When did Mediocrity Become the Best?

2011-10-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

The day hangs behind me like a charmed venomous cobra. Sure, the threat is always there to imprison my life behind a poisoned sequester, but today I decide to press on. The sun beats down littering the Texas pavement with more trashy sunlight. Nobody needs the day to be hotter and really the sun should just be for emergency occasions to make certain Earth does not become Pluto. What I'm trying to say is: it's hot and I'm tired.

But i cannot sleep yet. No. There is writing to be done. And blogging to be read. And nerdisms to coin. This is the rejoinder of a session long in recess. Welcome to the inner Congress of Space City Nerd.

Why did I ever stop producing literature for this site? Was it the spartan postings and deliberate and irrational scheduling? I mean a guy looks to crank out several hundred words, he would appreciate the ability to view said words within a Chrome browser a few minutes separate. It's not like I lacked the topical knowledge to become a pundit for the videogame peoples-- I was too engrossed in the stories of a game's development to care if it was good-- but I believe it was the lack of contrary force that made me lose interest.

The opinions of a videogame world and NERDS in general is a safe inconsequential debate. One can argue the legitimacy of an actor or artist all day long on an infinite supply of message boards. Trolling as an art form adopted by a mad troop of wandering self-proclaimed Core. Where is the spirit in consequence? If I say Firefly deserved to be cancelled, how does this spark a larger debate than whether the death penalty is ethically wrong?

Context is king, as someone said, probably out of context.

Right now, we live and abide in a world where nerd is a code for cool. It is the quickest most direct slang to describe ourselves without actually placing any descriptors on our person. You like comic books: you are a nerd. Sci-Fi, videogames, boardgames, cardgames, hell fantasy football players are now card-carrying members of the student AV club. So if everyone is a nerd, how come nerd talk is not allowed to mature and enter the larger philosophical conversations? Why must an idea that videogames are considered art be shoved aside for being too subjective; yet that same audience regularly polls itself to find out which Space Marine is the best? What is the game critic's real job? I mean, is it to decide which titles are purchase worthy; warn off the more salient creations; or simply build boilding hype for blockbusters. I believe a game critic is all of this, but more so speaking to the ideas and purpose beyond what takes 8 hours to play. It is to ask WHAT is play.

Why is this control scheme better? Why is there fun in spending time exploring smaller spaces and traversing larger expanses crammed with detail?

I don't wish to review games. Instead I want to talk about videogames are as an asset to understanding the human soul. Martin Heidegger classified his god as I and Thou, player and game. So my big deal question is this:

Do videogames prove the existence of God?

Gamesicon

2011-09-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

Here it is, the blog. An invention of radical journalists co-opted for the ultimately dull. I can't promise either extreme, all I can guarantee is a monorail towards a luminescent express station. Maybe it's in Vegas, could be Atlantic City. It's certainly not in Louisiana; fuck that place, yo.

Call me Mr. Sean.

I have been playing Dead Island on 360, but I would rather not cover common ground. Let me just say that Gears of War 3 is looming and I am easily suggestible. That being said, I will be playing the ever loving crap out that title until my chosen receptacle of multiplayer shows up (Uncharted 3).

Still the number 1 game I'm dying to play is Batman. You cannot propose a more eloquently sophisticated superhero game out there. The game lacks any sort of health or ammo counter making our pop cultural heroes out to be the immortal and invulnerable bastions of idealism they exist as.

Videgold

2011-03-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

I should feel ashamed of myself. Bopping my head to a Rivers Cuomo track in 2011. I don't care if B.o.B think's he's magic or if he carries magic within his personage...sitting at home trying to come up with topics to write about and realizing I'm actually productive with a person to bounce ideas off of. Houston and videogames are strange cocktail to try and cook. I mean how do you tie something so universal into H-town without tracking down the mere handfuls of studios?

Continued from Myspace

2008-05-09T23:45:00.001-07:00

Where the fuck am I?

You're in someone's secret little home. From here, you can look back at all the thoughts I've had over the past few years prior to meeting you.

This is completely crazy. I mean I was just over there and now I'm here?

hey, could be worse. you could be in here.

i don't understand. One second we were all happy and talking inside an IHOP when you got on the phone and now . now... what?

This is the evolution of a love poem, a sweet and kind lullaby you hum to an infant before you crush its windpipe. I like to talk here because Diaries are inadequate. I never liked the way the ink or pencil would show through the other side of the paper. Recording my every day like that seemed like a crime scene. The way I see it, the digital era is for those who either spit it or shit it. I spit it. Now if you want to cramp your hand dotting your I's with fucking hearts, be my guest. Or better, yet, print this out and trace it with a pen so you too can feel a creative satisfaction. I already know you're first question.

Why am I here?

Nintendo and shame, Nubian, Nintendo and shame. To be honest I don't know. i'm that voice that speaks the commonest sense when you need it, but you have to ask the right question first for the right answer. I'm here, manifest, because there is something you were saying that triggered it all. Anyway, you should be honored I'm here. now bow so hard till your knees hit your forehead.

You stole that shit!

Yes I did. You know, son, you had a pretty good handful of play ideas there for a while. Like that Alcestis notion. I bet you could work that one into a modern theater. Think of the setting. . . Death perched on the roof of a great hero's home waiting, like a vulture, to take his prize when Apollo enters and combats Death!

This play begins in silence. No talking, no breathing, no movement of any kind. Two characters are presented; Apollo is the sympathetic god as opposed to vigorous Death who is crouched in front of the door. The audience does not know why the two forces are opposed, just that they are decidedly different in philosophy and for the time being that is all that matters. Apollo is all the excellence in the human body, even going so far as to be the preserver of mortality, the beacon--

that's IT!!

Or remember this one: "(The scene opens on a sandy beach. Palm trees engulf the left half of the stage in darkness while the ocean is heard off in the distance. Typical isolated beach. A woman's form is silhouetted lying on the sand, distracted and near death but not in any emergency. In the distance music can be heard, first lightly, then louder as the crowd of flickering lights and cacophanous celebration comes closer. It soon fills the backdrop with revelry hanging sparkling necklaces into the back lace. Bacchus enters and sees the woman)"

Damn, that would be pretty nice to make into a real play. You see i was thinking---

Stop thinking!! Just write the blasted thing! Or remember this one?

The only time to swim is Texas dusk,

Because that swollen bothered sun has turned--

lifting the season, and you could not ask

For a cooler pool to ruin.

I remember how
Ripples quivered to the edge
from that collision of skin and liquid.

I was eager to bite that hanging

full moon surprising bare
swimmers; its grand lazy light,

Bright, making our submerged pieces appear

distanced, like coming from little children

With little fingers,tiny palms, short nails,

Pointing out our ridiculous sins.

To escape it we float deeper in love,

And we dive higher into the Texas

Dusk flapping little hands,

little ' ' wet ' ' wings.

The War Against Cliche

2007-01-23T02:35:00.000-08:00

Two men walk into a bar, of course two men is too cliche. Start over.

A man and a camel walk into a bar. Bar is quite the modern meet up place. Strike the cliche.

A man and a camel walk into an Asian Spa, but then again can we be so cockey to assume the preferred method of motorisation is walking? After all, walking implies a bipedal format. Damn the cliches!

A man and a camel fly in on an electronic hoverjet into an Asian Spa. There you go. 1/3 way done towards a audience killing joke.

I wonder if I have a sense of humor or just the right timing.

There's a Myspace universe whether or not it's a microcosm or a macrocosm is yet to be seen.

Hmmm. I need sexier boxer shorts. The ones I'm wearing now make it appear as if I'm hiding diapers.

Say God is out there, then you are here, but what if there is really here, does that mean you're not really here?

Skank by numbers is a ch-ch-ch-ch ile song.

Black people are brown and white people are pink. Two moderates have been pushed to extremes. Sounds political.

Amber glass lasts like coordinating puffs of oxygen and nitrogen;
When you drink it's exhalation but not of the going...

REGARDING THOSEINTERNET SEARCHESYOU FOUND AND THENCONFRONTED ME ABOUTIN A HOSTILE WAY?WE'LL BE LAUGHINGABOUT THE HUGEMISUNDERSTANDINGIN THIS WEEK'SCOUNSELINGSESSION.
BY FRANK FERRI
- - - -
anal creampies
Can't a person be particular about his desserts? I'm damn near OCD when it comes to blind-baking my crusts to the perfect golden brown. I was simply seeing if there were any like-minded precision-driven pastry fanatics out there.

teen sex
While it's true we don't have children yet, we're going to someday. And they're going to grow up—faster than you can imagine—and have lots of questions. I don't know about you, but I'd like to have some answers.

hot facials
I know how much you enjoy the occasional spa treatment, so I wanted to surprise you with one. Guess that's ruined now.

pearl necklace
It was going to be on your pillow when you got back from the facial. Also ruined.

dripping wet pussies
I'm sorry, but we don't own any books called What to Do When the Cat Falls in the Toilet. Forgive me for turning to the Internet for feline-drying techniques.

cock-hungry whores
Apparently, you're too busy—or is it callous?—to concern yourself with the fact that prostitutes need to eat, too. And guess what? Turns out they tend to crave poultry.

curious about gay lifestyles
Now that was just a typo. The c should have been an f. Those gays make me mad.

