on wedlock, pouring words, and the world’s most brilliant man by the name of Charles.

interview with dennis of thevagabondking.

conducted by nicole delcore.

n: what are your opinions on the institution of marriage and how do you think it’s changing?
d: My parents were married for 20+ years before divorcing.  In those twenty years there was some good times and some bad times.  As a kid, I always thought that that was just the way it was,  that that was how marriages work.  But as time went on, I started to see the flaws in marriage.  They’d stop talking, for weeks on end.  There was no communication.  They stayed in the marriage for the children.  That’s a horrible by product of raising children.  The trap of staying in it.

And the fact that homosexuals can’t get married legally is even more telling of the institution of marriage.  Two people, willing to fight societies stigma’s head on, aren’t allowed to unite their love - ridiculous. 

The only thing that’s changing about marriage is that the divorce rate is increasing every year. 

n: what’s your writing process?
d: My process is very simple.  I sit down. I think back to everything I have seen thus far in my day and search for something that is worthy of a story.  I keep a small tablet of paper with me at all times.  I do a lot of people watching during the day.  I make notes. I give them back stories. Then I let that sit for a while.

I usually have spotify on and listen to music while I wait.

Usually the Foo Fighters or lately, I’ve been putting on the Mozart Symphony channel.  And then I just let loose of all that’s hiding inside my mind.  I don’t censor, edit or analyze the work.

Once it is out of me, it’s out of me. 

n: do you think not editing has harmed or helped your work?
d: I think it’s probably done both.  I think a lot of the grammar snobs have lost what my writing is really about.  I’ve never claimed to be a writer of beautiful words.  My work is gritty, dirty, dark and raw.  Editing it, I feel, would eliminate the aura that I’m trying to create with my words. 

I don’t want to be remembered as the writer that wrote perfect stanzas.  Whose structure was solid.

I want people to remember the story told.  

n: generationally, where do you think your poetry fits in?
d: If you look at my logo, it says heavy metal poetry.  I’d like to think my poetry is a hybrid of beat/bukowski and twisted into a modernized outlaw poetry type style.  That all sounds like a lot of fucking bullshit, right?

My writing doesn’t really fit in with poetry at all.  I don’t rhyme, i don’t structure, I just write from my guts and my heart and my pain and my bottle. 

It’s doubtful that I’ll be remembered as a writer in forty years.  I’m an internet poet who writes good shit from time to time, but in the end, there’s no one really reading the words the way we used to read them. 

n: what’s your definition of the word obscene?
d: Great question.  I think obscene is vulgarity without reason.  I think it’s physical abuse.  I think it’s war.  I think obscene is what you get when you lose sight of a vision. 

n: what do you do for a living?
d: I’m technically unemployed.  I have what they call an “under the table” job, working with a band here in Illinois.  I do their social media marketing.  They’re currently shopping a CD in Nashville, having worked with a couple of Tim McGraw’s producers.

Other then that, I’m currently writing my second book and working on a new project called Rot Gut. 

n: why do you value Bukowski so much?
d: He validates what I already thought.  I was writing like this before I’d ever heard of Bukowski.  When I found him it was sort of an epiphany.  All these years I’d hid my work thinking … I’d be committed if I shared what I wrote.  Then, I find out that there’s this mother fucker making people crazy with similar shit.

The guy’s a genius.  Anyone that thinks other wise is still sucking on the tits of Walt Disney.  

n: do you think you’ll make a good father?
d: I think i’ll be a fantastic father.  I’m not going to be that father/parent that trips on the small details of life.  I’m going to teach him or her what life is really about.  I don’t believe in spoiling a child or buying its love.

n: better than your own was/is?
d: My dad was always working when I was a kid.  He worked two jobs so my mom wouldn’t have to work.  So our relationship when I was younger was pretty nonexistent.  He was always tired when he was home.

I never got to play catch with him enough.  Maybe five times in my whole life.

But after I graduated and got past some issues, we became pretty good friends.  I’d say best friends really.  He’s my drinking buddy.  We watch hockey games together and we poke fun at society.  I have been very lucky with the father I received. 

That said, he’s not a good communicator and as the years progress he’s getting sicker.  He has C.O.P.D and I think the bitterness of dying is starting to flavor his personality.

It’s sad to watch. 

n: how has watching him changed your own perception of death?
d: It saddens me that people fear it so much, to be honest.  I mean, we live with the fact that we’re going to die as soon as we become cognizant of what life is.  I wish he’d look at these last moments and cherish them.  It seems like a waste of life when you go into the end hating it.

I understand it’s probably not death that is bothering him or others in his shoes.  I imagine it’s more the pain of the ailment and maybe I’m projecting my sadness into his pain and imagining his bitterness.

