Fuck Yeah! Gabriel Gadfly

A tumblr dedicated to the work of poet Adam Kamerer who wrote under the pseudonym Gabriel Gadfly. 2016-21

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In my head I move faster than my body.

When they loose their red rubber volley, I transform:

I prance like stag, I pirouette like prima donna, I whirl like wind through wild air — upon the court, I become a gymnasium trickster god, laughing and spritely, more quick and fae than this big bellied body has ever known how to be, I evade every red comet star,

until empty handed and flustered, a dozen sweating boys in white sneakers squeak bewildered at untouchable me

but I was never untouchable, never stag nor prima donna, never wild like whirling air, never tricksy and divine,

I have always been a barnside, large and marked out bright, slapped red on my belly from every missile lobbed.

— Adam Kamerer Patreon || Website

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I am calling you into my temple, to the deep green forest, where scattered light gives way to shadow and moss.

Leave the asphalt and glass behind. Leave the streetlights and sirens, the busy bodies yelping in the artificial light, leave behind the hustling life, the gristmill of the civilization grind.

Pad quiet between the trunks, shrink beneath the ancient trees, lope into the gloaming dark, unhuman yourself with me,

let me teach you the religion my body taught itself:

I am not a creature of reason. I am not comfortable in my skin.

I am nature dreaming of itself, an animal prayer, a hungry spirit: I am a mouthful of howling, I am teeth and I am blood, I eat the earth until the earth eats me,

I know this is a ragged ritual, this prayer to animaling,

this is not the first time I have tried to explain this shaggy holiness.

Go back if you want but leave my wolf body here on the dirt,

ring me with wildflowers and river pebbles, let the ants have me,

until my pelt is eaten up and my bones bleach white in the air.

Enshrine me to my wild worship.

— Adam Kamerer Patreon || Website

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You go inside for more drinks, and I wander your garden.

You have left it to weed over. Old perennials suck desperate at the slums of the soil. A plastic windmill sways on a rusty stem, one vane lost. All the rest hang their faded heads.

I found a fat Buddha in a tangled flower bed; hands upturned, he invites the seasons back, ever the optimist; he laughs even as a vine wraps her hands around his neck.

I’d like to reincarnate this garden. I’d like to pull up the clotbur and the crabgrass, lay down fertile new soil, plant dozens of little bombs ready to explode in spring.

I’d scrub fat Buddha and let him breathe. I’d fix the windmill, I’d make barren into beautiful

but when you wobbled back, with drinks in your hands, I decided I always try to fix wasted gardens, and not this time, not this time.

- Adam Kamerer Patreon || Website

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For breakfast, while you slept, I ate peaches with my fingers, perched in my underwear in the rocking chair on the porch.

I fished the syrupy slippery wedges one by one straight out from the can with my fingers,

popped them into my mouth to dribble wet down my face, until the inevitable moment I sliced myself on the edge,

wet fingerprint split open welling bright and red. What would you say

if you stirred and saw me like this: sticky-chinned gargoyle, stony in the sunlight, dripping blood into the juice,

even wounded still reaching for another sweet fruit.

— Adam Kamerer Patreon || Website

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I. Birth by fire.

VII. For eleven days we three men leave our Mother’s arms but never her reach. Earth shines; the Moon is far away.

VIII. Mother’s reach stifles: the nest cannot hold us now. We do not go far: just to peer at the dark side of bright Luna.

XI. Luna welcomes us and Mother’s heart breaks in pride and wistful longing. My dusty footsteps will linger here for decades, but Earth begs us to return. We leave flags, boots, and predecessor ghosts.

XIII. Birth by fire. Oxygen is our lifeline and our fiery garrote here. Luna falls away and worried Mother stares in horror at her floundering children. God beckons but Mother won’t let go. She pulls us gently to her breast.

XVII. This is our last love affair with bright Luna. We slink away in black night to touch her and we linger longer than ever before, filling our eyes with her, our dusty lover. We orbit her. We orbit her but Mother calls and her call stirs our souls: Earth waits, children. – Adam Kamerer Patreon || Website

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Are you really Gabriel Gadfly? Lately I’ve had a couple of awkward messages in my inbox from people who seem to think I am somehow plagiarizing my own work. So, to lay this to rest, yes, I am Gabriel Gadfly. From 2009-2013, and briefly in 2017, I published poetry under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly on the now-defunct GabrielGadfly.com and here on Tumblr. At the time, I was open about the fact that Gabriel Gadfly was a pen name. If for some reason you need more proof, the images above come from a 2011 article from a local newspaper when my first poetry collection Bone Fragments was published. It clearly states that GG is a pen name. Why did you stop using the Gabriel Gadfly name? A couple reasons. First and foremost, it’s been several years, and they weren’t easy ones. I’ve grown a lot and been through a lot of trauma and I’ve become a different person than I was back then. It seemed fitting to lay the persona to rest. Moving forward, all new work will published under my real name, Adam Kamerer. Second, online presences take work to maintain. I’ve lost access to most of the social media presences I had, and the hosting account and domain name for the old site are long gone. I’m locked out of the old Tumblr account. Thus, new site, new Tumblr, new me.

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You guys, gals and non-binary pals! It's really him.

Adam is Gabriel.

Just to clear a few things. <3

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He's baaaack. He's on facebook under his real name. Adam Kamerer, Poet.

This is unreal. Omg.

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There was an early poem of his that I loved that referenced a father and a son... a hammer and its nails. I can't remember much more but that it moved me greatly. (I was such a fan back in 2013 that I ordered one of his tees, with name and an image of a fly on it. heh) Thanks in advance if you can locate it.

