today like everyday

Rough wet rain fell in the antique light of old

Seattle in the deliberately bright sun

Of spring. The Puget sound echoed with a

Great wrath of dark waves pushing steadfastly

Against the sides of tankers and fairy boats

And anonymous fishing crews docked beside

The lamp lit house boats in the bay marina.

I was at Pike Place sitting in Post Alley

Typing on some things I thought worth while

Over steaming coffee. The bums walked through

As did market security and business owners next

To an array of street performers bouncing off of walls

Echoing in laughter as they stood nearby chit-chatting. I felt

Like a golden template basking in a weather of cold wind

Asking for everything and giving only what came natural

To the powers that be. A friend had sent a letter up from New Orleans asking of information on what to do in New York.

He was headed there by way of thumb with our old roommate.

All I could muster in interest of New York, New York was the folk scene and roof top parties in Brooklyn, the MOMA museum and a friend’s apartment in the Bronx.

It seems like the tough skin of the city has shaped his voice and sharpened his sight.

By way of phone call he rang last week speaking in a powerful low-tone, reciting

To me a four page piece of recent love and learned eloquence surrounding the light

Of some girl, Natalie, he’d met.

His everyday became visiting Natalie on the Brooklyn Bridge to meet her while

She oil painted and he, according to one day, yelled infinitely into sound and space.

My reply in form of choppy type written words was put off for a bit

While I lit another cigarette outside Seattle’s Best in Post Alley.

A large Wooden pole shot out of the ground randomly in the middle

Of the alley. I put my coffee there as I lit and puffed my smoke, but then,

Something a bit odd happened. An old man with one arm walking ahead of his petite wife dressed with bright eyes in a bonnet asked if he could take a fashionable photo of

Me beside the coffee. I guessed the coffee did look good and I, suave leaning against it.

The old fellow snapped four flashes and upon leaving said “I’ll get the photos to you when I see you in Hell.” He pointed to his silent bashful wife behind him saying “she won’t be going there. She’ll be in heaven.” And walked inside the coffee shop.

I was left a bit puzzled wondering about unimportant things as how I looked

In the photos beside the coffee balancing on the wooden pole sticking out of the alley….

today like everyday

I was showing my sister the website for a book I am in, when she found a video and song

About me on youtube… Robin Attwood. After listening a while I recognized who this person was. She was a tourist girl I met in New Orleans visiting from L.A. I hadn’t really thought of her since. Being a street performer you meet lotsa folk who come and go and sometimes come back but usually just disappear and you never see them again. Any how the song was unfinished. The first few lyrics were “smoke cigarette/crooked smile/lend me your smile…Robin Attwood”. It was so unexpected! I didn’t think her or any of her friends took to me that day after miming on Royal st. My face was painted an oily white; I had just bought a beer with what little money I’d made and decided to drink it with Troll on the Mississippi River front. It was Troll who had been sitting and talking with this girl and the rest of her friends from L.A. Wow! What a trip. She gave me her glasses with no lenses in them; said they went well with my mime outfit. She never came to the show that

Night, I wonder why. I imagined, so enamored by me in mime face, that she would’ve come to see me perform.

Eh, you meet people you forget people you long otherwise.

,Robin

today like everyday

... walking toward the light
on st. claude avenue i heard church bells
ring twelve o' clock amid hurling cars
and the banter of crackheads
leaning in shadows.
i was walking away from a show
at Cow Poke's feeling lonesome
and so made a great gesture home
staring wide eyed into everything
on the ground and beside me.

someone had left out a crusty box
full of clothes and room furnishings,
letters and old porn on the sidewalk outside
Cajun's Bar. i grabbed a clean blue collered
shirt in the bottom and resumed walking.
there were ex-patriate middle class
runaway punks sitting and drinking outside
of Hanks on Port st. and thugs with fat assed
women hanging on their shoulders in the parking lot
blasting Little Wayne through bass speakers.
a brown tabby cat ran bright eyed and heretic into an abandoned home
across the street staring at me as if i should
know something
while another runaway grabbed cardboard
out of Hank's dumpster.

