If you feel up to celebrating National Poetry Month, I will be offering poetic solace and stimulation at the Redondo Beach Public Library. Monday April 14th, 6.30pm. 303 N.Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
April 2, 2014
The Portlandization of Los Angeles
March 23, 2014
CVI
Contact with anybody
who has produced work of quality
fills me with an air of thwarted yearning empathy,
an implausible sense of fraternity,
a melancholy sting. Regret and resentment
gnawing at me, eating me alive.
This is what you reap
when you haven’t sown anything.
March 1, 2014
Yield to Total Deflation
Where the Fourth Wall meets the Glass Ceiling.
I will be giving it a good seven minutes of my worst.
Monty Bar, 1222 W.7th street, LA. March 6th, 8pm.
February 21, 2014
A soft insidious plea
February 21, 2014
Chair, Sofa and Bed
Between these three points of love
and sloth (mostly the latter),
I flounder. Resting, without laurels,
restlessly. Pausing between pauses,
to inventory this harvest of regret;
to consider from every angle of unease,
this permanent rut… to forever name remainless,
staring at a curtain.
February 12, 2014
Moved
This death, as opposed to my other deaths,
feels dangerously like spring.
A catastrophic waste of time,
but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
February 7, 2014
Time Unregained
At this point it would be impossible
to make up for all the lost time.
I might as well try to settle
for a serviceable desperation,
and strive, at least, for resignation:
the long hard process of resigning myself
to the choices I made
by not making a choice.
January 27, 2014
Letting Go
In a constant state of choking down bitterness.
Getting it all down in the hope of exhausting it.
Only to find there’s more, it multiplies.
How empty my life would be without it.
What a gaping hole it would leave.
And what could possibly take its place?
That’s a good question…
I’m drawing a blank.
To ‘let go’ of bitterness and resentment:
It’s an interesting concept.
I must try it sometime.
No hurry.
January 9, 2014
Let me Ruin your Night
I will be ‘appearing’ as part of this bill in aid of a most worthy cause: ‘An Exquisite Salon for the Benefit of Making HM157 Legal’ at the fabled historic monument/ performance space. 3110 N.Broadway in Lincoln Heights. Saturday night, Jan 18th.
John Tottenham 