I hope this is what you were looking for <3

-neil

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Hammers and Nails

I think you learned to love people

by watching hammers love nails

You bury them in succession

one after another after another

and you never expect them

to get back up.

Some do, of course.

It takes them years.

Decades, sometimes, but

they wrench themselves out

of the holes you put them in

with their heads still smarting,

so you go back.

You love them down again. Harder.

You put all your weight into it,

just to make sure.

I know what will break you.

One day you will love someone

and they will go crooked.

You will love them

and they will twist at their shank.

They’d rather be mangled

Bent over, hunching their back,

they’ll take you on their spine

and let you hit as hard as you like.

than hidden away.

What will you do

with a love like that?

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published May 15, 2012

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Hello, for years now I have been looking for “Untranslatable” All I know is it was probably before 2012 and it is one of my favorites

Hey Anon, Can you remember some phrase or words from it? It would really help to find it. I'll try my best. Regards, Neil

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I am desperately trying to find the poem I think that was titled “in your wake”? Or that was one of the first lines. I think the last line was “one of these things does not miss you”. It was my favorite and I had it on my laptop however that has since crashed... I have been looking for it so much that now I am beginning to think I imagined it.

I'm not sure if I have this particular one but I'll try my best to find it! x

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A Short PSA

Since Gabriel has gone on another hiatus, and since I have school to worry about, we need to have a talk.

This Tumblr was started with the simple idea that even in the age of the ever present internet, we must sometimes grind and save as much as we can the things that we love. Gabriel's site became undependable a long time ago, and so this site was born.

It's been over three years since then, and although we don't get as many notes or reblogs and such, those things were never the purpose of this Tumblr.

One of the things I've loved having here is the many questions people bring to me about some obscure phrase or word or feeling from one of Gabriel's poems, and a penchant for finding the same. More often than not I was able to help them, and that brought me as much joy as it must've brought to the person searching for them.

I request, as far as possible, for the questions to be off anonymous, so that the person asking the question can be notified of it. That said, anon questions are always an option.

Nobody knows when Gabriel is going to return to his Tumblr, but I await the wholesome day when that happens.

As far as I know, this Tumblr will remain. I've only put up about 60 of his poems, and I plan to queue the rest soon. The questions from anons and other users will be answered as quickly as possible.

I don't even know if anyone reads these, but dear Reader, thank you for coming this far into the journey with us.

Fly far.

Love,

Rain

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There's a poem of gadfly about threads, I read it years ago but haven't found it again. It's about being in love with someone, and venturing away, and there's an invisible thread tied to the ankle, that, at that point helps one make the decision to walk away or come pack to the person one loves. Can I find this anywhere?

Threads

From time to time,

when you have wandered

away from a person,

you wander a little further

and feel the slightest tug

at your ankle.

Looking down, you find

a thread, red or maybe

blue, barely seen,

barely there, tied

gently and trailing

as far back as you

can see and you know,

instinctively, where

it leads.

It brings you to a choice:

to take one more step,

snap the thread and

leave it where it lay,

or return from whence

you came.

Sometimes, the one’s

the best choice;

sometimes, it’s the other.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published May 24, 2011

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As the sun sets, old mother oak tree shakes the rain from her limbs and stretches her roots down and down. On the ground below, all her tiny little children with brown round caps snuggle down into the softest earth and dream of the leaves they’ll have one day.

Acorns by Gabriel Gadfly

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Jun 26, 2011

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The shapes of a small woman’s bones twist on an empty isolated floor and I wonder if she still inhabits them – if the girl that flesh was made for still yearns for the pleasure of making love to sunlight and rain, for the unexpected bliss of hearing her own heart beat in the silences of stolen breaths. The stepping-stones of her ribs wear the ghost light of seclusion more than they wear the vital membrane of her flesh; I want to paint with my fingers the parts of her that have lost their color: her stepping-stone ribs, the lone hip, the single ear defined only by the shadow it casts in the light. I want to paint them in the messy radiance of warmth and invitation. I want to give her one bright flower to wear in the valley of her shoulders. I want to give her a poem and a candle to read it by.

After Homelessness by Gabriel Gadfly

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published June 21st, 2010.

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I am happy when I am with you and also sick sad. I am all blue in the middle. There are rainstorms in my belly and my mouth is full of fog. Wet moss creeps into the spaces between my cobblestones, but I love you, and you make the rainstorms the kind the sun shines through, and you make the fog the cool mist of morning, and you make the moss bright green and the softest I have ever felt but I am still all blue in the middle of me.

All Blue by Gabriel Gadfly

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published December 11th, 2012.

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She lies against the curve of the sea’s hip, Clothed only in sand. And never before have I envied Crushed quartz, But I envy the dust that supports her. When the tide thieves it away, I shall drink one of those graced grains. I’ll pack that sedimentary sentiment Into my shell. I’ll study it well, Though it burns my tongue. One day, A suitor with a shallow knife Will cut her from me, Just to admire her beauty. Were I he, I would do the same.

An Oyster Meets Aphrodite by Gabriel Gadfly

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Aug 6, 2009

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If I had hollow bird bones, you’d find me in the corner, filling them with buckshot. Oh, I still want to fly. Far up, higher and higher until blue air thins and lungs catch fire for scarcity but you know I’d never come back down. Weigh me here with heft, with burden, crow’s feet that never leave the earth.

Anchoring by Gabriel Gadfly

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published June 27th, 2013.