Jay Besemer

off to the main library downtown to follow up on a rabbit hole lead of the sort that only i could fall for…🕳️

& preorders should be arriving any second now😻🎉

wait aren’t we there already?

a tyrant who relishes the thought of having the power to cause so much death, who nurtures fantasies about being spared & even coming out on top—who could believe he’d listen to a word anyone says, least of all scientists or the everyday public?

i keep my commitment. but i do lose heart sometimes.

i saw an article about how close we are currently to a global nuclear war, & how few people really understand what that would mean. how the public, & scientists, are responsible for making world leaders understand what nuclear war would do.

sometimes i find it hard to emerge from despair over the world we share—which some of us share, & others try to own & use up. i have committed to stay with this world & the beings that make it together, but what can i do against people who are driven by fantasies of power through total destruction?

WAHEYYYYYY! that’s awesome & such welcome news! i’m so, so glad💚💚

EVERYTHING!!!!

hmm, i didn’t know, but it’s not surprising.

this one isn’t for a vehicle…at least, not technically speaking…

good morning from the ebay found poetry cauldron:

Rubber Ball Bulb Curled Horn Brass Car Bicycle Goose Honk Trumpet Style

oh gods…i get this. well done you!

your support has literally made so much od my work possible!

thank YOU!

i know, right?

hope it helps x

you may get this from a lot of people, but DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN is a classic & a game changer for folks who are beginning, or beginning again, or want to begin to see differently.

ha i hope so

yeah, i definitely saw them in those areas of NYS (& in algonquin provincial park, unsurprisingly).

i have never known what the blue fruiting bead lily was called until now! it is a very apt name. i used to love those but i don’t see them in the woods here—must be too far south.

i have to say, i would never think of you as a nag. i guess that’s not a side of you i know/perceive.

i find it totally necessary in dealing with most healthcare providers—tho it sounds like you lucked out there!

it’s great!

when weighed against the “demands” i’d be assumed to make upon the resources they’ve chosen to limit.

my work (in every sense) takes place where i am, & i am aware that there is no safe place where i am beyond the reach of officially, punitively reduced life chances.

so i’ll be around.

i can’t blame anyone refusing to travel here at this time, nor anyone leaving who can. yet i know that, despite having support networks elsewhere, i would not be a welcome presence to any state monitoring entry into it. on paper i am singularly repellant; my contributions don’t count in their metric

aren’t they? they’re among my favorite modes of his.

a small painted wood “puzzle” cut into organic shapes. the larger area is a sort of sap green, with smaller shapes in pink, yellow, orange and cerulean blue.

here, a somewhat larger piece (unpainted, with white gesso base) cut into more exuberantly twisty shapes. in this state it is a bit disorienting to follow the shapes.

now the middle piece is painted in green, black, red, yellow, powder blue and pink. everything moves in relation in a way that is much easier to follow. fascinating!

so @rupert-glimm.bsky.social has been playing with the scrollsaw & making what i call “puzzle paintings.” here are two: on the left, a smaller simpler one. middle, the “before” of yesterday’s larger piece. right, the “after.” i really dig these!

me too!

“Semaphore Trousers” by Jay Besemer ” and here, at the end of words, the wall that shatters the words that would shatter it, at the end of my tongue too dry to break” —excerpt from Jay Besemer’s “Semaphor Trou…

many of you have seen this already, but i have some work in the latest @thearsonista.bsky.social issue, curated by @saint-remus.bsky.social:

burninghousepress.com/2025/08/01/j...

an e-flyer for the poetry reading mentioned in the post. against a background of backyard flowering shrubs, the following text is presented: “FREE STUFF: a poetry reading August 16, 4-6: Poems from: Jay Besemer Clay Cofre & Jasmine Rodriguez Tony Trigilio email Olivia Cronk, oecronk@gmail.com, for the location)”

in twoish weeks, i will be giving the first in-person poetry reading i have been able to do in seven years!

folks in chicagolandia, if you know me well enough to contact me privately, i can also get you the address.

ok, as promised/forewarned: THE ANNOUNCEMENT THREAD!

it will be added to as developments develop.

this is the “cover page.”