St. Claude avenue is a large two way street
with long bodies of grass seperating each direction.
everyone smokes cigarettes on st. claude
and everyone is weary of either getting shot
or fucked with some way.
i find it an avenue beautiful usually just wanting to
get home, pick up groceries or find a show at some
bar. the avenue is beat beyond repair.
three out of every home or business per block
is either abandoned, squatted or under repair.
and the cops drive by flashing red white and blue
hailing down and up the road pushin sirens
in our ears. the trains are loudest and most modest.
they roll in and out of the military yard
on Press St. goin real slow and patient.
although last year my friend Patrick told me he
was heading home to his squat near the tracks
when he saw a gangster jump out of his car
after bein in hot pursute by the military police
and he ran straight in front of a passing train
dieing, instantly in front of Patrick about twenty feet off.

today like everyday

its another day,
and i can't tell if i'm tired
or plainly eager.
woke up at 8:00
this morning, looked out
the window on to the porch
covered in snow.
beyond that was a jungle
of forest and neighborhood
covered in white wintry wonderland.
three birds split in either direction
over the house as Art Blakey
began squeeling Come Rain or Come Shine.
it was a most official wintry seattle suburb day.
Obama began talking on the Television and on the radio.
i took two showers and jacked off once.
bemused over an article on two twin poets who
were "making a mark in America."
and set the laundry to dry
as the top ramen in my pot boiled on high.
the three cats at my place
are three shades of gray
and with the most official look, lie around
and wander outside in offense of something.
i littered a mixed cigarette as i listened
to the voicemails left by Daniel on my cell phone.
he was recalling something i'd written him in a letter.
he was cracking up while reiterating what i'd written
about businessmen on airplanes - the air plaines from
new orleans to atlanta and to seattle.
i wrote that "business men, moustache business men,
and middle aged women wash down
their salt peanuts with light beer."
listening to daniel's
three voicemails over my letter i'd sent him
sent me in a bout of convulsive giggles.
and as we both laughed together
i noticed three birds split in either direction
over the house
as Art Blakey squeeled Come Rain or Come Shine.

today like everyday

strange, the past time of the day.
watching people and things fly away.
i could care less about amusement
if i wasn't sentient.
now i must be infused with stories
that are hardly that of my own.
a curious rest about the future.
as if angels sit beside me now
as i write the contract of my life...

today like everyday

in the boiling parking lot
of america
i stand alone
and scream.
for all of the wires in the sky
that rain death upon our minds,
all of the machines,
their systems of babble and time.
i call
for unified essence!
a grace
to enrich us again.
as if from the sky
or from the ground.
SOMETHING so natural
as GRACE to revitalize
the coars of our BEING.

today like everyday

why am i obsessed with writing?
it just doesn't ever STOP.
i'm addicted to it like a dream.
like a stride pianist,
these words and images
keep coming to me
and i place them with such a melody.

there is a bounce bass,
and a low vowel held for measures.
a high howl of sudden bops!
and petite pleasures.
with such a sad richness to its moving soil,
its like a hot jazz combo killing
a crowd with machine gun banter
- what tone, breath and exhale.
a climbing god upon the stairwell
into stardom.
the very myth we question.
ah, writing is a farewell
to the future.
6 hours a day
into heavy drive.
its as if lifting weights
or jumping jacks in the morning
instead of coffee - although,
there is lots of coffee
and mixed cigarettes,
time and handling.
jacking off into the chilly cold
announcing in
sighs.
wet soup and bread for days.
a few shots and beers around.
scares, threats and consultations.
a few kisses over phone calls.
nocturnal sunshine of the mind
i am holy, a writer.
a bygone be bygone
freak of nature.
incessant fool am i,
although desireous
of such essence,
essence of measure.