Dylan Geick on Poetry, Love, Combat, and Cigarettes

GayNrd Editors December 6, 2021

Dylan Geick updated the world of the status of his second book of poetry, Heroic Cuirass, which he hinted back in February would be out by now on Friday saying, “Memory dump. I wrote a book of poetry a while ago and then got depressed. Anyone still want to read it?”

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Yes! We would.

Then Sunday he posted a provocative photo with a sexually charged poem from the book.

I spit the loose tobacco from my mouth and notice a woman sat by my door./
Two bags, two jackets, nothing very clean./
I watch her comb through her hair with greased fingers/
the way I part my mother’s hair, now a lonely nightmare vision./
Closer, young enough to be my sister, under all of it./
One last long drag, I look at her./
?????????????????????/

Her eyes trace all of me,/
I feel her looking for my jaw inside my hood, under a lazy beard./
Then my eyes, and I could see her sadness/
so vast and broken bearing into mine./
She shakes her head and I glance down embarrassed/
to plunge the cigarette into the planter before me/
burying it like sin in the garden./
.
.
Excerpt from “Walk Down Spring”

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According to his website, the title of the book now is now I Have Been Bleeding. From the synopsis: Bleeding is Geick’s sophomore collection of poetry: written as wanderer, lover, soldier, and finally man. Here he explores purpose and presence, myth and memory, and empire and war, weaving a desperate pursuit for god, the father, and beloved throughout. There is a personal narrative and a cosmic searching – a yogic enterprise of carving truth from experience and losing your self to the world. These poems were written on motorcycles and in sleeping bags lying next to a rifle. They were written in bunk beds by red light, under a hooch in a rainstorm, and always with eyes on the moon. Geick has returned with renewed purpose as an artist, and he has cleared his throat.

His previous collection called Early Works was published in 2017 and whose synopsis reads: “Geick is an 18 year old from Chicago committed to both athletics and the arts in equal measure. He’s set to wrestle and study creative writing at Columbia University in New York. These poems are a look into his early experiences with love and loss, an introspective coming of age tale told in verse.”

Geick has a peripatetic year, appearing on the cover of V Man in March. The feature story says of Geick, that when you think of him, “a few things come to mind: social influencer, for sure; wrestler, of course; and writer, most definitely. But one would be remiss and undeniably stupid to attempt to confine him to labels. Humans are a highly complex species, which, due to societal norms, can be susceptible to apply categorical filters in order to give meaning, identity or value in the imaginary social media-based caste system we live in. Despite Instagram’s best efforts to regulate this by concealing the number of likes– the world values people based on social numbers.”

Geick, however, is a special case despite his 678K followers on Instagram, over 200K subscribers on YouTube, and nearly 50K on TikTok. He often speaks out about the damage of social media and its ability to simplify people, ideas, and things that just have no business being simplified. He is a perfect enigma of contradictions where femininity and masculinity sing harmoniously, logic reasons with art, and war births tenderness. He is an embodiment of clashing complexities navigated by an enlightened consciousness that most of modern society will never come to terms with. Hailing from Chicago to the wrestling mats of Columbia University, and jet setting as a Los Angeles influencer to sleeping in unkempt army barracks while writing his latest works in poetry; Dylan Geick is many of things, but he absolutely cannot be simplified.

The warrior he refers to stems from his enlistment in the army after a little of a year at Columbia University where he was on the wrestling team, wrote poetry, and smoked a lot of cigarettes, a subject he addresses frequently. Back in 2019 he said: “Am I a better man for hiding Marlboros from young fans, or a fraud? A liar unworthy of my title or a human aspiring to the pedestal placed above my name in numerals(k). What sharing is courage and what is foolish? How hungry can a crowd be for idols or someone to validate their own perceived inadequacies, and which function to perform? Weigh these questions each time you act and know the exhaustion of such a responsibility. I cannot be human here. This is a document to be judged and I know this now; not just the judging of the crafted persona but the crafting itself. The modern pop star is a liquid in the algorithmic molds of their consumers. Their fame is theirs alone: pocketed and unique and not to abide change. Perhaps the only answer is to cast off all such notion of meaning or importance. Perhaps there is nothing to conquer. What tragedy.”

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The last time Geick plugged the book in March, he dropped some hot and heavy verses like:

“Gently, he takes my shirt over my head and places it with his./
I pull away again as he runs his finger along the laminate tear,/
wincing and pushing back but his grip is sure./
You cannot go on like this. You must protect yourself. You know this./
Welling tears, I shake my head./
I want to feel it. I want to feel all of it. I’ve only just taken them off./
This is no place for that./”