nights since - volume three

by Igor Brezhnev

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of nights since - volume five, before the sun rises, nights since - volume four, nights since - volume three, nights since - volume two, good morning, america. it's 2020., nights since - volume one, and Good Days & Bad Days. , and , .

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1.	night sixty seven 01:04	lyrics	buy track
night sixty seven the industry park blocks the access to river, metaphor for life? cherry blossoms are almost, my thoughts are that too—almost. march days are nigh gone. the woodpeckers have arrived. hear them in the trees. the cats are on spring business, greetings brief and in passing. magnolias bloom. leafless branches bouquet up. up in the deep blue. pink fists, raised against winter, unclench to welcome summer. poems, rushed, mirror life, untethered staccato of spaces and times. just enough time to sketch it, not enough time to delve in. portland, oregon / 3.24.2019
2.	night sixty eight 00:36	lyrics	buy track
night sixty eight elation pending, let me just get most of me to the next morning. how sleep sends invitations and i wait for last minute. wait for last minute, remember, last minute stuff. elation pending. i am still my harshest judge. young leaves remind me—be soft. portland, oregon / 3.25.2019
3.	night sixty nine 01:43	lyrics	buy track
night sixty nine it's night sixty nine. and this story ain't about that. it's about a walk, and some hope. empty forties lie on the grass discarded shells of someone's time. walk a mile with me, see—trees blossoming and that rat disappearing into the manicured shrubs, ain't it something to glance into windows of the wealthy on the way somewhere else, damn, that's a lot of rooms to clean, who got time for that, empty mansions cry some autumn song. it is a spring however and the sun is mansion enough and poets will weave tapestries more colorful on streets, than those hanging limp in beige entryways to boredom, these intricate trophies on walls, they'd fly out, if they could, back, to the weavers of dexterous hands. you and me we don't need much, just a little bit for food and drink, maybe a bit more for our crafts, the rest we'll make up by faith in flowers that come up again to greet the light, follow it like we follow our words into the mansions finer than any placed here on the old mountain, these empty homes. portland, oregon / 3.26.2019
4.	night seventy 01:54	lyrics	buy track
night seventy my hair wings over my ears, unkempt, my mustache hangs over my lips hungry for the food i eat, my body unkempt winged hungry over my lips. my body is a gift wrapped in last year's holiday wrappings, my lips kiss the old of it, kiss like my grandfather kissed my forehead once proud of something, i now forget what it was, his hands grasping my head callused hands, hard hands, hands that could hit hot, then soft hands holding my head tender like it was some flower to sell at a market, see, things for others were always best things, things for ourselves a little bit worse, best things on table for guests, dear guests to my body, unkempt winged hungry body, it is all i have, it is the best laid out on a clean tablecloth, you are welcome to it, to its wings, to its hunger, to its mess, when you need to fly, when you want to gather, when order suffocates you, i am here. you are welcome to me. when you need a bit of salt to borrow. you're welcome. portland, oregon / 3.27.2019
5.	night seventy one 02:06	lyrics	buy track
night seventy one the cat purrs, his weight on my side and, oddly, elbow, cats pick the most interesting resting arrangements and here we are. purring silence mounting, cat washes himself, i am a bed and i am a bathhouse, i am a silence that receives feline grace. how human to be a container for another life, other lives, how ironic that we are both, by others, called russian, called blue, when it doesn't mean much to either now, how we are not in a rush for now, though to the cat it never meant much in the first place, cats being territorial in other ways. cat says words in cat language, i pretend to know what he says to me, it is a polite thing to do, probably says "good night," or says "please do not move for i want to sleep deeply and dream of birds and breeze and summer sun," or maybe that is what i not say to the cat, and the cat pretends to know my not words, it is a polite thing to do, i will most likely fall asleep on the couch, weighted by this cat, by thought of what home means to those of us that do not have one, but can be one, at least for the cat. portland, oregon / 3.28.2019
