words dance

i received word that my poem an avalanche of suffering was accepted by words dance's guest editor, Jessica Mahlstedt, for issue #10; a print issue.

i've appeared in a few previous issues of words dance -- both online and in print -- in the past. it's a fine journal of poetry filled with quality poems. check out the website and subscribe/submit.

the diagnosis

well,
it appears there is nothing wrong with me (or my heart that is). the cardiologist said everything looked normal, the electrical pulses and sinus rhythm looked normal, the muscle appeared normal and strong. the only thing he noticed was the membrane between the left and right atria was thin and i potentially have something called a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) that 25% of adults have. it isn't life-threatening and things should be fine. there is still the possibility a small hole exists, but unless i have consistent symptoms there's nothing to worry about.

i am currently wearing a Holter Monitor (a 24-hour EKG device) in order to attempt to capture the bizarre and disconcerting arrhythmia that i experience. i will be taking a treadmill/stress EKG test on Monday and will follow up in two weeks to see if there is anything they find from these new tests.

it appears all the symptoms (apart from the arrhythmia) were due to stress and panic. i'm wondering if my wife's episode just 4 weeks ago played a part in this. now that she's well and back to normal i probably started to relax and all the emotions and pent up nerves and anxiety just flooded through my body causing my heart to race and i panicked.
i'm also prone to panic attacks and high anxiety. it's one of the fabulous Barrett traits along with a very big....well...nevermind.

anyway, it appears things are well.
for those of you hoping this was the end of justin.barrett, sorry suckas!it'll take more than a bum heart to get rid of this guy.

for those well-wishers out there, thank you!

i might have a weak heart, but there ain't no keeping this bastard down. for too long, at least.
ha!

i LOVE mail...and an eerily prescient title

in today's mail was a fine package from S.A. Griffin, venerable poet, artist, actor living in Los Angeles. in the package were a heft stack of his fabulous one-sheet journal MEAT, issue #10, with my poem our current president included. i'm honored to be included in issue #10. some great poems by Mr. Griffin, Ann Menebroker, Scott Wannberg, and others.

and, while reading through the previous posts on this blog (yes, i'm a vain egoist and i read my own posts from time to time), just before writing this, i noticed the eerily appropriate title to the post regarding my wife's own health issues: "the terror of your heart ripped from your solar plexis". it wasn't my heart that was ripped out during this ordeal, but a small hole.

my wife has that hole now. like e.e. cummings she carries my heart in her heart.

echo (updated)

i had my echocardiogram today. i won't find out the results until Friday morning, when i will see the cardiologist and he can give me the final diagnosis.

but, the echocardiogram is really fucking cool. first, the technician just searched around the front my chest, and we saw the pumps working and the valves flapping. then she went down around to the side of the chest and we saw the 4 chamber of the heart. she was even able to colorize it to see the blood flow.

then, she pulled out another instrument and we got to see my heart in 3D. and she was even able to take slices off of the 3D heart and view the inside, all the walls, the septa. it was insane. i've never seen anything like it.

also, it was all in real-time, so whatever my heart experienced could be seen on the screen. that was trippy.

before the whole echocardiogram began, the technician asked me what was going on, to get an understanding of what i was experiencing. she then asked me if there was any family history of heart problems, or any sudden deaths. i remember the ER doctor asking me the same thing when i was in there. i said no, because to the best of my knowledge there have been no heart problems in my family, either side. granted, we're not the closest of families and there are uncles i haven't seen in 20 years or more.

but, it just occured to me that my maternal grandfather died suddenly and unexpectedly when my mother was five. i'm terrified now that maybe he has some kind of heart condition. i know very little about the guy, other than his name, so it's possible he did have heart problems. i've asked my mother about it but haven't heard back from her yet.

anyway, Friday will be the day we find out the prognosis; and whether surgery will be necessary or not. i'll update when possible.

