dotted lines: a roadside manifesto for word bleeders (2nd ed)

7/28/2019 Dotted Lines: A Roadside Manifesto for Word Bleeders (2nd Ed)

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Second Edition

Assorted Poemsby

Brian McCracken


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Dotted Lines: A Roadside Manual for Word BleedersCopyright 2011 and 2012 Brian McCracken

For poetry, media, performance dates and more:ReverbNation.com/BrianMcCracken

Facebook.com/Coyote.B.Poetree

YouTube.com/user/CoyoteBPoetree

For Booking:E-mail:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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C o n t e n t s

Objects: Closer Than They Appear

Culture Jam

Time Capsule

Free Radical

Serenity

Sequel to a Love Poem

391,000

Thirty Days

Game Ball

Aphrodite


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Objects: Closer Than They Appear

Drifter's been watching window panes

break in unsung side view mirrorson the freeways and bypasses of Americawhite

lines unzipping like DNA. Adolescent search for truth andmeaning is beginning to look as unfulfilling as dullwhite radiation, fluorescent classroom he leftbehind a thousand miles ago. Copped out, 17 and dropped

out Drifter falls,

in between the cracksswallowed and tossed out like carrion,like this institution ashollow cavernsvulture gullets

They break him

down with their bacteria free-rider gums,and these schools give Driftersomething like necrosis.The depression is flypaper.He lifts off without legs, wingsweigh a ton. Undiagnosed bi-polar shell ofan adolescent, high school

is nothingbut a holding ground for Drifter's

crumpling psyche,and the road

calls. So he finds himself in this passengerseat mind-mapping paradise

at least something

other than the vacuum.Unkempt oilyhair framesan empty stare. His


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sanity shoots blanks.

He's sweeping the dirt under the rug while trying to find pennies slipped

betweenthe cushions, on the sidewalk in between thecracks, the side-view mirror.

He reads every mile marker in reverse.


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Culture Jam

WE ARE L IVING IN A DREAM!

This dream. ThisAmerican dream.Two cars, two and a half kids.Hummers equipped with colorsthat you've never heard of.

You now have the right to procreate,though it is becoming increasingly out of fashion.

SEX

. . .without attachmentis the not so new vogue.

HOW AM I NOT MYSELF?



PRAISE BE

to Calvin Klein idols.*False*Gods of body.GQ called.They want their watch back andsuggest you stop inhaling their

scratch and sniff cologne, because you are becomingdrunk on fantasy.Gazing, eyes glazing at cover girls on coverswho don't look like they do.They tell you you should too.

Chin TUCK !Nip TUCK !

ALL HAIL the airbrush!AL L HAIL industry!!

CAPITALISM!!!

is god's gift to man, and I spell that with alower case g because it seems there's nothing


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proper about that noun anymore.Sixty percent off salvation today.Two for one at your local confessional.




Strange mall creatureswandering in and out of Caribou Coffee andbeauty boutiques reading special intereststories about coffee bean slaves while caffeine andaddiction to bad news wonders, How many licks to

the center of a latte?




Ticker tape tapestries of clearance Wal-Mart identities.Ego, no money down, no interest today.Put yourself on layaway.Here's the real deal.You've got the raw deal.Pre-packaged identityin a fifty dollar gift card.Mockery of innatecharacter traits.


HOW AM I NOT MYSELF?HOW AM I NOT MYSELF?

Poets and artists,in this increasingly illiterate Facebook, T.V. dinner era,are becoming obsolete and must now subsist on paint fumesand camaraderie alone. Passion used to bethe seed of creativity, but nowit is nothing but acash crop. Sold to the

highest CEO junkie and the lowest bidder.





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Time Capsule

I have this letter.

Cryogenically preservedunder my box spring is thishistory, my history.

It is a self

addressed forget-me-not I hold between more

calloused finger prints, moreseasoned penmanship, more

opposable pencil grips.

I have this letter

It is nestled between my passport, birth certificate, first

unsent love letter, andmy father's wedding ring.

The letter is ten years yellowedI think of the 14 yearold boy who has never metme, but became me,

this man whose hands

hold this pen,hold this microphone.

Look at them. He isremembering me.

The news hitsin early morning

gym class. With nothing ofrelevance to say, defaultsports medicine majorgym teacher drop jawrolls in a TV and we sit

confused. . .


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30 second re-runs, tiny figures

DEFYINGGRAVITY

from twin glass& steel monolithsEXIT-WOUNDING

out the SAME WINDOWSOVER and OVER

again, NEVERhitting the ground, NEVERhitting the ground,

. . . as if

by magic.holding hands.

