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.

today like everyday

i wrote for four hours this morning.
and sparsely throughout the evening.
i sat, wrote, drank a whiskey 7,
rolled a couple cigarettes,
and jacked off.
i ordered a pizza
and watched a war flick.
angela called and i
strummed the guitar
singing Blue Moon of Kentucky.
sent a poem into McSweeney's
Magazine with my name,
address,
number,
and e-mail.
i thought about grandpa
and his missing leg.
my mum and all the family
of relatives.
olympia and the chaos
thats growing.
i wonder about
new orleans, Will and the crowd.
Angela and how i want to hold her.
my friend's address in hawaii
as he grows coffee
and plans to travel japan.
the economy recession
affecting people's lives;
falling.
falling.
falling.
a black flag is falling.

we will become sillhouettes
amid great light.
when all our hopes and dreams
are dealt with as morning crossword puzzle.

today like everyday

ashes to ashes,
dusk till dawn.
life is another,
life is a father.
it will take care
of you.
or put you to
the hell of what is imagined.
ashes to ashes,
dawn till dusk.
life is another,
life is a mother.
it will birth you
inside.
it will kill you
out-right.
ashes to ashes,
dusk till dawn.

a sad smile
upon the angel
whom carries us all.
naked and pale,
an example of people.

ashes to ashes
our saint lord's passions.
we are what we are
as to argue what we're
here for.

today like everyday

i love a low down lonesome lamp
with a lady and her presumptuous thighs
smile or no smile
sittin across from
two smoky ripe whiskey 7s
upon the carpet table
between where adjacent to
is the one windowsill in the office room
with one plant, a dark green beladona mess of hair
holding pose beside what darkness there is outside
-its night
and we're saucy in love, maybe like a debauche
dream of baudelaire
and a good sound of jazz hitting the atmosphere
crisp as shocking as a cold snow fall in northwest
winter shire.

today like everyday

i'm a poet in the dieing republic of the day.
this, interspersed with ignorance
and a many few chances taken;
upon the grounds of nothing.
i take pride in collar and suitcase
full of literature and thought.
we're a pea pod many.
i'm glad i'm not so alone anymore.
i am more so in a sense,
yet the way john updike praises
the art,
i feel holy in this fitting.
a collar of such a strange variety.
the very insensitivity it takes
to create the senses we want.
i'm a praised lord in myself
a single person
among so the many, in procession
of absolutely nothing.

today like everyday

i open the door
to let in, a cold frigid air.
it breathes in and consumes my body.
i realize that Earth, is a cold space.
and there will only be sorrow
leaving, all of us, with nothing to say.
yet our cigarettes burn, and we know are useless,
although, keep us company, like old friends.
and then begins a medley of thought, mixed with passion
in our heads,
and we get a little bit lighter or comfortably heavier.
all of the seasons, the places and inner expeditions
come running at us.
we make plans and leave plans behind,
useless like the wind and our direction.
with the inevitability of our lives
and of Earth's chaos we enthrive,
life is a solemn humble song.
a song we sing; a song of virtue.
the passion we reflect
with a brilliant statue.

today like everyday

portland was high
portland was low.
portland you monster,
you made us grow.
following crows to
the train yard,
we strange birds
held bright eyes
from dusk till dawn,
sleeping next to industry,
in the day and in the night,
we were alive
and felt how life was light,
as we three feathers fell,
began to ascend towards
the greater flock
that travels south
every winter
towards new orleans chamber
but before the mist and bayou,
the desert and hardships,
we made love to san francisco,
its jazz under wintery belt
in rain and wind,
we slept in the italian neighborhood,
made it to the cafe before the doors opened,
talked our symbolic history that hadn't happened yet,
it has now, and still we only feel of a beginning,
the beginning of our future prosperity we dream about.
not vaga-bondage but the surreal maturity we recognized
in finished arts like finished films, real but open to interpretation.

today like everyday

the children
we're all strung along the block
surrounding the stoop
listening towards nirvana.
one of those Frenchman st. nights
of new orleans.
we we're hustling well
all of the passing tourists
with songs and our wild look about life.

"hey Pete, you're going to the store?
well pick me up another beer will yah
- just one, yeah thanks."

too many cigarettes floatin about
peppering the air with a sick
nowhere about.
the night was young, only about ten o'clock.
i shoved my way among the drunken colourful
crowd over to the spotted cat
where washboard chazz was sitting in with some dixie land band.
i was all over the window trying to peek a sneak in at
how they made they're magic sound.
every two minutes the boys on stage would chant
and get the crowd inside to chant back.
they knew they were making some good tips that night.

hunger had been killin me, but with a good lick of jazz
and drink, i'd make it alright till morning,
where at the cafe i usually order a egg and cheese toast
with coffee.
for more fill i use lots of morning tobasco and ketchup.

with hustling over, the gang of kids would meander
down frenchman to where on burgundy a tight joint
was held together.
the name of the bar is The John; where every fool
and crust fuck goes to get a lick of something cheap and hard.
the bartenders fill mason jars up half with the hard drink and the rest
with whatever mix you want.
friends catch whiskey sours a lot, but i prefer the whiskey gingers.

after all said and done, a few pool games shot (lost and won),
people make it home.
groups on a level of straight line bought
from Jeffrey the neighborhood candy man,
walk out down streets like the cockroaches of evening
worked about, over nothing and everything.
the drunks either love each other or fight each other.
and some, loners as they are, sit outside with their
backs against the brick building waitin for somebody, something,
somewhere to happen and be lonely about again.