2006-11-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

The online profile for a girl who likes being submissive.

They say you have doe eyes and those
sayers are correct. They have the same
ethereal sadness before a bullet rips, rends the brain
from the skull.

Fantasic blowjobs. That's your tagline?
How can anyone care about that? What
kind of world do you think you live in with your doe eyes
just waiting for it.

2006-11-20T13:04:00.000-08:00

Create. The hands are masons the tips
caked in graphite sludge and concrete
mortars jabbing into internals using
the viscous fluid for glue. Glue holds
like hands hold other hands. Microscopic
details prove that each molecule of glue
is a knuckle white and pressed
to a knuckle to a knuckle until only wrists
remain and you need to add more glue.

2006-11-20T12:43:00.000-08:00

His leg jeked him out of what he thought was a sound sleep. There was a silent frustration at work when he awoke like when a garbage truck bangs its cans at four a.m. disturbing your respite of the day. Without opening his eyes he moved his fingers to feel the fringes of the mat he lay on, the solid starchy yet damp straw threatened to puncture his tips. His fingers moved further arcing underneath the mat to feel the texture of the thatches. One eye opened to take in the mud and the drizzling rain in the corners of the room. Beyond his feet, a few yards away crouched against the further wall of the shack was a small dark boy.

He thought dark, but black dark. Why is there a small black boy in my shack? The wretch looks hungry.

For a minute his eyes searched over the black boy's slim figure looking for a trace of clothing to help identify the visitor. All he saw was the ball-like head over thin shoulder rails and a slighly puffed muscular frame. The head knodded to one side at a soft angle and he concluded the boy must be sleeping.

His hip felt like a jagged chunk of stone as he tried to turn over, to get himself off the mat, to get himself outside the shack and into whatever rainy, thundery carniverous world was outside. He exerted as much pressure as he thought he could handle before believing his eyeballs would dislocate from the pressure. Strapped down, he thought. I must be strapped down. As he closed his eyes again, too worn out to fight and surrendering to the apathy awarded to those who feel no drive to overcome but instead wait and see, he thought for a second he could see the black boy raise its head and smiling gumless.

----

The plane fare from Sierra Leone to Houston, Texas was approximately $540 with a total traveling time of over ten hours with four stop overs.

2006-09-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

Free write is Hard.

Write what you know and know nothing else.
What I know is where these things always begin:
on the self. the cuddling of my tongue
on the ice cube out of a glass of orange juice.
The cold bite is shivering and sour
like the meeting of grass and sky.
Green and blue and now orange and blue.
The blue of ice which is never a blue except when you see it on yourself.
Cool crisp drops of concentrate
orange pulp extracted to produce a sweat
for fruit not unlike your own, cascading
and blooming flowers of perspiration on your collar and forehead.
The free write is an exercise i tell myself begins at one region and ends without one.
A destination is a border of sorts, the progressive end,
what I need, if I may, is not to have an end,
but a thought.
to have that glass of orange juice,
see the couture of the glass
slimming on my desk and the pale comparison
of a yellow sunny drink against
the thoughtful cherry wood's black scratches and rubbed-off varnish. Free write.

poem

2006-04-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

Actress

I will wince to hear you say, "Should the devil
tempt you to good." Acting is all forward,
the motion of birds in flocks of ten or more;
It stops in its tracks to fall in providence

like Hamlet's sparrow. Because every devil
never leaves its stage, blessed with a forward
spot, and a hovering company sweating more
and more to be the last and kiss Providence

on its painted lips. You're like a lusty devil,
yet you are. Acting is inside the foreword
of a great novel, or how Shakespeare's moor
is first a name, then a skin, then a keen providence

for black men to dance on thrusts free from devil
costumes. I think of Olivier pushing his cart forward,
filled with many tins of shoe polish. The more
dark he winks, they say, the grander performance.

2006-04-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

Oh, to speak to Emily Dickinson for just one minute. I'd tell her about the waves of critics content on disseminating over her dotted i's for the sake of Deconstruction and in search of the virtue lurking in autonomy.

What would the world have been like if Sylvia Plath decided that an adulterous Ted Hughes wasn't the end of the world? Probably a little less stereotypical of poets. I mean, there's a reason Plath is on a pedestal, and it ain't for the writing. She's good, yes, but Larkin is superb. Arnold is magnificent. Hardy was a god. There's a reason 'poet' is stated and Plath pops up. She cornered the market on angst-ridden cathartic shlock that composing poetry today is both pathetic and ironic.

"So you write about daddy hitting you?"

"Are you, like, going to kill yourself now?"

Where's the reward for the tough, who stick out real loss. Poets like Frost, who lost nearly his entire family in two years. Or Yeats, who pined after his love her entire life, Maud Gonne.

Hooray!

2006-03-28T19:11:00.000-08:00

Nothing better exists in this world than the wayward tilt of time and space: the day I've spent in bowling ecstasy, blasting the view.

2006-03-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

Oh God, 24 was awesome.
Met with Robyn. The guy who is (I think) her boyfriend was hovering outside the house when we came back. She lives in a place of plentiful money, gated community, golf cart crossing in the middle of the street. Whoever this guy was, she didn't want to introduce me, instead she just waves me off to my car with this guy goofily looking on. Maybe I read everything wrong from the first moment. Maybe I missed my chance.
I suck. I'm so frustrated because I should be so much more mature than to sneek around and hypothesize happy endings. What I really want to do is throw all my junk out there and see what sticks. I don't enjoy coy, I don't relish being subtle; I have to make something, because, hell, that's the world we live in. I just wish i wasn't so convinced that it would turn out badly. Confidence is a great thing when you have it.
Growing up, I don't think I ever had a mentor figure, no one I could impress that needed to be impressed. Sure, the input and value of friends and parents is all well and good, but when did those people ever have the courage to stand up and tell me when something sucked?
Brian got in to Mt. St. Mary college. He's thinking about the seminary. The man's so knowing about Catholicism and theology that it's almost predetermined. But people don't see that. They see the fact that he's never had a girlfriend, never brought girls over, or any of that garbage. He's too brainy, I believe that. I believe that of the women his age, very few operate at his level. He's not unattractive, so he gets interest fairly quickly (I've seen it); however, the girls are nothing but blonde-tipped vacoules who "love a smart man", but disengage when confronted with his fierce intelligence.
I don't have this excuse. I buy too many books, and wind up reading maybe one in my freetime over the course of a year. I'm prone to video games and the internet. I am so many faults, I don't know where to begin.

Putting this here on blogger, because I know no one on LJ really wants to read it, and I'm proud/ashamed to throw it by the wayside.

Epilogue

2006-03-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

All books 1$ is the greatest sign in the world.

Here's the working preface to a story I'm working on called "Beneath/ Between"

Contrary to what the planet earth believes, this generation did not arrive on the dusty stairway of disaster: that ubiquitous calamity in America's consciousness known as 9/11; instead, this generation is the belt buckle of a thing larger than imagination and older than the Rolling Stones. It is between worlds, between definitions, the generation has been between jobs and economies. Whether forward or backwards, the planet earth waits in silent prayer for us to make our move.

The collapse of the family

2006-02-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

You wanna know something sad?

I assume people have seen the Sheetz gasoline trucks driving around. You know, the big red ones with the advertisement for the new "Schmonster", the ridiculously stacked breakfast sandwhich that acts like a Rwandan genocide on your arteries.

On the back of the damn truck there's a disclaimer in big bold white letters:

"DRIVER DOES NOT CARRY SANDWICHES"

I think we've all seen gas trucks before. The old cylinder on 18 wheels bit. It's the only transporting truck of its kind. That's why there's generally no ads on gas trucks, because people know what the fuck is going on inside that tank.

Apparently not. You have to ask a few things: Is there someone out there who thought there WERE sandwiches in the tank and made such a BIG fuss about it, that Sheetz was forced to apply terms and conditions; is Sheetz PREEMPTING this dumbass from ever asking that question; or is this some tongue-in-cheek moment, whereas I despair when I think how apt and bitingly true that satire is?

2006-02-25T20:40:00.000-08:00

(bongo and acoustic and horns)

Broken arms, I would hold you
Even if I had broken arms.
Can you make a tourniquet for a broken heart? (da da da daaa)
A bad idea? (da da da daaa)
Well I suppose it’s up to me to juxtapose myself. (da da da daaa)

There’s little guys with little guns

(ba bada ba)
Inside our mouths, (ba bada ba) inside our heads,
They make us suffer.

(more bongos and horns)
I’ll stay home, it’s a good thing I think I’m funny. (Latin coffee latte)
Don’t come by, I’ll be making jokes about you.
But then again, (hooooooorn)

you could come in.

We could make fun of all the things we used to yesterday.
I’ve got a five, you’ve got a ten,
That’s fifteen dollars, we could see how long it takes to spend. (I love that line)

(bongo solo with some chimes)
You like games that drive us both insane

(ROCK OUT!) And I roll the dice but that’s just to be nice to you.
Why don’t we try something else for a change?
Hey, I know!
Why don’t I poke out my eyes for you over and over
And over and over again? (acapella)
Get out of my house!
And can I come with you?

