Imagine the desert reversed.
A waste of water
that squeezes your own
right out of your skin.

So desperate for a speck of sun
you see lights down there.
Images warm and dry
places only that land is.

The desert is
an ocean’s carcass
evaporated into
an un-urnable pile.

The sun bears on it
mobius mauling
mountains past
into sand that slinks
in clocks
slowing the bleached vista’s
development in your dark head.

It will get you praying for
even a dusting of rain,
that just gets the heat
as wet as a dog.

Part 2

The only wind is
the constant pant of
the creepy man
standing too close,
too much to be all at once
hot rotten whiskey wheeze.

Bits of small talk sand cling
to your every drop.
Then you see her,

a cigarette smoke apparition.
You wash your goggles
down with a glass of water
hoping for a better look
before you lope.

But you’re still there
too suddenly,
and everything is

her name.
She says her name is
Lantis, for short.
This dream will be
sunk by morning.

Everything
I didn’t know
I swallowed;
hook, line, sinker,
fishing rod, fishing man,
boat, ocean, continents,
the world,
our galaxy,
the universe.

I washed it down with a Jesus Malbec
and ate the rest of God for dessert.
God is omni-sweet,
omni-flavors must be saviored

They went down much easier than I did,
biting off the unfamiliar parts
of yourself is always crab legs awkward
and tastes like your voice on TV

The bananafish always die
because a bananafish never seen
is a bananafish without a story.
And obscure mythical fish,
as much as Santa Claus, are
dependent on their stories to exist.

But what did I know?
What was my story?
I can only assume the world
is based on assumptions.

Like back when my imagination had more territory
than the early colonies. Chief Pretend
used every scrap of The-Sky-
has-Fallen world’s junk to tee-pee
temporary Utopias from
our cushioned junk fortress.

There the only Fly Lord
was a smelly city nomad
whose timeshare started at first streetlight.
He paid us with empty bottles
but held no temptations for us,
we had innocent refrigerators full
of mom food at home.

We did collect his bottles,
and the bottles of every beer
drank in our neighborhood.
Our vast treasure could
could have sated our toddling desires
but someone stole those bottles.

Hoodwinked some would say
but how do you wink a hood
and why is that bad for someone?
My survival depended on answers.

None of these glasses
fit my face anymore
and I know that,
this was a secret op.

I replaced those stares with
cheap nagging wonder.
Not the awe inspiring traceable stuff,
more of that home grown “I wonder what’s wrong with that man”.

I joined twitter back in December and I have to admit it made me realize how little I care about other people’s current status. If I ever really wanted to know when someone 500 miles away is getting coffee I think it would make me very depressed, I barely look at the updates from the people I know. So I’ve turned off most of phone notifications I receive ( except from Inner Twitter, and some choice friends)

Today I got inspired. If you can’t read the text to the left it goes as follows:I don’t want a love you have to put on a clothes line. I need at least a low heat tumble dry love, a favorite t-shirt kind of love This was my latest notification, and with it I decided to band together every poet I could to start tweeting short poems to each other.

How it works:

1. First commit to writing 140 character poems/stanzas. I’m asking that no one slam our cellphones with a 20 post poem, so focus on keeping it short, though longer submissions are fine as long as you parse them out to one or two a day. My personal goal is one poem a day.
   1. There are no hard and fast rules here, write however you want.
   2. If you want some direction I suggest using mundane everyday occurences as inspiration, you know like what people are tweeting only make it poetry, that could lead to some beautiful relevations
2. Find and follow fellow poets. Opt for cellphone notifications from your favorite poets, and give your gold stars to the best twitted poems you find.
3. Check in here for lists of new tweeting poets I find, good blog posts, and my favorite poems. I’ll also post new project ideas as I find them, and tips for building your own audience.

I’m open to ideas and suggestions, for projects, and I’m making it my personal mission to market this to the online communities.

