TO HELL WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

Poetry. Beautiful Days Press, 2024. Chapbook, 40 pages. 7"x7"x0.2"

From the press: "If William Carlos Williams swallowed a Xanax and three tabs of acid, if he attempted to take a long nap, and if his brain was wired to a contraption that transcribed his bad dreams into poems, they might look a bit like Michael Martin Shea’s placid, euphoric, and horrifying vision of the lyric. In To Hell With Good Intentions, things don’t merely contain ideas; rather, they vibrate like prophetic objects in a televised crime scene, overflowing with the alternate grief and joy of our excessive present—a world filled with burning Amazon vans, airborne Doritos bags, and a humanity that is both knowable and not: “new toes which grew inside you / teeth new mouth new endless revision.” I am in love with Michael Martin Shea’s “beautiful brain” and these violent, gorgeous little poems that crawled like neon worms from its folds." - Marty Cain