this. tomorrow a girl is coming over, and I was going to make dinner, but now I’m thinking, we should just order from Al’s. that’s some good shit. hmm. I’ll ask. that’s the kind of thing that would horrify my sisters. they’d be like, no dude, you can’t order pizza. make some good dinner. but they don’t understand how some people are. how it’s all good, ya know? she listens to snoop dog. I dunno. it’s early. she’s bringing her dog, maybe. no relation to snoop. I’m getting hungry thinking about Al’s. gotta go. cheese is used positively once and negatively once in this post.

ps I’m not going to order from Al’s tomorrow but maybe sometime soon when I’m alone or not alone.