We All Need Reminders

After four years of chattering about it, some close calls, some flip-flopping, I did it,I got my first tattoo during this weekend's trip with my dear Ashley Ford to visit our Akron Family (not that Akron Family). All our Akron people said GOOD LIFE IS THE PLACE. Brian there hooked us up really nice. Ashley got "Anything Beautiful" on her shoulder, that being a nod at our pal Nick Sturm's massiveheart poem "I FEEL YES" (you'll see it soon in Forklift SO GET STOKED NOW). It looks good on her, so goooood! And I got the only first tattoo I could really see stamped on my bod, the only thing that I need on me right now. "We are clouds and terrible things happen in clouds." Dean Young said that. He says lots of beautiful and thumping things. That's from his poem, "Frottage," wowwow poem. This thing means YOU KNOW THIS DEAL WITH IT. This thing means MOVE FORWARD. This thing means WATCH OUT. This thing means I FEEL A RUMBLE YET IM BEAUTIFUL. I woke up this morning and couldn't believe it, this thing exists, I exist, the terrible exist. Let's rumble on, alright?

Matt Hart, pal of DY, got a big kick out of my tattoo, sent it to Dean, very nice.

What Matters, Revised.

Frottage By Dean Young

How goofy and horrible is life. Just
look into the faces of the lovers
as they near their drastic destinations,
the horses lathered and fagged. Just
look at them handling the vase
priced beyond the rational beneath
the sign stating the store’s breakage
policy, and what is the rational but
a thing we must always break? I am not
the only one composed of fractious murmurs.
From the point of view of the clouds,
it is all inevitable and dispersed—
they vanish over the lands to reconstitute
over the seas, themselves again
but no longer themselves, what they wanted
they no longer want, daylight fidgets
across the frothy waves. Most days
you can’t even rub a piece of charcoal
across paper laid on some rough wood
without a lion appearing, a fish’s umbrella
skeleton. Once we believed it told us
something of ourselves. Once we even believed
in the diagnostic power of ants. Upon
the eyelids of the touched and suffering,
they’d exchange their secretive packets
like notes folded smaller than chemicals.
They told us nearly nothing, which
may have been enough now that we know
so much more. From the point of view
of the ant, the entire planet is a dream
quivering beneath an eyelid, and who’s to say
the planet isn’t. From the point of view
of the sufferer, it seems everything will
be taken from us except the sensation
of being crawled over. I believe everything
will be taken from us. Then given back
when it’s no longer what we want. We
are clouds, and terrible things happen
in clouds. The wolf’s mouth is full
of strawberries, the morning’s a phantom
hum of glories, morning glories.