Sup, I disappeared from the Internet in order to design and build a secret weapon that I intend to launch at the HQ of Modern Literature, a basement-made conceptual rocket that’ll no doubt explode many careers and turn most libraries into graveyards browsed only by bookflies. The work continues… Meanwhile, I’m publishing a new book of drawings and a book of poetry containing much of my most ornate work yet, as well as new and improved editions of several existing books. Details below!
(Pssst: The links all lead to Amazon.com. If you’re from another country, you may need to change the URL before you can purchase the book. But if you’re flat broke/hate Amazon, just message me and I’ll send you a free PDF.)
“How to Summon an Angel stages magical and tragical poetry from 2019-2021 as a pearl-studded spectacle of personas. While wild rhymes explode in the sky, a one-man freakshow switches masks, hurls traps, hugs arctic skulls, and hammers out flaming impersonations on his ringing and singular face of faces. Then the curtains drop, and he stands alone gazing out a painted window.”
While this book is designed to be read on its own, it continues the themes and stories started in It Had Been a Long Exorcism, and I’d advise reading the books together. In my opinion, these poems represent the acme of both my poetic skill and my creative freedom. Especially the last four poems pull off a sustained vivid weirdness. I write these bottle rockets to be readable; writing should give life to the reader—not steal it.
After this, I’m done with poetry. From now on I’ll write only prose, though eventually I’ll publish two earlier books of poetry covering 2010-2012.
“Squalid and haunted poetry from 2018-2019, with odd, mocking laughter ringing through the falling halls of its verses. These humorously lugubrious poems come recommended for dusty people, exhausted gods, cynical kittens, unconvinced executioners, those who gambled their lives and lost, and winners whose winnings mean nothing.”
I added two new poems and gave the rest a line-by-line revision. In particular the climactic poem, “Enantiodromia” has been upgraded thoroughly.
“Surreal, angry and apocalyptic shards from 2003-2006, flowing from pulpy micro-stories about paranormal emergencies, to dream chronicles of echoing boy and girl characters struggling like weird flies on sticky paper, to some short-form cartoon warnings from an Armageddon junkie who summons heavenly destruction upon the unwitting, corked-ear world.”
I took out some stories and tweaked others, but otherwise the biggest change is the cover. Since this book contains fragments from my teenage writing, I consider it not quite as good as the preceding two books, but it has its charm and anyway it’s a sharp manifesto for what I felt and believed at the time.
“Sunrose contains 48 drawings from 2008-2010, spreading a deck of cloud islands, Rorschach panoramas, intricately tentacular traceries, and many other types of gleefully primitive improvisations straight out of paradise. So why not take your eyes for a stroll?"
“Unearthlily arranges 48 headstrong drawings from 2010-2022. This homemade cave-art, copied from inside the artist’s skull, posits dreams of ethereal geometries and melodic architectures of ink, no forests and only trees, in a flatland odyssey tossed with color salad, embossed with evening black.”