I know i’m going to die.  The only fear of it I have is leaving Kristen in this world alone.  I don’t fear what’s after this.  I don’t fear the pain of death.  It’s all over eventually. 

x

on twirling with Aladdin, epistolary’s to your future self and not-so-foreign foreign travels.

interview with gillian of gigisaysrawr.

conducted by allie gidcomb.

a: have you ever been out of the country?
g: only Canada when I was about two. that doesn’t count.

a: finish this sentence: dear future me..
g: dear future me, calm down a little. don’t stress yourself out, you know that never ends well.

a: in your opinion, what makes a word offensive?
g:  the person who hears it. take the word “faggot” for example, people on Tumblr use it as a little joke, so-and-so is such a faggot!, we know it’s a joke. however, if you go to someone who doesn’t view that word the same way, it instantly becomes offensive. another good example is the word “retarded”, if you say that to someone like me, I don’t find it offensive. now, if you say it to a person who has a relative with special needs, the word becomes offensive.  

a: if you didn’t know what your name was, what would your name be?
g: Jaymi! I’ve always loved that name, I don’t know why. When I was younger and my friends and I would play pretend, that that was my name.

a: speaking of when you were younger, did you ever have an imaginary friend?
g:  No, but I would imagine that I was with all of the Disney characters. Aladdin is my favorite Disney movie so I would mostly be with them. I would often dance with them in the backyard…I wonder if the neighbors ever saw and thought that it was weird. Oh well. 

a: are you a cat or dog person?
g: cat person because they’re so laid back and don’t constantly bug you to go outside. however, my mother hates cats, so, we can’t have one. I love my dog though.

on gasps, rain-laced gardens and the charming honey colored bear from the hundred acre wood.

interview with the ever-lovely nameless girl of bedbones.

conducted by allie gidcomb.

a: what’s your name, love? 
b:  I think my name makes me sad because it’s connected to so many things, it’s supposed to be connected to me, and oh, I tire of these obtrusive links to a world i haven’t ever truly felt a part of. there isn’t any real name for things like gasps or gripping hands or anything at all, is there? somehow the sounds are all mixed up and we pretend they make sense, and they don’t ever, do they? I wish my name was the sound love made when it came to the loneliest of people in camellia-laced park gardens or dimly lit motel bathrooms. I wish it wasn’t any sort of song or story that i or anyone i have ever known knew the words to.

a: too much or not enough?
b: not enough, I think. oh, that does sound awful somehow. as if I believed I were invincible or invisible. when there isn’t very much, there isn’t too much room for the things that hurt, I think. I hope.

a:do you think too many people have abandoned books? 
b:  I am unsure. I think that bookstores and libraries are a wonderful place for the people who have the hearts for them, and I think that’s lovely, it’s lovely that there are the secret beautiful things. it’s okay if not everyone adores books maybe, though it is heart-breaking that it sometimes seems as if not everyone adores what is most wonderful of all. 

a: what is the most attractive thing a person can do?
b: be kind, undoubtedly and indefinitely.

a: what compelled you to start writing?
b:  oh my gosh, I have written forever! I used to write stories when I was littler. one was about a rose and I did a watercolor picture on the front cover and so many were about girls who did things, like they’d have different color eyes and hairs and lives. I wasn’t able to ever exactly finish a story and so I started writing little things that were smaller, so it was allowed to talk about one eye for a very long time, and I found out that these things were called poems maybe, and I was so happy! well I would write in diaries for so long of a time, though i don’t like to think about that because it made a man very mad and then whenever he would sit on the bed beside me I would feel very worried and shaky inside by my heart if I wasn’t wearing big enough of a sweater.

a: what (book) character do you most relate to? 
b:  I think that maybe I am a little like the new baby named Annabelle that was the new sister to Jane and Michael in the book [by P.L. Travers] that is called Mary Poppins! I think that I am so because she thought an awful lot about where she might have come from and it wasn’t ever really from any place that was too near and she forgot the lovely things too, even though she was new, and she didn’t know how to be much at all afterwards, even though sometimes someone touched her hair in what must have been a nice way, at least once, maybe. because sometimes I can’t remember all the parts of my life because i’m not supposed to, just like her! or maybe I am like Piglet from [Milne’s]Winnie the Pooh, because he was so happy all of the time and also worrisome!

a: have you ever danced in the rain? 
b: I am not sure! I think I’ve worried about the rain! sometimes the whole world feels so invasive and I think it makes me want to hold my own hand in the back of a dark room, but oh maybe it doesn’t really because I love the garden when it’s rain-laced, I feel like such a small thing when i see how beautiful the roses and the lilies can be, and I try not to look at the pansies and the evening primrose as the world seems to ruin them when it does anything and I just can’t stand to see them drowned at all, I can’t stand to see them so tired, it’s always as if they’ve forgotten themselves entirely and I just can’t bear it! 

x