@readattheshow / www.adorkablelife.com
Hi! My new book, Territories, is out now on Instagram. The book is a long scroll, available totally for free, here:
Official synopsis and trailer are here:
In the aftermath of a second American Civil War, professional wrestler Pain Reade drives town to town, match to match, while discovering a new ability that could rocket him to the top of the card.
A cautionary road story about America, Territories is a love note to fatherhood and our ability to heal.
Weight plate, forty pounds
on the small of my back-
Father and son, Tampa-bound
to stand for the anthem.
Parachute down to the fifty
yard line, camouflage dad
hats all losing their minds.
The cell phone in my pocket’s
got nothing social about it.
The last photo of me was
taken with a Powershot ELPH.
Drawers full of others
taking the place of myself.
Suburban hate crime
outside of the mall.
Broken Ruby Tuesday’s glass
mixed with Sodium Chloride salt.
Wonder in nightmares
about a new Civil War.
Brothers killed brothers while
the world never got small.
Panic attacks, feet stuck in sand,
moving through days
with the grace of an
Interstate accident.
A baby delivered in a Burger
King kitchen wakes me
at night in a cold sweat,
complete with convulsions.
Futures like ovals, stuck
in a night class lecture
on perfect shapes
made imperfect by pressure.
401(k) bleak balance over quarters makes me wonder how closer we are to cut-ins, live from a sidewalk, bankers boxes for businesses. Anchors scraping sand, wondering where the time went. “When did you know it was coming unglued?” At least ISIS is beaten, swept away with a broom, the last firing synapse from 2002. Christian Bale thanking Satan for the times we’ve lived through. A groundhog saw his shadow the same day my friend overdosed. Six more weeks of winter, Gates of Heaven, dust-to-dust. Another warm October, watching Dutchess apples confused to rot. Pressure smashing into pressure, a line-graph car accident.
A Barnegat brain, fogged from
a night spent in the state park.
Paths to evacuate a hurricane,
a calm, slow walk over Route 72:
the tongue of the bridge freezing
all that unruly, sideways rain.
Run a hand over reeds,
boarded up small businesses
receding. Mud City between
fingers, as waves run their
nails over my sneakers.
Waterproof Jeep, every
hand-in-hand mile, took
trips to the grocery when
mom couldn’t cook.
Snap buttons hold the
roof, covering each first,
last worldly possession.
Left when the roots of
childhood Timbers grew
into the kitchen.
Radio’s red finger cracks
a warning from speakers:
to abandon homes,
to seek and hold shelter,
to find a ground higher,
not all ground is equal.
A matted dog licks my
fingers in front of plywood,
“Save us, Jesus.”
I name this dog Noah
right before retreating.
Bought a used Hasbro
Mean Gene at the flea
market in the Meadowlands.
Hollowed it out after a
Home Depot run so we
could get high with him.
Lately thoughts come
with gills, with scales,
to swim through an
aquarium with no
gravel or shelter,
with nothing to hide them.
Garage door opener stuck,
VCR with a blank tape -
A Monday Night spent,
a few Tuesday heavyweights.
Missing Oregon, the car
rides to the waterfall.
My dad would pack
snacks in a cooler.
5 hours felt two weeks
long. The forest stretched
And blurred like a flip book.
Inconsistent speed, distorting
the woods in the windows,
the snow over the hood.
1993, center-cut on a TV-
Gene, Ric, and 40,000 in
Biloxi, Mississippi.
photo appeared in Rolling Stone
Talking to you on the phone, I just want to let you know that you still sound like you. Friends check on friends, even though it’s easier to assume we’re great. New dad? Must be so thrilled. New job? Must be so successful. New relationship? Must be so happy. Look at all those photos - you in Burlington, with your dog, your mom, presents - spending your life living, right?
Over this year, music got sad - sad to the point that the people who were making it were using it as an unheeded call for help. When we lost artists, we tweeted and listened on Spotify. Not enough plays to bring an artist back. Where I teach, a teenager quoted a rapper in the yearbook. The lyrics were not boastful, but instead full of regret and tilting uncertainty. There are small moments when you know the world has shifted its plates, turned on its axis, changed entirely without you knowing.