6.	night seventy two 01:44	lyrics	buy track
night seventy two i grew on buckwheat and oats, a mashed potato boy, a sunflower seed boy, a dark rye bread crust boy, a honey-comb boy, a dried fish boy, a crawfish boil boy, a pryanik boy, a boy dipped in kvass, a beet boy, a boy for hard work in the fields, a boy for pounding hot metal, a boy to die in some hellhole, see in russian boy is a false friend, to your english boy, a word for a battle, a fight, a beating and the strike of a grandfather clock. and here i am no longer a boy. a memory of a boy. a tired man landless, buying thai pineapple fried rice with last dollars. a man with cat asleep on his stomach, a bearded man alone on top of a volcano, remembering childhood by eating sunflower seeds. hoping they sprout yellow-headed, grow tall and follow the gold sun, wherever it rests beyond west. portland, oregon / 3.29.2019
7.	night seventy three 01:47	lyrics	buy track
night seventy three it's one in the morning and i am eating donuts. the cat is eating whatever it is cats eat from a packet, life and poetry can be simple, a recitation of tender small facts, how the cat just jumped up on his favorite spot and settled in for a bit, how cold donuts still taste like a hi-five, how i have two more cigarettes, one for late late night and another for the morning, how there may or may not be another pack, how alone sometimes we feel after a crowd. how i am thankful for this other breath in the house, say, maybe this cat is my god damn twin flame, at least for this moment, how searching for love ain't what people think it is, love is small, of course, it could be a person, but when your future is short, love may as well be a wayward cat. if that is our luck, then all is well. and all is well. all is well. well is all. portland, oregon / 3.30.2019
8.	night seventy four 01:05	lyrics	buy track
night seventy four hear that? that’s the road calling me moonless branding me ditch dust, my blood, an exodus mix, whole—always a stranger, fourth—escaping serfdom, eighth—crossing the desert, sixteenth—a tsingane caravan, my blood knows hitting the road before the world hits you dead, knows the road loves our feet, knows song and dance of it, but how red of it yearns to see a tree blossom become a full fruit, how it wishes for the road to lead to a destination, not a destiny. how it drips on places that are home. portland, oregon / 3.31.2019
9.	night seventy five 01:15	lyrics	buy track
night seventy five there is a hole in the bucket, no. there are multiple holes, leaking little letters, wriggle! squiggles escaping its wild, might as well rename this mind a shower head, mend this, tend to wholly tender, grunt in mono utterations susurr our rations, susurr now, tender now, bloom now a bouquet of water, water now, all of waters now, how this tongue twists, how water of it, how liquid of it liquidation sign, how fluid of it to flow when container is weakened. there is a hole in my bucket, it is leaking all of its joys unmended. mind it now. portland, oregon / 4.1.2019
10.	night seventy six 01:15	lyrics	buy track
night seventy six week here, week there, thinner my nows, threadbare, holes in socks, holes in underwear, holes in memory and holes in my teeth, am i not now holy, full of wholesome grit, do i not now contain more of this planet, it filling my holes with its atmosphere, am i not now a cloud in the steel sky, ready to spill itself dry, passing by the busy streets of your lights, am i not the flickering noise on yesteryear's tv screen, past-your-bedtime story, am i not a cloud, am i not a spring rain, am i not an end to the means, am i not the holes in my shoes holy, cry they, holy, holy, holy, full of holy water, full of the holy sky. portland, oregon / 4.2.2019
11.	night seventy seven 01:35	lyrics	buy track
night seventy seven this cadillac night moving toward the exit sign on a thick bass and harmonica line, fancy new cars are passing us bye, but we, we are a steady move to the ephemeral exit sign. this turkish night grind, sweet and dark lullaby moving us closer toward the glowing red exit sign, calling us to our prayer to be closer to some shared human divine. this cadillac night, this old automotive shine, they don't make them like this, this shifting gears smooth rolling springwater blues, this we ain't poor recline, this every note truth. ain't we lucky sevens, to spill ourselves through speaker cones, in this purple room after midnight, just us, no audience present, just voices into this slow steady cadillac of a night toward our personal exit signs. portland, oregon / 4.3.2019