‘Cuz where there’s a will

there’s a way We can kill

all the midgets with guns
That we have on our tongues
Just stick out your lips, lean in close, and we’ll kiss them
Goodbye to the midgets with guns.

Goodbye to the midgets with guns Goodbye to the midgets with guns!

------------

Work was ok. Matt went out and brought back blunt to smoke in the back. I was copascetic (sp?) Honestly, wasn't impressed, nothing close to a good buzz barring the accompanying euphoria of initial variation. Looks like I have a lifetime of drinking ahead of me. But at least I can say I smoked pot at work. Suddenly all of those Kevin Smith jokes make sense...

2006-02-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

Emily Dickinson is great poet, but I'm afraid this century of new criticism all of its subsequent rapscallions are transforming her into a puppet.

Exultation is the going
of an inland soul to sea
past the Houses--
past the Headlands--
into deep Eternity.

Bred as we, among the mountains,
can the sailor understand
the divine intoxication,
of a league out from land?
-----
I'm trying to capitalize on potential. Trying to be content is as the same world. But all I ever end up doing is hating the people for not being as skilled as me, and despising those I strive to equal. Either way, I'm too frightened to really explicate myself. One thing published in Apathy and it's the worst I've done in a long time. "Feeder" is their mark of quality? Taking this course (a GRAD course btw) on Dickinson is really about the criticism, and it seems to me what matters most in academics is picking a side. Intention vs. Attention. Which will it be Sean DeFlora? You've played the game of intent and marked motivation cloaked by obscurity, can we now say that you are ready to play for attention?

------

I finished a quick draft of a sonnet. The first stanza is obscenely formal. It begins iambic, but short (the first line) then the rest of the stanza is oversaturated with spondees to juxtapose the first line. The lines shoot 8 6 8 8 and coincidentally the rhyme scheme follows suit A B A A. Now the last line is long, to close out the stanza. However, my problem is that it closes on a divthong so as to prolong the lyricism into the next stanza.

With her, a dozen lids to sputter--

eyes, juicy white, well-scooped

From egg's whites, still hold the flutter

of Heartstrings unattached to piano wire.

Robyn liked it, which surprised me and pleased me.

For all this, take their distances as choice,
Fine of love lives as proved, where mutes find voice.

I like the last line's inversion/ spondee sequence and then moves into iambic pentameter (if you choose to unstress "find", either that or double stress at the end works to close the rhyme). Eh, what can you do. It reminds me (for some reason) of a Yeats couplet:

"But as for him who ponders well
my rhymes more than their rhyming tell

of the dim wisdoms old and deep
that God gives unto man in sleep."

and sonnet 129

"All this the world well knows, yet none know well
to shun the Heaven that leads men to this Hell."

And now to close with a moribund piece of work called "Cancer Ward"

Paper, grass, coiling in pastel rings
hunts the knuckle like a duck,
with call, fooling, with bullet brings
hot end to physical luck.

It burns to hap to putter the open
mouth a cigar has, to cloud
lungs with cancer, smudging the organ
and smearing the blistering shroud

which once were bed sheets;
and now the nurses scrub alcohol
to clear the soot that leaks
from every por. We wince once to Fall

then grasp ledges to crawl
brick to brick to brick to brick.

2006-02-14T18:34:00.000-08:00

"he an i are both wiccan.. i am sronger than he is in my work.. because i have a respect for people and things and do stupid shit with spells (even if you do not believe just hear me out) so he has been trying to contact my friend sarah who is also strong in magic.. but she has been stand offish.. so who does he go to next for power... then again this could be me on a little pwer trip..."

quackier than Cat Stevens at the Apollo.

2006-02-09T00:09:00.000-08:00

GUTTERMOUTH
"Can I Borrow Some Ambition?"

well i'm starving for attention
and i'm looking for perfection
and my only opposition
is my lack of motivation
but i'm looking for an in
but i'm pissin' in the wind
and if i had a towel
man i'm sure i'd throw it in
i'm fishing for a valid excuse
and when i think of one
i will put it to good use
am i a freight train or am i just the caboose
too much time tied to the rails

fuck no
gotta find a reason to go
fuck no
never have nothing to show
fuck no
gotta find a reason to go
fuck nonever have nothing to show [x2]can i borrow some ambitionor a box of ammunitionman i need a new directionlike a positive regressioni could use a new excuseneed an ace, but drew a duecei will do the world a favorand i'll never reproducei'm fishing for a valid excuseand when i think of onei will put it to good useam i a freight train or am i just the caboosetoo much time tied to the railsfuck nogotta find a reason to gofuck nonever have nothing to showfuck nogotta find a reason to gofuck nonever have nothing to show [x2]fuck nogotta find a reason to gofuck nonever have nothing to showfuck nogotta find a reason to gofuck nonever have nothing to show [x3]well i'm starving for attentionand i'm looking for perfectionnow my only oppositionis my lack of motivationi'm looking for an inbut i'm pissin' in the wind

Crybabies...

2006-02-08T03:18:00.000-08:00

I waaaas going to post this in the comments of LJ Mavirik's post, but I may have pushed the rhetorical dial into 11; kicked the speechification (fancy word, made-up of course) from a Jungian depth so dank I found myself in need of galoshes in the description; found my homework too boring. The situation is thus: cartoon hits the funny pages. Framed within the second-rate drawing is a bearded Muhammed looking man with a bomb for a hat. Not a true-life bomb, a Bomberman bomb, a Tom and Jerry explosive, the orb with the fuse wanting so bad to be phallic. In other words, BOMB. Muslims are offended. Flags are burned. Death is sentenced on Western Devils. Baklava is baked and Pop-Tarts are tossed into the gutters. You know the deal. Outrage scuffs the news show's tickers like annoying 3rd graders walking back from recess, but this time the Janitor isn't calmly wiping clean the linoleum, no, this time Bob Janitor is holding the classroom hostage with his dungy soap water. That's why I'm here. To ask a very probing and undeniable question...
Don't these people think just a little too highly of themselves?
Come on. Two of the most popular cartoons of all time feature Jesus in a supporting role. A SUPPORTING ROLE. The man dies on a cross and he can't even get a whole comic strip to himself, let alone headline a television program. Muslims, take it from me: there's no such thing as bad press.
(And another thing, where the hell are these people who complain about comic strips. Who's it gonna offend? Your kid? Your kid is fucking stupid, if he was even seen reading anything ON HIS OWN, I'd be shocked! The THOUGHT that your dumbass child might one day crack open the Washington Post (not even debating the point that your kid should NEVER get up before you), peruse the business section and stumble upon a sexual euphamism in the daily Dilbert strip is fantastical. Let's get this straight: your kid READ something. Maybe he'll write someday too. But it'll probably be some lame rap music.
NBC (I think it is) has a new series starting about an Episcopal priest who's addicted to pills, his one son is gay, his wife is an alcoholic, his sister is sleeping with the bishop, his other son deals drugs, his dioceses is being extorted, and the man sees Jesus in his car. The show is written to skewer religion by a man who claims to be "spiritual, not religious" and that we should all respect his point of view.
They are the same people who, nearly 80 years ago, labeled Graham Greene a "Catholic" writer. Yes, he was a Catholic and some of his characters were Catholic. Oooookay. Writing a poem about firefighters doesn't make Walt Whitman a firefighter does it? Greene's characters fuck up and feel guilty afterwards. Someone called that Catholic and not human.
The point I'm getting to is the patronization of minorities by larger power-holding structures, because when you're dealing with any "askew" group, then an inch becomes a mile. The implied message, however, reeks of inequality. Pop Quiz: what was the biggest source for mainstream Christian focus in the past few years? It was Mel Gibson. Why Mel? Because suddenly it was a revelation that there's money to be made off those Jesus folks. Suddenly, I was an "audience" Hollywood had lost; I was a "demographic" for certain television programs; even my "readership" was analyzed to figure out just how "The Da Vinci Code" sells.
Truly religious people write for other religious people
Fuck the white man's burden. It's about racial prejudices being there because all of these organizations live to harp on WHAT makes people ethnic instead of deciding WHY the fuck it even matters.

2006-02-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

Lately Ive heard this song, you see,And it will not let me be.Its a measure or two with a hell of a grooveBut a lot of simplicity.Its the kind of a song you want to write for your momIts the kind of a song that makes you hum for a whileIts the kind of a song thats kind of stupid and dumb. Just another tarnished diamond for the pile.And here I am, smashing square pegs into round holes.Here I am, weakening the whole.Square pegs, well knock all their blocks off this timeWith a hell of a melody rhyme,Always keeping in mind that ImAs square as they come, well thats fine.Ill spend all my money and timeSpinning wheels on an incline.Staying inside has got me doubting my mindAnd doing battle with phantoms again.In the form of some notes,I think a musical ghostIs digging dead melodies from my head.I should be out in the sun, I should be having some fun.I should be drinking some beer, I should be reading somewhere.I should be seeing my wife instead of wasting my nightsAnd from all that I hear I should be getting my hair cutBut here I am, with 53 chords and broken horn lines.But here I am, losing my mind.Square pegs, well knock all their blocks off this timeWith a hell of a melody rhyme,Always keeping in mind that ImAs square as they come, well thats fine.Ill spend all my money and timeSpinning wheels on an incline.

