Focus Jordan

Focus Jordan Mar 2018

#DCDCDC

Drawing all over the walls
Red And Blue
While
Teaching me
Chemistry
Resonance and
Polyatomic Ions
Positively charged
Eyes
A cool grey
You liked the writing
On my Chuck Taylor’s
Back at headquarters
Trespassing in the Library
To study
Forensics and Anatomy
One day I’lltte after palette
Swirling brilliance
Black
Crimson
And
Glaucous

The title is the color code for gainsboro a specific shade of grey. I had an amazing time with a brilliant person yesterday and felt like I had to write about it. I tagged a whole entire wall with paint markers yesterday with their encouragement and I think when you meet someone who gives you encouragement to be creative it’s hard not to smile and feel inspired.

Focus Jordan Mar 2018

Comfortable Ashtray

When making the decision
To run away with no money
I developed a coke habit
In the New Shoreham Libraries only
Bathroom

A copy of this poem
Was left on the shelf
By an older man
Whom I introduced myself to
After seeing him smoke a wooden pipe
And listening to him mutter about the
**** of intimacy under his breath
For the better part of the boat ride
To a cabin
Somewhere in the Atlantic
Presiding over a dead reef way
Way
Past the big waves
That I dreamt of
With a backpack full
Of spray paint
And ***** unkempt fingernails
I etched my manifesto on its walls

Circling around the drain in your shower
Heavy enough that the water cannot
Pull me down into the corroded pipes
That contain the same isotope of lead
Your little cousin gulps down in his
Water Fountain at Frank Defino Elementary
But light enough
That I spin and spin
Watching Jason take his Argonauts
Across The Sea of Monsters all the while
Aware of the futility of his mission
And laughing at Homer
Around and around
Unable to control how and when
Never giving in but never trying either

Sinking back into the freckles I wore as a
13 year old watching Silverstein play
The Rec-Center I had started so many
Fights at
All those years I played youth Basketball
With no intentions of scoring points
Committing fouls until
Someone’s dad screamed

My most-liked smile is the one where
After I got my two front teeth snapped by
A knee to the mouth
I looked up
incisors in hand
Blood dotting my lips and chin how Lichtenstein
Would have imagined
Grinning a grin that would make the Cheshire Cat Jealous I am not lost in this fantasy
No baby
This World
Was built hand by cracked skin hand
For me
There aren’t maps in a lucid dream
Don’t you understand that
Like Rorschach told the Small Gangster
I’m not locked up in here with you
No
You’re locked up in here with me

If I still had Kathryn’s number I would
Apologize for leaving her bed
In the middle of the night and stealing
Her only suitcase to drag my things to a
Ferry
To take me to the next Island
Where I would isolate myself once again
Continuing the habit I started
In the seventh grade
Spending 3 weeks in an abandoned
Airport and a pricey sleeping bag
Avoiding the standardized tests needed
When the road has tested you for this long
And you come across Tupac’s rose
In the cracks of the Sidewalk
You have no choice but to pick it
And stomp hard
But for now
We’re getting along fine

Two years ago I really had run away to a small Island my college Roomate had grown up on where his classes from pre school to graduating high school was only 6 kids. I had been ******* up heavily in my life over and over again and after leaving college to take time and figure what the hell I was doing I spent the summer on that island pulling in boats at a luxury dock and understanding what it was like to start from zero. My Roomate James had been helping me eat for a long time that summer until my checks came in. But old habits kicked in and I fell heavily into drugs before James literally slapped me in the face and said get a ******* grip.

Focus Jordan Mar 2018

Apple Cider Vinegar

Like laying down
On the one part of the floor
Where carpet
Overlapped a different
Carpet

Daydreaming
Arguing
Separation anxiety
It’s an eye roll away
And a left at Wyncrest Road

It was outside on cold nights
With gloves
Stolen from the lost and found
Beckoning the older kids
Drive up
Have your money ready

Like sitting down in
The shower
Or singing a sad tune
Off key
Like rolling
A broken ankle
And laughing

It’s like working a
Paper route
And never seeing the sun
Just so someone else
Can wake up to the truth
Bagging papers
People's faces are the most honest
Especially on a rainy day
Gotta double bag it then

The song in my head
Isn’t the same beat
As the blood pumping
Through my arm
Or the throbbing
Of my elbow
But *******
Can my feet dance

I think this piece was born out of a massive wave of frustration I was dealing with while working to deliver papers at 2:30 in the morning. To be 20, and in a position like that made me wonder and ask myself how did I get here? Why do I keep pushing forward? And where does it end? The title speaks to holistic remedies and how I feel people look for cheap solutions and short cuts to complex health problems; Apple Cider Vinegar being this magical cure for everything from teeth to skincare to digestion. It seemed odd to me, similar to how people put a carpet in a room with carpeted floors.

