poetry collection

This Can’t Be All There Is

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I’ve been sitting on this one for far too long, and I’m excited to finally put it out there.

This Can’t Be All There Is was originally intended to be both a poetry book and a fully recorded spoken-word album. I’ve dabbled in the idea in the past, but this time, I got close. Every song was demoed, and most of them were completely finished, save for a few touch-ups, and one major aspect: the vocals. I never was able to get my voice to a place I liked or could even stand.

But I’m proud of a lot of these poems, so the book is moving forward. The album might come someday. I still have a lot of work to do before I’ll know for sure.

This Can’t Be All There Is contains 27 poems:

Wilderness
The House You Built for Me
We Were
Someday Will Eventually Come
Still
Storms
Graveyard Shift
All My Favorite Songs
Come Back
Variables
At the End of All Things
Take Me Away
When I Went to Bed
This Can’t Be All There Is
Nowhere Road
Worry
I Live Here
I Need You, Summer
Shapes and Spaces
A Long Night’s Conversation
You Harbor
Worth
KALEIDOSCOPE
Noise
Just Passing Through
Hey Sunburn
My Forever

The book will be available November 15, 2019. Its cover might change before then. I’ll also post a selection of poems on my site before release. (Keen visitors will find that a few of them have already been here for years. I promise I didn’t shoehorn them in; they were always a part of this collection. Like I said, I’ve been sitting on it for too long.)

Pre-order the digital edition here:

Amazon • Smashwords • Barnes & Noble • iTunes

To start things off, here’s “Nowhere Road”.

Nowhere Road

Hey, weary traveler
Come with me tonight,
All you have to do is be a passenger.

You can recline your seat,
Roll down the window,
Maybe even get some sleep.

There won’t be anyone on the roads,
Because this is a direction nobody goes.
It’s a way that very few people seem to know,
And the ones who do know better than to take it.

I’ll take you somewhere the lines have faded
And nothing divides us, places
Go by like faces in a crowd,
Faded and drowned out.
You and I and sounds like
Tearing the sky.

I want to see the way the asphalt stretches toward the bottom of the glass,
And how surrounding towns burn down to ashes as we pass.
Watch the fog fight the defroster,
Turn our music up full blast.
And, for once, relax.

Your hands can ride the wind,
And when I want to scream I don’t have to hold it in.
In the driveway or out on the highway, we can cast aside our sins
And leave our virtues in the back seat with our vices and our whims.

If I drive fast enough,
Maybe you and I will blur together.
Maybe time stands still and lasts forever.
We can outrun our pain and all bad weather,
Catch storms in our eyes like your hair catches light.

Hey, innocent bystander.
Take me with you.
I’ll go anywhere your soul is aching to.

I’ll show you places they don’t put on maps,
Hold your hand across old railroad tracks.
We’ll go out to the edge of your heart and back,
Or over and fall forever, if you want.

Just take me somewhere the stars aren’t falling
The buses and cars stop calling
My heart isn’t walled up and cold,
Tone deaf and old.
Here we are and nothing,
No matter how far,
Can tear us apart.

Oh, Winter Morning (from Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails)

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by David J. Lovato

Oh, Winter Morning

Wake to find the whitened light
Sliding through my windows
Creep across a hardwood floor
The chill of morning scrapes at my nose

Crack my door to feel a greeting kiss from the cold
Stare into a winter sunrise as it stretches all the shadows
This is the only friend and oldest friend I’ve ever known.

Listen close as everything freezes
No birds or words or slightest breezes
Only ice as it spreads across all things,
The trees and skin and all my reasons

Fall into the loneliest of seasons, never pause
The air so cold it brings the seconds to a stop
Spend the rest of my entire life inside a broken clock
Stand barefoot in the snow until my toes fall off.
Stare into the dimlit sun til I see God.

Only the winter wind could ever move my skin and bones,
They are the only vehicle my soul has ever known.
The snow will hold all sound to stillness, kill the tone
While I run back to my bed and sleep until I grow old alone.

 

from Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails, available now.

Build Yourself Better and Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails Available Now

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Happy Leap Day, everyone!

From today my poetry collections Build Yourself Better and Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails are available.

cover art by david j. lovato   cover art by david j. lovato

Build Yourself Better is a narrative poetry collection, meaning the poems tell an overall story while also standing on their own. Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails is a collection of my narrative poetry collections, and includes Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages, A Means to an Ens, Build Yourself Better, and a collection of poems originally scrapped from the above three works, titled B-Sides and Rarities.