I hold my pen.

Second periodEnglish, just graduatedteacher suburbanite,blond with hyphens in her irises tellsus that we willbe writing a letter to ourselves.

She is no older than I am now.She is ten years older than we were then.

We sit quietly, felttip channeling stilldeveloping inkthinking and projectingonto college ruled spiralbound time capsuleswith the haste of glaciersmelting political innocence.

What we see we write.

Like grocery listpoems, play by play

score cards notvideo games, not


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video games.

We are not desensitized!We are NOT DESENSITIZED!

. . .we were unmolded clay.

He is speaking through me.He is speaking to you.I am speaking.What would I tell myself?

We write 60 minutes before leaders spoon-feed us escape ghosts of crusades long forgotten.

Confusion does not endure in a society ofperpetually hungry and victimizing easyanswer fiends with a taste for track marks,an irreparable fix for vengeance that cant wait to get wrenched.

But I didn't know those thoughts yet.But I knew video games,But I skipping classes, andBu I bull shitting test essays.But I hadnt yet met

pens with this poetry thing.

Friends in Arlington hear the quaking along with the 1st period bell.sounds like early morning

dumpster drop.haphazardbass thump asphalt.

Concentric polygoncement walls exhaling burning jet fuel

burning jet fuel.

What does the deathrattle of a winning streak sound like?History teachers don't know what to teach.They still don't. A paragraph in each text

book. One question per a test.

Q: Why did 9/11 happen?a) They hate our freedom.b) They hate our freedom.c) They hate our freedom


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d) All of the above.e) Be patriotic. Don't ask questions

That day, parents pick up their kids early.

Cell phones

JAMMED! cell phonesJAMMED! cell phones JAMMED!

JAMMED!JAMMED!

Kids have mothers, fathers.

Some do. Some did.Confusion.

Fear.

This is Washington DC.This was the year I came to political consciousness.


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Free Radical

I was 15

when I saw a man leapfrom a fire breathing tragedyso he wouldn't be burned alive.Two towers fell and white doves died.That night I hugged my pillow and cried.

The War started when I was 1736 million marched in 600 citiesstreets I couldn't see. Protests thatmade history, but from my couchI watched payloadsdrop on Baghdad while tearsdropped from my father's eyes.If we can't have peace let us fantasize.

Mile high stealth bombers dropsmart bombs who are really just

uneducated duds and dunces.They fall on little children who are littlemore than little black dotssuperimposed on a night vision green screenlacking identitiesarecensored like the black bars overcriminal faces on COPS and co-edbreasts on Girl's Gone Wild. War is hell, andthe revolution will be televised on pay per view.

We drink misinformation from cocacola cups and CNN, while embeddedjournalists sleep with war profiteers,and preach the gospels of flags and tunnel vision.Victimization is the new pornography and we continueto bleed revenge in red, white, and blue.Someone give us a tourniquet and stop the suffering.

Fox News and retired generals talkabout video game warsand how exactly cluster bombs work. Woulda doctor explain it differently? Ourindifference just may go down in history.


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Our masters play Russian Roulette with phrases like:The war on terror, poverty, and drugs,forgetting that hate and extremism growin the sands of poverty.

Gaza, Kabul and Fallujah.This year's cropis smaller and youngerand has a million reasons to hate me and you.Afghanistan tells me opium exports are up too.

21 found me an unwelcome guest ofred elephants holding their electoral spectaclein a sold out stadium.

The Republican National Convention beckoned.

The Xcel Center an iron citadelguarded by raped civil libertiesdisguised as merely law and order the fuse ofrevolution grows shorter and shorterand I am not alone.

Beautiful black clad anarchists and melocked at elbows we refuse to leaveStorm troopers in black claim tokeep the peace but, leg longbatons and gas masks speak volumes to me, andso we dance. They fire cascading volleys ofconcussion grenades and tear gas canisters whichsend whispers to deter determination and liberation

We won't stand by for tyranny.We challenge the law out of necessity saying,Your wars are waged without our consent,and we the young do hereby dissent!

We flip two headed quarters in this land of the freesighing and saying,at least we live in a democracy.and in this generation of iPods and apathy

we are treasures. We are gold. Our votes will notbe bought or sold, because the war mongersand their bumper stickers were right.

