Category Archives: Poetry and Prose

expressionist freeverse, punk rock lyrics, occasional ode to love, digression into nonsense, or possibly vaguely lyrical or rhyming, but not likely – maybe in cycles

Lyric: slow burned & singed #draft

Unrelated photo, more or less – you decide
Well lets all pretend
That we did our best
And try for a graceful exit
And give up on all the rest

All our romantic notions
And pretending we were something new
When the truth is nothing special
And the ending is always blue

Mama always told me
I am one in a million
I am no mathematician
But it seems that nothing brilliant

A bunch of abject failures
Pretending to be a revolution
Constructs and fabrications
A series of a hallucinations

I guess like everyone else
I want to be part of something
Something, bigger than myself not thin sliced up and slow burned & singed

Be that human who can
trust my inner instincts
Not ending up baffled
As a walking contradiction

So here we are, you and I
And another spoon in the road
endless cul-de-sac and paper route
Trying to get to another bus ride

Diaries with dreams, band names and secret crushes
Tender cringe of course
Is where sparkly magic lives

Burn it all in an oil barrel
Stolen from a Hampton Airport
This is my luxury i demand
In the sparkley Chelsea apartment

Steal an ashtray on the way out
And brag about it to be relevant
Collect DNA samples from lip gloss
And scan the brain for blood flow

Vagus nerve pierces like a pitchfork
Smoldering on bamboo charcoal
Devil ain’t got nothing more to give me
So I offer her a raincoat
And say “are you up for a stroll?“

{a snippet of poem and musings about brain and soul pain} #bruised

Another *notable* one gone (you can tell when the reason/cause/method isn’t listed but conjecture abounds and the same cliches surface).

Compelled to add (into the oblivion):

Gosh, sometimes brain and heart and soul get all tangled up & so bery blue / + all the blabs about “reaching out for help” (as though resources are easy & abundant when in crisis) & then crappy meds touted as cure, or bromides about “tortured artist finding peace” are bruising :(

Compassion, empathy, assistance, acceptance for all the human travelers… especially those struggling at anytime, in any of so many ways.

So many lost along the way each day // could’ve been me – so glad not you.

My heart aches for so many so many so many…

Find a pathway.

And then thought (clearly unwisely as these sorts of trips into translucency rarely end well) to *not be cagey* and share a bit of my story, such as it is.

Thus, dug into the secret locked journals with transcriptions from scribbled notebooks and only giving a tiny slice (too much hurts too much to remember and would hurt others to read) and not like anyone’s lining up to read, except you, right?

Checked myself into Royal Jubilee
Alas majesty not on duty
So a shivering white v neck 
grab backpack and run

{snipp'd}

To a taxi 
Into the night
Ferry on a quiet room
To a safe house
A mystic tincture
then a hall which smelled like soup 
And a well made bed
Kindness in Royal Albert

No matter though
I was escaped 
I thought
Drift away from your fangs
Your rants and burns
Your distaste for happiness
Your hostage knot

I scarred my heart and 
Served on a charcuterie platter 
Made from madrona wood
Between salami and prosciutto
Ignore my hints
A call left for recompense
Said “oh nothing but…”

Still I feel irrelevant
Now disappeared, 
malcontent and pretend
To be indifferent

{snip}

A shadow reconstituted by
Solitude and time
No address to ??
Just uniforms without authority 
But a few land laughs
and a misdirection 
is all I could ask 

Above prob 2015/6

Well since i’m here, comes a narrative to *someone* about a rough night / week/ month {maybe so *you* know its not just you etc and also the system of care is broken, not you (no, telephone helplines are not the solution albeit well-intentioned, i guess #shrug)

Yes I have, it was a terrible experience… I was shaking and crying for days and begging for help from doctors who didn’t really seem to care.

I self admitted myself to an energency psychiatric ward (with help from a brain injury clinic) and honestly, was treated terribly because I wasn’t either ideating suicide plans, or wasn’t a street drug “junkie“ although I was with withdrawing from prescription meds (benzos, opiates, ssris_. 

They treated me like they werent serious about my needs. Was terribly demeaning and embarrassing. 
I cried and shook and they just told me to “calm down“ and wait… I was there for over six hours in a cold the waiting room, with no headphones/earplugs, bright lights, and a TV playing news. 