12.	night seventy eight 01:00	lyrics	buy track
night seventy eight an airstream trailer, is my home for this week, a tiny dog and a cat included, the dog sleeps and the cat eats. this home is a chromed spaceship, it has a shape of someone else’s life, i try not to stretch, i try my best to be liquid, to fit this domicile container, not to leave any of myself behind, not to disturb this perfection. i wonder what does the cat dream of tonight, asleep on my stranger chest. the city rains on us. portland, oregon / 4.4.2019
13.	night seventy nine 01:08	lyrics	buy track
night seventy nine by now i should have broken the addiction to home, guess that one runs as deep as the smoke that cures my bones. by now i should have known my name to be lazarus, to know that mine is the comfort found in stops along the way, beggar's bowl modern in hands, pride swallowed whole in whale of me, tell this weary carcass: no place like home means no place is home, rest in poor, rest in poor, ask if resurrection was worth the price of admission, ask which alleyway will quiet me. ask if i wanted this name. portland, oregon / 4.5.2019
14.	night eighty 00:52	lyrics	buy track
night eighty trailer windows are fogged, cars outside part road waters, each its own prophet, each a sea, cloudseeds are planting themselves on the roof, i am in the great automotive fantasy, feel a highway, feel a promise, would i wake up in a different town if i were to believe in this chrome? is there a trailer park in the sky for the lost people like me? how many nights would quench this thirst that ever rain cannot fill? portland, oregon / 4.6.2019
15.	night eighty one 00:35	lyrics	buy track
night eighty one a guest is a stranger, i am then stranger eternal, live mostly unharmed within the ants' nests and wonder if i ever had my own nest. nights have now blurred into one long night. i now know much about being a good host. portland, oregon / 4.7.2019
16.	night eighty two 01:33	lyrics	buy track
night eighty two blues of jeans contraband, it will never mean the same thing to those who just had it. undersunner, yellow and black, raising its head to the local star, black suit and silver monochrome, thank you, darling hollywood, for that delightful stereotype, aren’t i a danger, aren’t i just an accent you'd hide from, aren't i your best exported red dawn, white linen comfort or loud orange shirt, take-me-to-the-beach-bum, green and brown like trees, for aren’t i a forest cut down for being not the right kind of neck to be from. colors. so many colors. this night is colored white-petal-rain, colored sunflower, colored tea and wafers, colored alone. tell me. please. what is the colour of having a home? portland, oregon / 4.8.2019
17.	night eighty three 01:26	lyrics	buy track
night eighty three look in the mirror, say, you need a bit of a trim, weeds of it thistling knots, say, your face is an old field, say, battlefield, eyes—craters, algae green water in charred earth, say, mirrors don't lie the way minds do, say, new trenches cross forehead maze, say, who would till this and trust harvest, this houseless, this ungardened, fallow, look down at your hands—see roots pushing up the moss of desert skin, say, these hands would work this land, these trees would grow despite the wind and salt, say, remember oregon coastline, the way it endures rugged, say, ocean is beautiful. portland, oregon / 4.9.2019
18.	night eighty four 01:28	lyrics	buy track
night eighty four another last night, another goodbye, i am, getting better at loving places and animals and saying my fare thee wells, i am getting better at moons of me and saying sleep tender now wherever this night finds and leaves my feet, i'm getting better at waking into tomorrow, i'm getting better at knowing i might not, but most likely will. i am getting better at saying thank you for one more night and for rain in it, i am getting better, old friend, at pouring everything into a day, into stars that walk these streets, i am getting better at watching cats nap and packing my alone into bags between poetry books, i am getting better at dreaming oceans, i am getting better, old friend, i am. portland, oregon / 4.10.2019
19.	night eighty five 01:28	lyrics	buy track