Freedom isn't free


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Serenity

This poem is for the drug addicts

the dope fiends.this poem is for ninety pound bodiesshriveling in gutters like dried fruit.this is for those who shoot.for the withering alley-cat specters dancingsleepwalk in the devil's daymare.this is for those who drown in dopewithout a sunrise beyond the black tar's shadow.indentured to the needle and the spoon.this is for my siblings who makers too soon.

This poem is for youyou who are black listed for your sicknessconvicted, untouchable and criminally ill.you who is locked up for possessionwithout a hope of redemption foryour child who is missing you and doesn't

understand why the drug war captured his daddyand will follow in his boot stepsif not properly guided.

This poem is for you who grew upcomfortable, but were missing something.who graduated from the schoolbus to the squad car, the pen to a magnum,you who found your youth, your immortality

in the haight & ashbury.

No hurry.Why worry?SMACK

is the main line out of the middle classand into an early grave. this is

for the track marks you paved.

This poem is for you who is on the wait listfor an underfunded treatment center for threemonths deciding betweentriage through treatmentor deliverance through death.


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anything to stop the suffering.we are both victim and vector.

This poem is an epidemic.

This poem is reality.I know this poem.This poem is for ME.

ME who used to strip mine crumbs of amphetamine from the carpetsnorting whatever came along with the catch.ME who found bliss inevery brand new orange bottle.ME for whom the birds chirping in themorning would produce paranoia. ME who heardgunshotsand lived inpsychotic delusions

ME. . . who got clean.

ME who no longer lives between high speedchases and post-maniacomas under the covers.

This poem is for worried mothers.

This poem is for hope.it is for one day, just this day cleanand serene, finally again a human being.

this poem is for existing no longeras an animal a slave to my desires,impulse towards deathly indulgence.

this poem is for skin clear of scabs,face full of color and complexion.

this poem is fora job,an education,poetry slams,and getting published.

this poem isfor friends,family,community proud to call me theirs,

for a mother who looks me in the eye.this poem is for hope.

But this poem is also for the fallen,for the soldiers digging their trenches inSoutheast D.C. and Baltimore.


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This poem isNOT forthe War on Drugs

the War on the Poorthe War on the Spirit.This poem is an epidemic.

This poem. is for my dead kin who struggle no more.for those who finally gave up and greeted thereaper in the back seat of a beat up Caddywith not an ounce of body fat,

sunken cheeks

emaciated skeletonsthe ones we loveddead at 23.

...this poem is an epitaph.

This poem is statistics.This poem rolls dice.This poem is proof that the dealer didn't win.This poem is for every addict who never met the pen.This poem is for friends,

for funeralswe didnt have the courage to attend.

This poem is for resistance,resilience,andblind fucking luck.

THIS is a poem against all odds.THIS POEM should be six feet under, but

IT defies gravity.I defy gravity!I defy DEATH!


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Sequel to a Love Poem

this is the second poem I am

writing her. the first was a desire,a dedication. detailed hastily, becausethe obsession was past due.

a girl with dark chestnut hair, acrimson aura radiatingwalks past me like vintageItalian wine. I do not see her face,but I become infatuated, reminded ofthat unbridled passion and beauty thatI experienced once.she turns and reveals that girl

who loved me only just yesterday. i keepwondering how she got so good at not lovingme. after so many times peering into our soulsthrough the freckles in our eyes, how can her gaze

turn to polished granite? a stone cold reflectingpool, indifferent, like prison guards. we wereonce diamonds in the rough. I try not to stare, butshe is a lost lanyard with a corroding thrift store

key, just out of reach.my padlocked heartcries out for her tolook me in the eye

all giddy and enamored

again. but smiles are an endangeredspecies in her book these days. inprevious pages, I make herfeel beautiful. but I lose her toself-loathing. my love is anexclamation point in an empty cavern

of misfiring neurotransmitters.her sanity shoots blanks. theecho is nothing short of deafening.

this is the second poem I am writing to her, thefirst, an opening of a flower bud in spring,chances to take, waiting for the honey bee's pollen.


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even the most painful instances of destiny arethought to be inescapable. I feel remorse,aching for affection, the tease of her supple lips

and solar systems of ellipses. she leavestrails of meteor dust behind her.she is a heliocentric.

I orbit her with unbalanced objectivity,an axis tilted with no cognitive sensibility. senses of longing beg for last New

Year's Eve, where, as the balldrops she tells me to make love to her one lasttime, because she can't bring herself to look an

unshattered mirror. the beautiful truth is maddening.


