The Excelano Project Official Blog » Garrett Carey

Produce

Garrett Carey — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:25:14 +0000

to
waste a
bounded youth
running from the
cursory promise
of happiness lying
in an untidy room and
licking coffee from the roof of
our mouths, to cattle-prod the hide of
hope and die alone with our cheeseburgers

Simple Plan

Garrett Carey — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:16:17 +0000

I,
like most,
have stories
to tell. And my
stories, like most are
more important than all
others, so I learned a few
big words, practise a few turns of
phrase in hopes of bribing you all to
listen to me more. It’s working so far.

Bryant Park

Garrett Carey — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:33:05 +0000

I don’t know what a girl is
sometimes,
the small of a back
peeking, shy,
a secret spoken in an outside voice;
a good day,

when one should decide
to breathe upon you,
seems foreign, magical.
I see her, lying,
testing the cold grass toe-first
in an invisible patch of Manhattan -
jazz whispers in the background
like a jealous ex-girlfriend,
a movie scene.
I am sure I see her
a little uncomfortable
at the peak of my
dream-woven everything
but I don’t really know what
“seeing”
means.

Kissing is easier. You can feel
the borders
when you reach them,
map them.

Everywhere
there is a misplaced fantasy
forlorn. The hoola-hoopers
are close, but oblivious
and almost Burtonesque
in their brazen eccentricity.
The watchers are
watching. The listeners
are listening. In three minutes,
a siren
will nudge its way between us
as if the world resented being forgotten
even for a moment.

This is a girl.

It is a good day,
or
at the very least,
I think it is.

At Sea

Garrett Carey — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:59:17 +0000

People always tell me
it wasn’t my fault. There was nothing
I could do, her depression
was beyond my control, I loved her
harder and longer than anybody could;
half of life is just
showing up.
It’s natural
to offer a patch of consolation
to a wounded friend
when you, like nearly everyone
lack the needle
or the medical skills to stitch them up,
but there is always something
I could have done, always
some point I can be better,
some eye contact, some curl
of the lip, some honest human
reversion to dopey, sundrunk courtship
with all the tiny wonders
to blur the big looming questions of life
into the background.
I could have found a way
to anchor her to a reality bent and
burning under the millennial pressure
of love too silly to know it has a definite place
in time. There was a right moment
to lean over and remind her
through the gloss of her tears
that she has a favorite flower,
an ice cream shop in Queens,
a first time. To be touched
lovingly is to fold
all of your possible futures
back on to your single, lonely past
and let them crush it out of existence.
It’s simple magic,
honest, endless, cheap.

The truth is
there is no destiny or duty
to a life at sea. Sailors set out
because they’d rather miss home
than be there.

‘09 Spring Show Footage, Day 2

Garrett Carey — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:45:39 +0000

Video Playlist

‘09 Spring Show Footage, Day 1

Garrett Carey — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:14:56 +0000

Video Playlist

iPod

Garrett Carey — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:29:21 +0000

by David Warner and Garrett Carey

WE ARE MUSICAL NOTES
shaking beat-down accords on BX corners,
tracing the wavelength of Caribbean heat.
I’m a Pac verse over a Neptune beat,
all the confused righteousness and fire of a young martyr
lain over a sea of spacey purples, glistening silvers, and shiny patton leather reds.
I’m a reggae scat sung way too fast for anyone to understand,
with way too much rhythm to ignore.
I am the drunken squiggling path from the ass to the dancefloor.
I’m Jazzy Jeff and Primo scratching Robert Frost,
til the woods become ‘hoods,
and the road not taken is made of concrete and chalk outlines.
I’m Marvin Gaye, softly singing TS Eliot
over music made for making babies. I’m the space
between every song in your iPod and
a scribbled idea in a notepad,
so put us on a playlist
pop in your headphones and
PRESS PLAY.
Quiet, like disease and morning coffee.
Raindrops jealously echo licked lips
watching from the wet window glass as we
watch each other’s naked writhing bodies–
PAUSE!!! SKIP.
I spit from lips laced with land mines,
launching lethal language left and right like hand signs
from a tongue like a tech 9, t-t-tech 9.
I wreck lines, line after line like coke addicts.
So rapid, so fast its like two lines ago (tech 9, t-t-tech 9)
ugh, automatic.
PAUSE. SKIP.
My systematic schematic
is to break static, and make emphatic wakes
with every step I take. I don’t rap,
but I get slack and phosphatic.
I’m ecstatic to say that my socratic cliches
can relate. I have a habit to create.
The fact is, you don’t have to make sense
to make cents, and I’m just as sick as any
talentless nigga paying rent with wack shit.
PAUSE. FAST FORWARD.
My systematic schematic
is to make static and break emphatic wakes
with every step I take. I don’t rap,
but I get slack and phosphatic.
I’m ecstatic to say that my socratic
cliche’s can relate, I have a habit to create.
PAUSE!!! SKIP.
Speak to me,
four words with life,
live!
Can I sew us into something
changing and inconstant?
The dashing we do changes everything.
PAUSE… REWIND?
Everything changes.
Do we?
Dashing the inconstant
and changing something into us
so I can live a life
with words for me to speak.
STOP!!! Please stop!
Needless to say, we can do this
all day. We are poets.
And if you don’t let us spit
we’d probably explode with witty quips
and gritty drips of what it is.
So do your best
to find at least one poet every day and
PRESS PLAY

Naked

Garrett Carey — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:25:08 +0000

I undress her,
and by undress I mean
she leads the eyes
a glistening moon over
helpless
waves.