UPDATE: i heard back from my mother. my grandfather DID die of a sudden heart attack. "coronary thrombosis" was the official cause of death. FABU-fucking-LOUS! he was only 48, too. shit. i'm only 33, but that ain't too far off. so, i must inform my cardiologist of this, just to be safe. i hope that what i have is nothing related to what happened to him.
and now, i must attempt to remain calm for the next 40 hours; not gonna be easy.

filling the holes in our lives

yesterday, sitting in my mailbox, was the first 2 broadsides of the Guerilla Poetics Project. i did my part by hiding a quarter of them in a store in West Jordan, Utah; and will finish by hiding the remaining ones in the downtown Salt Lake Library and in a few stores around there. these hidden broadsides will fill a hole in the poetry publishing arena. we are plugging the gaps, filling the voids.

and, on top of that great news, is a touch of bad.
after my wife's scare three weeks ago, we aren't able to handle too much more; but, life just has a way of piling shit on top of shit.
yesterday, we decided to see a movie but had to suddenly leave when i started feeling anxious and clammy and had bizarre heart palpitations. i figured i'd finally contracted the virus that had been making the rounds at work. we went home, and i stayed up late into the night with the chills, the weird heart palpitations and a shortness of breath.
it lingered into today, so i decided i probably should get it checked out. just in case.

well, it turns out i have a congenital heart defect that i was never aware of. apparently, there is a hole in my heart, between the two atria which is causing the palpitations. it isn't life-threatening (meaning, i won't die from it) but it is concerning as they have been known to cause clots that could lead to stroke, etc.
i will be setting up an appointment with a cardiologist later this week, will get a cardiac echo and will most likely have to have surgery to close the hole.

it's strange, having something like this, that you were born with, that you knew nothing about. and it manifests itself only 3 weeks after the fright we had with my wife. it's too soon for this shit. luckily, it's not THAT bad. if the hole were between the ventricles, i wouldn't be home now and, instead, would be having open heart surgery as i write this. the surgery to repair this hole is pretty damn slick and can be done going through an artery.

anyway, the hole in my heart will be plugged much like we are doing with the Guerilla Poetics Project. suturing a gap that severely needs to be done.

more good news

i received an email the other day from The Other Voices International Project stating that they plan to put out an anthology of the work published on their journal over the years, and my poem After Heidi committed suicide and a few weeks passed, letting it sink in; and after the wife and I sat at home for 5 straight nights, barely talking to each other; and after sharing a bottle of wine, finally letting the emotion wash over us like soap bubbles, she said, was selected for inclusion. very exciting. i had 8 poems published in Vol. 8 back in 2004. it's nice to know that of all of the times an editor has said he held anthology rights it finally paid off once.

a touch of good news...

...for me,
a touch of bad news for Nerve Cowboy subscribers:

my poem "Letter to Glenn" was accepted for a future issue. damn glad to hear it. Nerve Cowboy is one of the best journals out there. very few are as consistently good and chock full of such amazing writing.

anyway, it was a bit of good news and it lifted my spirits considerably.

quick update

it's been a week since she was released from the hopsital for her pulmonary embolism.
she is no longer on the low-molecular-weight heparin (Lovenox) and is now taking strictly Coumadin. her INR (blood-clotting level) is perfectly in the therapeutic range (it will take about 3X longer for her blood to clot than a normal person) and things are looking good so far.

she has been back to work since Wednesday of last week. so far so good there, too. she's doing her best to eliminate as much work-related stress as she can, and working even harder at relaxing during those times when stress is unavoidable.

we still get brief moments of panic and terror, but they are becoming more rare with each day.

i want to thank all of you, again, for your kind words. it's comforting to know others have experienced similar episodes and emotions and have made it through. it's good to know that there are people out there who care.

i hope to get back into blogging more regularly, soon. i need to finish a few things around the house and such, after which i'll be back in full force.

the terror of your heart ripped from your solar plexis

some of you are already aware, but for those of you who don't know, my wife was admitted to the hospital this past Friday afternoon for a pulmonary embolism. her "PE" was due to a deep venous thrombosis (blood clot in her calf muscle) that was released into her bloodstream and then lodged in the arteries in her lungs. PEs are potentially fatal (allegedly 26% die from them), but we got lucky, caught it early enough and she is currently on treatment.