I finally demanded to leave at 11:30 PM when they were going to make me sleep in the waiting room… they tried to keep me. They said odd things. 

Then was released in shorts and a sweat soaked v-neck undershirt and sandals into the night, no transport, no safe place, completely manic and wild beast.

I somehow pulled myself together to get on a ferry (I was living on an island) and go to a friends house where I “hid out” for days. 

When I finally went back home, {snip} was the worst month of my life [ed note: up to then] lousy birthday as well #heh

and a bit of a letter from (early 2018), don’t make me regret sharing this:

The wistful look in my eye you mentioned I think it’s just me trying to look happy because honestly I’m terribly depressed. 

Every day I am in terrible pain and I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to improve and nothing seems to help and I feel like I am stuck with this illness for the rest of my life and every day I will wake up in pain and I will go to bed in pain. 

And all the dreams of everything I wanted to do, been a fun and happy person, making creative projects, it’s all basically not possible anymore for me. 

My life is now just trying to get through each day without completely falling apart. 

I cry all the time, I never sleep well, and I have very little hope for any improvement. 

I’m sorry to tell you this bluntly but since you notice the look in my eyes, I thought I would just say it so you know what I’m dealing with. 

I try to smile and laugh out loud because some psychologists say helps to create new neural pathways to feel joy. 

Yes I hate to let other people see how sad I am because then the burden themselves with my troubles. It’s one of the reasons I am better to live far away so people don’t see me suffer.

oh geez, again with the pain, just so you know its not just you lost confused and in pain, date unknown, maybe 2017?

I don’t want to be medicated but I also realize my moods are all over the fucking map and meditation alone isn’t helping. I struggle with it in general And feel there must be some sort of physical marker or explanation for all of this even though all conventional wisdom says there isn’t. 

Yes I go down the snake hole about this. But what else am I supposed to do? Sit around the house and live like an old man doing three hours of activity a day and spending the rest of the time in bed? Because that seems to be the other option. And frankly I’m sick of all the self-help problem about “the best you can do is the best you can do” and all of this… Shit needs done, I want to live life with some expectation I’m at improvement and happiness. I also realize I’ve been through hell and back the last four years and just need some calm but that seems to be fucking impossible when every night I go to bed in pain, wake up exhausted and drift through the day like a zombie.

this was all may be a terrible idea, I found so much more from the diaries and journals, I read too much of the letters during the really dark times… The dark time still come back, but my life is most every measurable way is wonderful yet the demons are still lingering and ready to pounce. Recently festering.

Somehow *it* (the safety, calm, love) happened. Did I manifest? Would be powerful to think, yet somehow, the goodness all just came together. Peace to all of us. Each Day.

(Sorry) I didn’t answer your Internets

Forgot your Internet

My pardons if I didn’t click
You’re evidently awesome Internets

I’m not trying to be mean
just when I fire up the robot machine
I forget what all of this really means

Suppose it’s easier when you have a working brain
Mine only works four hours a day
And when I start to reply
it just goes
Uhhhhhhh _______

When when the synapses spark
I’m usually in the bathtub
and can’t connect
fingers to the wires
or in the best of times

Manage to be more concise
Then re-writing “when I paint Ulysses war & peace” by Henry Winston Kerouac

Plus you got your twitternets, facespace, instabook, whatsagram, messenger-es (no not twitch, tiktok as I am purely Gen X which means I still have a skype account but no, no more icq and yeah I heard that you were on mastodon, do you need a certificate?

Plus I don’t know about you but at some point I thought having several email addresses was a good idea
I’d keep them all sorted and organized and filtered and brilliant
but then I realize…
I got laundry to fold,
Dishes to wash
And poetry for you to ignore (that’s fine, really no big deal)

Anyhow, I do my best
With postal correspondence
With help from stamps & Providence
(no help from the USPS “How has that guy not been sacked?”)

so as unrequested & unadvised course of action
In lieu of a fax (which would be super cool) or telegram
(the one delivered by a chop and a hat, not the app or a singing vixen) is to postcard me back at the cottage

Tip: just Bing up “Dave Olson postal address”

or heck
Give me a ring

I would call you but it shows as a “restricted number“
So you never seem to pick up
And heaven help me if I’m going to leave a voicemail (except for you Larry)