night eighty five cars swing around the corner of twenty fifth and morrisson, just there, by the cemetery, one in twenty has rather questionable taste in music and something to prove by speeding into the turn, a statistic that might also be true for those in graves. people ask me how i am, i say—respirating and locomoting, maybe, add that i am tired, maybe, excited, tell of a poet whose words keep me here, maybe, recount some numbers that seem important just then. i do not drive. not for years. maybe i do not trust my feet to keep me safe, hugging those turns, not to take me away from this counting, maybe my music tastes are also questionable, but i’m not in a grave as of yet. there is a cat. portland, oregon / 4.11.2019
20.	night eighty six 01:45	lyrics	buy track
night eighty six there is an escape hatch. i try not to think of its presence. tell myself it is too small. tell myself i won't fit into its narrow, fall back into this cell tooth-marked and broken, more broken than now, tell myself you have tried this, tell myself do not leave while others can use you some way, tell myself hatch is not there, tell myself do your own time, at least i can pace in this cell, at least i can draw on its wall, at least i can sing my songs, at least i recall light of stars, at least i am still, i am still, i recite my at-leasts litany, thou art born into this, make it better for next, be the wall, be stone, leave marks, count drops of water on tongue, count darker nights, count steps in the cell. there is an escape hatch. at least there is an escape hatch in night eighty six leading into night eighty seven. portland, oregon / 4.12.2019
21.	night eighty seven 00:40	lyrics	buy track
night eighty seven funny thing about walking into unknown is that it feels exactly like walking somewhere on purpose. i throw a question into the wet air, it hangs there almost answered, follow it with my feet, come up to the porch, say “hey”, am greeted like belonging, like are-you-hungry, like you’re-home. cats know this. maybe i am learning a little. portland, oregon / 4.13.2019
22.	night eighty eight 00:53	lyrics	buy track
night eighty eight this is a night full of luck, like some nights are starful, at least in chinese. elsewhere the number means many things some not so pretty, some darling. my belly is full of my luck as plump as the loops in the number eight, my luck is under me and over me—a bed and a roof, twice the luck, twice the miracle, i am filled with bamboo blessings this night, i am as much a child of asia as of north, i’ll take all the luck i can get. portland, oregon / 4.14.2019
23.	night eighty nine 01:01	lyrics	buy track
night eighty nine burnt-out ash-night wishes for a fade-out. wishes, wishes, wishes. but, ah, wishes are all lost at sea. this is a lullaby for me. listen, i would sleep for a century, close my eyes, hang a sign on a tree: "i's gone fishin' for wishes who do be lost at the sea. signed, yours most sincerely, tender poverty” listen, i’d sleep for a century, wake up a tattered book, scribbled tender poetry, naught but a name, lost ashes at sea, singing a lullaby for someone a-nighting like me. portland, oregon / 4.15.2019
24.	night ninety 02:27	lyrics	buy track
night ninety dealing with reality is an acquired taste-skill, peering into mad time is more of my particular innate capability. magnolias scream animal pink into clouds gray of the brushed metal utility, tulip candles every votive color of fire rise through grass unshorn honesty, piles of petals white for memory of nameless trees, pass, pass, black soil piled resting for hands, not mine, not yet, if, by a miracle, i make it, all the way to sixty four, crown my white dandelion, paint my lips blackberry, dance around me, a spring effigy, color outside of the lines of me in every bluebell hue, aye, here’s to making it, here is a song for every spring that wasn’t a last spring, though it wanted to be a last spring, so much, teeth clenched, jaw locked, color-blind in cold of it, every night a victory, every day a defeat, and if i do not make it all the way to sixty four, love me still for as much shy miracle as has occurred, wear those crowns yellow gold, let berry juice drip from your lips, sweet of it, tart of it, into the black of the soil, now rich of me, for your clever hands, kiss each other, do, lay on the honest grass, stare into the sky, may it be blue for every each one of you. portland, oregon / 4.16.2019
25.	night ninety one 02:06	lyrics	buy track