I am captivated,
madly in love
and by madly I mean
57 times a day,
I mean under-
estimated

I mean the black
lace draws murals under
her shirt,
a masterpiece -
and by masterpiece I mean
in the way
of her breasts.

She is dressed,
I mean, she is wanted,
she is loved.
She wears it well.

The Wall

Garrett Carey — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:05:10 +0000

We were like colors
quickened from the palettes
of dreamers unfamiliar
in their own skin. We
grafted to flax and gave
back what we got
in shifted spectrums,
narrower, not
so final. I tasted
sunlight on your back
and knew nothing of who I was.
Looking back, I think

maybe I was as you drew me
all bundled up and still far
too big for my own skin,
bone softened with milky watercolor
and too well contained
on canvas to jut out
at uncomfortable angles, and maybe
you were just something
I dreamed about and tried childishly
to stick to the wall.
I too liked the flavor of black
paint. I spoke in the industry
of romance, smearing
sadness where I settled
to collect and whisper warnings
from crude, iridescent
puddles. We were artists

only in the sense that we knew
what the aftertaste of heaven
felt like on our tongues.
We were geniuses
counting on inadequate
tools, trying to cheat the science
of happiness,

painting our utopias
with colors that were never meant
to be pretty.

Epilogue to Youth

Garrett Carey — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:51:06 +0000

When I kissed you
the whole world came loose.
The avenues unwound themselves
before us, and clouds
slipped free of the heavens,
bursting like snowy molotovs around you
in the street.
The beauties of the world
were at war
at your feet. You confessed
that your love transcended
sex: gender roles were nothing but
curls in your hair, to be fondled
and flicked and played with.
Your finger, delicate as breaking daylight,
could crush capitol buildings with
a little pressure at the end,
you said you brought a friend…
and then
there was nothing left to say.
Warm like sweat, the awe-struck stupor
of youth soaked into my clothes
made them too heavy
to wear. The indignant innocence
emboldened me when you
told me I could touch you there, when she
told me you could hold her
with no one near. There’s no one here
but three pairs of closed eyes
and lips at secrect trysts with inner thighs.
I was brave enough to persist
but afraid enough to omit
that I liked the taste of her
on your tongue
when we kissed.
I was young. I bit into your melon lips,
and she watched the juice trickle down my chin
whispering rough draft sonatas
about waterfalls and Vermilion,
she was young- we were too young to withstand
the full force of heaven, waiting prostrate
like the sound of angels singing would not cave our
chests and blow our skulls open like flower buds
in bloom, you could pluck us from your garden
soon. We were young, and you
were always in control, always
a few steps ahead
but you were always moving
too fast, always leaving
no chance for anything natural to catch
you, but light flashes
and car crashes
don’t have to.
Early mornings and open roads knew you
better than anyone, you
took to familiar streets with her
in your passenger seat.
You knew better
than to slow down on the blind curve,
and so did the other SUV.
You didn’t even have the time to swerve.
You were young. You were too
young to withstand the force
of leaving, as metal
kissed metal, and fucked inertia
as your face kissed the tarmac on its way back to
the earth, your face burst like melon
and she watched the juice
trickle through her fingers,
holding a tangled hairy pulp
where your smile used to sit
you were young, and she was older than the dirt
pulling her last bloody romance
out of a shattered mannequin
that looked nothing like you.
They found her hysterical on the hot pavement
and ignorant as men are, they tried to calm her down
and ignorant as men are, they saw your crimson mess on her shirt
and checked her first, you seemed too far beyond reach-
it was not worth their time
your crumpled frame must have stopped
sputtering before the sirens turned off.
She was baptized in coagulating silence,
complete but for the harsh whisper
of eternity slowly easing away
from her, and death
sounding dumbly
like hollow metal, bent
into a shape almost suitable
for music, when rung
the vibrations shed the earth
around you. You were young,
and they were old enough to know
it was for you the bell tolled
and they
fucking heard it-
but your life was not worth
their time.
Your life
was not worth
their time…
You did not survive long enough
to see your mother’s expression shatter
like crystal
in the face of the morning news, she
would have died to hug you -
and she did.
Your mother never took another living breath,
but duty could not let her rest.
Forced to fulfill her post-mortem obligation
to bury her first-born child, she was young
and hardly human, but to keep up with the ruse
you shared your funeral, you in a beech box
locked up like a hope chest
and her propped up in the pews.
I wish I could let her rest, I wish
I could bring you back then we
could have one more Saturday night
dancing like mockingbirds
so I could spend Sunday morning
hearing your call
instead of bearing your pall.
The slow march to absolution tastes wrong
as rancid milk, your baby brother in a black suit
reaching his hand just high enough
to touch the casket, he always
looked up to
you.
He was young,
too young
to be stripped of infinity
too young
to lose his virginity against the rough metal
of realization that his sister
was not coming home today.
Who is to explain the truth
to him?
We all had our shot at youth,
we all had
our chance to bruise our lips
upon the fickle mouth of reality
and some of us took it,
but what
can we say
to him?