Category: so sheepless right now

Damn it feels good to have a sideyard.

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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)

The poets and the farmers (poem) (mine).

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The poets and the farmers

 

For a while now the poets have known

the farmers and now the farmers know

the poets and they say hello and hug them

and Elle says again, You were so wonderful

on Friday night and Frankie is smiling

because it is never too late or early for

a compliment meant genuinely and I give

Frankie free zinnias by Ellie not because

she is a poet but because she is a very good

human who has such strange handwriting

that it makes people want to tattoo it on their

bodies, and she tattooed it on hers but not

in a braggy way, in a columnar/cut-off way,

and I like to watch people ask her about it

and I think to myself that I’d never tattoo

myself because I hate repeating myself

but, to repeat myself, now the farmers know

the poets and they like them for their words

and savvy presentation (I think of Scott

in the front row of the sideyard smiling like

someone gave him the exact correct birthday

present) and the poets love the farmers

for their very good foods like Nardello

peppers which are sweet and the most

divine, they’re Ellie’s favorite and she’s

a painter and a farmer, too. And life, I think,

is not as simply roasted as a pepper is, but

it is sweet to watch a farmer hug a poet

hug a professor hug a trapezist hug

a graphic designer slash table maker

hug  a videographer hug me, I’m hugging

all of them one after another or two

at once at the farmstand on a Sunday,

and I think we’re all farmers inside somehow,

all artily growing or having newly grown.

the after-sideyard:

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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…

Sideyardsideyardsideyardsideyard

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the frazzled state of hair in this photograph is no where near to the frazzled state of my hair right now. by tomorrow, i will be groomed. by tomorrow, 29 photographs around the yard. by tomorrow, poems and poets and flowers by ellie and good people in the sideyard hearing art, seeing art. you should come. 7pm.

 

 

Tuesday Update.

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Misha shaved all his hair off and we got a new chicken. Her name is Vicky. Vicky Christina Chicky-Wicky. V’Nilla and Vicky: the sideporch chicky-sissies. Is that a good name for a movie or for nothing at all?

In other news, I held two baby goats this week and they melted into my arms like butter. I also finished “Bossypants,” (by Tina Fet duh), sewed Misha’s robe, and watched the spectators of the pride parade like a granny, in a plastic chair on the corner of the sidewalk, with my other granny friends. (“Look at that lady! SO much purple! AND HER BUTT IS OUT! YEAH!!!”) Afterwards we made hot sauce. On Sunday, at the farmer’s market, I wore a mustache for three hours. I highly recommend this experience. So many jokes.

 

And last night I found this poem again. Swoon.

To the Harbormaster by Frank O’Hara

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.