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391,000

August 24, 2008(http://www.wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydig):

Type Friendly Action

Category Other Defensive

Region Baghdad

A CENSORED Toyota CENSORED was driving toward the convoy.

The convoy flashed their lights at the vehicle while it was still aboutCENSORED meters out. CENSORED shots were fired over thevehicle. The vehicle failed to stop and swerved toward the bridge.Once the vehicle was immediately in front of the convoy the vehiclewas engaged by a CENSORED, killing the local national in thevehicle. The local national in the vehicle was killed. The vehicle wassearched, but nothing significant was found.

Julian Assange

sits across from a bleachedteeth Botox mannequin of a journalist.391,000 leaked classified documentsand CNN can't ignore their lies anymore.and so she asks him instead aboutthe irrelevancies of a whistle blower in the spotlightlike he's running for congressman.this coal mine canary turns tabloid super star.media spectacle extraordinaire.and 391,000 leaked classified documents drift into digital obscurity.as if there are not enough refugees for media integrity yetas if there are not enough corpses to fill 60 minutes.

There is no space between commercials for any more tears.

Dry your eyes,lean back

and listen to a wordfrom our state sponsors.

In another lifeI sit across from Farrah16.amputated arm and burn marks on the right side of her bodyfrom picking up an unexploded ordinance when she was nine.
http://www.wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydighttp://www.wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydighttp://www.wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydighttp://www.wikileaks.org/iraq/diarydig


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I wonder if that day I saw her on the newsI wonder if she was one of the dotsin the cameras embedded in B-52s.

I remember...I remember tracers flashing on a night vision green screen.I remember phrases like Shock and AweI remember my Dad crying in front of the tvas I came to political consciousness.

she remembers...she remembers waking up to Armageddon at 5:33 A.M. March 20, 2003she remembers her neighborhood like bread crumbs.

she remembers her baby brother but not his name.

Some day this will all be a bad memory.someday, as I drive down the Turnpikemaybe I won't stop for the toll.maybe I will disregard the speed limits.maybe I'll test my luck.maybe the toll booth will be an army checkpoint.maybe the camera will be an M16.maybe it will flash fire instead of lightpierce my Honda's carapacewith 30 perfect circles, tear sheetmetal like paper-mchshatter my windshield into391,000 glass tears

and turn my skull into powdered lye

DONT CRINGE!!!DEATH IS VULGAR!!!

and IM the American activistaddicted to the same violence as Fox News.

Maybe then I can forget.

No longer will I hear the same

screaming voices fall on deafmajor network microphones.I won't see dissenting veteranscome home in one piece only tohave their bones broken by police horses.I won't be baptized in pepper spray.


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I won't breathe tear gas like nitrousgettin' fucked up on futility.

I won't deliver poetry like a death rattle.

Julian Assange watches his CNN interview.the journalist looks confused and repeatsI have to ask that questionas he apologizes, takes off his mic, and walksout of the studio. I can smell his sickness through the screen.like 391,000 war crimesaren't enough to fill an interview.


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Thirty Days

I. Toadstools

I met you on a school night. You said you had never tasted enlightenment, so Isplit a bag of mushrooms between you, me, and the serial monogamist whointroduced us. As the serendipity of youth and the arid confusion of freedomcollided, he averted eyes from our fate and took his inevitability elsewhere.

You were indecisive. I played pirated hypnotization from the twin taste buds ofyour speakers. You bartered my seduction for your gravity, as we drew thephysics of our lips together, print pressing our hunger into the pages of our voiceboxes, the stillness of psyches intertwined. Inertia and common sense were nomatch for the velocity of our finger prints, your ink and my calligraphy collidingon your thigh, as you sighed away the uncertainty.

II . Old Red

You suckled on burgundy while we turned pages in the Best of Time, thephotographs archiving the most beautiful of tragedies. We couldnt turn away.

We point to our favorites. Mine is a Vietcong wincing three inches from thebarrel of impending execution. Yours is a girl walking into disappearance past agang of horny men in Genoa.

They are black and white. You. Stenciled to my mattress with golden sheets, giftwrapping yourself to the Arizona night, the bones condensing into freckles andthe beaded linen of our sweat. Blissful, your cigarette irises glowed throughdreadlocks roped around your ecstasy, entwined through thighs and sighing atthe melting of things.