You’ll find both available in eBook and softcover, as well as a hardcover option for Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails. Those interested in checking the books out before buying will find samples by highlighting the “Samples” link on my site’s top menu.

Store links can be found below.

Build Yourself Better
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, Google Play, Smashwords, CreateSpace

Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, Google Play, Smashwords, CreateSpace, Lulu (hardcover)

As always, thanks for everything.

Now and Then (from Build Yourself Better)

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by David J. Lovato

Now and Then

On the ride home she was singing songs to me
I was trying to stay conscious in the passenger seat, and
I was thinking there was nowhere else I’d rather be, but
Now I’m thinking that I’d rather be right there, forever.

Now I’m sitting naked on my bedroom floor
Trying to remember what led you to the door
I won’t apologize for not being good enough,
I know it wasn’t something wrong with me, but us

From the back porch I watch the light from her window stretch across the yard.
It’s the only light in the neighborhood, the rest of the world is dark
My eyes keep trying to adjust,
The way they were always trying to get used to “us”
I don’t think they realize that darkness is the point now.

She flicked cigarettes across the pavement
The way I skipped stones across the lake, and
I was thinking there was nothing we could lose, but
Now I’m thinking I’ve lost everything.

From the office I watch the dog stare out the window and whine
I think she thinks of herself more as yours than she was ever mine
My heart keeps trying to believe
The way it’s always trying to get used to now “just me”
I don’t think it understands that belief isn’t the point anymore.

She slept softly in the bed that I had made
The way I speak softly if I ever have to say her name, and
I kept thinking maybe she’ll come back for me, but
Now I’m thinking we should exist separately.

 

from Build Yourself Better and Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails, available in print and digital formats February 29th, 2016.

Down and Out (from Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails)

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by David J. Lovato

Down and Out

Don’t think that I have ever held such doubt.
And lately I’ve been thinking far too much
About someone I have no right thinking about.
Is it trite to write about the weather?
Is it too cliché to just forget her?
Well there’s nothing new under the sun
So let’s forget the pretense,
I am done, I’m done, I’m done.

Don’t think that I have ever held such doubt.
And lately I’ve been thinking far too much
About someone I have no right thinking about.
Some local kids smashed my window in and
It’s been getting colder out.
So I will speak your name
And rip it from my lips,
Toss it to the flame
And I might get some sleep at night
But I will never be the same.

 

from Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails, available in print and digital formats February 29th, 2016.

I Can Make a Hundred Dollars Last a While (from Build Yourself Better)

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by David J. Lovato

I Can Make a Hundred Dollars Last a While

I could sleep on your couch
Until you kick me out
Either subtly or explicitly,
Or even just with doubt.

I could get around this town
Until I figure some things out
Either directly or aversely,
Or just do without.

And I have been
Thinking that my life is
Never going to change, it’s
Always going to stay the same.
I used to
Never question why, and
Never say goodbye, but
Now it’s all I’m doing these days.

I don’t have expensive taste,
I just like to get by.
I’ve never been one to waste,
And you won’t notice me at night.

Because the way that things are now
Is the best they’re going to get
And I’m sick of faces in the crowd
And I’m sick of making friends
And as good as things are now
Is the best they’re going to get
I’m sick of looking at the clouds
And I’m sick of losing friends

So I could help you pay your rent,
If you gave me a ride to work.
I can make a hundred dollars last a while,
But I can’t spare myself this hurt.

 

from Build Yourself Better and Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails, available in print and digital formats February 29th, 2016.

Into the Night (from Build Yourself Better)

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by David J. Lovato

Into the Night

I held a sinner’s tongue
In a throat swollen red from saying your name out loud
I kept a broken clock
So I would never know if time was running out

We gathered all the gold,
But couldn’t tell it from the dirt
You said “This is getting old,”
I said at least it doesn’t hurt

We fight the cold,
The wind reaches out to us
But we explode
And there’s no front that could keep up
And we alight like birds
Before we return
Into the night

You held my shaking hands
With fingers fragile from the things that you had done
You kept a missing link
So the world could never put a chain on us

We tried to chase the moon
You said “Jesus, I am tired.”
I kept a broken watch on you
Does that make me a liar?

I’ll see you soon,
Time chases after us
But we’re too smooth,
Pretty soon it will give up
And we alight like fires
Burning higher
Into the night

We hold the pieces of our broken hearts
In chests we turned the locks of years ago
Said they would never open up again,
But then we met,
And I’m not sure where all the hollow went
And we alight like passengers
Carried to our destinations,
We don’t have to know where we are going
We just have to trail headlights
And together drive
Into the night

 

from Build Yourself Better and Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails, available in print and digital formats February 29th, 2016.