I can see us now chitchat
like sweethearts in the 1980s
But without those stolen sprint cards
Our parents hollering “I’m expecting a call”

But I like the idea
Of payphone booths on a rainy day
Will come up with codenames
And put in various coins

I’ve requisitioned
Numbers both foreign and domestic
for your convenience
And have been assured
Operators are standing down

OK bye for now
[No *you* hang up first]

Finding Home #transcription (repeat)

No longer daunted
By subterfuge
Payola schemes or even
Assassinations by a religious stooge

Still enamored by overbites
Pretty lies, feathered caps
and Japanese super cub motorbikes

Confused by burning coals
to alchemize
and quicksilver mines
in a triangular ruse

I don’t need a course
To tell me to be happy
I already know what wealthy means:
Have you a garden, a pen and Wood stove?

The answer to the biggest question is:
“to love, and to be loved”

The pathway to go there is: kindness, tolerance, empathy, intrepidness, weakness is strength

All this is to say:
Cynicism avoided, reality reinvented, consensus subverted, admiration for the usual
Savor the regular days, notice the magnificence in nonchalance & common place.

Get down on your knees!

To look closely
The tactility of grass
The softness of sand
The circles and cycles
The shards of pottery
The ants smaller than the other ants
The lichen, the moss the dirt
The rivulets
The worm holes to everywhere else

Will lead you back to exactly here.

At the library, observations #poem

A spangled Cub Scout in his short pants and neckerchief
check out a book, holding
little sister’s hand

Elder lady clutching armload of books her shirt says

“please please protect the love“

Posters for the J2 futbol club (with a solid blonde import out in front) sponsor laden jerseys on display

(the sign reminds you not to touch, inexplicably
But instead
write celebratory messages of
support on a preformatted card)

a message for Italian pheasants

oh look! kid with a jumper covered with excavators, mixers and cranes (just like mine wears)

Pamphlets to play baseball, or table tennis or some kind of martial art… I know none of these things

Magnets attaching, all right angles, no overlap, tidy

“Literature Okayama 2023” - some kind of event I missed? (Momotaro and his monkey companion gaze nonchalantly holding a banner I can’t read)

I should pay better attention, on second thought…

Or rather festival at a temple which involves a large bonfire

And now my little guy comes running out with a book to check out

later, outside the boy with spectacles, a bright vest straps on his backpack, does 20 Achilles tendon stretches before unlocking his bicycle

we walk past and purchase three pieces of Chilean salmon from a man in a converted kei-truck
¥800

Poetry transcription: “finding home”

{transcription from an “field notes” notebook while in bed… stashed here so I don’t misplace}

[Unrelated photo #SnowyOwl]
Finding home

No longer daunted
By subterfuge
Payola schemes or even
Assassinations by a religious stooge

Still enamored by overbites
Pretty lies feathered caps
and quicksilver mines

Confused by burning coals
to alchemize
cartoon currencies
in a triangular ruse

I don’t need a course
To tell me to be happy
I already know what wealthy means
Have you a garden, a pen and Wood stove?

The answer to the biggest question is:
“to love, and to be loved”

The pathway to go there is: kindness, tolerance, empathy, intrepidness, weakness is strength

All this is to say:
Cynicism avoided, reality reinvented, consensus subverted, admiration for the usual
Savor the regular days, notice the magnificence in nonchalance & common place.

Get down on your knees!

To look closely
The tactility of grass
The softness of sand
The circles and cycles
The shards of pottery
The ants smaller than the other ants
The lichen, the moss the dirt
The rivulets
The worm holes to everywhere else

Will lead you back to exactly here.

Lit-ish Artifacts: from Writers Read Their early Sht pod w/ J. Emde

biographical notes (very important items to note)

In November 2022 I was very pleased to be a very lousy guest on the very gracious Jason Emde’s podcast (broadcast in Gifu rock city) in which writers share their “early, unripe… etc. etc.” work along with Jason’s curious questions, amusing banter and general graciousness.