Hello

2006-01-28T19:37:00.000-08:00

For those wondering, the lilac can be a metaphor (the lilac was her devotion)
or it can be metonymous with the deluge of celebratory blooms
consecrating a performance ground; either way, what one knows is fact,
is its frame: particularly I grasp the stalk of the lilac, which is dry pine

in texture; next, the blossoms do not collect on the top, but instead sprout like arms from the central line; she looks like a tattered coat on a stick when in full regalia. And that, in itself, is a metaphor for the lilac and the writer, because it is the form we all aspire to; it is so dynamic. A rose is a rose is a rose only when it stands up. A lilac is a patchwork of petals, some groaning in confusion and dry madness, others bombastically tip the balance. But whatever the appearance is, you can be assured that each flower creates its own work in due to the attachment to the central process of the plant.

I like that "groaning in confusion"

2006-01-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

I would run a real political blog,
had I the patience
to wade past the truncheons
of Beltway duplicitousness
on a daily basis.

Chronicals of the Lonely: Shooting Star
by Tearful Joy
3rd instalment. rated for implied suicide.
a bridge, rain, and a shooting star
will be found within.
The title is a road sign
spraypainted dayglo orange;
STAY OUT, it says.

This is from a www.fictionpress.com--
a "nice" people literary circle
molded with tones like cowbells
striking rotted wood.

"Butterfly suplex" is a wonderous
word-- geekdom in prickly
ecstacy. The drunks are at it again,
like loose mustangs in the suburbs,
cacophinous mangy manes
popping with blisters of booze.

2006-01-18T18:40:00.000-08:00

An Obscure Literary Term and Literary Theory That Sounds Like Coughing

choka

when you write ten words really fast, what do the words mean if you just slathered them on the page?

synechdoche, metampsychosis, Bartelby, distraut, disparaging, pirate, discovering the kitchen sink, and scam spam lam tam ma'am ram the damn span of things.

I read once that for every 100 bad things, we get 1 good thing. People who are exempt to this rule are greedy.

I hate poems that talk about "you".

I hate poems that talk about "me".

I hate poems that talk about "you" and "me" s as if it was pencil and octopus. Baseball and bat. Fish and basketball. Hat and dinosaur.

Specificity. Spe-ci-fic-it-eeee.

"If you're reading this, thank a teacher; if your (sic) reading it in English, thank an American soldier." Huh? Relying too much on alcohol and irony. Is that really an irony though? It's more like a didactic manner, a double mirror if you would. Spanish is quickly becoming our language. Thank you AMERICAN soldier?

Borders are fences, but they make something of whatever's in between, become sparkling like a new watch.

From the bending furs of grass,
the corridors of space and sky
run vertical, halting only as our
own desire wanes.

Lampposts are matchsticks
are struck like accordian chords,
breathing out fuming light
like a bad wedding band

Loudoun street melts into houses
as easily pop market stands stood
bolting tall and strapping, cash
flickers from pocket to pocket

crumbling into a distant thunder.

So, a man is an editor by trade when he meets his wife, a writer. She will be writing her first book. He has suspicions that the work is about him, and he sneaks to reading chapters, distraut over the astounding secrets he's encountering. But is the work a fiction or biography? She can't decide as much as he can't decide how far to trust her. He's been expected to publish this book, can a man overcome his paranoia and devote himself at the risk of endorsing his own critique? The story is about him putting together her story as the details become more and more immediately familiar. Will the book lap itself?

Marble and Liam are old friends; however, Liam is despairing, falling into hard times. He then hatches a plan to kidnap a rich girl. Her brother is in on the scam, but Liam includes him as one of the victims. Marble is secretly devoted to the girl. The two manage to hold the pair of entitled youngsters. Marble is no better, finding his ex-girlfriend has killed herself, and his ties to that family deepened, but for his own purposes. Sub plot includes Marble's father, Richard, whose story represents intertextually, the plot of Richard II, because he was a man ousted from his poor relationship to Marble's mother and his life attempting to reconcile his lost condition. per example, Richard II tries to create his identity without the crown, as a man lacking...Richard's central metamorphoses is his reestablishment of trust in the opposite sex. I'd like to think that this whole story would center around the difficulties we face when trying out who we can trust and why, but the action is chaotic, so what stable thing can stand for finality. Trusting someone is not about being positive, it's being certain of their condition. Marble has trouble finding stable people.

Bacon, shamma lamma ding don. The exciting adventures of e pluribus un"betch"um.

2006-01-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna write, now, on the passing of an incident
between two men who walked a same road
and a different path. Assume neither innocent
before the story, or else you'll spoil the goal.

And to say again, it was a road shared of time
beyond place, within that dome of sky
commonly Death called; the banging toll of time
sounds into all ears, and the dust will fly

into pedestrian craws. It's fears, we say,
that impress the dirt after life.
Two men walked on a narrow lonely way
away from life, but dust in grief,

dust in persons, one man to declare to another,
Have you seen any great heroes here?
I passed last night, and I been walking further
looking for an Abraham or even a Hector.

No one's here, no giants, you, actually,
are the first I've seen since my steps
first started from the woods behind me.
The other man was a bundle of strips

of cloth, like dressed on a twig. I've written
a few songs, he said, they may be
to your liking. And he sang about forgotten
lullabies and dreamy shades free

as flying geese, black pepper ground
against a milky cobalt sky. Wonders
of immortals, dashed bravey sound
with force and strength. Blunders

of ships and sky sailing rapturous
ovals, burning in capital. The walker
man said, you're true, the melodies
are good, but the lyrics are taller

than ever.

----save---

Goth and Liberty

2005-12-28T21:17:00.000-08:00

"Believe It"

it could happen to you,
a defect from the
wasted outskirts of los angeles
with a crumpled-up pass for the RTD
and no authority or trajectory
on the brink of insanity
you'd better believe it
because it's written all over your face
just a neighborhood reject,
out of step and out of place
you'd better believe it
would you ever have thought
persistence could prevail
against the almost
unbearable weight of the system?
with nothing better to do,
and no one else who you can look up to
you'd better believe it
because it's written all over your face
a political defect,
out of step and out of place
you'd better believe it
and the future is bright
when ideas run astray
so turn out the light,
a punk can't have a say
sometimes desire is all that's there
who said life was fair?

So...depressing people...who needs them? I remember this one girl from high school-- she was Russian or something and filthy rich-- and I noticed one day that she was drawing something. I said, "Hey, Xenia, whatcha draw'n'?" Then she said it was a zebra. But it looked like a regular colored in horse. I said, "don't zebras have stripes?" and she turns to me all enigmatically like she was a fortune teller at the fair and says, with a straight face, "Sean, you know how people have good days and bad days? and that's a lot how zebras have black stripes and white stripes? well...my zebra's all black."

So you're zebra's all black all the time, huh?

Then you don't get to call it a zebra anymore, okay? The world gets it that you're sad and you're confused as to how to properly express the dissatisfaction, but don't count out that little thing called discretion. You see, people in the world, a small portion, believe that everyone should ultimately be able to do what they want. "The Party of Principle." As long as no one gets hurt, but that only furthers the advantages for stupid people and expands the realm of excuses for the socially retarded. Little Miss Black Zebra will paint a picture, write a poem, tattoo herself with an indecipherable blend of Egyptian and Celtic symbols, slice, dice, chop, and flay her skin because someone told her to "be yourself." Fuck that-- I don't like the idea of a nation of "yourselves"; we need a unified culture and a nationally held standard on things which will be allowed to enter into the market of thought and creativity. No more bullshit about Avril Lavigne and Evanescence having artistic merit. It's pathetic how people with ACTUAL talent are fine just surviving in the margins, as if limited exposure is somehow a badge for the innovative. I blame Ayn Rand for converting so many jellie-minded-slack-tooth'd-wig-rattlers to the modicum of "Objectivism". One would hope that with a philosophy grounded in absolutes, then there would be no need for a rant in this space, but lo and behold the grand inversion of taste. Because, frankly, if everything is concrete and objective, then things produced need no reckoning for creative value; after all, "creativity" is just an oppressive tool of subjectivity. Far better for a culture to have an onverabundance of creation shine like 99 cent tinsel on a banister than to search for REAL gems, apparently.

People say they listen to "everything" and in their case I am sorry. Sorry for these people too frightened to admit that there is bad music. Universally. B A D. And it's called RAP music and GOTH music and EMO music and "PUNK" music and "EASY LISTENING" and ROCK and METAL and DANCE and even motherfucking POLKA. The radio isn't a measuring of success, it's a tool for bandwidth, the simple access point, and unfortunately, the gateway has been deemed the pedigree. So a song plays on the radio. Big fucking whoop. Why the hell do I have to know the lyrics to bullshit song from a bullshit band called Maroon 5? Are they the next anything? No. Fuck them and the 20 million recording contract they rode in on. Ashlee Simpson, Britney Spears, and Avril Lavigne should all be lined up and stabbed through the eye with a single stick to save the world the time of having to find three sticks sharp enough.

