This here, is one of my favourite poetry books ever, hands down. For starters the entire book is bookended by ‘The First Punk Rock Show Ever' and 'The Story Of The Last Punk Rock Show Before The City Tore Down Little Brother's’ and as a poetry nerd, that framing gives me the tingles. There's something so raw about this book, he tells epic tales through poetry and it reaches in and makes you want to spill every story you have. Hanif gets me through writer's block often. A couple of his poems and I find the words start flowing immediately, the book is that powerful. Aside from this, Hanif got me writing Odes and using long AF titles. Odes helped me take small moments of my life and give thanks to them. I wrote an Ode To Sigur Ros (I'll share below) for how the band helped me with my moments of feeling overwhelmed and as I have Aspergers, these moments are unfortunately often. Mixed with the open road, Sigur Ros have legit pulled me from plenty of cliff edges. This book and this poet, Hanif Abdurraqib, have the same effect for me. So why not write some odes? Finish the newsletter, I'll leave some links for Hanif’s performances and then I'll post some of mine and then, take a shot. They don't have to be serious. They can be, Ode to the Halloween Candy or Ode to the giraffe with too much neck. They can also talk about bigger moments like Ode to the day you left us or Ode to the mountain we almost didn't conquer. The world is your oyster. Share them in the comments of you write them, as always I'd love to read them. Happy Sunday. And don't forget to have a big lunch because it's the first of the month. (I totally just invented this but you bet it'll be a thing now)

Ode To Biggie

Ode To Waffle House At Midnight

For the sake of the topic of these newsletters, let's make the 3x3 an Ode too. This one is the ‘The Ode To The Sky Edition' - it doesn't really make sense without the title which is totally cheating but I won't tell anybody if you don't.

I will follow

in your footsteps

and feel, freely.

Here's the Ode To Sigur Ros. I didn't like the word trumpeters so I made up a new word, trumpeteers which means the exact same thing but sounds cooler.

I'll be uploading another Ode later as a subscriber-only exclusive.