Note: i riffed about Jason’s most excellent book in a Beat Sushi video dispatch “Curiously Punctuated” and we enjoy a prolific mostly-postcard-but-sometimes-passport correspondence.

very un-reliable account of King Tut’s life. this is not science (yet i won the ribbon)

We spoke for something like four hours which is a world record for me of late, yes I was a little spun out and it’s not my finest moment *but* gave me an opportunity to dig deep into the archive to find things from my legit early days. Of course about an hour makes it into the finished program but my goodness, is it a lot of action in an hour. Leaping wildly from topic to form, location to era, anecdote to musing. A bit rant-y sure so hold on to yer cap.

In this case I pulled items from: fourth grade King Tut mimeographed hand out from my (award winning :-)) science fair project at Prince Charles Elementary; newspaper editorials and chapbooks at the Orem (UT) high school; early stories at Utah Valley community college; and, the beginning of the *disgruntled with the literary establishment years* at University of Utah years.

(one of several fusillades fired in the Orem High School newspaper (under different surname), this one about student teachers from BYU

Yes there are many digressions, rapid speaking, a few shots fired, salvos really, a bit of sweetness and a bit of tenderness as I figured out who I thought I might be when I was already completely myself.

Find it all at:

Writers Read Their Early Sh*t S2/E5 – Dave Olson (aka Uncle Weed): priorities & bad decisions

my “notes to self” for assembling the materials

Blurb:

Jason welcomes under-qualified window-washer Dave Olson & his fantastic beard & beautiful hands for a natter about punching or hugging Dostoevsky, see-through loincloths, meeting REM, borrowing mustard from Allen Ginsberg, dodgy Greyhound stations, working out the writing life math, and how cheerleaders are people too.

There’s ropey Egyptian history, a savage polemic, the details of hippy teacher Mr Boris’s new motorized home, a few bits & Brother Bobs of Dave’s early poetry & prose, & Jason getting his Tutankhamun timeline wrong by only 3700 years. An unnerving—if not terrifying—time is guaranteed for all.

Check out Dave’s creative life archive at https://daveostory.com—much to enjoy there. Music by the outrageous DJ Max in Tokyo.

Join the early sh*t chat at https://www.facebook.com/WRTESpodcast & on Instagram @writersreadtheirearlyshit. You can also send an email to WritersReadTheirEarlyShit (at sign) gmail.com. Many thanks, wherever & whoever & however you are, for listening. 

Preso Pitch to: European Beat Studies Network (re-: Cut-Ups 2023 / Items:Forgotten)

Hello EBSN from Okayama, Japan,

I write today in request to contribute to the Cut-Ups 2023 conference by discussing the process of making a cut-up series as a practical method.

I would present remotely (from a well lit studio) and am comfortable with public speaking and presentation (2 keynotes at SxSW conference, 1 TEDx, 4 Pecha Kucha talks) more details at https://daveostory.com/dave-olson-dossier/speaking-presenting/

Briefly: I propose to explore the full lifecycle of a project from transcribing notebooks while traveling, to using a cut-up process to develop something unique, until the end result which became visual poems (cut-ups glued to mostly hotel letterhead and other ephemera) which were then reproduced in various means and spread all over the world – both analog and digital – as a series called “Items: Forgotten”.

Note: I’m not entirely sure what else I can share about this proposal to make it more clear so please feel free to ask me with any questions and I will reply promptly and/or investigate the resources provided.

Regards, 

daveo

Continue reading Preso Pitch to: European Beat Studies Network (re-: Cut-Ups 2023 / Items:Forgotten)

Snippets and words, w/o context per se {transcribed from notebooks}

“Hero card” images: unrelated to snippets below, as far as I can tell anyhow
Still enamoured by overbites
On your couch learning French
French as slowly as possible
Prevents encouraging habits
and libations
Depths and perceptions
Pacific driftwood heave
Bog lands
Where the houses
will float away
Though welded to the dock
Can’t hear you over the brightness of the lightsMoved it over a peg to the left
It didn’t seem
So symmetrical
Unnerving
The symmetry, you see
Makes me dizzy
& rather unsure on my feet
Bag of Zippers
Essence of Bergamot
Samovar
Lilywhite leaning
Envision a clear path homeward
Considering
Lubrious
Plaintive
Budding
Eagerly
Wafting sage and lavender
Transcendent to Tibet
High valley with a path
Leading towards mtns unknown