the story:
two Fridays ago (the 4th of August) my wife woke with a searing and horrific cramp in her left calf muscle, just below the knee pit. she had just begun working out for the first time about a month and a half and we initially thought it was a cramp due to that, and maybe some of the stress from her job (see previous post). the cramp responded to Ibuprofen and was only really bad at night and in the mornings. suddenly, the cramp stopped and the calf only ached a little. It must be getting better we thought.
then, on Wednesday (the 9th) my wife began experiencing a peculiar shortness of breath. suddenly, walking the dog around the block nearly floored her. merely walking up our one flight of stairs would wind her to the point of exhaustion. she knew something was wrong.
as luck would have it (not really, but the cliche works here), her father has a history of DVTs and PEs due to a sports-related injury he received when he was a teenager. he's lived with the fear ofsuddenly dying his whole life, having been on blood-thinners (Coumadin) since he was a young man. my wife knew of his condition and wondered if she might be experiencing the same thing.

she went to see our Primary Care Physician on Friday the 11th (having cancelled a previous appointment the day before because she couldn't get out of work early enough!!). our physician didn't think the muscle pain was due to a torn muscle, or muscle fatique, and ordered an ultrasound of the calf.
my wife drove to the clinic for the ultrasound, which showed a small (1 cm) clot behind the knee. the clot most likely caused the cramp. problem solved.

but what of the shortness of breath?

our physician's husband just so happens to be a cardiopulmonologist. she consulted with him and he suggested my wife high tail it to LDS Hospital for a pulmonary angiograph CT. she was pumped with radiocontrast dye and put in a CT tube. the angiograms showed multiple emboli in both lungs!

she was admitted to the ER for emergency treatment, then admitted into the hospital for 4 days of further treatment.

we got lucky. we got lucky that my wife's father had this condition in the past and it sparked a moment of recognition (or at least worry) in her. we are lucky our physician was concerned enough to order an ultrasound of the leg. we are lucky the leg still had a small thrombus that was visible. we are lucky our physician's husband specializes in this area of the body. we are lucky we caught it early enough for treatment.

and now we are home, after 4 harrowing, terror-filled days, and are on treatment. she was given a shot of Lovenox, a low-molecular weight heparin, in the subcutaneous fat of her belly immediately upon admittance in the ER. she continued those shots every 12 hours (and still will until Thursday of this week) -- i'm the one giving her the shots, which is so horrible for me as it bruises her something fierce. she was then given Coumadin by mouth and will continue that for 6 months, whereupon she will be removed from treatment, have further genetic testing, another angiogram and we'll go from there depending upon the findings of all the tests.

i mentioned the genetic testing above. this is done to assess a reason for her DVT and subsequent PE. so far, the doctors are mystified as to the reason. the main causes of DVT (and PE) are all non-factors for my wife (pregnancy, cancer, sedation, major surgery), except for the oral contraception she is on. oral contraception is a risk factor for DVT, and the older a woman gets the more at-risk she is. however, my wife is on a very low dose, and the doctors are fairly certain (and all are in agreement on this) that the birth control pills most likely had NO play in this episode.
if that's the case, then what caused it? with everything else ruled out, the only remaining options are genetic disorders (which are very rare, but so is getting a DVT and PE at her age with no other risk factors) or just plain, dumb luck (something you generally want to avoid, but is now something we are desperately hoping for). some of the genetic tests were done while she was in the ER, and all came back from the lab while she was admitted except one -- which should be back shortly. they all came back negative, except one (Protein S deficiency), but this test could have been skewed by the clot itself (which tends to gives a false-positive result) and by the fact the blood for the test was taken after her first dose of anti-coagulant (which definitely can skew the results). therefore, she needs to be retested after the 6 months of Coumadin treatment (plus 2 weeks for normal recovery of her blood clotting factors). Protein S deficiency is extremely rare (only 0.2% of the population has it) and her father DOES NOT have it, so she most likely doesn't either, but it is a concern. if she does have it, she'll be on Coumadin for life (not a great thing as she's so young, but better than the alternative). all we can hope for is a negative on the genetic testing, and no further PE or DVT episodes. if not, at least we know what to look for and can catch the DVT early enough that it should never progress to a PE.