I can't marry this idea with this idea. Christianity doesn't fit with Atheism. You know why? You try to marry two ideas without ever thinking that one of them might be less developed, weaker, or even flat-out wrong! So fucking ditch the objectivist crap and elect discrimination when you read instead of adopting the vacuous stare of muddled empirical thought.

SO in conclusion, she's a political reject, that zebra is a fucking horse, and you're not a dazzling snowflake, you're not the all-dancing all-singing crap of the world, you are not the dogma of a mediocre Brad Pitt movie, and you sure as hell are not the thing you create.

Everyone has an opinion

But not all opinions are equal.

On Education

2005-12-23T20:34:00.000-08:00

Education in this country is flawed.

It is flawed because it is too subjective
Subjective learning rarely produces ambition besides apathy.
Apathy is dangerously contagious.
Rigid structure cuts out apathy for favor of embarassment.
Students can fail.
Students fail because they cannot read.
The language is the key to education.
Before teaching anything else, we must teach a child not how to read, but to.
Through literacy, we develop gateways to other regions of thought.
A man well-schooled in English, can understand Hawking as well as he understands Henry James.
How does one teach to read then?
Early youths, first must have their minds conditioned through recitation and memorization.
The faculty modern society has lost is memory.
Technology frees us to forget.
Rudimentary learning then, traps us in thought, culturing our behavior with a distinguished contamination of ideas.
Modern school if focused on cycle, when it really should concentrate on retaining words and language in a mind.
Asking a student to recite, for example, a passage from "Phaedo" teaches several faculties: A) the student learns, through comprehension, the philosophy of master antiquity; B) He learns to deeply respect discourse and rhetoric from his comprehension; and C) finally, he learns the value of academic image.
Point C, should be elaborated upon; the education is public, as Americans we have understood this; however, that should extend so that the student's progress is not private.
I hold that the reason for apathy, is its allowance into a life.
Apathy is disdained in a social group for pragmatic reasons-- even the most basic organism recognizes an unflattering appendage.
Condition the student then, to learn shame in stupidity.
Failure to produce, cruelly even, MUST be accompanied by a punishment.
Since career paths matter little to the unproductive, and parents cannot be trusted to enforce a school's humor, the task then falls to peers.
We know, thanks to modern sociology, how influential a youth's peers can be, and so it only stands to reason that peer pressure be acclimated to produce for the school.
Some would say this is cruel and psychological punishment, but to them I say, is Shame any crueller a badge on a young mind than a blatant lie and a bastard certificate of 'intelligence'? I believe false aggrandizement is far more harmful than a day's worth of hurt feelings.

We should also keep in mind that unlike the condition of their education, a youth is free at any time to apply himself and remedy the shame he feels; it, in effect, allows power to the youth over their status as opposed to imposing a gratuitous social condition and requirement.

So what shall we teach... For next time. :)

Gloating in Tenacious D Key

2005-12-21T21:50:00.000-08:00

71229 ENGL 302 H19 Advanced Composition Fairfax A- 3.000

71321 ENGL 336 001 Shakespeare/Trag & Rom Fairfax A- 3.000

71334 ENGL 396 002 Intro: Creative Writing Fairfax A 3.000

71366 ENGL 447 001 American Drama 20th Cent Fairfax A 3.000

71374 ENGL 474 002 Milton Fairfax A- 3.000

71382 ENGL 498 001 Internship: Spec Topics Fairfax A 3.000
----------

Wow. I've never actually made it to a Dean's List before.

Oh my god, I did it. I fucking did it. Kage! Come here, I want you!
What what? dude, I'm sleeping.
Oh my god I fucking did it.
Did what?
The most powerful tool in singing technology since yodeling dude. Inward singing, check it. Rock singers are only rocking you half the time! The other time they're-- they're breathing...in! But not any more baby! Ha HA! Not with inward singing check it out

"And then I start some lyrics
/and you can't believe I'm singing,
and I'm never fucking stopping,
/and I'm always fucking singing.
And now you know that I will never,
/stop the fucking singing,
I'm like a fucking one man band!
/I'm like a fucking one man baaaaand!

And I can sing like that all fucking night.
Yeah but it wasn't really nonstop, there was a slight pause
Ah, shut up! Fuck you. And you know it sounds even better when fucking singing in! Shut up-- fuck you! You fucking dick! Always naysaying! Everything I create! You piece of shit! You create something like "inward singing!" You fucking sit on your tower...and nap...what's funny? You fucking bitch! Fucking...Cockaius!!!! (wd?)

You're fired from the band.
Uh...that won't be necessary...
Why's that?
I quit.

"Last week, Kyle quit the band...
but now we're back together. Uh!"

Be Still" Poem and Story

2005-12-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

Today's selection for all you little internet reading elfs (who, let's face it, are as fictional as Santa Claus)is a reworking of an old poem and a beginning to a grand story. I wrote a monologue for Thomas a couple days ago, set a decade later. I want to trace how resolve for survival can pervert itself into a negative prejudice. It's all a flashback. For those who want to know how the flashback ends, Thomas escapes, but he loses his fingers to frostbite. For some reason or another, I tend to use the contraptions to collect my thoughts rather than standard handwriting. It worries me because I feel that I cannot think and retain ideas unless I'm at a computer; I would say technology frees us to forget what could matter. Photographs, blogging, all of this shouldn't serve as a reference to a person's particular state of mind because once the thing is written or copied, the person goes on obvlivious. People do not learn from these things. People are narcissistic and there's a small point of pleasure in people like myself who are pleased with the appearance of our words on a web page. Enough of that.

Be Still Be Still

“…your body is pollen; your mind is pollen; your voice is pollen. The trail is beautiful. Be still.”

Though the storm heaves
Her drum; the chill
Is never severe.
Be still; be still

As a loud light's bending
Signals harsh climax;
The end's never ending.
Be still; be still.

Where is she? oh, where is she?
I heard her say the sigh,
The lady's never free.
Be still; be still.

As home hollows its hall
The road goes back
never at all.
Be still; be still

2005-12-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

Thomas lifted a finger. His single finger was a rosy pink against the blank expression of snow on the windshield. It looked like a sliver of life in a page run without any marks. Snow was the color of obvlivion. Thomas touched the finger to his stinging forehead and brought it back to its foreground. The digit was red, darker red, like a brick burned in a fire. He bent his finger at the mid-knuckle to prove to himself he wasn't dead. It may have been a flicker of life, but it was enough.

Thomas' car lay at random at the clear indent of the creek. The cascading snow fall, built up, made the altitude and the ten foot drop appear like a casual dip. Now a wind had filled the crease of earth-- what's that? oh yea, "nature abhors a vacuum, Thomas thought, cold air pouring into his lungs.

He tried the door, but in the fall, the mass of snow left only one mark, and that was his entry point, which as the hour turned dark, began to cover itself up like a monstrous white snake gorging on a rat. He pushed the door. He lunged at it, screamed, cursed, kicked, whined, he even scratched at the automatic buttons controlling the windows. Nothing worked. Everything was shut solid like a can of pickled beets.

Looking out through the windows, Thomas thought it an enormous roll of paper covering the car. He turned the key and the car sputtered, gave a death rattle, and escaped itself resigning to its unconscious sublime. It was never coming back, Thomas was certain of that. He imagined floating in his car and all around him were clouds, brazen and midday, waiting for the sun to dip so that they might travel on to another part of the world. The freedom of flight. Thomas thought of no better recourse than dream.

He switched off the interior light. There was not even sound afterwards. No air breezed by him, and all he could see was what he couldn't; the car was buried so deep from light and breath. His breaths were unsteady, unrhythmic and alarming, aching his throat with each gasp. Too alarming, in fact, that Thomas was not sure they would continue past sleep. He could not wait.

With difficulty he found the buckle still holding him in place and released it. A click and a zip was hear as Thomas felt the buckle's icy steel in his palm. Gripping the buckle piece tight in his fist, the metal prong jutting outward between the knuckles, Thomas faced the window. The first punch his hand so much that he wrapped the belt thrice deep round his fist, making sure the buckle was still prominent. He jabbed because of his position. Jab after jab did nothing else but scratch the glass.

He then had an idea. Laying himself horizontally across the driver's and passenger's seats, Thomas pressed the buckle against the glass with one foot, the plastic under his shoe and the buckle sticking out. He pulled back his leg and shot it forward kicked at the metal with ferocity. Then a crack. Then another and another, the cracks tracing a more and more elaborate picture with each strike before the window completely came apart, and a micro avalance filled the driver's seat.

The snow was heavy enough that it wouldn't crumble if hollowed. The frost was bitterly cold, numbing his fingers with one touch. He had no gloves, he had lost every pair he had ever owned. Regretting his lack of protection, Thomas shot his hands into the surrounding snow and began to savagely claw.

