And bc it’s so full of feelings, it’s tempting to write it off as sentimental. As ‘different than serious art.’

But this is the statement she’s making about supposed ‘serious art.’ She makes this statement:

I don’t want

to hear it

if I can’t

dance to it

Stevie sings

That line break, after can’t.

How I feel about so much writing.

I…just…

I can’t.

Bro cut the fuckshit make me feel something sing to me!

Why are your bars any different than your writing?

Why the fuck.

Why indeed.

There should be no difference, what she saying.

What she demonstrates.

She even takes shots at the specific rage-impulse I read her over and over specifically to quell. To calm my way out of.

Hey baby

come sit on

my lap / Why

don’t you smile

Oow I could

get me some

of that

You got a

boyfriend

Bitch, you know

you want it

Dumb cunt

But back to freedom, and whether it lies in art or in walking across country or simply here, in Philadelphia, meaning wherever you happen to be. Whatever body you find yourself inhabiting:

I thought

I could find

freedom in

a book

but I was wrong

Now it’s the dream

of the road

to go & never

stop / Now it’s

the moment

at the end of

the work day

when I take off

my dress

Fuck bruh.

I wanted to talk to her.

To tell her I done explored this dream, of the road / to go & never / stop, and

I don’t know…

Ended up back in the same city.

Same shit.

How did she do it?

Manage to stay put?

I wanted to learn.

To tell her / learn.

Be taught what I didn’t know / tell her what I did.

We all knew things others could be helped by, it was just about locating what.

About reaching out.

So I reached out and asked if she wanted to record a pod and we met up and recorded a pod.

Hadn’t realized you could just do that.

She talked to me about the New York School of poets and writing like you talk and studying under Maggie Nelson during her MFA and how she was from Michigan and loved the Pistons and Tigers and Spartans and about struggles she’d been going through surviving and maintaining her health and working in order to secure her healthcare.

I guess I hadn’t realized you could just be all the things you were to anyone whenever and that that was an OK thing and that it was an OK thing to talk and write and correspond directly and clearly rather than cryptically and strategically and manipulatively…

4

RYDEN

November 2018

I picked up Ryden at his new spot, 49th and somewhere south of Baltimore. Warrington maybe.

Near there.

His roomies headed out to campus too but in a different car.

Room in theirs, but Ryden wanted to roll with.