Our full-length studio recording, The Ghost of Childhood, is out now! Please listen, share, download, give us a thumbs up and post a glowing review! We’re so happy to share this work with you, and hope you enjoy the record.
Purchase it our Official Store: https://octoberproject.bandcamp.com/album/the-ghost-of-childhood-2
Stream it on your favorite streaming platform: https://orcd.co/tgoc
It is the thick sludge of myself drowning me from the inside. I smell me as I die. It is the slow decay or the fast heartbeat that says stop! What is the point? It’s the idea I had but did nothing about. It’s that orgasm that was on its way but then someone burped and farted, and we laughed ourselves limp.
It’s a brother’s mocking voice from childhood as if it was now. Or a friend who promised to show up but made a believable excuse that I somehow later found out was a total lie. It’s all the resentments I prefer to real life. It’s me saying something mean to my own face in the mirror, my lips, a knife: stupid, old, coward, bitch, idiot, wannabe.
It’s FOMO that changes its mind every thirty seconds doom scrolling what to be jealous about. Retirement in Portugal? A mainstage TED talk? Fantastic plastic surgery? Freedom from what others think? A seven-figure newsletter business based on creativity and self-expression?
No.
A flat stomach. Perfect eyebrows. A farm upstate. A castle to renovate somewhere in Europe. Sitting in a coffee shop in Paris having deep thoughts that an editor in New York is waiting for so that Reese Witherspoon can find my book and champion it into a miniseries.
Nap?
Sometimes, I eat chocolate in the morning. Sometimes, I pretend I’ve only had one glass of wine when I’ve actually had two but poured the second one as a topper for the first. Sometimes, I smell my own armpit and I actually like the smell better than after the shower. Sometimes, I say awful things about people based on characteristics they have no control over. Sometimes, I say awful things about people I actually love. Sometimes, I want to write a cruel, hilarious truth but I don’t because I am really in it for rewards not consequences and I am too chicken-livered to suffer for my art.
I am a coward When it comes to peoples’ opinions of me. Suffering for my art would mean that people can have their opinions. They can say awful things about me even though they might even love me. But I will take those things as gospel because they are about me and therefore wounding. Whereas when I’m saying things about others, I know it’s stupid and meaningless—and why is it so wrong to be funny?
Funny ha-ha? Or funny peculiar?
I think I’m both. I want to be funny ha-ha, but my husband and son laugh at different things than I do. I laugh at Midnight Run, Lethal Weapon, Poor Things, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Sarah Silverman. I sit like an Easter Island head contemplating an unwelcome and disturbing visitor when I watch Monty Python. I just don’t get it. I am made of stone and can’t fathom the mystery of its impact on people. I know they’re funny ha-ha. As for peculiar?
I moved to a town where people wear teal, coral and pink. Where they do Weight Watchers because they can substitute Doritos for food. It is a town I can afford that affords me a ten-mile, uninterrupted beach walk on the Long Island Sound and a seven-minute drive to New Haven, which is not New York, but which has some wonderful secrets it shares with me.
I still wear black. I look a little too much like Neo in The Matrix or Cher on a runway in the 80’s, sometimes, but you know I’m not off the rails, over the top, under the bus. It’s appropriate, just not for a town where people think it’s great to leave a Christmas decoration out all the way into March of a drunken, ceramic elf, ass-to-heaven, face down on the cement stairs leading up to their house.
Merry Christmas, weirdos. I love you and it’s okay you are weird, but I get to be weird in my way too, and in New York we appreciate and ignore that about each other. We get to be weird in our own anonymous way.
Anonymous.
Pretend you don’t notice I’m a midget, I’m a celebrity, I’m naked but for a plastic, leopard loincloth In Central Park, I’m walking my pet tarantula, I’m walking my twelve-foot boombox by the reservoir at full volume, pulling it along on a Radio Flyer cart, I’m walking backwards and leading a puppet dance partner in a mystery tango. Don’t notice. Don’t comment. Let’s keep it anonymous, okay? Like good neighbors do.
But up here?
Some lady in the hair salon said to me, “I know who you are. I’ve seen you walk. You walk everywhere. I followed you once in my car. [WTF?] Yes, I just love your costumes. All your black outfits. I watch you from my window now when you walk to the Green. I wish I was skinny.”
Was this a compliment?
Anyway, I should be writing. I should be getting clients. I should be doing taxes. I should be perfect. I should get Invisalign. I should make my husband’s follow up doctor’s appointment. I should do Rocket Money and find and eliminate all the subscriptions I don’t know I have.
Nap?
Oh, shit. It’s only 9:40 am.
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Ron Lach
It’s Day THIRTY of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
We hope everyone has enjoyed this month of new Julie Flanders poetry. Exciting news ahead!
