r.i.p. david berman

It’s so hard watching them continue to fall . . .

Oh Where

by David Berman

Where did you go, my dear, my day;
Where, oh where, did you go?
To market, to maker of market, to say
Too much of the little I know.

Where did you go, my dear, my year;
Why did you flee from me?
I went from here to there to here
Loitering breathlessly.

Where did you go, my life, my own,
Decades gone in a wink?
Some things are better left unknown
Some thoughts too thick to think.



‘It is autumn and my camouflage is dying . . .’

new print publications

Zines © 2019 Sean Stewart

These are limited print editions of projects originally serialized online.

Bunker Diaries is a fictional journal kept by an unnamed instructor while teaching a cadre of listless trainees in a desert bunker. It was serialized here in Fall 2012 and has been lightly revised for this print edition. It is no longer available online.

Inner Harbor Field Reports is a compendium of observations made during lunchtime walks around Baltimore’s Inner Harbor between 2014 and 2019 (heavier on the early years of that range). It began as notes embedded in rambling blog entries (which is why this print edition seems like it starts in the middle of something, but trust me, you’re not missing out on any needed context). Eventually I decided to streamline it into pure observational bliss and moved it over to Tumblr. I had a good run there, until Tumblr inexplicably extended the long arm of censorship and shut down my site. Attempts at appeal failed and as my interest was already waning, I decided to end it there.

I enjoyed this project while it lasted, though, and so I thought it would be cool to memorialize it with this print edition. The text remains largely untouched, with only minimal corrections and revisions. The ending is somewhat abrupt, much like the beginning, closing on a sole entry from 2019. Although there is a postscript explaining the genesis of the project, the lack of contextual intro and outro is purposeful, for the intent of this document is only to offer a narrow slice of the ongoing continuum that is life at the Inner Harbor.

Available from the following independent bookstores:

Atomic Books: Bunker Diaries | Inner Harbor Field Reports

Quimby’s: Bunker Diaries | Inner Harbor Field Reports

the phantasmagoria of the mist

Unconsciously, but still of free will, he had preferred the splendour and the gloom of a malignant vision before his corporal pains, before the hard reality of his own impotence. It was better to dwell in vague melancholy, to stray in the forsaken streets of a city doomed from ages, to wander amidst forlorn and desperate rocks than to awake to a gnawing and ignoble torment, to confess that a house of business would have been more suitable and more practical, that he had promised what he could never perform. Even as he struggled to beat back the phantasmagoria of the mist, and resolved that he would no longer make all the streets a stage of apparitions; he hardly realised what he had done, or that the ghosts he had called might depart and return again.

Arthur Machen, The Hill of Dreams

prelude to nothing (let there be light)

Go to a strange place to take a long test. Everything is unfamiliar but signals an escape. Recall the repellent damp stench of the locker room. Trees waving from the roadside. Airing tires at the gas station. Old men clean the windshields, their starched white coveralls blistered in full noon sun. Now the strange sounds of Fiat Lux wash over the bed. Now a breeze enters the room. On the phone a voice to capture an ache. A head still full of numbers. Names to speak in a rush. Understand little / experience less / imagine all instead. Growing wake of books trails behind. Later too late. Later written to the page. Later loss of lettersloss of historyloss of self. Self walks awaynever in pursuit. Transport black bile across state lines. But no: too soon. Return, retrace. Head strikes blacktop, skin inflames summers. Cover with this overcoat before a surge at year’s end. Holy songs and rituals halo material desires. Now far offnow beyondnow tinny at the end of this dead line.

[w. 2015 / rev. 2017-2019]

weighing souls with sand: a response

Touched through by a white wing she stands defiant (or is it expectant) above the crashing waves. Orange storm sky rages above the rocky coastline. Thundering in her ears. Birds soar overheadtheir frantic cries pierce the heavy air. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to leave. The darkening sky. The diminishing hour. A throat clogged with fear. The golden orb sinks toward a depthless chasm, loss radiating from its rim. There is only heavy sand belowsand to weigh a soul down. Perched on the rock, though, perhaps she will ascend, the feathers of the wing lessening her load, her arms open and her soul rough with sand, aching to be brushed clean.

the agent by russell edson

. . . Assigned to you when your flesh was separating from your
mother’s, this shadow, who seeing the opportunity at hand, joined your
presence in such a way as some say the soul is given.

You have always caricatured me in my travels. I have seen you on
mountains, and in dim cafes. I have seen you hold your head, your elbows
on your knees, and while I was sad you were serene!

I seek a mastery over fate, of which you are, in objective witness, the
agent of . . . I run away one night as you sleep, the trusting wife, whose
borders have opened in the universal dark.

She feels in the morning among the sheets for the easy habit of her
husband’s shape – Now arc the earth, sweet dark, the law of umbra give
you panic to search me out with your cunning speed of light!

~from The Clam Theater (1973)

hatred of writing update

Hatred of Writing is now available at both Atomic Books in Baltimore and Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago. Copies are also still available direct from me through PayPal on the order page. Many thanks to those who’ve already ordered! Your support means a lot.

From the depths of the salt mine comes…Hatred of Writing.

.

new zine: hatred of writing

Hatred of Writing, © 2018 S. D. Stewart

Now Available: Hatred of Writing

Selected short fiction from the past five years.

Limited to 50 numbered copies

48 pages, digest-sized, hand-lettered cover

Published in October 2018

Available here: Atomic Books, Normals (in-store only), and Quimby’s.

doves depart

Thunder cracks
over doves of doom
perched on wire,
tails toward gray mass
tracking north,
a wet smudge to
wash our heat away.
What wonder sprung
from this shall pass
before doves depart,
folded feathers
now unfurled,
shedding rain
as voices sing
familiar words
in arcane bursts.

japanese death poems

Four-and-fifty years
I’ve hung the sky with stars.
Now I leap through—
What shattering!

—Dogen Zenji, 1253

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going—
Two simple happenings
that got tangled.

—Kozan Ichikyo, 1360

Spitting blood
Clears up reality
And dreams alike.

—Sunao, 1926

Showing its back
And showing its front,
A maple leaf falling.

—Zen Master Ryokan, 1831

What legacy shall I
leave behind?
Flowers in spring.
Cuckoos in summer.
Maple leaves in autumn.

—Zen Master Ryokan, 1831

More on death poems here and here.

(Thank you: Dendo @ Baltimore Dharma Group)

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