evening air in new orleans is old, warm - a stench for every block.
jazz radio spinning out of windows as you pass them on your way home.
a few strangers in dark ride by on tall bikes and small bikes, holding the most
absurd of conversation, speeding through Elisian Fields, Mandeville, Press street across
the tracks where ghosts of sillhouettes walk slowly through the mississippi mist.
and a hollow buddha moon glows on as you turn your back towards the night, kissing it all,
wishing it farewell - but knowin you must leave and close your eyes with a baby in bed readin all your books under the beautiful broken light you need to replace, yet without it the piss and shit on your walls wouldn't look as great with the families of mice and cockroach sputtering back and forth on the floor.
you make it back. slam the door to keep out any ghosts.
see your housemate chattin it up over the silence of a cigarette with a few other people.
say "hey" to everyone and wind on down walkin
up your flight of broken stairs
only to find babe, soft and sweet,
stretching a "hello" as you turn on the lights
and roll another cigarette
to have while skimming the new york times
for stories about the dead.
you feel the warm winter wind
blow through your window
sayin "yo".
time is time and it is time to farewell kiss goodnight in bed
as all excuse for love in life comes out
with one another, you and your sweet,
in bed again for tomorrow day to wake up
like every day and breathe again.

today like everyday

... i was just over a mixed cigarette and soy coffee
on my folk's porch; gazing at the cascades,
birds in trees chirping, the white cloud alure
lazy in the blue ceruleant sky, trees that stand
and look like old men, the neighbors house - wondering
if they were watching me.
i drank more upon the soy coffee and sights
as i heard garfunkle my cat make a cry
a cry, and another cry.
i looked around, didn't see him, then i did.
he was on the roof top wandering like King Lear
in desert and field.
rushing from one edge of the roof to the other
holding amazement in his eyes.

"garfunkle" i said.

"how the hell did ya git up there?"

"merowww. merowwwww. merow" he replied.

"are you having visions?"

"ohh, you're scared of heights
i didn't know about that."

i turned around to gaze at the cascades
sipping on the soy coffee as he cryed.
and he cryed and he cryed and he cryed - he kept saying something,
so i went and placed a porch seat beneath the hanging gutter of the roof
picking pine cones out of the winter gutter. i threw them across the roof top's black turf trying to see if garfunkle would play responsive.
and he was. he pawed at the first throw.

then i put my arms out for him
seein if he wanted to get down.
i pretended it was a suicide case
and, like a close friend, i was trying
to talk him out of it.
he dropped on his side and scratched
his back about it - staring at me.

then i noticed i was as tall as the
wind chimes hanging from the eve
beside me.
i dinged and donged them to see garfunkle
react.
as his ears perked up he creeped
closer to the gutter's edge,
peered down and cocked his head
at the bells and whistles knocking
into each other.
it was as if he were looking at his
reflection in the mirror.

jumping off the chair,
throwing the ciggy
off the porch,
i grabbed my coffee
off the banister.
knocked all three
of the porche's windchimes
and went inside
to deliver the morning shit.

today like everyday

cigarettes are lessons and breaths are commas hanging in mid-air.
an arm in the sky, a leg on the ground.
one arm round the sky the other around the earth.
angelic weight is upon us.
symbols are like objects with meaning.
i'm in the doorway of the observer gazing without feeling.

today like everyday

feb 2/9/09


to lie awake amid nocturnal glow; of broken light lives drying joy.
as an immortal discussion, a dialogue inside, rages with the fury of angelic bliss.
slight epiphanies occur in a mature sense of the word.
props like coffee and wine make the modern bodhisatva smoke too many cigarettes towards nirvana.
upon a flea bit bed the body is of cold sun,and a minor weeping can be heard from within the head,
like a chapel,
loudly,
singing.

today like everyday

a letter i wrote...



to ange:

heavenly earth is poor,and i love you dear, dear i love you as heavenly earth is poor.like the rocksteady of our three cities, heavenly earth is poor. little do people know,life rains with or without umbrellas. san francisco, new orleans, new york. life is poor on heavenly earth with or without you.

from: robin

==========================================================
heavenly my head
resuscitates all that it comments on.
it looks like a CONFUSED CLOUD in the blue and black of the sky.
i am naked and burnt out on questions.
standing in the parking lot of AMERICA.
in the BOILING POT of the WORLD!

its as if SOMEONE entered us all
into the GREAT spelling B in the sky.
life is very paradoxical and "MEANING" means NOTHING to me.
yet i still consider THE EVERYDAY with a value system inside of
WHO I AM.

i have to make up my life everyday for the rest of the future.
and if not i play a dumb character... probably closer to my true self
than my true self is closer to me.


... why is every "day", a wash across the face?
and every cigarette a lesson?
and every breath a comma?
feel things we don't see?
value, a desire for truth.
why desire truth when we value all together everything?

today like everyday

there is no particular THING to be said ANYMORE.
we want to change our lives every DAY.
i see visions as i talk to YOU, people and everything.
WE enunciate clearer what we mean in our heads.
again and AGAIN and again.
all our BREATHS are like COMMAS.
they hang in the air as we talk.
SONGS are SUNG as the SUN falls and rises.
songs as in our stories of the EVERYDAY.
does this make sense?

life is titanic.
as in, life is a BIG DEAL and SINKS, then is historically thought about for all of time.
it evolves like creatures do.
the personal and non-personal life is minute in relation to the GRAND FOREVER of everything.

GOD. god is like this. THE GRAND forever THING.
....................................................
i've been havin trouble concentrating.
my mind is on all sorts of things.
like why we care so much about things
that don't amount to anything.
everything amounts to everything.
its a paradox to value.