Focus Jordan Mar 2018

Eighty Eight And A Third

I hear the Nightclub Singer
Male
42
He's wearing a grey suit
The type that has
The small lines
Running through
Threads waiting
For something
Wool
I assume
And black shoes
Slip ons
Shiny
He sings over a lazy beat
Da de da de da de
Da doh
Da doh
Do
Over and over
His suit getting tighter
His hair slicker
Than the lies
I tell

Im sitting in the corner
The booth is a round one
But I am alone
Except for my guests
I fill their plates
And eat
My dessert

There are no waitresses
Because nobodies
Waiting
And I can't muster
The courage
To say
I'm hungry
The cake
And constant cigarette smoking
Must have got me
And as I roll back
Onto the floor and
Into the music
The singer fades out
To a guitar solo
That made me shake
Thunderous music
That grabs at
Your soul

I noticed later
When I put my head
Against
The pillow
I hear my heartbeat
Deep behind my ear
Behind my ear drum
Behind what is
Behind there
Da de da de da de
Dah doh
Dah doh
Doh

This is one of a series of pieces I wrote after finding out I had tinnitus in my right ear, and was starting to lose my hearing. As a musician this had me absolutely terrified, and as a creative I felt it necessary to find a different outlet of expression if I couldn't continue with writing music. I really do hear my heartbeat when I put my head against the pillow and some nights it really ***** with me. The title comes from a Jazz Station I used to listen to as a kid, WBGO 88.3 Newark.

Focus Jordan Mar 2018

Taken From Recently Deleted

Sit down across from me in the tub
I’ll sit criss cross
Your feet can rest in my lap
Take a Polaroid every time I look up into the water
Then bite on my shoulder
I’ll hold your wine glass

Can I bring you to Copenhagen
And introduce you to my art collector
Friends
We can make nice with everyone
At fancy dinners
Then go home and laugh at how stupid
They all are

Fall asleep on me
As we take a train
From somewhere
To Paris
I’ll drink you in with the scenery
Outside our window
As I drift off myself

I felt like a lot of my work was either extremely abstract, or really impersonal, as if I refused to let myself speak directly on my emotions. It seems really cliche to me to write about someone, or about the love you found with someone. To me, pieces like that don't hold up well over time. My objective hear was to open myself up enough to write about love, but in a timeless way that still felt like me.

Focus Jordan Mar 2018

Scared Look

I'll give you
The world
While I
Fight my war

Just give me
Your body
To rest with

There aren't many things that can replace the feeling you get when you fall asleep next to someone. That level of trust and appreciation and I would even say happiness is really special and because of that, didn't need much unboxing.

Focus Jordan Mar 2018

Lemons

In order to get sharks
Close to us
We need to
We need to attract them
By using
What they want

I was in my
Bed
Craving a smoke
So I went downstairs
Looking around
Peering
Searching
Something to ease my mind
Please
I went
To the garage

Its horrific
How pollution
Like an empty package
Can make its way
Into our ocean
A box of something that needed to be
Wrapped up tight
Something
That someone cared about
And shipped to a friend
Or lover
The box
Wrapped in plastic
To keep it safe from eroding for the next
100 years or so
Went from Paterson
To a shipping center in Cranbury for
Amazon
To Deal
To the pipes that spill into the water
Underneath that bridge that girl was killed
At
In Belmar
To the ocean depths
Farther out
Past the ****** party boats
Overcrowded with drunkards
Who have no business fishing
Out past the private charters
With their fish finders
And dynamite
And out past the big waves
That rock the shipping containers
That held the package once
Past the girl

At the bottom of this
Particular piece of ocean
The box unraveled
Like the meaning of what was inside
And the plastic wrap came off
It floated up
Gravity is backwards underwater
And wrapped itself around a
Yellow Shark
Right between the fins
And the gills
The predator got used to it
And the plastic stayed
It's skin deformed
Morphing around our intrusion
The shark was alive
And it knew more about the world
Then you and I ever could

There was nothing to smoke in the garage
Not in the golf bags
I checked every pocket
Or my old safe I used to bring to
Summer Camp
Nothing in the washing machine the last
Tenant owned
Not under the towels
Or inside the summer Umbrellas
So I searched inside

There was nothing
In the nightstand
Or the drawers
Nothing in the desk
Or the jar
Nothing under the hats
Or in the shoebox
Nothing in my old books
But
A piggy bank

I emptied it out
And counted the change inside
There was $1.75
As I reached in
To get the noisy coins
That didn't fall
I pulled out an omen
It was a quarter
With the texture of a shark
And a color
Black as the ocean
At night

I have constantly struggled with smoking, and general addiction to anything that takes me away from a normal state of mind. I was introduced to **** at super young age and being someone with horrible ADHD and a couple of battles with depression I quickly became dependent on it. This is one of the truest and semblence-to-my-life-I-guess things I have written. I actually have woken up dying to smoke anything and would search every nook and cranny of my house figuring there would be something even in the smallest amounts for me to light up. I thought that, and how we mindlessly litter and pollute were two really interesting things to juxtapose. Why do we harm ourselves and the world around us for quick enjoyment? Why don't we learn from our mistakes? How do we let others lead us in the wrong direction and at what point do we say enough? I hoped to tackle those questions in writing this particular piece.