#withagoodcriminalheart

[ashtrayfloors]

Death is Colorful // New Orleans, June 2010

#withagoodcriminalheart #new orleans #cemetery #st. louis cemetery no. 1 #my photos #2010 #ok to reblog

[indaimayau]

I'm guessing you REALLY like RX Bandits? :P

It has been a while I didn't listen to their song though, but I still love them. xD

#RX Bandits #withagoodcriminalheart

[ashtrayfloors]

I’m so sporadic with Tumblr, and with most social media. I post and reblog a bunch of stuff at once, and then don’t post anything for days, weeks, months even.

Life is strange lately. There have been a lot of deaths and near-deaths in my extended family in the past couple weeks. I don’t know what else to say about that right now, I’m still processing. I’ve been having lots of terrifying and vivid dreams that wake me up and keep me up. Because of this, I’ve been sleep-deprived enough that weird, dreamlike things are bleeding into my waking life. Thursday morning, after being woken up repeatedly by nightmares, and finally falling into a solid sleep around 4 a.m., I was awoken at 6 a.m. by two loud booms, followed by a lot of people yelling and then a police megaphone telling everyone to get back in their houses. Apparently they were serving a search warrant for a suspected member of a drug and gun trafficking crew. This was on my block, just six houses away. I’ve been extra jumpy and anxious since then.

Oh and of course there is the autumn nostalgia, the most acute kind for me. I miss a hundred people and places and times. (I miss everything all the time.)

Been thinking a lot about the days and years of my life when I spent much of my time alone, in cars, on trains and buses, on bicycle or foot. Those days I spent wandering so many cities and towns and landscapes. How I’d meet up with friends or lovers, or befriend or make a lover out of a sweet stranger, and shortly thereafter I’d be gone again, on to the next adventure. (But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.) Thinking about how lonesome I thought I was back then—and I was sometimes deeply lonely—and now I recall those years as the best ones of my life.

Related to the above: I’ve also been thinking about how I’ve long felt able to fit into many different groups of people, in many different places, but at the same time I’ve always felt…just a bit on the outside of all those groups and places. Like an infiltrator, an observer. That might stem somewhat from moving and traveling around a lot, and also from being interested in so many different things—I flitted in and out of a lot of different scenes, some I had deeper roots in than others, but I never stayed in any one place, with any one group. Or it might just be a side effect of being a writer. I think feeling a little bit like an outsider in any given situation is essential to being a writer; it makes you a sharper observer if you’ve got a little bit of distance between yourself and whatever you’re experiencing.

I’m trying to reconnect to myself. Wearing outfits that may look ridiculous but make me feel comfortable in my skin; listening to old favorite music. I do this periodically, and it helps.

I‘m working on my Peter Lorre poems again; some of them will be appearing in my next Writer in Residence post and I think ultimately they’ll be my next chapbook. I’m also working on my next column for Hello America; this installment will be about the time I went to Hallowmas in 2007. So of course I’m thinking about W/IFS. Which makes me think about Cloth. And oh fuck, I miss him so much it is physically painful. I haven’t been drinking much lately, but tonight I’m getting wine drunk. I’m drinking the best wine first.

It’s fully autumn now. Peacoat and fingerless glove weather, and I‘m thriving.

Tomorrow I get to see my bestie. We’re gonna grab coffees to go and then wander around in the woods. Monday P. and I are taking the kiddos to a pumpkin patch.

That’s all for now. Goodnight.

#withagoodcriminalheart #pls no reblobs // #dear livejournal #life #death #acab #nightmares #autumn #nostalgia #it's the too huge world vaulting us and it's good bye #i'm on the outside #i miss everything all the time #every old life is a house on fire #jack terricloth #alcohol #drink the best wine first

[ashtrayfloors]

things I have

CBD oil

nicotine gum

a sore back

a letter I can’t send

anxiety

maskne

a haunted heart

old photographs

lavender in bloom

a glass of wine

a depressed partner

some treasures I found at the beach

a lot of books to read

a lot of vegetables which I will be putting in pasta for dinner

things I want

weed

a pouch of Bali Shag

spiced crab apple jam made from my great grandmother’s recipe

a brand new pair of rollerskates

to finish a goddamn poem

to finish the next issue of my zine

a roll of film for my Holga

brownies

an end to the pandemic

my old friends, my old face, my old mind (fuck this time and place)

karaoke

dancing

a Purple Haze (an amazing coffee drink I tried last week—a latte with vanilla and lavender)

