Fans who have enjoyed the lyrics and music on such albums as Cardinology, Easy Tiger, and Prisoner, or hit songs including “When the Stars Go Blue,” know that Ryan Adams is a poet at heart. In this follow-up to his first collection of poems, Infinity Blues—praised by Stephen King as “a passionate, arresting, and entertaining book of verse”—readers will discover new ideas, deeper insights, and graceful, sensual compositions that reveal another side of Ryan Adams.
“Ryan Adams writes with equal parts precision and recklessness; the blood he draws from the text is easily as unnerving as its unapologetic tenderness. He is proof that poetry will find its writer.” —Mary-Louise Parker
Fans who have enjoyed the lyrics and music on such albums as Cardinology, Easy Tiger, and Prisoner, or hit songs including “When the Stars Go Blue,” know that Ryan Adams is a poet at heart. In this follow-up to his first collection of poems, Infinity Blues—praised by Stephen King as “a passionate, arresting, and entertaining book of verse”—readers will discover new ideas, deeper insights, and graceful, sensual compositions that reveal another side of Ryan Adams.
“Ryan Adams writes with equal parts precision and recklessness; the blood he draws from the text is easily as unnerving as its unapologetic tenderness. He is proof that poetry will find its writer.” —Mary-Louise Parker
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Overview
Fans who have enjoyed the lyrics and music on such albums as Cardinology, Easy Tiger, and Prisoner, or hit songs including “When the Stars Go Blue,” know that Ryan Adams is a poet at heart. In this follow-up to his first collection of poems, Infinity Blues—praised by Stephen King as “a passionate, arresting, and entertaining book of verse”—readers will discover new ideas, deeper insights, and graceful, sensual compositions that reveal another side of Ryan Adams.
“Ryan Adams writes with equal parts precision and recklessness; the blood he draws from the text is easily as unnerving as its unapologetic tenderness. He is proof that poetry will find its writer.” —Mary-Louise Parker
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781936070305 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Akashic Books |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 492 KB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Florida
florida lay there before us swollen this driver and me rolling into a sure ghetto neon jacksonville ghetto to get a car taxi was rattling smoke shot up with seats ripped we rolled into the lot and streetlamp-outlined men standing up in a row braced each on a corner body language loud saying listen they had it firearms street pharmaceuticals and when our eyes met palms blurred smokeburns electrical fires sky ripping those whitecotton clouds up in some deep-ass blue the too-deep sea never-going-to-see-land-again deep sky lost-at-sea deep sky blur just over there that i could see total anger moans calm rage lamps without shades drywall tears a history of night hours and in that moment some clenched fists they broke my bones like a light falling off a night table and like the rats we all are florida florida spat me out but i kept my breath slow a little girl at the bottom of the stairs scowled surrounded by night shade shadow wall bricks hidden in a mossy funk in a row on the second floor landing in the cement block apartment rise some half-dressed bodies lit up christmas trees these men were streetlamp damp sweating hard guns near in the nightpools she stared through me like i was meat she held a plastic uzi in a room staring like they were eating through my skin and without a nod without a tip we slid very quietly into the butterscotch grand prix the driver and me under the moons screaming inside maybe inside the rooms with television blurs circling us and circling it that car all armor-alled up and smelling like grease and like bad stuff or like something like forget it we got in all of a sudden he stopped asking me about the money which was scary he knew i knew he knew i had that money and in your mind you go bloody feet barely alive screaming for your neighborhood life out of that place but she called and he answered and something pulled him triggered his heart click guiding him smiling to the freeway no taxi his nephew's car butterscotch grand prix and off the highway in a fast food parking lot the driver pulled me in hands over my shrugging sides delivered me like a wish as i forked over a little more than bargained forgot about landing in the wrong city
that airport dry rotting forgot about meeting
her father her father so decent his grill smoking forgot about the mosquito bites
pine halls those castle walls of wood forgot about myself and i was just happy to be home i was happy to remember who i really was and you know i see that sky still it reminds me of a dishrag rolled with heavy dew and palmettos exploding oranges that florida sky emitting total life and total death and me on the fresh steps to dropping all the bags arms out receiving my destiny and hope in several phases of doubts colored somehow with love
Fruit-Rotting
once in coins subwayesque we paid all the way uptown back in the skeleton-eye like,
"hey hey hey gotta
keep up now"
somebody would shout sweating beautiful on the shitty rushing chinatown streets glistening bodies yellow mash sunrocked those days ...