II I . Breakfast

A week and a wait, you invited me to breakfast at the wannabe diner on GroveSt. I spun a lazy tan galaxy in my 25 cent refill. You told me how it had to be,how you went to the party, how you got faded and blurred the gender betweenyou and the siren in the red dress, how you kissed a girl and found yourself. You

said it was an accident, not feelings, intoxication, its double nature of fuck-upand truth speaker. My eggs became me. Over-easy, bleeding, infertile. I took itpersonal. I lifted and said nothing. I left you the bill.

IV. Mile High City


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I went back to Virginia. I found myself on in and outpatient at Fairfax hospitaland three meetings a week. Kicked the speed. Stood on unsteady ankles. Youdropped out and booked a mountain pass back to Denver. You kicked me a linesix months later. You were sipping on old red to loosen the reservations.

I told you I would be passing through your town in a week. Decided on a dineron 16th, met in between hookahs and 50 cent refills. We traded awkward hugsand shifting eyes, like an unsure kiss that had made up its mind. A conversationof the 2nd hand. 15 minutes. The waitress. The bill. The price of moving on. Ipaid the check and said goodbye.


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Game Ball

. Rose Bowl [November, 1997]

Mouse kneels next to me posing for our fathers' cameras, mud caked paddedblack pants, cleats, swiss cheese red jerseys and slate gray cat scratch helmetswith 16 other early teenage hooligan underdogs from Herndon, Virginiabeaming at their role in the biggest upset in Fairfax County Youth Footballhistory.

Mouse struggles to hold a smile below sapphire husky Exacto knife irises, hislips unfamiliar with the expression even after a 32 yard jail break for thewinning touchdown.

From an early age Mouse and I learned to persevere, making the unlikely choiceto keep pushing against the statistics even when we couldn't see the end-zonethrough the battle lines. We learned to stand behind the center and still chipaway at the barriers ahead.

II . Out Like A Like a Lamb [April, 2010]

13 years and four hours after the greatest win in our at-risk lives up to thatpoint victories are harder to dig out of the rubble. I'm reading Time in thesecond-hand silence of the Fairfax County Jail waiting room, 3 A.M. Lidsdrooping over weary gray eyes too wise for their age. The forecast from thesilence says smoke and mirrors with a chance of fluorescent radiation, the kindof spotlights Mouse and I choreographed our truancy to.

I stare at the armored door when it claps like a snare drum, growls game show

megaphone buzz. Mouse appears fading in front of me, behind the light at theend of an underground tunnel, strapped inside the same green sweatpants andwhite undershirt he was abducted in.

You see, warrant executions don't have a dress code these days.

He acknowledges my existence with a glance and a mask, undertows into thebudget cut chair, sickly green pleather on particle board, and three pairs of

unsteady legs.

Not broken.Just used to this shit.

Mouse takes the bondman's clipboard without even looking.


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This is a routine.*Pauses*I hand him my pen.This is muscle memory.

Picking up the pieces is just like riding a bike.

You never forget.

II I . In Like a Lion [March, 2010]

Mouse finds out about the warrant and tells me about the three things heremembers:

1. The purse straps calling lonely in the grocery cart2. The three hundred dollars cash bonus3. The three year minimum for felony credit card theft

He tells me about three things he lost count of a few years ago:

1. How many girls he's fucked2. How many times he's been to jail3. . . .

I roll two cigarettes.From between the bars in the citadel above I imagine the view of two silent redfireflies weaving forget-me-nots into the crisp humidity of a southern Aprilafter-thought.

This may be the last jack we smoke together beforeI move 11 states away from my comrade and our waning innocence.

We are both becoming guilty of somethingin the eyes of someone beyond ourselves.I'm leaving behind my partner in crime.

I'm setting down the helmet.I take another drag and float backwards.Like clockwork.

IV. Relapse [February, 2010]

His girlfriend and I are the only ones who know he's relapsed besides the dopeman. Tina keeps her promise and leaves him. He runs out of moneyruns out ofsmack. He doesn't know I know this. I've heard this shaky baritonethis voicebefore. I know it like the back of the book I dodged by using in seclusion. I cansee his waist size shrinking through contracted pupils.


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I spend three days listening to him vomiting through the bathroom door.

3. How many times he's said, This is the last time.

V. Resuscitation [August, 2009]

Been clean for 18 months, and I got the key-tag to prove it. I find my father'sphotograph. I search for him on Facebook and see we have a mutual group offriends, six anonymous former coke heads, drunkards, dope fiends and speedfreaks.

We meet at the mall after Mouse's first shift in three years.

