Tweet?
Is there an echo?
  Is there an end to this maze?
Or just steps in 
  darkness that,
  soon or late,
  will fade?

Why worry?
I know what you’ve 
  been thinking.
Just think about it this way:
Every day
Just find one beautiful 
  Thing to say.

Writing has not died; I don’t think it ever will. Yet, like any living thing, it will adapt. The ecology of the written word has changed dramatically. The rise of social media has changed the way that people think, interact, and express themselves. We generate huge volumes of written content every day. We trade jokes, opinions, and anecdotes. We publish blogs, articles, photos, videos and music. The expressive force and entertainment value of these media are immense. Add to this the proliferation of Internet programming, some of it high quality, which provides a steady stream of comedy, drama, and romance. Poetry and short-form prose can seem like mice under the feet of superfauna. Yet I think poetry and prose can remain relevant by adapting to this new environment. JimPerry140 is an exploration of poetry and prose adapted specifically to the ecology of the Internet. “140” attempts Twitter-ready writing of 140 characters or less. “200” is a blog of prose and poems of 200 words or less. “1024” pairs words and images. All content is pushed out on social media; this site is a repository. All writing found here is mine alone. All quotations are fictitious.

Will there be a day
When your chin will leave
Its perpetual palm?

When every question
You have asked
Will have its answer?

Those days lie in fiction_
But no novel 
You have read.

Life ends in half rhyme,
In a doorknob touched
And not opened,

In a comma 
Whose next clause is unwritten
By art,

Or else by the artist, 
Like me,
Who could not find his answer.

The lamp motif of this website, designed by my friend Melissa Armstrong, was inspired by mid-century Modernism. In the 1940’s and 50’s designers like Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand created book jackets for works by authors ranging from Henry Miller to Gertrude Stein. The designs were simple and bold, ideal for paperbacks and reprints. These were books to be dog-eared—to be passed around, beat up, contended with. Passages were underlined. They fell out of bed. Today, they are found at bookstalls and garage sales, musty pages recalling a thirst for obscurity and a thrill of the illicit that has lost its potency. Like all things past, we cannot recreate the time or place, but only pay them homage—a nod (or a bow) to three colors and a silkscreen.

Click here.
Lower. Left clavicle_
OK, now the disclaimer:
99% post-consumer material.
Can’t be washed with whites.
I often change my mind.

Say you won’t take them, well_
Two of them are right now
  somewhere on this Earth,
Laying nose to nose,
  toe to toe.
Scheming.

New Haven boasts the world’s smartest vagrants.
There was one, 
	old gopher all clad in leather,
Lecturing at the coffee shop on the green.

Said the longbowmen of England
	could outdistance cannon-shot, and
	the undergrads had no cause to doubt him.

I wondered then on the value of education_
What they were learning there
	would carry them
	no farther than the threshold.
The rest they would forget in time.

But Yale! Now, there was something!
That name would adorn them forever 
	and be their pass key
	to boardrooms and 
	law schools and 
	legislatures…

Did they know then? Did they? 
	Did the hobo playing professor?
What their parents knew when they 
	endowed them with these resumes_
The great hidden principle of meritocracy_
	That caveat that
	no high school
	guidance counselor
	seems to know or
	at least dares not mention_
That brilliance without status is nothing at all.  
And status without brilliance will always,
	Always, be good enough.

At the bottom of the well,
  No words will be my rope,
Nor will I think myself
  To daylight.