Poet

2005-12-18T08:11:00.000-08:00

Poetry today resides on the outskirts of action; the implausible and overly safe distance from existance. The modern poet tells no story except exhalts their own bravery in composition. The intrinsic achievements are worth nothing, in my opinion, if they do not hold water against a greater narrative i.e. the winding theme. Bond in poetry, as in Shakespeare, works to motivate characters. Tell me, what bond appears as Sylvia Plath bemoans her conditions. What story does she tell but her own and is that the measure of a poet? to have a conditional life suitable for autobiography. Some of us are not so lucky as to be born bi-polar and so we go through life with words like "my heart" and "my pain" inside small unopenable briefcases. Where they belong I might add. First, the reader must be made aware of the stresses of the character-- what good is it to have pain demark a being when the more interesting story is the origin of the so-called "stain of pain". I would sometimes spend my time lambasting the cruel diatribes and concrete abstractness which has haunted so much poetry over the years. By concrete abstractness, I mean the tendency for an artist to attempt to explain himself in an image by using an image which is more nonsensical than the feeling itself. John Amen is a practitioner of this avant garde, and more widely abstract poetry. Not quite on the level of Sitwell, Amen will sit down in front of you with a guitar, sing a song, then elect to tell you how he feels like "a stampede of horses running on barbed wire". Certainly the image is evocative, but evocation is something like seeing a bright blue square painted on a canvas at MoMA: The mind accepts the hue and enjoys it, but cannot comprehend why a blue square should have merit to be inside a museum. Likewise with the poem. That is why I push for narrative. For further concreteness in poetry. For Realism is the gateway to great poetry; the local color, the actual people will not be denied. Work today bears the weight of the presence of the poet, perhaps too greatly a weight, that each word is too intentional, too predicted. What we need is abscence from poetry and the poet. To be my ideal poet, I need form like a chocolate batter needs a baking pan and cookie cutters. Set in the oven and back away. The complete formation is out of the poet's hands, their only luxury and leisure now is an overhearing on the audible life of a lyric.

2005-12-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

abridged edition An abbreviated or condensed version of a work. Abridgement may be done in order to save space or to cut out passages which are thought to be unsuitable for some sections of the reading public. School editions of Shakespeare were often abridged (and still are occasionally)lest the sensibilities of adolescents be offended.

That is all.

2005-12-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

Decrepit
Spoiled
Tragic

All of the things I've had to put up with from the opposite sex because somehow I was born with a tender effeminacy; so preclusive to my being that activities aren't worth action if women are not involved. Let me make this clear. No more hiding around in corners. Time to come clean with what I feel.

Women are loathsome creatures. They are arrogant whiny inspipid human beings. Their guts are nothing but piles of humor vitreous, neverending, cold, dank, impersonal, and horrifying. I have never met a woman who had the capacity to reach the grand apexes a man could. They are, in effect, minimal things which deserve subjection. I will no longer impede my own self, my own potential, to the charms of some...bitch! The world is a cruel and hierarchical nature; the egalitarianism women strive for only diminishes the strength of the world. They can call me bitter and unloved, any self loathing is gone for the sake of projection. If to the pure, all things are pure, and I have never seen a pure woman, then it should only follow that I extricate myself from them-- ignorant beasts! Rape would be a reward to the shallowest woman because it scapes them into the victim status they so lovingly adorn through generations. I don't feel sympathy for a captured heroine in a story because I know them to be victims always in real life. Women serve no other purpose than to further the aspirations of their companionate male. Instead they spoil minds. They wreck havoc on the lesser mind, Rap Culture idolizes and over values the pursuit of women, as if that was anything else except a nihilistic venture. Wittgenstein tells us to look into the signs of things, to learn the word from the perception. When I see women, now, all I see are degenerate organisms preying on lust, their lascivious laps accepting all breed of heroes, only to cut the hair, castrate the epitome and reduce the ideal to their own subjection.

That was a character from my story, about a young boy who tries to castrate himself. It's based loosely on the Hemingway short story, "Kilimanjaro" I think is the name.

I don't know why Celia still bothers me. It's been monthes. Maybe it's the fact that I was completely cut off for lack of any decent rejection. It fucking bothers me and I do not know why. She was nothing but a rude cunt, and yet I feel like I have some matter at fault. It is not for want of logic, I have been rejected enough to understand the myriad of equations which, for one point or another, do not include me; however, it would be comforting to know about something I could improve upon.

Taming the Heart

I'll become an ascetic.
I will starve myself and cut
my body off from the world
of luxury and desire where
I have fattened up as at the teat
of some indulgent monster.
My argument is in tatters,
and, I can not help but feel,
and so is my heart. Oh my.
It has been a while since
I've bandied that phrase
about the page. My heart.
The word written screams its origin,
the strings of fluid connecting
to the screen from my chest
seem fresh, wounded, unafraid of honesty.
I worry so much about cliche,
it is no wonder I have never spoken
about my heart. Each time, it insists
at the back of my throat
like its very own enigmatic heart beat;
the guts rushing forward, tumulting
and turning the basis of my organs,
inverting everything, ensuring
chaotic divide until my spleen rubs my lungs,
my pancreas pumps our blood,
my fingers point out of my skull,
and my heart pulses behind my eyes,
thickening the brine with sour dye.
My heart. Out, then in again. Polishing
the bone and unloading Past
like a New World frigate.
It grows fat on the outside.
I wonder if it will ever
fit back inside the cage.

Forged

2005-12-11T21:11:00.000-08:00

Iron. Iron in the gun's barrel, loaded with the atoms;
the bullet was always a concoction of iron and dust--
dust is the real building block of the universe--
ashes to ashes is like rust blossoming on rust
and everything decays. Sad. Pity. The world turns,
full of iron. People wear iron in their mouths,
nasal pouches, tongues, and ears. clits
and dicks now come with iron, bits
of metal in temples and chests. It wasn't long
ago that there was less iron in a frame
than in the earth. And from the earth, iron,
carried like infants, still yet valuable,
by steel men made of steel and from steel.
The world reads like a periodic table,
and all the things you thought you knew
existed, you wish you had forgotten;
how the iron ripped from boulders,
trucked to suburban worlds
and risen to urban lands would someday
become an ironic bullet.

2005-12-05T00:11:00.000-08:00

I am not that photo album sticker-laced
from college days; that griefless zombie
gripping heinekens like philosopher stones,
rolling over, tasting light-- touch taste.

It raised my brain, taught the flexing tree
of coiled nerved to muscle-move bones,
taught how paws scrapped, taught how tigers paced
as fierce intelligenc in the capital city.

What a Word Can Be

2005-10-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

Wordplay

Thuh word is not the word. It never is.
Thuh word (,) is the lips that cage the tongue.

Thuh word starts here, climbs there, and exits here.
God spoke thuh word, and everything was words.

Words are like a smile in a sandstorm,
what you have is grit in your teeth. My arm

is like a word. It bends when I tell it,
and when I do not, it bends anyway.

The words are all blanks-- all sound and fury
that spit in rich people's soups to make taste.

Some words have ranks like the military:
Thuh F-Word, thuh S-Word, thuh C-word…

Thuh word Word comes from Greek, meaning Logos.
Plato had a plucked chicken chucked at him,

Over his fence, because of the Man word.
Swordplay is wordplay, with more viciousness.

2005-09-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

What do you want from me, she said,

he only looked past her into the brush

beyond it the wide open cobalt sky.

What do you want, she said tapping

her annoying and painted fingernail

like a metronome. She was tapping

it against my palm, reading it, waiting

for a signal or a sign of my compliance,

surrender. Outside, I was watching,

a gray squirrel come up to pick at

our charitable bird feeder; he was hung

upside down, clinging to the top, so that

he might not fall and snap his neck.

With a deft paw, he snuck kernels

from the feeder, he looked like

our son, when he cannot sleep

and is anxious of hulking monsters

underneath his bed. The squirrel

fed himself and then a blue jay

flew in furiously, combatting

the squirrel's tail and bludgeoning

him with the wings. Confusion

rapped the squirrel and he fell.

He fell into the grass with a

plop. The blue jay, not satisfied

dove down, batting him a little more,

then plucked the eyes, feeding himself

from the body of the quivering

squirrel. She said, she wanted to know

what it is I wanted from her. I told her,

I don't want you to eat my eyes.

Please Hold Little Hands

2005-09-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

The best time to swim is Texas dusk,
Because that fatherly sun has curved
heat into recline, and you couldn’t ask
For cooler depths of water to ruin
With your otter-like body. Quiver

Went the ripples from that delightful
Collision of liquid and skin. Naked
Arms, elbows, fingers, thighs, a full
Moon surprised the tough Texas dusk.
I am eager to bite that leather hanging

From your jeans, on the lawn chair
Outside of the water. False light
Makes our pieces underneath appear
Smaller, like coming from children
With little fingers, little hands

Pointing at us, saying ridiculous
Things; meaningless things sinking
Like stones to the floor below us
And we dive higher into Texas
Dusk flapping little hands, wet wings.

He Cuts His Hair

2005-09-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

The seat and chair are immobile.
What moves, really moves, comes
down like a Doric column, to tile,
and into a tin-cup base fettered
with human hair.

