Live from the graduation weekend I present to you…Kyle Martindale.
Category: friendship
Poem for a friend (mine).
samantha hubball you
make even a diet coke
sound like a luxury. i
could eat shitty packaged
cornbread with you on
a ragged subway stair
and still feel sumptuous.
Poem drawn for Katie.
O how unlovely!
Pacing around my house, laughing
and crying at the same time, this is
the closest I’ve ever achieved at doing
both together, it’s a Frankie sort of verb,
laughingcrying, and an ice cube is dripping
off my face and onto my sweatshirt and
leaving little puddles as I walk around and
O Caity Baptiste I need you now! This
is going to be a cyborg of a cold sore it’s
gonna be full-on one-sided Botox of the
lip it’s gonna stun all your med schoolies
into silenced awe it’s gonna make y’all
reassess your medical vocations, it’s won
the Golden Globe for Most Likely To Make
You Not Wanna Disrobe Me, it’s the best
and worst thing my body’s done all week,
it’s making me laugh then cry then repeat,
a crunching of the face where I get those
creases round the nose (the face Jen loves
to try to do) and then laughing looking
out the window as the dapper drug dealer
in his white fedora walks by with the dog
-owning homeless addicts and the ice is for
the lip because Lorelei Frantz (of the Blue
Camel Café, of ginger peach tea and my
employment) told me that’s how you burn
a coldsore away, you ice it out, you decide It
Is Not There, you chill it freeze it drip it all
around the house is what I’m doing, a messy
sort of process but somehow worth a poem,
Please come to the sideyard reading on Friday
at 7pm! and see for yourself the evidence! of
me attempting everything at once, of trying
to get everything right the first time around,
the proof is on my lip, it’s a mountainrange
of dripping sickness but wait it’s not so bad
in profile in fact it kind of makes me feel
voluptuous and I hey, NEVER feel voluptuous
Quotation & photograph (Patti Smith).
Patti Smith, in Interview Magazine, on art and Robert Mapplethorpe:
But the artist has to struggle beneath that canopy, just as we struggled beneath a different canopy—though ours wasn’t as overwhelming. I think that true artists just have to keep doing their work, keep struggling, and keep hold of their vision. Because being a true artist is its own reward. If that’s what you are, then you are always that. You could be locked away in a prison with no way at all to communicate what’s in there, but you’re still an artist. The imagination and the ability to transform is what makes one an artist. So young artists who feel overwhelmed by everything have to almost downscale. They have to go all the way to this kernel and believe in themselves, and that’s what Robert gave me. He believed in that kernel I had, you know, with absolute unconditional belief. And if you believe it, you’ll have that your whole life, through the worst times.
And here’s my favorite picture of Patti Smith:
Read “Just Kids,” people. It is very, very good.
Some poems I drew today.
thank you mom & dad for the printer with a scanner
thank you misha for the cow eraser
the whale above is a sculpture; a man can be an aquarium.
No one knows this better than Eoin (Cahill).
…in a poem.
The last of the LA poems (mine).
“New scenery, new noise”
said Rimbaud. I slept
through the traffic. I’m so
spoiled I get humble then
romantic. I’ve never held
a gun but I’ll sit beside you
or behind and ride and ride
*
Cougar on wheels
The bike changes
gears automatically—
I’m fast I’m slower I’m
skidding a little in the sand
I’m a sea snake on land
*
Last Wednesday
“It’s like your name is
‘Taylor Katz comma poet’
she said across a burrito
as the rain decided on us
*
“Hello I love you won’t you tell me your name”
I’ll be your amulet,
baby
*
Lost Angeles
Goodbye hand sewn Barcelona
pouch with the three overlapping
stars. Goodbye mint chapstick
from the pack of three and the birthday
lipstick; goodbye pocket mirror with the red
bunnies from the party’s grab bag. Goodbye
eye drops, olive green pencil from the notebook
set. Adios scar like a broken trident
on the left side of your face, see you
later, see you soon
LA poems, 11-15.
Black tied
Thinking of Paris, France.
Thinking of mangy cats
in garbage piles.
A hair cut can change everything.
*
The Latter
“Do you think we’ll ever stop
becoming ourselves? Maybe
around 40? And then we cruise?
Or will we die at 86 having
come right up next to it?”
*
“Ok can we stop being serious now”
because it’s nearly 4am & late
to be a soldier for the word
“treasure” for the first time in my life,
but goddammit you are such a.
And hardly anyone knows it.
*
World Famous Big Dean’s
This is the first time I’ve wanted
a Coca-Cola this badly in years
*
Boarding
BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!
BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!
yell the kids at the pretzel shop but
don’t we stop needing salt as soon
as it’s offered? Take me to the ocean.
LA poems, 6-10 (mine).
Late Lunch
I’ll have the Blue
Plate Special! We say.
What?! No blue plates
here at all?! Fucking
Los Angeles.
*
The fellow with the cowboy mouth
is a man I love
*
Return trip
Alameda Street, 6:45 pm.
I offer the man asking
for change an orange.
I’m trying to get a ticket,
he says, staring. A ticket.
*
Misha taught me plants
Handgrab of rosemary
from an apartment compound
on Montana Street falls
out of my lefthand leather
pocket, snap unsnapped
*
Not the Chelsea
The Georgian Hotel,
a deep cerulean. The bar
patrons drink, sheltered
from the sea’s easy chills
by flapping walls of plastic
panache, perhaps 