but now we are old and in us drugs rot like we are dirty like our insides are paying for our sins and not us our insides like a cross fruit-rotting sun-diving we are eagles now
beautiful
and we we feast on what we like
lucky ones so so lucky so lucky imagine if one of us,
um, found out one of our best friends had died overdose-cop-call on an empty bed or worse all of us lied
more some of us got free on the dust falling out of the bags meant for a sick sunday
or one of us betrayed the animals let loose in the disco metal farm
we
are lucky count-your-wishes-and-stars lucky now we are old and going for more we are dirty like our insides went to work for us for every night we spent in the throws throwing up diamonds and trust funds our souls eternal for those nights and we felt it a real disco polaroid
famous wasted
eternal buzz
so rocked but inside it was all a joke hahahahaha
and we we were a joke just all sped up and neon and ugly
like sharks
in shiny dresses
minus leeches
us, and our bowls of fruit fruitcake-dreaming
but full of disco-lies and fucking each other disgusting our souls shining hard in valhalla but inside we were lying and while we were not busy with the snake or the unicorn-rainbow hallucinations if we sat down for even one moment we knew once we got home our insides t2hey would pay for our sins while we sat on the window-bed-nook under a peach-rind quilt suffering a loss
we was bright and alive once
we was
was but now now;
just steeped in self juice and balloon-popped yellow-yucked and fucked up white-wine dinnered and disgusting crossworded all of us totally sucking and stuck our insides like a cross sun-diving
and fruit-rotting
Dope Camera
screaming
lord knows,
screamed like as in screaming as in
"sunshine came screaming into the room, bottles empty, lines under eyes
where they were broken up and followed into a face"
awful
rocked so hard i broke the crib
sneezed so hard i broke a rib
lost a dog
couldn't take care of it
couldn't see eyes breaking out from fleshy dope smear
what
what was anybody doing there?
pretty pretty people in there in that fog land wasted in that dock of memory
i worry about all of them
and
i don't know, us nothing really happened
cuz we talked so much
nobody moved
inside
the rooms
the brightlight
midnights
were bloody as a lie
and fortune cookies hung over us like the low gongs
plus-sized songs the valley was ripe with flashfires
and
cement trucks
heavy metal freight cars
on wheels
cemetery skin
smoking with the hookers
on Noplace
and 10th
or whatever street we made this whole thing up inside my bedroom
madness close behind
it felt like
well i swallowed the whole of the world
in a night screamed for the past to hear me first
and take me last like as in screaming as in scream team m.v.p.
now totally m.i.a.
and all, "fuck you"
somebody really should have had the cameras rolling back then well some of them did
oops our lives went
bullshitting with the loansharks
and we all bought the tent
golden tooth paying all the rent
inside lord knows we are all ...
screaming
Bags
three bags sit on this bench sunlit flies also not on the bags a tree, oak, long branches reaches behind ever lit also yellow sunlight and green-washed like salt blast from water reefs this greenish thing i walk past in a moment thinking
"i am not here"
sure as fire my lover reclines and the electricity pulsing through the grid in the metal towers racing in a row through the cut-low grass hills trees on either side like an evergreen racing grid pump the towns with light as we read aloud the words to the song of our life in time with the jets singing
"i know a love true and i know a love strong"
we know ...
and like a saturday is coming like a fucking wall is caving like all the rest just easing into it like bricks like who fucking cares?
me—
three bags sit on the bench in the summer of my dreams filled with rose petals filled with candy i left them there without reason no reason i am beyond reason really almost beyond reason almost really i am i was
Feverpitch
in a feverpitch the note broke my eyes so glassed and in the kitchen i did the dishes very poorly almost as if to say to make this last
"i will prolong this"
my battle against time my unmade bed moans so that if i must use these things again they will go under the water for things are more useful clean like dreaming with my eyes closed and open either way i am open as in opening nonstop full-time sleeping fuzz-faced overage costs, ratios, house dollars the build-up counter tops, numbers, receipts in jars calculators tick-tock tick-tocking my body is counting itself counting something so many new pieces ah, my lungs feel like what what ash is on a still warm backyard summer fire on strike fresh-cut grass must feel like this does it feel no burning embers like what that might feel like to feel i feel things and i apply metaphor i dunno why i do that i don't know how to explain my feelings ever so i write too much down talkmouth blahzzzrt too much not enough man my nose is running achoo it feels like running there's so much energy in pain and so much madness in energy now this!
NOT doing something, so feverpitch ...
there's no sense in NOT talking that should be so easy right how much poison really how much extraction before i'm better before i say this
"i guess i had enough"
or YES!
and
OK THANKS! haha that note rung so loud it cracked our porcelain sky and it cracked bad pink clouds, goshawks circling soon i will put on my colored faces and planting boots and i will go cast myself into the painted desert walls and sycamore tree fuckery plus no one but the coyotes say, man, say these animals cannot read but we remember what overwhelming REALLY is captain?