I need a phone call, I need a raincoat (I really really need a raincoat)

#withagoodcriminalheart #list #ok to reblog #things i want #in which i reference the weakerthans and melanie and ani and counting crows #but i’m not joking #i really do have or want all the things I listed #there’s so much more to say but i’m still processing #so this’ll have to do for now #drugs tw #cigarettes tw #i can always hear a freight train #baby if i listen real hard

[ashtrayfloors]

Rocky Mountain Haze // Boulder, CO, July 2007

#withagoodcriminalheart #photography #boulder #colorado #rocky mountains #ok to reblog #my photos #2007

[ashtrayfloors]

I always bring my diary with me… // November 2006

#withagoodcriminalheart #gpoy #2006 #black and white photography #ok to reblog #cigarettes #one must have something sensational to read on the train

[ashtrayfloors]

Bindlestiff Family Circus // New York City, February 2007

#photography #circus #clown #bindlestiff family circus #new york city #2007 #my photos #blurry #nostalgia #sigh forever #withagoodcriminalheart #ok to reblog

[ashtrayfloors]

Petrifying Springs, Kenosha // October 2021

#iphoneography #autumn color #kenosha #wisconsin #petrifying springs #ok to reblog #withagoodcriminalheart #my photos

[ashtrayfloors]

2012 — The Bronze Fonz // Milwaukee

2013 — We’re Here Now // Chicago

2014 — October Blood // en route to Chicago 

2015 — Ok…I gotta go now // Los Angeles

2016 — Zine Life // Kenosha

#withagoodcriminalheart #pls no reblobs // #gpoy #2012 #2013 #2014 #2015 #2016 #milwaukee #chicago #metra #los angeles #kenosha

[ashtrayfloors]

conjuring // Chicago, June 2008

#withagoodcriminalheart #smoke #smoke balls #magic #chicago #ok to reblog #my photos #2008 #alleyway #people #friends #gpoy

[ashtrayfloors]

I GOT THE WRITING GIG!!! I can’t announce it publicly til tomorrow so that’s why I’m still being cryptic about what exactly it is, but yeah. I am so fucking happy. I for real manifested that shit.

#withagoodcriminalheart #good things #did I mention it’s a paid gig???? cuz it is!!!

[ashtrayfloors]

etchings // June 12, 2021, Racine, WI

Not a Fluke / Fuck a Fluke

Stanley & Stella & Ghost

Will & Mad Dog 20/20

CT & Bruce

#withagoodcriminalheart #photography #graffiti #alleyway #racine #wisconsin #bricks #my photos #ok to reblog #when i tell you i nearly fainted dead away seeing the names #will and ct and bruce ALL on that wall #three of my ex-whatevers or old flames #all of them people i met/fell for in '03/'04 #the time period which i am currrently reminiscing about constantly #and writing #and #it was just a bit spooky

[ashtrayfloors]

She recalls the nights the mares. The ways he felled her friends. The party the slaughterhouse. She shuts her eyes and each death plays. Inside her head a picture show a midnight horror. (The slut the slash of silver knife. The boys dead drunk the drunk boys dead.) The run and closet-hide and breath-hold. The trying not to move not to exist until she’s sure he’s gone for good. (Until we meet again.)

Jessie Lynn McMains, from “Final Girl’s Love Song”

#jessie lynn mcmains #poetry #prose poetry #final girls #death #murder #my writing #quoting myself #withagoodcriminalheart #ok to reblog

[ashtrayfloors]

remember the alchemy of hardware circus workers sliced open the Dreamland Inferno the dancefloor’s insurrection

Jessie Lynn Mcmains, from The Loneliest Show on Earth

#jessie lynn mcmains #quotations #poetry #the loneliest show on earth #my writing #ok to reblog #withagoodcriminalheart #2020 #death #destruction #fire

[ashtrayfloors]

Hey, Peter Lorre—where’d all the money go? // Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Los Angeles, May 2015

#withagoodcriminalheart #my photos #hollywood forever cemetery #los angeles #peter lorre #cemetery #2015 #ok to reblog

[ashtrayfloors]

Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Sings) // Los Angeles, CA, May 2015

#withagoodcriminalheart #my photos #hollywood forever cemetery #los angeles #ok to reblog #2015 #cemetery