Poe Toaster 2010, 1st hand account

As we set out last night in a juggled mess of new volumed voices, and bundles of clothing; cheeks ever so slightly burned of whiskey, and the ground ever so slightly gave out on us......but none of us predicted that we'd make national and local news by daybreak. [PICTURES below]

[[[Edgar Allen Poe is a beloved figure in Baltimorean history; born in Richmond, VA, the brilliant writer lived and saw various places throughout his macabre 40 years, but spent half his life in VA and half in a quintessential townhouse in Baltimore. Four days prior to his death in the hospital, Poe was found eerily delirious, ranting, and discarded in the grub of the street outside tavern "Gunner's Hall". [more info]........a final chapter to a "most stormy life" ("Alone" by Poe).]]]

_____To fellow locals that dive into the murky abyss of literary mysteries and Baltimore traditions....the event is an elegant and darkly ephemeral tribute to this man. This man who even in eternal rest, cannot rest.

It is an opportunity to experience the growth of the city; from nighttime to dawn, and each passing character that appears.

From onlookers made of artisans and historians, to street dwellers and beggars, it feels as if the brick and cobble SWELL-thick as cognac-into a viscous you can drink up entirely.

It is Baltimore of a century worth of torment and creation, a century worth of this brown dicy place a few loyal artist have called home enough........well, home enough to exist in it.

_____So my loyal friends and I hollered and climbed, shook and shivered, watched and recited, and laughed and laughed...

It's insanity I told them, that will take hold as the cold turns to sore

and the whole body locks against itself to brace for the dawn, yet twitches and races

in such a way that you feel days could be lived without rest.

....<>We met a couple sweetly huddled in the crevace of the corner of the gate; the girl furiously writing intangible sentences in a tiny notebook before hiding it, repeatedly, into the abyss of her furred coat.

....<><>There was the impeccably dapper, deep-Southern man, who as we drove away near 6:30 am, stood alone still staring into the darkness of the off-lit graveyard. Slicked back hair and a so-smooth black peacoat, he seemed to only tolerate our bunch, until-he seemed to smile so jolly and feel so welcomed.

.....<><>Then there was the devoutly drunken guy, who swayed on the pavement in his laps up and down Greene, when he'd suddenly compose himself--and then- in a flourish-dig out a beautiful "Complete Works" from his layers--and shove it excitedly into someone hands to "read, read!", or "hold! hold!" (also credited with taking the group shot after Jeff departed)

And there were so many characters brushing at our ankles, the ones that we huddled against (new and old, 
"You all look so cute from up there" 
Jeff Jerome told us after asking how we were dealing with the conditions), 
and all the distant dreary ones in the emptied lurking streets surrounding, and in all the words of Poe from which we read......and passed along.....a love for such a man....

Of course if you've paid attention to today's news-after 60 years-the Poe Toaster did NOT show up at all this year.

[link1 link2 link3].

Another mystery yes, but quite a heartache for our little group of pilgrims...

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night." ~Edgar Allen Poe

"Then-in my childhood-in the dawn of a most stormy life-was drawn from ev'ry depth of good and ill-the mystery which bind me still...From the thunder and the storm-and the cloud that took the form (when the rest of heaven was blue) of a demon in my view-" ~Edgar Allen Poe, poem "Alone"

Sip

I hated coffee today.

[sip]

Woke up in the grey-cold afternoon, trapped between months of 7:30 alarms, and there was nothing that took hold of me. So I raced down a million undetermined options and found no smile breaking the crusted eyelids. The corners of round raccoons that have seen the crevaces between too many unknown sheets.

I'm the secret.

So I figured it was a day for something new. [Sip]

I'm something new.....to myself. So much so that I mock mercilessly the other rings, the other shells, that I've worn-that now lay crusted like ancient newsprint in cream colored heaps about my carpeted floor. My carpeted floor......

Poked the button too many times on a new coffee maker, picked a brand namelessly, and went about a routine pretending. (Familiar?)

Anyone else's routine.

Maybe I can be anybody else.

Because I smoke now, and drink again now, and I drape myself in poet's black.....and haven't ever written anything without a "him" it seems.

I think I hate-don't understand-that sweet "him" of my 21 years.

