Verdant Verlyn

"Being entangled is the condition of life itself." - VK

Yes, welcome again, Fall.

Mid-summer day's reality.

Well, so much for keeping up on the regular posting. I realized though, that if I'm going to have links to this jawn out in the webosphere, then there ought to be something to read on it. Today I think I'm just going to go with some updates....interesting things I've found/seen/heard/done recently.

1. Aside from finishing my thesis....

 ...I've been trying to keep up with writing projects. As such, be sure to catch the August edition of Pork and Mead Magazine for a) the cover story (by yours truly) on artist Matt Gordon b) a few other arts features and c) interviews with Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers and Joe Michelini of River City Extension, as well as reviews of their latest albums.

2. Philadelphia is really an awesome town. Just when you think you know all there is to know about it, you remember how ridiculous you were to think that. Like today, for example, when I stumbled upon Nic Esposito and his projects, including The Head and the Hand Press. Which brings me to...

3. Urban Agriculture/Urban Farming/Urban Gardening. Call it what you want, but I've long been a proponent of the concept. Bouncing between the East Coast major metropolitan areas, I find more and more that there is so much usable space in cities if only you look around. Get creative. This summer's drought is yet another reminder of why we need to reexamine the way that we interact with food and our environment (NEWSFLASH: it's only gonna get worse, folks). Take a look at Rebecca Solnit's latest article in Orion. While it may not go terribly deep into the movement, it offers up an important (dare I say, integral) point that I think sometimes goes unnoticed amid all of the "trendy" aspects of urban ag, which is, whether you're feeding a family or a community or just yourself, having tangible, reciprocal relationships with the land and space that you occupy (anywhere, but here, particularly in the city) triggers social transformation. "When they’re at their best, urban farms and gardens are a way to change the world. Even if they only produced food—it’s food. And even keeping the model and knowledge of agriculture alive may become crucial to our survival at some later point."

4. Same topic. Sorry. Not sorry. Fritz Haeg and "Edible Estates".

5. Different topic, and I'll leave you with this:

I remember this city

as I remember the feel

of your flesh like a peach

in summer; there is no better thing. 

But you and the city have changed

without me

here to traipse along 

the wide avenues,

through the covered market,

down by the canal where I dreamt

that I caught a fish too big 

to reel, too real. The ghetto and you

coughed into new skin, familiar

but not recognizable, or is it

the other way around?

I could say I don't know

which of you I missed more,

but that would be an easy lie

to detect.

Happy Spring.

The clarity of today hurts my eyes; they are more used to screens and smog.

(Happy Spring).

 

Winter daze

On this eve of the eve of the new year, the end of the month, the end of the year, still the beginning of the season, I thought it was due time for a post.

I feel my shoulders 

hunch my spine over, 

protecting my heart 
from the cold.

I could really trace my bouts of seasonal inspiration/depression through old poems... the winter is wonderous in that way - inspiring and deadening and beautiful and hollow all the same.

For example -

2005:

Untitled

Under the covered bridge

secrets hang on the sucked-candy cane ends

of weeping icicles,

until now unheard; they drip 
precariously close to the edge

and then fall, shattering 
the eyes of an unsuspecting meanderer.

Without my glasses, blurred 
objects on the roadway forget themselves to me,

but my fleeting shape was never a part 
of their falling-rock reality, anyway.

Rough pines and slender birches bend

to hear the whispers of the mountain;

they stretch in vain to hide

the arrogance in their own indigo shadows.

2008:

(not) Surviving winter

In the second of a sob’s hitch

passion dies and all that

remains

is an open carcass

left to lie in its own

sucked marrow

stillness.

2010:

Northeast Corridor

I am wounded and whelmed –

can you be a mechanic and an artist

(these bodies break so easily) –

when the parts fail are we doomed or destined?

I M whenever U R

ready, for The F

                            all.

Listening to Dylan on the train is a religious experience

like Christmas lights

down the Northeast Corridor.

Grass returns where suburbia grows

out of industrial waste; West Philadelphia

screams through graffiti tenements and doghouse drainpipe dreams

of the backyard beyond

“Trenton Mak s T e World T kes”

and I am here again,

in the effervescence of reality,

counting on numerology reports to forecast a tomorrow that bleeds

through the pages of the journal I always mean to keep.

The puncture wounds of last night still throb

and bobbing in the rising sea tide are all of the small inconsistencies

of living and dying

to live. I am fearful of the time

when I call out a name in the night

and it isn’t yours.

In our houses of (non)silence

we all sleep deep,

breathing circa 1985 rhythms

that mingle with the frost-heave

static

and with the faucet drip sputter

that is the steady base

of night’s symphony, cacophony,

rhythms that perspire and conspire

to be trickled down with the wet beads of our past.

Tomorrow is

a full moon, blue moon

eve of a new year.

This winter? So it goes, that same ebb and flow. All things are stripped bare, exposing their ugly, dirty side streets and their beautiful, rosy cheeks. Right now this is what I think - love is a black and white dog running through the snow and between black and white birches, ears flapping back and a smile on his face just for me.

Pork & Mead

Who doesn't love art and music zines? Here's a really sweet one based in Detroit that, as of this week, I will be contributing to with interviews and artist features.

Spread the love...and the mead.

Check it out.

the Freelance Whales

Saw these guys in the District a couple years ago. I recently re-discovered this track and felt like it was worth posting.

Location