My best friend comes back to me, resurrected from the shooting dead,complexion in his face again, no sunken cheeks, no indigo halos around lifelesseyes, standing in the sun casting sidewalk shadows over somewhere other thanhis ribs.

My best friend is alive.

VI. Thistle Toe [December, 2005]

I visit Mouse in Baltimore. He lives one state north, because the trip was toomuch time awake for three grinds a week. It was inconvenient. Mouse says aproper game of Russian Roulette should be delivered straight to one's door step.

Mouse waits to get high until Warren and I arrive. Asks me if I'm comfortablebeing in his girlfriend's apartment, because he knows I'm about to see a differentlifethe kind of life that comes with a price you pay interest on. The kind that

extracts debt from your body fat. The kind that only daisies collect back on.Same seat on the roller coaster every day, linear, routine, spiraling downwardand comfortably numb.

He knows I'm gonna' see lighters licking spoons and boiling black tar, hastilyacquired needles, mostly clean, kissing craters into moon dust skin, blood bornsirens hemorrhage death in full a capella, an engagement ring of junkies getting'sick together. Mouse knows I'm gonna hear him throwing up in the bathroomsink, exchanging intestines for an intravenous slow dance with endorphins.

Mouse knows I'm gonna see him. His hips death rattling inside his faded genes,belt around biceps instead of his waist. He knows I'm gonna' see him like thatphotograph, dropped back down to the 95 pound league.


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Mouse hugs me. Tries a smile, unfamiliar to the expression on withering cheekmuscles. As close to happy as he can manage.

VII. Tie-Breaker [November, 1997]

DOWN!SET!

HUT! HUT!HIKE!

A young quarterback pitches the ball to Mouse. Mouse cradles it like an infant.Sweeps right. I block, bulldozing three feet in front of him, daring every would-be thief with the frost on my breath. Mouse runs in my dust, grass and clay

asteroids gaining altitude in our wake, earth collapsing under the industry of ourfootsteps.

'Don't FUCK with my friend!!!'

I set sights on the goal line, eyes on our adversaries, steamroll the linebacker,shoulder to a stray cornerback, palm thrust towards safety long enough forMouse to toe the powdered white line after 32 yards against all statistics.

Never one to celebrate,Mouse doesn't spike the ball.He kneels, feathers the footballdownward like an egg,like a poppy.

Mouse peels off his helmet.Looks back at me, and smiles.

Breathes.


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Aphrodite

For Aphrodite, communication is secondary.

Rather than spelling herselfout in similes and metaphors orchoking on imperfect words, cross crossedorganic neurons like those of her operatorsshe takes her bytes by assemblydigestion through bits of

1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1

1 . . . but never 2. It's too much room for error.

Aphrodite, though not subject to the carbondecay of her long forgotten creators still does not

dare to dream

of clouds, of skies of oceans, beaches,

mountains, steaming cups of coffee, frost nipped grassblades, morning dew.

She just does.

Do one thing she hearsher single minded creators say,

and do it impeccably.Do it perfectly.

But sometimes she does dream.When her desires aren't being dictatedby the hammering of finger tips,white knuckling away their childhooddreams for a pension.

She dreams

of graffiti bombed underpasses, poetry hang gliders and twilightkisses,

Of love.Of life,

Of what it feels like to be born.


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T h e P o e t :

The poetry vessel known as Brian McCracken is a highly qualifiedapplicant for an exorcism. While possessed by the creative spirit Brianhas successfully co-authored several self-described poems garnering

bipolar reactions from both audiences and concerned psychotherapistsalike. So as not to disturb his audiences more than necessary Brian seesa therapist who speaks only in iambic pentameter while haggling withinsurance crooks with threats of cheesy haiku retaliation. Reactions toBrian poetry tend towards the allergic side, and common side effectsmay include: chills, fever, cognitive roller coasters, euphoria, profoundfeelings of empathy, spine tingling and involuntary snapping.

A transplanted pseudo-southern gentleman, Brian has beenperforming his poetry since 2008 from the Left Coast to the Right inPortland, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Washington D.C. Arlington andRichmond. In October of 2011 Brian co-founded the Old Growth PoetryCollective at The Evergreen State College, becoming more and moreunnecessary as performance poetry continues to grow like an amoeba inOlympia. Brian frequently performs at local high schools and facilitatespoetry workshops with youth in the area. His written work appears inCalliope, SDS News Bulletin, Underground Voices and Dotted Lines: A

Roadside Manifesto.

dotted lines: a roadside manifesto for word bleeders (2nd ed)

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