I’m moving the Rough Sketch show to once a month because life (clients, interviews, and general chaos) is loud, and I’m using that extra space to go back to poetry — the thing that actually hooked me on art. I’m Timothy Kimo Brien, your resident instigator, and this episode is me dusting off 12 steno pads, putting pen to paper, and reading a rough sketch called “Going Back” that leans on jazz, nostalgia, and the messy, beautiful return to simplicity. The poem walks through late-night weariness, a mausoleum of depression, and the small ritual of scratching thoughts down as both warning and salvation — basically me trying to send postcards to myself from places I shouldn’t have left. I talk about why prompts didn’t stick, how I decided no prompt was needed, and why editing in a new way helped the work breathe. Stick around for the pieces I read, give me your honest take, and take this as your friendly nudge to tame that inner critic: create more than you consume, write a poem about what you’re going through, and maybe share it with me. I’ll catch you next month — same chaos, more poems.
Poem:
Going Back
6 Sept 2026
The record spins
The arm lifts up,
over, gracefully
I am back to 1992
Looking at the hard-fought bags
under my bloodshot eyes
Aching body
Aching mind
Vision is blurry
Daily meditation done
French lesson done
The house encompasses us all,
creaks and moans
As the weather changes from an unforgiving summer
To the wet and dreary fall
And I am looking at boxes
piled up for recycling
Making a modern art sculpture
Unfinished diamond painting
Brushes hardened by dry acrylic paint
and empty canvases
Twelve steno pads wait
to become memorials
to my thoughts
That I dare not share with my loved ones
I’ve isolated myself
from the rest of my home
I have created a mausoleum of depression
There are no tickets for sale
Remarkably,
there is no line a mile long to enter
So I feel the only way
to fill the gaping hole
in my soul
Is to go back to the beginning
Jazz playing in the background
Living vicariously
through the disciples
of hard bop and cool
Pen to paper,
releasing inner struggles
Scratching my thoughts
Not as a user manual
But as a warning
A warning of what not to become
Letting the subconscious
out of its self-imposed prison
To feel the sunlight
that finds its way into my cave
Timidly, trembling, cautiously
I’m going back
to when I thought simplicity
Was the way to be
To find the decisions that led me
To a place where I was
Or should have been
Content
And remake those choices to stay there
I’m going back
So I can send postcards
to myself
From where I should have never left
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