I always thought ‘A’ would lead to ‘B’
And naturally to the sea
But when I got there, I found a junkyard
And a parking lot
Full of discarded toys and old cars
With their mouths rusted open
It was probably stupid
To follow the alphabet
Who said it would lead to the sky
Who was it
Who told me to ride the ‘L’ to the ‘W’
To get to the other side of ‘Q’
To avoid the dangers of ‘Y’
The map was not the territory
Even the territory was imaginary
When I got there
‘A’,’B’,’C’,’D’,’E’,’F’,’G’
I remember my mother
Teaching that song to me
I remember my mother
But her voice fades
Along with the way her hands felt
On my seven-year-old braids
I remember a bathing cap she wore to the beach
And the time she said she’d teach me to count
To infinity
It’s so funny
How we never got there
How we were always here
And we are always where
There is no end in sight
And nowhere to go
But right back home
Sometimes I wish we were
In New Mexico
In a pretty house in the hills
Writing songs about being young
I wish we could still be young
Together
And when we wake up
I hope we are somewhere far from this
Strange weather
We won’t forget
I hope we wake up
In a totally different
Alphabet
I can hear the thunder
But the sun still shines
Isn’t it about time it rained
Isn’t it about time it started storming
Cooling
The sun’s godforsaken warming
I’m not blaming you for any of this
I can’t even make out who you are anymore
Just please wake me up
When it’s time
Kiss me until I forget all this
Kiss me
Until I remember it right
Until I see the light that leads home
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Dimitry Ovsyannikov
It’s Day TWENTY EIGHT of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
THE WAITING GAME
The oven on
The window closed
Something cooking
While you wait
Read a magazine
Watch TV
Pay the bills
Snack on fingernails
Wait for the last cuticle of day
To be pushed away
Into eternity
Past calamity
Now return to this
Somehow
There is nothing else
That’s what they say
When you look back
When you look away
There’s always something
To intrude
The oven bell
The smell of food
Life is waiting
Life is rude
Awakening
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Gui Rossi
It’s Day TWENTY SEVEN of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: https://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
I woke or emerged to find I was being carried
It was extremely pleasurable
And I did not feel a need to resist
When we arrived
The workers laid me down
And bowed
Before they left the nest for other tasks
I was new to the colony
Recently emergent
And did not yet know the customs
It wasn’t until something began happening that
My instincts would assure me
Ah, this is right
I recognize this
When the males started arriving to mate
I was receptive
I could smell the pheromones
That marked them as
Being one with us
In our colony
We mate in multiplicities
Assuring we don’t incur the dangers of inbreeding
And expanding the ways in which the colony can survive
Each of the males
Served a gift of seeds
Entering my still new body
To plant the future
I was receptive to this
The seeds would be with me for a while
I knew there were other queens
But I might as well have been the only one
The workers who attended me
Were small but fierce
Making the environment around us
Safe and comfortable
The repletes arrived with food
And the haploids worked tirelessly
Never questioning their station
One day, however
A male was brought to me
With a different smell
It was an intoxicating smell
Compelling, familiar, foreign
An intruder
Whose scent was designed to throw off all chance
Of recognizing him as different
As he entered
With his gift of seed
I knew
And did not know
He was from elsewhere
It was the strongest connection I had made
I did not reveal my suspicions
But instead
Trusted life
And its ways of moving to and through me
When he left
I chewed through my wings
To signal that I was full
And that I would bear life
From the seeds already there
It was like putting up a sign
No vacancy
I love the ways we are organized
That we are a community of created beings
Ancient and new
Coordinating as if we were one corpus
One living breathing intention
With a million bodies
Each day
A mix of instinct and improvisation
Toward a greater good
Where life and food and birth
Happen without thought and
We build and inhabit whole worlds of our own invention
It is beautiful to be a part of something
So intelligently engineered
And to know
That my royal part in it is fundamental
Essential
And sacrosanct
I would just as gladly be born a worker
As a queen
Because there is no shame in being what is needed
And yet
That one day
The stranger came
I also understood
What it might mean to be different
Not just a “one of many”
But a “one of a kind”
It scares me to think about that
I prefer to turn my attention to my next tasks
And to feel life inside me
Urging itself into the forms that are needed
By the collective
One day I will be gone
But it will be as if I am still here
Within and among the others
I carry history into this present moment
In my awareness and my lineage
Life moves through me
And I move
Through life
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Alex Mihai
It’s Day TWENTY FIVE of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
Sadness twirls
And marches through me
Like soldiers who have come home
To a place
They no longer recognize
My heart beats metallic
Without regard
For any rhythm but its own
Losses
Some woman tosses garbage in the street
I discard myself
And hope to start again
As someone else
There is no one else
To be
Or not to be
That is the sadness
I hurl myself
Into life
And hope to lose myself
There
But sadness grows
Like Rapunzel’s hair
And I watch myself
Kill the hour
Like some maiden in a tower
Waiting
To live
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Maycon Marmo
It’s Day TWENTY FOUR of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
The moon is a full surprise
As you round the corner of the reservoir
Your eyes
Meet the over-blue horizon
And that rising yellow light
Familiar, astonishing
Lambent, bright
Every night
So much you see
Disappears in measure
