Things that are awesome (Sunday edition).

 

garlic scapes are awesome

roses smell awesome

tampons are awesome

women that use diva cups are awesome

old ladies who dye their white hair purple are awesome

men with babies strapped to their fronts are awesome (so is anyone with a baby strapped to their body)

bare feet are awesome

mixed recycling is awesome

happy hour prices are awesome

bicycling feels awesome

tie dye is awesome

“Made in the USA” is awesome

having a sister is awesome

homemade hot sauce tastes awesome

grilling is awesome

finishing projects is awesome

making pancakes for yourself is awesome (so is making pancakes with anyone)

driving a tractor is awesome

getting high on coffee is awesome

artichokes are awesome

handshakes are awesome

wordplay is awesome

DJ names are awesome

blueberry season is awesome

reading is totally awesome

i think rollerblading looks awesome but i only did it once so i don’t know for sure

being taken out to lunch is awesome

feeding people is awesome

riding shotgun is awesome

James Brown will always be awesome

writing poems is for sure awesome

giving poems to people is awesome

whiskey is awesome

ginger beer is awesome

old friends are the most awesome of awesome

homemade muffins are awesome

thrift stores are awesome especially the sunglasses section

records are awesome

the word “platypus” is awesome and so is “spritz”

hip hop lyrics can be really awesome

bartering is awesome

letters in the mail are undeniably awesome

bacon is awesome why didn’t anyone make me eat it earlier it so so goddamn awesome

summer coming on is awesome

Misha is number 1 awesome

treasures are awesome (like bird bones or gemstones)

wind turbines are awesome

root beer floats are awesome

notebooks are awesome especially new notebooks

woodcuts are awesome

worms are awesome

herbs are awesome

friendship bracelets are awesome

monks are awesome and so are nuns

hats are of course awesome but we already knew that

getting an mfa is awesome and i’m almost done doing it!!!! awesome over & out.

 

 

 

James Baldwin wrote it; Heather Garner sewed it (image).

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

-James Baldwin, from “Giovanni’s Room”

 

Thank you, Heather, for the beautiful present.

 

(You can buy Heather’s handcrafts on her etsy site. She might even take embroidery requests!)

 

And here’s a painting of Baldwin, by Beauford Delaney, that I especially love.

 

 

Have you read “Giovanni’s Room” yet? Please do.

 

 

Valentine’s day (photo)!

as it turns out, i love valentine’s day. misha  & i give each other little presents a lot (little things, just poems or a small round rock), but today we give each other a little present on the same day, and i like that. it feels nice to know that loving is emphasized today, even if it’s all hallmark-ized and hollywood-ized–still, people are remembering to act in the name of love today. i believe in that. i love so many people, my mom & dad & sister, & my grandpa with his broken shoulder & the rest of my family, & my friends in the east & some people out west & various chickens & cats around america. loving people is what i like to do. valentine’s day has gotten dumbed down a little–bad chocolates are dumb & so are teddy bears with hearts in their bellies, but a loaf of bread with a heart in it is not dumb it all. in fact, it is very savory & beautiful. & it slices like heaven.

(bread & photography by misha j.)

happy day to everyone i love. happy happy day.

xoxo

A giving of thanks (mine).

This is a thank-you to everyone who reads this blog,

 

because you do, and it makes me feel thankful and surrounded and known and relevant. Because you google “panache taylor katz” or “taylor mardis katz” and you get here. You read it and you text me about it. You read it and write me an email. You read it and cry and tell me about it. You”like this” on facebook. You refer to something from here in a conversation. You secretly, you in your house with your mug, you in your house with your dog, with your nothing on at all, you read this thing I write.

I write this thing because I love people and I like people and I believe that a person who likes or loves me would like to end up here. Because all of you have jobs, or you are trying to have jobs, and you are walking around, taking public transportation, shaking hands, heating up a lunch, you are talking on the phone or you are completing projects or having a drink with new or old friends, or you are in law school or you are in Berlin, and you like poetry, somewhere. If only because you know me. Poetry is a thing that I love and people are a thing that I love and to me, the two are connected.

And then there are the people that end up here accidentally, because I typed up a poem they searched for, or I compiled photographs they were curious about. They don’t know me but maybe they click around. I am not famous and I am not invincible and I know only a small amount. I don’t know who ends up here, I only know the numbers, when I check them.