Check on your friends - because being a new dad is scary when you live paycheck to paycheck. New jobs mean piles of new responsibility, longer hours, more pressure. New relationships come on the heels of old relationships, and most of those leave scar tissue, some leave broken skin. Being successful does not change the chemistry in your head, in your body.
Back to our call - you’ll never lose me no matter how much space you need. When the gaps close, I’ll still be here caring, keeping you in my thoughts, imagining you happy, no matter if you are or are not. When I picture us, we are at the reservation, you’re taking photos, I’m trying so hard to look important. I remember us at Melrose Diner, sitting, talking. Surrounded by friends in love with one another. The night never breaks to the day, just a small moment I’ve kept forever.
photo by Bill Cannon
Adorkablelife has been reopened and will be updated with new poetry, letters and songs. The past few years have been hard. This is that story.
There is a version of us, of me, of you, on upstate acres. Dreaming about it feels real: chickens, golden years- rain between grass under feet, in nostrils, mixed tears. An ache, or a panic, or a manic stress response, a physical me, a mind wandering on. Hold it in a photo, hung in our apartment - the mountain we climbed, the castle, the fountain. Your blue hair in gallons of tourists, the falling in love that cost us a fortune. Reflected in a Lego Store window, the glasses, the rose tattoo. Children born in homes, in apartments- Life over a wire- to get close is to still never touch it. The poet returned with the town waiting, listening, for a story of spring, of pollenated beginning. The reality bit, broke the skin singing. The tree, the lights, the loop of laughing from the rink. A stranger’s shoulder in our photo, fingers brushing over a creek. Irrigating acres and miles to allow you to drink.
44 hung in my suburb, on a front lawn. They hung Her too, orange prison clothes on. Stuffed dolls strung in trees, and my white blood cells - a response to disease. Trapp Comics, Foodtown, income that lets you move out, and stay out. Visit on Thanksgiving, seltzer from Walt’s Liquor King. You quit when they found that weak part of your heart’s lining. The bagel place is making bagels great again. A Mercedes-Benz, a bumper sticker: The War on Christmas is The Only War Worth Winning. Every other house for sale- white realtors, white photographs, gelled-hair pushed straight back, just a couple kids who never left. 44 hung in my suburb, hung in effigy, in a gray suit. On Winden Drive, leading up to the high school.
If youve been feeling overwhelmed by things, read this. I’ve been really coming to terms with a ton this last year.
https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/notes-on-rabbit-holes-78428e44b075
I spent Christmas at a Red Roof Inn Express. A special kind of misty, public lonely with the shapes of people who never really left. Another species on the brink, another acquaintance on the edge of Facebook with my parents. Another artist burned up in a white-hot structure fire of tweets and of drugs. That’s the world: Aspirational light that tows a line between back-breaking and just heavy enough. Sorrow is hurricane-swept foam on high tide, existing for a second and displaced at the same time. Through it, we remain waiting for the good news of our favorite song’s refrain - taking us back to basements, to long drives, to photos of power lines in the middle of a hazy place. A poet with major depression, a manic genius wasting away- all for the claims of residency in the hearts, minds - Mundane chronicles of a people spinning one thousand miles-per-hour through a solar system, a universe that’s reflecting off another planet’s lake. A fire between two more hearts across a soundless vacuum called outer space.
I’ve been having a hard time processing this latest mass shooting and writing about it helps
https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/leaving-the-house-2b61e5626a5a
so, I know too many women affected by sexual harassment, a lot of whom have been telling their stories. My heart breaks for each and every one of you. https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/ihearyou-2eae725f9792
here’s an article I wrote about football, me, and what it means to take a knee.
Hi. Every year I write about this. Every year I hope things can get better. This is the story of a town that, sixteen years later, never healed from the events of September 11th. If you haven’t read this story, here you go:
give me some claps on this one.
hi. I wrote this over on Medium. It’s important. Please take 4 minutes to read it. https://medium.com/@nicholasrorsini/fostering-kittens-9875cd64a258