night ninety one street lights indifferent to blood, porch lamps say you don't live here, tender attics glow someone's comfort, neon of closed stores—empty promise, wherever we go, there is a light, just not for us, just what we bring in our eyes. see i'm lucky, i'm going somewhere, if not home, but close enough for the being of time, close enough. this fellow sprawled by a teashop, cocooned in sleeping bag has less luck than i do and i wonder when my luck will run out and i wonder of the empty platitudes about how heart is where you live. but does your heart have a shower, does it come with an outhouse? can you piss in your most tender heart? can you wash off the neon from your skin, wash your socks, hang them to dry? can you ask your sleep to come to your bed, lights off, meet dark nights in the fabled heart card castle? can you say: “we live here. we live in this rented heart?” does your heart come with a little doorbell? does your heart have a key? how's the rent? portland, oregon / 4.17.2019
26.	night ninety two 02:14	lyrics	buy track
night ninety two poet brings peanuts. i eat them. by handful. there’s a metaphor there, but mostly it is compassion. poet brings words. i eat them. all of them. words sustain us too. i thank the poets for nourishment. i am a nowhere poet and here now poet, a poet clawing at somewhere, a poet writing rain droplets into skies. there was a poet, named i. homeless, in one of my favorite books. though he wasn’t a poet. wasn’t homeless. just a plot twist for devil’s deeds. but i do see a few parallel plots. there was a particularly sly cat in that book too. it’s no wonder a poet says “it’s all about cats.” i concur. a cat always knows when to walk away, to have dignity in the last days or nights. i do not know how to do that yet. i’m walking down belmont street, moon behind tattered clouds, feel all the pains of this aging body, tell them: a poor man doesn’t get to be sick, a poor man only gets to be alive for a time. if only i knew cats' trick on when to keep walking into the moon and clouds. portland, oregon / 4.18.2019
27.	night ninety three 01:46	lyrics	buy track
night ninety three from din to solitary smoke, ain't nothing to drill deep alone as a hundred hugs and sweet words. why do i do what i do, that song refrain, appropriate to my particular affliction, rain drips and drizzles, as expected, my thoughts are distant buoyant on the coastal waves, all ocean, all washing up distant wrecks. yes. yes. grateful for the day, yes. warmed by presence. but, darlings, am i not a seagull, city-lost, am i not an albatross, chained to a writing desk. and i still can see my breath, they say it's good for something, it is just getting harder to believe these stories and voices young, harder to build driftwood huts of words and our intentions, and live in them as though they are gilded mansions. in watermelon sugar my mind seeks its wine, in sleep—its pause and i am smaller ever smaller dream. portland, oregon / 4.19.2019
28.	night ninety four 01:06	lyrics	buy track
night ninety four do you need it right this second? do you need it bad, this barbecue sauce elegy, this tin rhapsody? take your last five minutes. sing engine rumble hot, bliss the ill-tended grass barest skin, scream your mess of hair into soil, see through the moon and neon signs, knock on the fortune's door, your rain insistent, your jungle wilding rooms, sway to your silence evergreen, take your last five minutes. take every second of it. take every starlit blink. after. after, there will be quiet sleep. there will be morning. maybe. portland, oregon / 4.20.2019
29.	night ninety five 01:45	lyrics	buy track
night ninety five when in distress i go to a fire, like it would catch me flame, would let me cloud rise, smoke signal above these house lights. he is risen. a greeting for this day. did once they ask if coming back was his wish. or father's. or spirit's. the scholars will have every answer at the ready and miss the question. night ninety five, if not for effort i would lose the count, like i am losing count of where i have slept, which resurrection am i on, which friend i've wronged by dying silent to their ever life. yet still i pass for middle class, unless you look a bit too close, grandfather taught my poor well, dress a last supper always, dress better than the devil that will take you, still billed eccentric for the webs of circumstance. it's well. i know this hiding well. like fire hides in bog droughts, underground peat burning, burning still. portland, oregon / 4.21.2019
30.	night ninety six 01:49	lyrics	buy track