An old Oriental man, pocket jammed
full of scissors, shavers, and combs,
wants to feel my hair. The tactile
grain and weight of hair is his
education, learning

to cut human hair, is to touch human
hair. A smock like a dentist owns
for those X-Ray days is draped while
water blasts my nostril and lower lip,
that clean scent

water has, that ability to smell fresh
and only fresh; and his fingers comb
my hair, pinching the bits into piles
like tall hay, and then the first cut...
But not the last.

Foreshadowing.

2005-09-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

The creatures that prosper in my knuckles
are wailing for another, another slick
hot moist poem to jam in their maws, thick
with slime and love. I guess what troubles:
I am hers. Mongols draughted the wailng juice
from their horses' pulsing throats; or like
a rising sun holds cloudy blobs to drench
in frantic color, what Juliet could call envious,
and Romeo called his death.

The Nude Way Of Entering a Room

2005-09-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

The nude under the towel, erect
and drawing the room's thoughts,
can think poetry is a nicer way
to live and love than

anything she could ever expect
to learn from school; it clots
the mouth and clouds her nude way
of saying the nicer

things in life. Like legs dulcet,
in tone and silky; no high spots
of poetry can fix her way
of doing things

the nude way.

2005-08-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

I wasn't there when that guy told me
I could build a house from
wine corks
and live in fragrance and velvet
at my headboard and doorbell.

Sometimes I am missing the obvious
specialties like the reach-
around after sex and smoking my cigarette
too soon...too soon.
This guy I know is an excellent spooner.

Or maybe my socks are too tall
to wear to the beach
in leather velcro sandals and Hawaii
on my shorts. I think I know to swim,
at least, to one edge of the planet.

Mom wants to see my new apartment,
nestled with its reasonable tenants,
because she doesn't hear me--
she's getting deaf so late in life
that she begs to see me forever.

These things are model-sized life,
exact die-cast replicas
like the Deathstar in Star Wars--
The daintiest of exit signs painted
to make leaving a breeze.

2005-08-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

Right now, he thought,
right now she sees me.
When she crosses her legs,
then swishes
her heel to dangle
over her kneecap,
it makes the heart,
or something pulmonary,
flutter slightly.

new poem

2005-07-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

A Preface Before You Read These "Poems"
Read this with spit and gravel in your eyes-

it helps the fascination.

They're pulled from gasping wounds and the

cuts you find on ridiculous youth.

Neutered. My poems here are all neutered,

fancy them, humping in the street.

I see his stuff as gluttony, as sloth,

adultery,vile mounds of sweating bestiality.

I am self-loathing,

love them if you wish

like children, or better yet,

dying puppies.

Your Parodies SUCK

2005-06-27T21:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've had it. Leonard, you're fired. I've had a good deal of patience for your unefficable work, but today is the last straw. I cannot believe you just suggested the next sketch be about pop sensation "Britney Beers". She drinks beer? "Angelina Jolly"? "Jenny McArthur"? That type of quality is inexusable. Leonard, your parodies suck.

We are a state of the art, cutting edge topical sketch quartet; we are inner city Baltimore all the way! The residents of our little slice of urban heaven need sketches ripped from the headlines. Like Ted here. He wrote a damn fine sketch about a, get this, a molestation trial featuring "Micheal Wackson". See, the name is integral. Your lame "Tom Cruisemissile" is no match for Ted's "Dennis Quaalude", or that matter, his "Bill Pull-edpork-man".

You had promise when you first started here. We had just lost Randy when he moved to Northern Virginia with his girlfriend, and we needed a new kazoo player. You wowed me at the audition, but I should've seen this coming when you proposed that god-awful "Paris Richton". It wasn't funny, but we all thought you were getting your sea legs. How wrong we were.

I remember the greats of our business, the Molly Walkers and the Steven McCapsgees. You could give you any celebrity and they'd have a bonafide parody for you in minutes. One time, Steven, I said, do you have anything for Brad Pitt? He looked at me and said, I'll never forget this, "Bad Pitt McGee". Of course, his gimmick was to throw a "McGee" at the end, but it wasn't his shortcut in the business, it was his seal of approval. And Molly, whooo she could give you a name like you'd think it was real, "Stat Cevens" and "Gel Mibson" not to mention "Gteve Suttenberg".

I'll need the t-shirt back too. We're no longer "The Four Strained Piece", another classic. Come back when you've made a t-shirt. And take your sucky parodies with you!

A Blog, A Diary. a Legacy

2005-06-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

"A Blog on the Experience of Writing a Blog about What it is Like to Write a Blog about the Experiences of Writing a Blog."

The first sentence took a while to conjure up, but when it did, it arrived breathing smoke. The second sentence was just a small retarding flame. I nurtured the flame into the third sentence, still keeping in mind my first and second sentences. By the fourth sentence, the beast was alive and vivid with imagery about fire. The fifth sentence segued into...

The second paragraph's first sentence. My tensions rose as I hammered out the second sentence-- would it rival its first paragraph counterpart, or would it flounder like the third sentence did. This is the third sentence. My fourth sentence was incomplete because of-- the fifth sentence of the second paragraph came to suddenly and I had no hopes of faithfully ending the fourth's existence. My sixth sentence told me that I had achieved half of some great meditative truth in the fourth, but the devil in the fifth suppressed it. The seventh sentence was delayed from an IM which required attention. Now the eighth sentence is a burgeoning item, my capacity for sentences in the second paragraph is challenged, as nothing in the first paragraph could prepare me for the syntactical structure of the second paragraph. Nine sentences and no sign of stopping, this entire outpouring is magnificently, I could never have thought that the fire imagery in paragraph one could've-- oh, the words escape me-- expanded into reality. The monster of free thought is finally realized in its encapsulating tenth sentence. May the eleventh sentence save us all.

Oh, God, the destruction! the chaos! the interjections of the first sentence of the third paragraph. The rubble...the final sentence.

If you see this, make a comment!

2005-06-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

The stairway, a corkscrew pattern between the 3rd and 2nd floors carpeted in a plush beige tone, creaked in protestation of Savio DeScindo's late night weight. Each step pronounced itself as Savio made his way down to the bottom floor of his house-- too many damn floors for an old man's legs; he thought of his father's father, and how he used to crave a ranch house, bad knees was a family legacy.

Savio's wife had sent him out to check on a noise she thought she might have heard from the den. She was fast asleep before her old (and fourth) husband was out the bedroom door.

Stupid Marla, he scowled. In the dark, the familiar niches of his comfortable decorations were alien. Now that he was closing in on the vicinity of the alleged noise, these uncanny markings were foreboding to him. The coat rack was too draped in shadows not to be feared. Each brush of a wall's edging sent a chill into his biceps. But there was still enough moonlight to avoid full on collisions.

Savio reached the front door. Still locked. The area of the front door was open all the way up the house's height, and circular windows with snowflake frames dotted the broad open space between door and ceiling. It was these windows that gave the most light during the day and even at night. Everything that was touched by the perspective was awash in casual blue luminescence, and everything removed was in utter darkness. Savio made his own portly shadow into the living room, then stepped aside so that the room could be unfolded in light like an crumbling sandcastle emerging from underneath the tide.

CHAPTER II

2005-06-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

This isn't exciting and I apologize. You picked up this book thinking you were going to read about maybe someone dying, hopefully of cancer, a disease which could be stretched out over the length of these odd pages.

I'm sorry, but my life, as much as it seems droll to you, is even more so to me. Its dry daily activities are calming and sooth the soul, but that is the precise reason why it provokes insanity.

I have no stories of friends gone mad, people I know that took shotguns to their face for the sake of telling a tale, the bad news of a pregnancy test, or Daddys runaway to New Jersey with his new friend, “Ted”. The tension in the town is a pressure of Whogonnadoit. Someone here is going to flip out, I'm sure, and I'm anxious to hear the news.

It is not inconceivable to want this. Leesburg is a town growing exponentially, but it has not come of age until it can survive a great tragedy. People know Troy for Helen. People who can't locate Europe on a map know Auschwitz. These completely inconsequential places being thrust celebrity and thus garner their fame from sympathy, the pattern claims Leesburg as its next brood, but no one here is willing to sacrifice. Oh the mundanity of it all, to want to hear the firetruck wailing and see the billows against the blue sky like ink bleeding through paper, wetting everything it touches with the same unintentional destruction/ creation.

What else is there to be said about a town without a story?

Plato

2005-05-31T16:40:00.000-07:00

I.

This is a perfect image of me:
seated and quaking in the front seat of

my '99 Dodge Neon (with spoiler)
turbo, outside the resteraunt I love

is a waitress I love and will have so
many gorgeous babies with; the first goal

done when I left the house with a
grain of maybe in my pocket and from

out the driveway took my car.
She is smoking slowly a cigarette.

II.

This is a perfect image of car:
the wheels and frame, a chassis

as a slave to control, the summit
of physical and mechanical genius.

I want a whip with eight tails to slap
the car's vulgar engine into shit

and drive it ragged, before it only
goes so far, like a Vietnam grunt,

and kills me with its own force
which I forced it to hump and carry.