NOTE: she may very well have a genetic disorder even if all current genetic tests are negative. the medical establishment is finding new disorder almost daily, and very likely will find another that could cause clotting issues. obviously, we would never know about it, but it's still a possibility.

so, that's the story of our weekend. i nearly lost the one person in this world i could afford to lose least. we experienced a terror unlike any we've experienced up to that point in our lives. unfortunately, we'll be faced with such terror in the future (almost all of us will) but i hope it's not for a long time to come.

we still get waves of panic at times, but we are working on getting back into our lives. it will take some time, but it will happen eventually.

for those of you who sent us emails (and/or visited us in the hospital) we THANK YOU from the deepest recesses of our hearts. the words THANK YOU don't convey how much your sentiments and words meant. we truly appreciate it.

and we are thankful for many things: for having such good friends and family; for being able to spend more time together with each other (and with you); for gaining a deeper understanding into our lives; for being so god damn lucky; and for gaining a fuller appreciation of each other.

things will probably change in our lives. strike that. DEFINITELY change. our diets will improve. our fitness levels will improve. our stress levels will decrease. our love for each other will grow stronger. and the things we care about most will NOT be put on the back burner of the stove of life, but instead will be moved to the front.

and lastly, again, THANK YOU ALL!

employment follies

my wife hates her job.
absolutely hates it.
she's a microbiologist for a medical device testing lab. they're a local company started by (and named for) a brilliant Ph.D. microbiologist who thought he could fill a niche in the medical device testing arena. he was right.

the company shall remain nameless, until they fuck my wife over (which they will undoubtedly do eventually), and then it will be posted all over this fucking blog. but, like i said, it's named after this guy who started the company. anyway, he retired a few years ago and his unqualified, incompetent, far-less-brilliant, new-business-loving son took over. he's a bush-league CEO and is running the company into the ground. i can't help but smile at that thought. what a moron. how anyone can fail at running such a potentially lucrative company is besides me. but, the stupid will never cease to amaze.

well, some of the things my wife has told me that goes on there range from mind-boggling to downright unethical. she has been looking for a new job for a long time now, with no luck. fortunately, she found another job recently. unfortunately, it's for the same company, doing a completely different job; but i hope it works out for her. at the very least, she'll be removed from her bitch of a boss. however, she's still working for this small-fry company.

the employee turnover at this company is sick. i've never seen anything like it in the science field. it's insane. moreover, my wife told me that they run the company like a gulag: with fear and threats. apparently, one guy, who has worked there for a number of years and had a stellar, hard-working reputation, made a mistake one weekend: he forgot to notate when he took something out of the incubator. he threw that something away, and on the following Monday realized his mistake. his boss accused him of forging documents (a terrible, humongous no-no in a regulated field, and a very serious accusation). the stuff was later found in the trash and he was exonerated, but not after his name was dragged through the mud and certain, specific restraints had been placed on him.

these restraints are purely fascist in nature and (should be) illegal, whatever they are, they are unethical and scary wrong: he had the people who reported to him removed from his managership, he was docked all of his vacation for the next few years, he is now forced to justify all of his work and is basically NOT TRUSTED at all. and lastly, he was forced to sign a document that said he wouldn't discuss WITH ANYONE these overly harsh and unjust measures levied against him. i'm serious! and he didn't even do anything wrong but make a notation mistake on a weekend. i suppose he would've been tar, feathered and strung up for the magpies to peck at had he actually committed the crime.

a fucking Nazi-company if ever there was one.
christ on a stick.
the guy is looking for a new job, obviously; and didn't comply with the document, obviously (or how else did i find out?), thereby sticking it to the man. good for him.
but, my god. these are people struggling with families and mortgages and unable to afford to lose their job. and they're being fucked around with. i tell you, if my wife ever has anything like this attempted to be forced upon her, there will be a huge lawsuit, a big FUCK YOU to incompetent daddy's boy, and a anonymous call to FDA.

"uh, Mr. Eschenbach, have you ever heard of REDACTED REDACTED in Salt Lake City, Utah? no? oh, well, you should pay them an unannounced visit some day. if you do, check out their REDACTED lab and REDACTED. and be sure not to miss their REDACTED REDACTED lab. i think you'll find something very interesting indeed."

anyway, when she told me the kind of shit that goes on there (there's a ton more, but i can't say too much lest the fascists start monitoring my correspondences (Tommy? Frimp? are you there?)) i couldn't believe what i was hearing. losing your vacation? being forced to sign a document saying you wouldn't discuss it? what the fuck? what are they, the Spanish fucking Inquisition?

christ.
the only good thing that will come of this is the turnover will remain high, the company will continue to falter and dipshit daddy's boy will fail like he was born to do.