night ninety six back to the wall, lights of every color, chipped paint on tables, a chandelier of cheap crystal, coffee, cigarette, plastic ashtray, a place and time suspended in its weird, where unfitting fit somehow. a portrait on the wall, a woman in red dress and silk floral shawl, her gaze upon whoever sits where presently i take my refuge, her hand mudra bodhisattva-like, her lips, neither smile nor a frown, hair—black, an earring crescent-shaped, hint of worship of the moon, bronze or tarnished gold. thus we are, a tired man and a woman's portrait unstoried, latenighted, though, her wall is a home to her and mine is not. when midnight strikes i will have to leave. walk down the street to another place, sleep, then to another place not unlike this one, would that i be the portrait on the wall, gazing quiet at the world. portland, oregon / 4.22.2019
31.	night ninety seven 01:18	lyrics	buy track
night ninety seven pink petals aggregate on black of asphalt roads, the city dresses in its spring. green cathedral cupolas once more encompass streets, rising, rising above the detritus of winter, as if proclaiming, you, dear children, have survived the storms and deluge, these temples are your hymnals new, be merry now, summer berry feasts are not too far and the rivers await your weary bodies to wash away your struggles and despairs. grass carpets malachite spread for your feet, lush and welcome. nights are softer now, less stark, mayhap, i too am growing, a moonful verdant beast. portland, oregon / 4.23.2019
32.	night ninety eight 01:38	lyrics	buy track
night ninety eight a man leans in to me after i read a rifle poem and asks what do i think of guns. i start to say all the murder, but another artist is about to perform, so silence falls, not unlike one after a gunshot. later, the man leaves, but tells me: "i liked your poems, but not the one about the gun. i disagree" i get it. it is hard to hear that death sleeps in one's veins. hard to hear that next to your good i feel the cold of your gun, heat of your bullets, i remember how blood flows out of human. that now you have to work harder for me to trust you. that i know you may become killer in one well-aimed shot. and after even for a hero there is only fatality, no redemption. while the rich men selling us fear will laugh. portland, oregon / 4.24.2019
33.	night ninety nine 01:35	lyrics	buy track
night ninety nine i am rich in nights i have ninety nine of'm see, every counted night is an affirmation—another one, and another one, some way, somehow, i got to the end of another day, somewhere i lay my head and life is almost okay, circumstances haven't broken me, and someone cared to welcome me into their shelter for a time. if this isn't hope i don't know what is. so here is a homeless poet's blessing may you always count your nights, may they be gentle stars, may they warm your lonely and purr on your chest, may tomorrow come to you again and again, know that i am counting with you. know that ninety nine is a long time. know that we are rich at least in nights. portland, oregon / 4.25.2019

about

"street lights indifferent to blood,
porch lamps say you don’t live here,
tender attics glow someone’s comfort,
neon of closed stores—empty promise,
wherever we go, there is a light, just not
for us, just what we bring in our eyes."

This is the audio version of the third volume of the ‘nights since’ poetry project. It started on January 17th of 2019 and ended on January 14th of 2020. During this time I wrote a poem every night with the intent to document the emotional landscape of being without a home.

The poems are presented unedited, as they were written on those nights, kept intact and raw to emphasize the urgency of writing without the luxury of hindsight available to the settled.

There are eleven volumes in total, each containing 33 poems. You can learn more about the project and follow its progress at
igorbrezhnev.com/nights-since.

credits

released May 12, 2021

Recorded by Brian Bauer at Shady Pines Media in Portland, OR.
www.shadypinesmedia.com

Released with assistance from Lightship Press.
www.lightshippress.com

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about

Igor Brezhnev Portland, Oregon

Igor Brezhnev is a poet, an author and an artist, amongst his other sins. He has first-hand experience with confronting depression, homelessness, poverty, and xenophobia, as well as more common ailments like heartbreak and spilled coffee. Igor has authored three books: the book of possibilities (2012), dearest void (2016) and america is a dry cookie and other love stories (2018). ... more

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