i was born John Edward Roe at 8am on January 25th 1976 to a 19 year old woman at the Wilmington Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. I share a birthday with Alycia Keys, Virginia Woolf and Tobe Hooper, director of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

My name is John Micheal Burke. I have a brother, Franklin Andrew Roe, now
Andrew Lee Burke, born June 19, 1974.
We arrived at a foster home sometime in 1978 after a daycare worker found bruises and cigerrette burns on Andy's back. That same day we went home with a Matthew and Clara Burke.


-though i was a really shrimpy kid, i played santa in the kindergarden christmas play. I landed the part because of my sensational rewording of santas lines. I wish I knew what i said.

-At 12 I had a paper route which i inherited from a girl down the street whose father my dad worked at the Chrysler Plant with.
I rode bikes all the time. i wanted to skateboard but mom and dad wouldnt buy me one. so i saved up money from the paper route and bought a freestyle bike. quicker transportion to the arcade..and tried to do tricks. I wanted to be like Josh White and Josh Hoffman...
ask mom about details.

around that same time my brother began getting into a lot of trouble....he had been seeing all kinds of shrinks since my parents got us. Mrs. Gay was his psychologist until he was a teen-
she told my parents early on that andy would be a mess for the rest of his life due to the stress he incurred at 3 and prior. My mom and dad always tried reaching out to him the best they knew how...but when the rebellion and lies and real teenage shit started hitting the fan, they sent me to find him. i rode around in the cop car weekly....
that was a painful time.

At 13 the nightime cop car rides were happening almost weekly. Officer Friendly from across the street told me I should help my family by riding shotgun while he looked for my runaway brother who was somewhere having way more fun than me. I guess I was bait.

at the time i found punk music, and eventually the punk scene. isnt anything by my bloody valentine, life's too good by the sugarcubes, sister by sonic youth and WXDR's show the Cutting Edge changed the way i thought about music.

at 16 i started going to punk shows regularly and didnt stop for 5 years. travelled, wrote zines, sold records, and made friend from all over the east coast.

at 22 i was setting up and promoting punk shows...mainly of bands i was really into because i wanted to see them play.working at kinko's and making zines and small art books.

at 23 things were going well. i had a girlfriend named chloe. i had a job at a coffee shop and i was working relentlessly on drawings and paintings...painting graffitti on freight trains and walls..living with college kids above a laundramat in Newark, De.
i was trying to be an artist.

that summer i landed a job as an arts and crafts teacher at a summer camp for kids ages 7-10...i had no experience teaching and little art experience...i lied and said i was almost finished college.
mid summer i was restless. a friend offered me a space in her car diving around the country for 3 weeks and i knew i had to quit my job...
we drive to LA then to Seattle and back. When i returned without a job, I found one at Borders Books working in the cafe..

i met a girl at a party at our apartment that fall.
I totally fell for her....full of life, easy blue eyed smile ... we soon found out she was pregnant. a couple of weeks later we sat in her car discussing what to do. our child had been growing in her belly for 4 weeks. both of us in tears, we decided an abortion was proper decision.
i dont know exactly how we came to that decision...i think i more or less convinced her that it was what we should do. sure, it was ultimately her decision, but i clearly remember convincing her to do it. looking back, i know i could've made it work out.
i wanted that baby for us but i thought i'd fuck it up.
she had the abortion a couple of days before her college graduation.

After she graduated we moved to philly and into a three story mini loft space.. fine at first but things got tough. she was very involved with her job...i was very involved with her life and let myself fall apart. she moved to germany a year and a half later.
We lasted a total of 2 years.

-6 months later i moved to portland oregon.

-three months later i returned.

-three years later, at 29, i was still a bike messenger. biking, fighting traffic,weather and people. drinking every night, writing graffitti, and being an asshole.

im 30 now. i'm learning to live again and learning to love.
Its easy to lose the forest in the trees.
easy's boring.

carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem carpe diem

carpet dimes
carpet dimes
carpet dimes
carpet dimes

grandma's garden...... as a kid dad and my brother andy and me would work with her...long after her husband died, into her 70's-she worked her land... she lived.worked everyday...how we worked that garden.... pulled weeds, and hoeing(? a word) and once a year sholveling menure......later grandma canned the vegetables and stored them in her cellar.


When we were children, Andy and I would pick the apples from her tree...often picking them too soon. we'd reach up to pick, then bite into the sour fruit, scrunch our faces up and drop the apple to the ground. Eventually we'd step into the sweet rotten fruit while playing in the yard. Rotten apple smeared on our kicks and we'd laugh at the other before pausing to carefully clean the sweet discarded apple from the bottom of the shoe. The smell of apple sauce in a steamy saturday afternoon kitchen would arrive with fall. Running through the kitchen past the slamming screen door mom yelled for us to slow down. sometimes grandma would offer a wooden spoonful of hot applesauce from the pot.