That, (don't say fairy tale)-that placement of a word, that makes it seem there's love, makes it seems that any of else actually feel.

Feel less, feel normally, that is.

Because I feel the world upon the tiniest hairs, and I want so very much to live the way I hope. To live the way it feels so fucked up and falling........[sip] on the rooftops of every city all at once, reaching with arms stretched out in a near-silenced scream.....when you can be a Prophet, and a Queen, and a jester, and a magician.

[Sip that coffee I still don't like]

Magician, yes we're magicians. We're the magicians that pick-pocket from the push-pin wealthy, with ring-weighted fingers that can dazzzzzzzzzle all the faces of all the children that believe in what we wish to believe in again. They believe in us. (if we ever did)

And us, what do we bring to them?

And them, what did our magicians bring to us?

There was something magical that we did see, in the stars when I looked upon them Christmas Eve, on the fireworks; that catapulted our "imaginations" into Imaginations.

Run, Max Run. Build so many forts. See so many sunrises. Know so many friends. Reallyyy know, without a single conversation devoid of make-believe.

[sip]

I still hate it.

I still hate that I see them all again in the words I've written.

Hate that the clothes will never smell again after the wash, though all those 32 nights were on the fabrics.

Hate what they keep--that they keep, saying that I deserve. Cause its never been there. I kiss all the wrong places hello.

I still hate when I hope. (Don't we all?)

....And where am I ending today? They're leaving--we're leaving, I'M leaving. (Supposed to?) It's all ending, now you've come, and it's all happening!

[Sip. Stir]

Stir it all up for me, tap the wand against each point on the circle. Hoop-stick-pick.....

Pick it up, the smoke filling up throat with cracks.

Crackle-pop-the fire is burning and the cookies swelling. Heat it up and nestle up. Alone?

There's so many logs in that fireplace.

There's so many things we'll never do. There's so many things we WILL.

__Daily headphones: David Gray's "Please forgive me" , William Fitzsimmons's "I dont feel it anymore (song of the sparrow)", and Fleet Foxes "White Winter Hymnal"

< photo by Paul Nouge.

2814.

We, dear friend speak the same language. And it is something so rare from our origin, because you see they will never be - able to connect. It is more than the free love, the creations, the jokes; it's that we are so much more innately sad than they will ever, should ever, comprehend within themselves, for us.


Yes, the richest thirst for stories comes from sadness. It comes out of the wreckage; out of becoming so lost so many times that....you find yourself.
And we've found ourselves....a family. 

The red candlelight above the narrow cabinet stairs.
The sounds of those voices, in that haze of smokes, vibrating into the silence outside.

The city silence.
Our city. 

So joyous. Our moments, and the way that one room feels- filled with beloved eyes, and smiles you can't remember right, ...and closed within all the thoughts that are held in beads of sweat.

...oceanic water pressure with the music and the touch of skin, and lips.

And in my dreams I think I may return back there someday. Walk back there if I might live to be old. Walk along that kitshy street, with woodland trees and chipped wooden fronts, coming as if anew to the same address.
This....that, metaphor of our existence once.
______Feeling that rush of all the chances that lie free.

The love to be made, when we pretend, to be immortal forces. And all the nerves that make you uneasy....the sound of high heels on crackled concrete....places in that place that we have dreamed within. -Dreamed within nightmares and cocktails.

_______Turning on my heels-suddenly-each time right in front...because the door, the steps, the porch, appear as if its 9 and 3/4. Appearing, because we find it still stands somehow. Though its shaken down, and could've crumbled down....a toy hand sticking out of a mug was all that could've been left.

But anyway its anyhow. It's all really something how, the mundane days are so many days of made....art.
So oddly productive.
Really truly falling now, and how, we're so in love with the only "one true love" of--ART.
Art we seek and art we fight and art we build.
And ART actually runs through the high-content bloodstream, to the fingertips, as if its getting drunk......upon the very idea that maybe we can be immortal for just a period.

A period in time of being able to say its falling smoothly, we're treading evenly--no, unstably---into whatever the catastrophically beautiful IT really is.
Damnation on our heads already placed, cause we're the sinners of the normal life!

Dail headphones: Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", LMFAO's "Shots", James Morrison's "Once when I was little" and Bon Iver's "Skinny Love"