sayonara motherfucker.

oh, and if you're in need of a damn fine microbiologist who is a hard worker and a quick learner, give me a holler. i know someone who fits that description to a T. AND, she will never take maternity leave on your ass. ;)

and out of the blue...

i get an email from The Stinging Fly saying they liked my poem The Perfect Night and that they want to publish it. you might remember that i posted recently about a rejection i received from them. i only got three poems back in the rejection, but i don't keep records of which poems i send where (i know, i know) so i had no idea that they had actually kept one. so, i guess it wasn't a rejection after all.

plus, they pay 50 pounds -- or maybe it was Euros, i don't know -- (not sure what that is in American dollars, either) and two contributor's copies. hot damn. The Stinging Fly is a great glossy, perfect bound journal out of Dublin, Ireland. gorgeous production and filled with damn fine poetry.
this poet's life contributor Brian McGettrick (bmcg) had a featured poet spread in a previous issue. and it was great stuff.

i'm gonna have to come up with something good to spend my monies. boy oh boy.

lastly, my weekly column Background Noise was posted over on Upright Against The Savage Heavens this past Sunday. i forgot to mention it. this week i talk about poetry slams and open-mic nights, and what reading poetry aloud to an audience is good for, if anything.

that's a bit personal, isn't it?

i've been thinking about posting on this for awhile, now.
so here goes:

as you may or may not know, the wife and i live in Utah. and, as you may or may not know, Utah is a VERY child-rich state (meaning there are more children than adults). i believe the average age in Utah is 26, and this isn't due to the fact that there are no old people. it's due to the fact that most of our population is under the age of 15 (i'm serious).
anyway, the wife and i (as you may or may...) also have decided to NOT have children. there are various and numerous reasons for this, but they are personal. who's business is it, anyways, if we're going to have children or not. but, for some reason, there seems to be certain things -- personal things -- that aren't personal, or at least people think shouldn't be personal; things that can be asked about out in the open. our breeding status happens to be one of them, apparently.

the moment someone hears that we've decided not to have children they are impelled to ask us why. "Oh, why? Why aren't you going to have children?" they say; almost as if we MUST have children to validate the fact that they did. or as if we're out of our fucking minds for not wanting kids. either way, too fucking bad. we're not here to validate your bad decisions, nor are we here to defend any of ours.

"Oh, why? Why wouldn't you want children?"
i gotta tell you, i am so tempted to look at the questioner's umpteen kids -- invariably running amok and causing havoc -- point at them and say, "That's why!"
but the thing is, it's no one's goddamn business WHY we've decided to not have kids. i don't go up to people and ask them WHY they had theirs. i don't go up to an ugly couple, their 6 obese, ugly kids eating dirt and dismembering each other, and say, "Why in all that is holy did YOU TWO decide to have kids?" but, whenever anyone sees a 30-something, married couple without kids, they MUST ask. and by asking they are implying that there is something wrong with us.

and so fucking what if there were? so what? that's our business. some things are personal, and should remain so.

but the worst is when they condescend to us and tell us that "we'll change our minds"; as if we're some fucking immature teenagers who don't know any better, who aren't capable of making a right decision for themselves. "Oh, you'll change your mind as you get older." like our lives will suddenly become meaningless without precious fucking kids in our lives. NEWSFLASH, asshole -- we didn't just come up with this plan on a whim, while drunk one night:

"You know what, honey *burp* i don't think i want any kids."
"That's a marvelous idea. *hiccup* pass me another beer wouldja?"

so, if it's not prying into our personal lives, it's a patronizing tone about how we're obviously mistaken about our choices and will soon come to our senses.
*warning, sarcasm ahead*
oh man, i hope the wife and i snap out of this immature phase we're in. and before it's too late and we end up regretting our entire lives.
*end sarcasm*
FUCK YOU and your fucking condescension!