She never cleaned out her husband's shed. in the little wooden barn on shelves- jars of nails, hooks, and pins, and all types of little metal things...amongst cob webs and dusted spiders-dead and the creepeing...stood as rusted ghosts in jars. arranged like dead soldiers and mummies..

the idea of being loyal and/or devoted to one person hasn't sat comfortably with me for several years. all things must come to an end.
relationships, jobs, rentals, all cease to be.
i'm being pretty negative here but thats become my outlook on life. bare im mind this is not a fixed outlook; just what i've experienced.
every once in a while you meet someone that challenges that perception. someone so beautiful and full of life that you're reminded that there must be another way to live. you want to be close to that person but you fear could ruin that person.eternity in a flower? neil young said "love is a rose so you better not pick it."
what do you do?

i didnt think anyone was reading this... I think i have like 2 livejournal "pals" so i assumed no one really saw this....thus, my absolute frankness.
Life isnt as bad as it sounds. writing can be theaputic for me, which is why i decide to keep this and why i dig up all this dirt.
Life is actually really good right now.
a job i like, cool landlord and a wonderful house in a quiet part of fishtown.

Its true i was staying in a shelter for a month...it was a harsh reality that I thought would remain a secret for many years to come. but now people know. no big deal. i partially feel like i should be embarrassed by this experience. i am, to a degree, but i also think that part of me wanted or needed, that experience to bring a greater understanding of life in the city and the things that other people experience.
id like to create work that speaks to people and the things that they feel through the difficulties inherant in an out-of-control capitalist society. i want to understand how people value themselves and others when taught based on the demands of the market...how people deal with pain and escape.

there was a field behind our house...the size of two football fields? it's tought to say.

further back, a five minute walk for little legs, was a two lane road called chestnut hill road. in this field. .... and a hundred yards or so away lived a grand, powerfully weeping willow tree. It was the center of everything. we would run all around the underside of this tree feeling the immensity of it and trying to understand it. we'd reach up to touch and grab and attempt to swing on it's hanging rope like arms...

a couple of years later they widened chestnut hill road, razing the land and the tree with it.
bulldozers built giant mounds like mountains of sand and soil behind our yard... hills piled high, i'd sit on the cool slope examining the contents...red clay dried in the sun making little gifts for mom..mica for peeling and peeling and peeling. the thinner and more translucent the more valuable.
later that summer trees were planted and the exposed mica and red clay turned under and covered with mulch. The men planted small trees that grew to become sound barriers for what is called Route 4.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

baller

dad enrolled me in tee ball. At the end of the season the team grouped together for a photo. I took the right corner of the front row, kneeled on my left leg and rested my right hand on the other knee, just as the photographer instructed. Right before the camera snapped i bent my right index finger and tucked in under itself.
When the photographer told us to group together, stand up straight, smile and look into the camera, I wanted to botch his perfect photo. I was seven years old and I wanted my imperfection to be immortalized, thinking in the years to come I someone may need a reminder. I knew a perfect picture was out of the question.

my actions several months prior and up to last monday have resulted in me living in a homeless shelter.
acting the fool, and not taking care of my responsibilities has dropped me all the way to the bottom. i sleep on a cot in a room with 30 other men.
some of them are heroin addicts. others are trying to kick a powerful crack addiction. some have long conversations with themselves; and many of them have been on the merry-go-round of american institutional "rehabilitation" so long they don't understand how to function in mainstream society anymore.
the basics are all supplied at Ridge Avenue Men's Shelter. We are fed three meals a day, clothing is available if someone has none.
i imagine how, if you've given up on trying to get by "outside"-that is, outside of prison-but don't want to go back to jail you'd stay in the shelter for as long as you can. i've never been to jail but it feels like this shelter is very similar to prison as i understand it to be from tv, my brother as an exprisoner, and books i've read.
though there are no cells or cell blocks, the rooms were we sleep are called "cubes". how creative. we are herded to and fro all meals, given a wake up call, told when to go to bed, when to take medications and attended Alcohol and Drug rehabilitation classes (na, aa). There is a curfew one must meet everynight and if any of the above rules are not followed the consequence is eviction.
it's mad here.
the reason for me being there is simple. i spent all the money i had at the bar.
i havent admitted it to myself fully, and it would be a lot easier if i was diagnosed by a doctor or someone certified-but i think i may be an alcoholic. i can stop drinking. i dont like to until i have a serious buzz but i can. however i dont like to do a lot of things....and so i guess i drink to forget about all of the things i should do but don't like to do or should be doing.....
i would go to the bar at 5 or so and sit there until the money or the beer ran out. whichever came first. so yeah...i have a problem...
and i wish i hadn't fucked up so badly...
but im glad it's happening now and not 40 years from now.
im learning a lot at the shelter, though i really wish i wasnt there.

i decided it was time i accept responsiblity for my actions. i think i probably could have couch surfed. but this is my pickle. i have to work it out for myself.