When I write about something having to do with love, people click. That, alone, is fact enough to thank. I have things to say and I like to sit down and say them, and I do it, and you read. This blog is not one thing, it is many; it’s here to say: I like poets. I like photographers, especially when they photograph people. I like Misha and my friends. I like to feel like I am living the life I began imagining for myself at a very young age. I miss people, and I care for them by writing a poem that will make them laugh. I love my sister, and she moved to Texas. I like to think of my parents when they were young. I have a sideyard, and you should come to it. I am questioning and sometimes a poem surfaces to answer. I drew something, and it’s unskilled but you can see it. I wrote a little ditty and why not put it out there.

I am multiple and I am grateful and I am predisposed to joy. I make poems as a way of staying here. If you read this, it is very likely that we get along. And so: hey guys. Thanks for clicking on this site, this someplace on the internet. It really makes me happy that you do.

With love,

Taylor Mardis Katz

 

(Edward Hopper’s “Freight Car at Truro”)

 

Poem for someone I have never met (mine).

Poem for Geoff

 

You have only just begun to love her

and therefore there is no way for you to know

how much I love her. I love her so ardently

that already I must and do love you. And not

because of anecdotes  or the photo of your parted

hair, but because you loving her is a way to keep

my loving relevant, keep it safely and unwilted

in the air nearby her, air I can’t inhabit after moving

far away. I thank you and I thank you for keeping her

not in a jar but within a cloud of particles that love

her particles, within the air I see  you breathing out,

visible as steam and towards her, no matter

what the weather calls itself that day.

 

Damn it feels good to have a sideyard.

 

The sideyard was better than ever before

The sideyard, according  to a new neighbor-friend named Neil “felt like the 60s again.”

The sideyard had around 70 people attend which is record-breaking for the sideyard

The sideyard had a tiki torch

The sideyard had such good loud music that the police came

The sideyard thanks “Tendrils,” the new house band, who will perform acoustically from here on out so that we don’t get evicted

According to a girl I met, the sideyard was “the most fun event I’ve ever been to.” EVER!

Neighbor and friend Jed said about the sideyard, “Don’t ever let me miss this again.”

The sideyard offered free wine and decaffeinated coffee

The morning after the sideyard I had both a real hangover as well as a happiness hangover

 

Thank you to everyone who came to the sideyard

Thank you to everyone who let themselves enjoy something so analog

Thank you to everyone for coming out to hear poetry; we poets need you, we poets are you, we are all poets

 

(photos by misha marston johnson)

“I like brown beverages and…” (poem) (mine).

I like brown beverages and

stripping coriander with a friend

on the hot September stoop.

I like four books in a pile

with biggest on the bottom

and making spicy beans

and maybe even Loretta Lynn.

I like it when someone comes back

from a trip and they look a little

better than when they left.

I like the way one hand on my chest

and one on my back bookends

my heart and keeps it in.

the after-sideyard:

mostly just this

mixed in with this

(thanks kaz)

and frankie’s feeling it too

and misha sold four prints

and there are flowers all over the house, even by the sink and right here on the desk

and there are four dollars in “20,000 words” which means at least 2 people have my chapbooks

and maybe, maybe, some sort of art scene to remember is getting going in san diego, but even if not, even if we’re all just smartpeople in a yard for a party, it feels good to remember how many  good people there are in this city, and that with some wood and tacks and trashbins-turned-to-tables and the help of farmily, art can happen right next to where we live, and even though no one on the east has seen this thing we did and made, we will bring it wherever we bring our selves, sideyard or sideporch or sideacre of a plot of land…

Dream Song 295 (John Berryman).

 

You dear you, cleaning up Henry’s foreign affairs,
with your sword & armour heading for his bank,
a cable gone astray:
except for you he had hopped in the Liffey & sank.
Now what can he in return do: upstairs? downstairs?
You run your life every day

so well it’s hard to think    of anything you need
and I only supply needs, needs & ceremonies,
I’ll send you the last thirteen,
in all of which Henry is extremely dead
but talkative. To you with your peat moss & leaf-mould
& little soft wet holes

where you put ginger, bloodroot & blueheads
& pearly everlastings, —what can he say of worth?
In all his nine lives
he was seldom so pleased been to be on the same earth
with you, my dear. We get on better than
most husbands & wives.