Two Books. One Post.

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This has been finished for a while, but A Means to an Ens had been finished even longer, so this one had to wait its turn.

cover art by david j. lovato

Two people meet, fall in love, fall out, and fall apart, left wondering what to do with the pieces that remain. A collection of narrative poetry.

Build Yourself Better is a poetry collection, and the final in a trilogy called Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails, which consists of Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages, A Means to an Ens, and Build Yourself Better.

cover art by david j. lovato

The whole trilogy can be purchased as a set inconspicuously titled Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails, which will also include a fourth collection, B-Sides and Rarities, consisting of poems cut from the first three.

All in all, each collection is a set of narrative poetry, meaning the poems tell an over-arching story. Together, the collections form a thematic, loosely-related trilogy.

Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails gathers four poetry collections:

Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages details a narrator’s struggle to find his place in the world as he drifts through parallel universes, replaces the people around him with fictional characters, scatters his poetry to the wind, and keeps the things he can’t bear to lose by writing them down.

A Means to an Ens follows the last man on earth. Years after waking up to find himself seemingly alone in the world, the narrator heads out on a journey to find any sign of life in a desolate place, but is instead confronted by the ghosts of his past.

Build Yourself Better chronicles two people who meet, fall in love, fall out, and then fall apart, and what they do in the aftermath with the pieces that remain.

B-Sides and Rarities features poems originally cut from the above collections.

Build Yourself Better and Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails will be available in eBook and print formats on February 29th, 2016. Because the chance to release a book on February 29th doesn’t come around very often.

Before then, you can look forward to previews of a few of the poems by keeping an eye here, especially on my Scenes page.

Thanks for everything.

Pre-order links (more will be added as they become available):

Build Yourself Better: Amazon, Smashwords, Google Play

Pen and Paper, Wood and Nails: Amazon, Smashwords, Google Play

A Means to an Ens

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A Means to an Ens

A Means to an Ens is a poetry collection, and a spiritual successor to Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages. A Means to an Ens follows a much more linear, fictional narrative, and tells the story of the last man on earth.

The collection is about half as long as Permanent Ink, so it felt wrong to slap it into a paperback and sell it for the same price. I wanted to do something a little more special with it. My first thought was to record it as a concept album, but I’m bad at that and would probably never finish it.

What I ended up doing was an extension of my Scenes project. Each of the poems in A Means to an Ens has been placed over an accompanying picture. These range in size and dimension, and the idea is for the reader to be able to zoom in and out, scale it, scroll it, maybe even rotate it if they so choose to get the fullest experience from reading the text.

Thus, this collection is presented as an image album. It goes in chronological order, and text should be read in columns, from left to right and top to bottom (so the farthest column to the left, read from the very top to its very bottom before moving on to the column to that one’s right).

For those willing to overlook the cost for the length of the work, a physical edition (minus the images) is available, but that’s entirely optional. I also won’t hide that I’m working on a much more substantial collection featuring all of the poems you’re about to read and more, so if you’d rather hold off on buying it, I won’t mind.

Enough of my babbling. Please enjoy A Means to an Ens by clicking on the link to the next page.

Front Cover ⇒

Or, if you prefer, you can download the collection of images by clicking here: Gallery

You may also download it in eBook format by clicking the following links: .mobi, .epub, .pdf

And the print edition can be found here: https://www.createspace.com/5953496

Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages Release

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Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages is now available at most online book retailers.

Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages

Each of the 16 poems in Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages stands alone, but also serves as a piece of a larger narrative. From the death of poetry itself in “At Rest in the Sea” to the lifetime-spanning “The Back of the Room”, the stream-of-consciousness piece “Alone” to the song-turned-poem “Sunday Calls for Cloudy Skies”, and the thematically-related interludes “Letters”, “Pages”, and “Poetries”, Permanent Ink on Temporary Pages tells the story of a narrator struggling to find his place in the world, drifting between tangential universes, and replacing the people around him with fictional characters, all the while writing letters he doesn’t send, poetry scattered to the wind, and pages full of everything he can’t bear the thought of losing.

You can find the e-book through these links:

Amazon • Smashwords • Apple iBooks • Barnes & Noble • Kobo • Google Play

The paperback should be up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble soon, and is available through the CreateSpace store now.

Samples of the book can be found at all of its storefronts, but you can also read several poems under the Scenes section of my blog, under “Samples” in the menu bar.