At its base the internet is a reading dependant technology, even if you’re a you tube junkie you have to having some reading skill to find all the good videos out there, and if you don’t like to read odds are you aren’t online anyways.

<a href=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88732661>NPR</a> had a interview the other day with literary publishers who have found that releasing digital copies of their work lead to a 300% increase in sales. Why? Well you start reading a book online and really like it, so you buy it, because we all still want to have a library, and being able to read without a computer is nice too. Secondly you tell your friends about this book you love, and then let them know they can sample it online for free. Simple word of mouth marketing.

Now poetry today seems to suffer from a lack of audience more than anything else, and I think that the internet provides a optimal place to solve that problem. See my next post for the first of many experiments.

Imagine living in on a street with the people you see the most, in a neighborhood where you know everyone, like it used to be before we got so busy.  Where the nearest coffee shop, pizzeria, or bar is the your friends go to.

Imagine stores like the old general stores, and specialty shops, who ordered and tailored products for the community, being able to keep up with everyone’s needs and find deals and the best products for them.

What else do you imagine?

Attention is more valuable than money. Especially in a world where performance is measured by page views/unique pv, bounce rate/etc. Traditionally marketers have tried to get our attention through advertising. But today we are excellent at ignoring you, being distracted away from you, and not trusting you. So maybe its time you tried something new. Today consumers are giving their attention to their peers to decide what to buy because they can’t trust you to tell them the truth. Distrust of the government, corporations, and even religious institutions has so pervaded our media that all we can trust is each other. Funny thing is that right as this is happening we see the advent of the WEB 2.0 where we can connect we each other, and experts like never before. The entire consumer population on the web is a giant informal organization and if you want our attention you better have something of quality to catch our eyes.

The key to marketing for tomorrow is in your reputation. Marketing tomorrow will be done entire by peer networks opinion of products. Consumers will blog/forum about their experiences with products/ services, and potential consumers will find this information on products. Fame = attention, that fame can be an expert’s opinion on a product or Paris Hilton at a nightclub. There will also be the new marketers, they won’t try to sell anything, they will be just accurately accrue the best data and give it away to whoever will give their attention to it. That attention means several things, it means that people are trusting you opinion and that’s influential to your relationship with your costumers. You go from being a distrusted marketer to a recommended maven.

This means that you primary client changes from the companies you used to advertise for into the communities seeking quality organized balanced information on the products they are looking for. You have to interact with the most regarded experts in the industry you’re focusing on, to know their opinions and have them know your’s. You must have no secrets, because we will find them and your reputation will be ruined. You can’t try to manipulate the ocean of opinions beyond speaking you’re own but you can navigate that sea better than anyone else and be rewarded by a customer base that buys your opinion with their attention. If you strive to be to go person for reliable information IE the good and the bad, then people will seek your advice on what to buy. When people seek your opinion it becomes valuable from a marketing viewpoint. Marketing companies will become critics, the more rigorous the better, companies will pay to have their products judged and the best products will have the seal of company on it.

If you sell out or try to trick people: we will find out and tattoo your bad reputation to your e-forehead.

If you try to sell a product: we won’t trust you and (see above) You will never see any type of advertisement on the front page of Digg.

If you like where this going you should read the Doctrine 2.0, as for me I’m getting started on a my next entries: WEB 3.0. and Brainstorming an Online Creative Art Movement.

MPAA Chief Lobbyist Glickman: Popcorn Salesman

where you hear about the MPAA lobbying lawmakers to keep digital sharing criminal blah blah but do you feel any pity? Think of it, having to make the call that says we have to pay these lawmakers 7 digits because it would be more costly not to do so.

Also I worry about the fellow directors, writers, and producers out there who aren’t making any money now. How can we save the good ones……? (I’ll tell you later)

AND in this corner weighing in at a broken scale we have the World 2.0. digitized and analyzed and you better start asking me about Foucault, because civilization has been nothing more than a never ending invasion of privacy.