... no?
well a coyote's cry echoes
& hopefully one day one last face full of tears and cracked eyes will drain simple lines for a pool of howls but glowing when that note breaks the spell and it's curtains to all things false to all things sour and ill timed in a feverpitch for a hope i will be here for you, my love always
on key in the dusted halls
of the infinite hours feverpitched
and cherrysour
Numbers
Blitzed all kinds of slow sad My God i remember being really pilled out numb the TV blew all this static at me about WAR because WAR SELLS like POETRY likes WAR fuck that
seriously
i was all pilled up
Medication Station
and this giant love
earth/air elemental
orange-juice-good
for me
and me
numb
her,
right beside me —
white walls
cotton sheets
asleep
and on the f'n TV
Just War Shit numb
Blitzed then
then
then i go deaf from this fucking head trip thing i got my grandfather, he was also super deaf/super duper hearingaide deaf
now Now i can't hear the numbers people's kids are all shot up in the desert they only dream this empty sand trap and say the names
and there i was
alone
in my head
going deaf
afraid i wouldn't be able to hit the notes and i would forget the numbers and
all these people were dying all shot up
my lover asleep
ready to let me slip away
across the ocean
all pilled up
i got so lucky
i even got kinda
religious about it
Blitzed all
numb My God
OK, Wow
i allow myself the invitation,
i surround the door,
ill at ease,
maybe — but draped — still foolishly,
eh i have a wiry shape ...
his my grandfather's and possibly wolves i dunno age ...
things growing ...
backaches and oh wow ow
"that hurts"
but
"this feels fine"
certainly well, "doesn't it always something?"
all these things match the way i have to always wear a watch because it's right to enjoy the race morning turning day for someday we will meet inside the gates because there is nothing left to do but not be late and we all learn from our mistakes like it or not ugh,
ouch and well,
ok, w o w
I Am Standing on This Beach
i am on this fucking beach.
noisy noisy waves ... blast, blast in my face so loud—
pigeons,
sea spray,
the second crash comes after the first like a wave — it binds though, so binds itself to the rot of the beach; a "fuckoff"
almost to the tide ... washing garbage on dirty sand-like-sand,
colors — electric blue, with candy wrappers and condoms and shells/plus some breeze that comes,
goes, comes, goes, oblivious to tempo or nature even a beach, on the fucking endless beach where that goddamn sun rises and falls like a loud boss; like a nightmare; restart machine-ball hot like a nuclear stop watch
....i watch it.
watch it.......
break into the fall of lines sized for angels and ancient gods or mountains
—born there,
and ...
no matter how it sounds,
crass and underhanded,
inside any man,
fought off or not,
it's just it's just this ...
a woman can be a junk ship, wooden,
patched red sail here and there like flying over singapore thru that fog ever there — hiding it.....her/us/me/it her/me/us/it/fog—
fog—like singapore fog we are hiding.
sad sad sad
(always —then —
like magic — whammo — descend and out the window—there it is —
beautiful and not in any time — not decade-era fixed —
"totally" non-american — past/present —
all functioning at once — .......................
with harbors — junk ships — and my, my god, my god....
all lit with skyscraper xmas lights —
lit peaks and nighttime valleyhouses a fortress of woven wooden trunks of trees — blinded by mad mad mad beauty).....
mad beauty.....
and a man is a tug, mechanical and plastic; hard-lining sunken; work'd manhands broken nails chalked palms boxer-sized bed-ready —
the kind that fix ropes round boxes if they had to with an elephant cargo — before they were even a child — past sails, deaths, things drunk......ugh,,,,,,,
drunken ... worse — beyond youth more
"curse of youth"
all that shit no matter how mannered no matter how buddhist no matter how many dresses who?
who is handing out the charity turkeys on new year's in the mission, low key — crying—with some lady saying "it's ok honey — we all do it, you just ain't been down here as long,"
all that shit, in a man,
always,,,,,,,,
but whatever really,
a man, hey, he is still a tug tugboat.
a tug.
and sometimes,
sometimes, not always,
but sometimes,
it needs repair/slides up aside there — "there" like arms; like long pale arms —
..........................from the junk ship down come the ropes — to bind tugboats plastic outsides align — soft each splinter of wood into the fabric of shitty-weather salt-riddled plastic feel like rooms if a child were born in the heart of a man
...inside his tug,
his cry machine,
his eyes.
