Newspaper Blackout Poems

Newspaper + Marker = Poetry. Buy the book.

Statues

Sunday, October 4, 2020

From Thoreau’s diary, Sept. 18, 1859:

Filed under: Thoreau

I have spoken to Batman

Thursday, August 27, 2020

I made this one in 2016. (Draw a picture of Batman! Everyone can be Batman!)

Newspaper Blackout is ten years old

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

This weird little book turned 10 years old this month. Kind of hard to believe. I made most of the poems on the bus to work and on my lunch break at my office job. Years ago I thought for sure it would probably be remaindered and go out-of-print. And yet, it’s still around after a decade. (Perhaps even more amazingly, I get a modest check for it once in a while…)

A few years ago I wrote about what I’ve learned from a decade of publishing. Not much to add to that, except:

1) Make sure when you publish a book you think you can live with it for a while.

2) Try to write books you want to read, yes, but also, if you can, ones only you can write.

3) Have a little fun with it, if you can.

There really is nothing like that first book…

A muse the muse can afford

Thursday, March 12, 2020

This age we’re living in

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Neighbors

Thursday, March 7, 2019

RIP Luke Perry. I made this poem back in 2014. Burroughs was convinced that the cut-ups were a form of time travel, and the longer I make them, the less crazy he sounds…

The cruelest month

Saturday, September 1, 2018

“Summer gets to be an old story.”
—Henry David Thoreau

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month, but in Austin, Texas, it’s September. Summer is winter here, and summer isn’t even officially over until September 22. The cursed sun pays no heed to anything official. You’re not out of the A/C until Halloween at the earliest. September here is just a cruel joke. When Northern Instagram fills with scarves and pumpkin spice lattes, your only solace is shorts in February. (Awful in its own way.) “Hot and sunny every day,” Bill Hicks mocked. “What are you, a fucking lizard? Only reptiles feel that way about this kind of weather.” It’s nothing right or natural. Nothing to be celebrated. Only endured.