In degree
As if by some magnificent decree
You are growing slowly blind
To beauty
That is everywhere in front of you
And behind
You
Have to ache into your bones
Hear the call of ancient tones
And yearn
For something you have always known
But somehow have forgotten
The clues
Are rising with the moon
Held in the clouds
And the day’s perfume
You have been lost
Too long
Lost too soon
But now
You are finding your way
Home
With no compass
But your beating heart
You guide yourself
To finally start
Everything
You have tried to numb
Awakens and begins
To come alive
And this is how
You learn to live
To love the world
And to forgive
The sadness and the loneliness
You carry
As if you were the only one breathing
As if you were the only one
Grieving beauty
Your eyes are windows
Blue and wide
Where everything you see has died
But you still carry life
Inside
© 2024 Julie Flanders
It’s Day TWENTY THREE of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
Superman jumped up
Right over our heads
We could hardly see him
But we could feel the whoosh of air
The flash of red
As all of Times Square stopped to stare
At the man in the cape
From this far away
He is nothing but a shape
Nothing but a means of escape
In my heart
I can hardly tell you how much time I have spent
Falling out of love with Superman
Falling in love with Clark Kent
Trying to take the whole puzzle apart
Or put it together
So that he can put down that disguise
Forever
And turn into someone I recognize
Love is the mirror I hold in my eyes
Let it be your portrait
Let it be your door
Let it be the window that lets the starlight
Come through to the dance floor
I’ll be your partner in a dance of secrets
The curse of your power
The cause of your weakness
We’re losing ourselves
But life will still seek us
Always to bring us home
You think of the past
As a beautiful portrait
A memory you hold
Until time scorches its edges to a blur
There for a moment
A witness you were
An actor
A hero
A lover
The random X-factor
Of all that you are
In the scars of your life
The invisible marks
I can see
Before you are known
Before you are seen
For the hero you are
And the person you’re being
I will be standing
And searching the sky
For the red of your cape
And your courage to fly
Superman
© 2024 Julie Flanders
It’s Day TWENTY TWO of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
[-1-]
She had never liked the name Sally
She had a secret name
Her real name
Her grandmother’s name
A name she had never been called by
In her family
Yet it was hers legally
And now that grandma was dead
She decided to try it out
She would be Sarah
She would cut and dye her hair
She would shed her clothes
And dress up Tilda Swinton-style
David Bowie-bold
And strut into her new life
Leaving no Lone Star tick larvae
Sleeping under her skin
Draining her of her imagination
And her will to begin
She had no plan
No destination really
Just that she was going to jump
A mystery train of dreams
And head for the place
Where the ocean tips over the horizon’s seams
A place where others would be
Reluctant to follow her
A place from which
She would not return
So, she took her backpack
And walked out into the bright world
Straight to the station
And decided
She would take the next scheduled ride
Wherever it was bound
The sign said Providence
She got on
And headed South
The train conductor did not know
That she was Sarah now
He could not know
That she would not return
As she had bought a round-trip
Ticket
To confuse whoever might decide
To follow her
Once it had become clear
That Sally had forever
Disappeared
[-2-]
She left his room
In a pair of socks
That didn’t match
In any way
Except that they were both warm
and seemingly new
She tied her hair back
With a shoelace she found in the medicine cabinet
Next to a dried rose
And a bottle of nose drops
She found his cupboards
Almost bare
Except for some baking soda
Some olive oil
And a box of TRiX
Very old
The refrigerator had some cold figs
And a can of coffee
But no milk
He had left
Where she could find it
A note
And a throat lozenge
From his coat pocket
There was a key for the door
So, she could lock it behind her
When she went back
Out into the street
The maze of concrete
Waited for her
To lose herself in
[-3-]
She is rocking in the garden
Full of every living thing
Between this life and any other
She sits on a child’s swing
And remembers
How her mother used to sing to her
Where the days moved so slowly
Between her heart and every other
Across a distance she knows
Is still too far to go
In some strange tunnel
Under her
Under Sally
There are a thousand silences
No one can see
The pain
That runs under her
Is always and never the same
Something she perceives to enter
Like a mystery train
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Keenan Constance
It’s Day TWENTY ONE of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
The day avalanches
Memory
Marching in a haphazard parade
Old soldiers of feeling
On a broken cavalcade
Waving
To the children on the curb
We can see farther and farther
Into the origin of the stars
That big banging moment
When
All hell broke loose
A locomotive of energy
With an infinite caboose of debris
We keep trying to blow things up
The whole world
Collecting rain
In a paper cup
As if we could slake this thirst
With the lurid
Explosive
Curse of our own nature
We watch ourselves hang
Tongues out
As the drums bang
And the soldiers shout
Toothless chants
Without the powers
Of the past
Power lingers
But it does not last
We stand and wave back
To the parade
As the day roasts
Our skin with sun
No shade
As the ghosts
March on
As if some battle was won
But what we believed in once
Is long gone
We are still searching on
For what to believe
In
Instead
As we walk among the living
We see the living dead
Proceed before us
We cannot ignore
The explosion of dread
The big bang overhead
I’ve forgotten what you said
As the universe bled
Stars
© 2024 Julie Flanders
Photo Credit: Ali Muftuogullari
It’s Day TWENTY of Poetry Month! We’re posting a new poem every day. Enter our 6th annual poetry contest: http://www.octoberprojectmusic.com/poetry-contest/annual-poetry-contest
October Process 