...beaten too — from a weather-only an ocean-sized dream that never ended could whisper it to you — ///////////rusted so that you might believe — and you do.
inside the flicker or the blue no words say shit — just a look and every horizon-wave-tide —
bloody rope gloved catch — it is.
it just is.
she sees.
in a lucky thought here — she smiles —
but we just don't know.
we don't know what she or he would really do.
not really.........................................
so into a bed two could go, harbor side torn apart — funnily, no different than any mechanic, working on a car — but this ocean, he works in it, and it — it —
THAT ocean it is so many-many-many-many hearts in a row — what you throw out and what comes back — never mind so much..........
it's all that bottomless and in-between that, well, you know,
that is what drives any tug driver home H O M E Home —
eventually —
that is if a man were lucky.
lucky being fickle,
fickle luck being funny,
funny being sad sometimes,
like you just ran out of it —
steam, money,
dreams, honeycomb or blankets,
and somebody was going to get cold.
cold,
not in a home.
to know a home my god, how lucky.
and certainly a postman too, a diver or a saloon owner or a personal driver or anyone,
it drives them home,
this in and out of an ocean of somethings thoughts, working-assembly-line working-desk-sitting-phone-answering —
everyone, even those in a dream when they do a thing —
something in them realizes that clock upon the wall if it is to be anything so true it is just numbers of a face — kind,
beautiful we are lucky to return to —
our homes..............................................
and into a bed the bind is not the sizes of a shape of a person there to hide against but hopeful blue light if a tv set is on—
or just doors/windows — open to the stars,
or......
impressions of stars cause unnatural light also binds itself too, like when it is not a me or a him or her or a you but an us.
where the ocean stops.........................
but it stops.
not home.
no home there.
lucky-not.
noisy noisy waves, tideblast, blast in a face, squinting in place.........................
sarong or blanket flag flying horizontal colors against that line that goes down the sides of a woman.
in a wow, sigh,
from sea spray for a little while till the ocean is the woman who you waited for and,
strangely, saying this as a man,
why you went,
why you went anyway.......a soldier of sorts, to collect new things inside you —
to restart those eyes, that woman, and without a doubt—inside she could see too the impression of unimaginable sunsets,
only happening out there — while we we are not looking but the tug goes still and the sky holds —
holds it to the blue pages —
to bring home to her.
like a rat. in a bow tie.
smiling at small beds to a family of also cartoon rats, in bow ties
(imagine that!!!!)
if only in a gesture of the shoulders —
and a look — that something amazing still stands even if that wait meant.....
well......
just inside a man,
and if that man were the one —
the one under the blue lights —
and nightstars pulled into the junk ship a tug binded binded and the splinters went in and i felt each one, and i am a tug on this ocean of ours ...
but i am standing on this fucking beach.
Smoking and Bug
so many years old but not a man
at all
am i this weird place so much bedroom noise radiator making clangs this whole night like a stretch of beach with blond and salty bangs or candy cane missiles projecting light orbs over blankets cursed under backache and why did i stop or even start what a
dumb kid i have been that for so long pointless really isn't it to act like this
or that say we get lost in a moment say we get gone in the fly rods casting outward to sea on expensive dinghies en masse spanish armada omelets diner fantasy food outward upward dreaming half-assed and awake i miss someone so much i quit well, smoking really to prove to myself how strong a love is even for me so many years old and not a man
at all
in years but terribly
terribly overwhelmed by a name and mercy be a woman with her name and me imagine this not smoking wowed secret loud backwards lot centered alive arms out planted in the new days
Excerpted from "Hello Sunshine"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Ryan Adams.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Florida 11
Fruit-Rotting 17
Dope Camera 22
Bags 26
Feverpitch 29
Numbers 34
Ok, Wow 37
I Am Standing on This Beach 39
Chapter 2
Smoking and Bug 51
Hover 54
Plus Dreams 57
Our Hearts, Okay 59
Papercut-Sunrays 61
No Mask 63
Fixtures Rot 65
Ironing 69
Goodbye, New York City 70
Chapter 3
New Gods 75
Back to Us 77
Windows 78
Full Tilt 80
Sparklers 83
Night Blooms Sweet 88
Nonsmoking Dream 90
Snowflakes, Curtains, and All 91
Now I Sing My Life 93
Go I 95
Chapter 4
Future/Past 101
FutureFucked 102
What a Bad Idea 103
Me and Joan of Arc 105
A Colorful Ending 109
Flight Pattern 116
Poets Smoke 117
The Bible Sold Lots, Didn't it? 121
Repeat 124
Our Dreams Went South 126
Help 130
White Diamond 132
San Pedro Park Blues 138
Chapter 5
Saturday 143
Super Good/Keep Looking 146
Smiling Like I Was New 149
Whale Ships 152
Drift 159
Moon 161
Good Things Too 163
Artificial Lights 165
Why Not? 167
Yes 169
Before That . . . 171
Chapter 6
California Forever 175
Hellosunshine 177
Hi 180
You're Sleeping Now, Yes? 182
Bright as Stars 184
Like This, Us 186
Lucky 189