NOTE TO ASSHOLES: if you really want to know the real reason we don't want to have kids, it's because we grew up with you halfwits, went to school with you, watched you proliferate and breed, even become managers and bosses and we really don't want any of our offspring to have to grow up in a world that allows such injustice, and then go to school and socialize with your serial-killers-in-the-making spawn.

just kidding; you're not all halfwits.
some of you are considerably less witted than half.

creeeeeeeepy

new website

i'm working diligently on the new Guerilla Poetics Project website. i've got 90% of it done. only thing left is to add the distilled manifesto and the rest of the biographies of the participating poets.

check it out and let me know what you think.

also, the first 4 poems have been chosen for the GPP, and I'm proud to say one of mine was in that 4. my poem "like fireworks" will be GPP Broadside #001, and is currently being worked on by Bill Roberts. hopefully, it'll be in the hands of the GPP Operatives shortly. the other 3 poems chosen were by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Hosho McCreesh and Karl Koweski. congrats, guys, and i'm itching to get all of them out into the paperbacks!

check out the GPP blog to see the final results of the first voting process.

rant about the house and a pleasant surprise

i walked down into the basement, to go through a few of our boxes looking for some books that i had misplaced (which i thankfully found elsewhere) and what do i find? well, a great big fucking puddle covering 1/4 of the basement, soaking through one of our area rugs we've got rolled up down there is what. i looks as if it came through the hole drilled into the wall where the water main enters the house. we had a terrific and horrible rainstorm earlier today. one of those odd high-desert ones where membranes of rain thoroughly soak everything for a couple of hours and then the sun comes out as if nothing ever happened.
it appears there's a pretty impressive leak somewhere. just great!

well, in today's mail was a beautiful "pick-me-up": a copy of Christopher Cunningham's newest book and still the night left to go by Bottle of Smoke Press. it's a two-book collection of poems and letters; and it's fucking magnificent. beautiful. i'm sure you already know my feelings about Cunningham's poetry. but, his letters. my god, his letters. and there are 11 in the collection to read to poets and editors and publishers -- including, i am proud to say, one that was written to yours truly.
it's a beautiful fucking collection. a work of art. mine came with a brilliant watercolor of a typewriter and glass of wine, as if something important is looming. and for $10, it's a steal.
pick a copy up right now, okay, fucker?

Orwellian rules to writing better prose

i just finished reading a great essay by George Orwell on the death of effective and beautiful prose in the English language.

The essay culminates in a list of five rules for prose writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

if you've ever read anything by Orwell, you know he is one of the all-time great writers, and a master at non-fiction, biographical/historical works (Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London are masterpieces).

i think most (if not all) of these rules apply just as well to poetry. and are often the main reasons bad poetry is bad. Rules 2, 3, 4 and 5 seem the most important to me. Simplicity, beauty and originality is the name of the game.

and i suppose Rule 6 is what we call "poetic license." just don't make use of that license too much or it could end up being revoked.

another rejection

i received a rejection in today's mail from Ireland, for a submission i sent over 6 months ago to The Stinging Fly. denied from yet another country.

and i'm of Irish descent, too. my own people don't even want me. ah well.
at least the poems i sent them were stronger than the ones i sent Nerve Cowboy (see two posts down). i thought they were pretty damn good, even.

another country down, another 190 or so to go.

good news and a heart fed to the wind

i received word today that my poem Of An Otherwise Stark, Rural Highway will appear in Naked Knuckle #7. I had some poems in earlier issues, but have been goose-egged since. I'm happy to crack it again. I'll update when it appears.

Also in the mail today was a copy of Michael Kriesel's new chapbook Feeding My Heart to the Wind -- Selected Short Poems 1999-2005, published by sunnyoutside. Kriesel is one of the best out there with dictating a specific mood in 12 words or less. masterful.
i look forward to devouring it.

rejected

i received a rejection from Nerve Cowboy today. upon reading the poems they sent back, i realized i'd made a grave error in having written them in the first place; nevermind sending the damn things out as a submission.
i forgave myself this once, though. i was a bit rusty in my selection process as this was the first submission i'd made after my extended hiatus.

really, though. the poems sucked. it's kind of embarrassing knowing i sent them the poems.
i have another submission out to them (i hedged my bets and sent another, stronger stack of poems), and i'll update on the verdict when it arrives.

background noise and guerilla publishing

read my latest Background Noise post on Christopher Cunningham's Upright Against The Savage Heavens. a little elucidation into why we are taking it upon ourselves to ambush the reading American public.

Guerilla Poetics Project. Not Just A Movement, A Way Of Life.

keep posted here and on the GPP blog for more information. if you're interested in participating, or helping out, let me know.