Chapter 1

2005-05-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

Two bowls of store-brand Froot Loops are consumed. Not the actual trademarked Froot Loops, but those damn bagged cereals that grocery stores sell now. Except for the container, the packaging is obnoxiously ripped off from the traditional groups: the snazzy and hip (yet strangely outdated (a bear wearing roller blades as if the millenium never happened)) cartoon character and the ridiculous pun of “Froot Hoops” or “Lucky Treasures” or “Sugar-Coated Flakes”; with the exception of marshmallows (that dried sugar shit) the cereal is exactly the same. I wish everyone else would buy these knock-offs and relieve me of the inert feeling of poverty I get from eating the run-off from more successful brands. The taste, texture, everything is identical, so why aren't the major brands out of money? I know a shit poor family which still buys the box, as if cardboard was representative of a cerealocracy (impressive word, huh?) in which Jesus wouldn't come back to save the whole of us with his salvation; he would shun us fool-hardy religious folk as he sped his damn at-the-bottom-of-every-box-plastic-toy filled chariot back towards the pearly gates, laughing with Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam and whatever that little leprechaun fucker's name is. Probably Lucky. Clever bastards, naming an Irish stereotype Lucky.

I have respect for the things in this world that don't remind you of the brand name first. Milk, for example, is the optimum drink for men and women shucking the responsibilities of label. Sure, you'll have vegetarians, vegans, and all sorts of animal activists bemoaning the treatment of the cows, but still, there is no more perfect beverage; served either hot or cold, nourishing, and is never brought to you by. Years ago, when the “Got Milk” ads began, they were queueing into that post-Generation X apathy, you know, the “we have no real things to stand behind” attitude which left us all vulnerable to any marketing vulture ready to swoop down and make a kosher party platter out of our displaced innards and passions. Thankfully, Coca Cola was out wooing the middle east, and MTV was too obssessed with music (at that point) to think of whoring youth. In came a coalition of dairy, flirting with danger and cradling us into lactation. The chant, “Got Milk” isn't advertising. It isn't advertising until Jennifer Aniston gets involved. The phrase itself is a fetus of greater conditioning, the will to power replaced by the will to possession. Before, everything was geared towards motivating the slacker, but once those down-trodden flannel wearing Seattleites finally got moving, they realized the deeper secrets of financial dominance: rich people don't make more rich people. And so, “Got Milk” was devised by new hierarchy to ensure that the scraggly generation following suit, was kept in the feudal position, namely, the serf. “Live off the land, Microsoft will provide” and “Don't worry, that mobile sidekick will save your life.” In a world where phone booths were barely noticed, cellular phones became necessity, not because of necessity, but because everyone agreed it was necessity. And those people at work, the ones who came in with the hands-free headset and the top-of-the-line blackberrys, the vegans and Atkins freaks, the proto skaters and the rap musicians, they are all just the next line of a finely tuned robot produced and manufactured by a breed of people the world wasn't supposed to suspect of accomplishing anything. I respect that cut throat covert practice. Nothing bugs me more than when these bastards are obvious. I've constantly argued for a secret government because to hear the scum say that they “know you” is slap in the face not unlike your favorite senator coming into your kitchen while you eat breakfast and shitting in your cereal. Literally.

I Know You're Shivering in Antici

2005-05-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

pation.

I couldn't help it :p but onto the bright and shining lies of the world that all kinda come together in a quilt of reality I like to call that "Indian Blanket Thing". Newsflash horndogs, this here rustling blog tonight is brought you on the basis and concensus of an all out indiscretion in the name of free thought. It's hard to say free thought in free thought without it devolving into a discussion about the process of free thought so I promise and immediate digression for your reading enjoyment.

Solarity is the kin to all kinds of cosmic hereafters. Man loves poetry when it burns and hurts and scars and peels the flesh, but its the grotesque things that drive the fascination; however, that fascination leaves off at talent. To understand poetry, to understand it, you have to be in commune with the subject of verse: you need a pencil or pen or paper or an idea before you even set out the door. Often it helps to speak it. Avoid the esoteric and the obscure unless you're looking to impress those bourgeouis bastards and their stranglehold on the arts. Poetry was meant to be enjoyed in soliloquy and one should not have to consult an encyclopedia just to get the point and on should not have to mull over an image just because the poet links the two inoperable things together with the surgical twine of a syntax. Cummings was a fading star and he will never hold a candles to masters of form because CUmmings breaks the first rule that poetry exists in the mouth.

Dating is for the Birds...or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

2005-05-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

Entered a bill into www.wheresgeorge.com. My dollar bill was originally used as tender at Harper's Ferry. Wow. 56 miles in 4 days.

Finished work at Costco as a demoer.

It's good to be back amongst the familiar junk...went out to dinner with Brian tonight. We bitched about "Kindom of Heaven" as well as the nihilistic tendencies of David Hume and Libertarians. It seems slightly chauvinistic to pronounce other cultures as primitive, but if we don't have those measuring sticks for civilization and acivilization, then what are we but a conglomerate of egalitarians? People need rules, unfortunately. People have never proven themselves as effective and fair in the course of human histories.

Somedays I feel like I am too hard on humanity, because I expect such high standards.

Right now, I'm looking at my notebook, "Entelechy"-- the name means in Greek, "The reduced life". The meaning basically is that inside this little book, is a complete life derived from my own, it exists as a part, but it is also its self. Aristotle used the term to describe excellence. Someone else I know called it a commonplace book. The two terms are not that far apart. She's a smart one, I gotta say. Don't know where she went though. Just kinda evaporated away. I'm not unused to the treatment, too bad.

Sonnet 10?

2005-05-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

The Night was Thick and Fallen

The night was thick and fallen
as I cracked the bedroom window

to let the summer air trip in
until there was nowhere to go

that I wouldn't feel I was
outside; the cloud of lazy dreams

runs only in a summer fuzz:
the buzz of burning May it seems

to follow me wherever. Today,
was another day without yet her,

as yesterday, in its callow way,
called to me; that there never were

suns or sly moons, together, to count
the slumbering summer nights run out.

2005-05-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I will be going to the beach. Hooray for me.

Room has been rearranged to accentuate the books. I had no idea I needed two NEW bookcases, let alone one. Upon the shelves are various nick-nacks I've collected, among them: a melted candle solid in form, a disturbed form; an old watch box full of dry and used flower petals, the lid is shut capturing a scent I like to call, "the essence of winter sleep" (Frost) i.e. decay; more than a few pieces of origami assembled so long ago that their appearance is a mystery; various trophys for Karate, soccer, baseball, however, my favorite has to be the "I Hate Your Favorite Wrestler" coffee mug from the short-lived "Superplex Radio" (I did my friend a favor and shot off a few columns for his website); finally, I have the commencement flower from my high school graduation, it stilly sits in its vase long-dead, a rememberance of what education is.

The things we know and what we learn do decay over time, but there is the unquestionable presence of what it was. Life endures, changes, it's law; however, the reality of things is constant. The things I know, ultimately drain the pool of ambition, lucky is the man who finds a fountain. I'm still searching for my fountain, that person or place or thing which will make my education endure despite its degression-- what is a love of life without a life of love? it cannot be teased from nothing. This schlock is going to annoy me in a second, but just for a second, it stands as sweet honesty...I'll savor it.

Velocity

2005-05-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

And she says, we're all like bullets,
to which I reply, no. The trajectory
of a bullet is something we all admire
but can never attain. You need
silence in your life because silence
means the air is still.

When nothing moves, then maybe you
have velocity. In other times
and different air pressures, pressing
the nozzle and kissing its iron schnoz
makes the time pass quicker...
but only if you didn't know what time it was to start.

She says time is too long. But of
course it is, you would expect such
a thing like time to press on like
a bullet. Man does not have that
velocity and time does not have that velocity.
You and me and the gun and the bullet
endure in space, so I guess we're all like bullets.
Like you said. Like she said, the expert
placement of a gun suddenly becomes
symbolic of suicide as if there was
never a man who cured himself the
way ham is cured. I will have to admit

theft on that last sentence from some
chap named Knobshill or Cobbshil or Numskill.
So sue me for plagiarism, a lawsuit
has its own velocity. It operates
out of air because law counts
on strangling its victims. Choke
on your free speech, to quote Falstaff,
"What is honor? Air."
A fat man was never so true.

Bertrand Russel Can Kiss My Ass

2005-05-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

A- in Shakespeare
B+ in 1970s

What's the difference? .10. That's all it would've taken to be able to say all A's so far.

In terms of other things taking so little to succeed... I'm not a needy guy romantically speaking. But the one thing that consistently happens to me that I am not happy about is being left in the dark. I try. God knows that I try, yet somehow the result always ends up being me having to assume rejection. No one has the courage to just say, "hey, Sean, you're great, but I don't think this will work." Instead I get to run around for days thinking I have SOMETHING, when in reality, I have NOTHING. I'm not at all fit, and sometimes I lack intelligence, so I can see why I might be turned down, but damn it all if it isn't the most frustrating thing in the world to convince yourself back and forth for an entire week just because someone doesn't grant you the priority to let you know where the hell you stand?! She was a 10. I never before had a chance with a 10, and now I know that I never did. Depressing. I don't want to end up like one of those guys who aims low because he cannot get what he really wants, but I'm afraid life is chock full of compromises like that.

And people wonder why sometimes I am skeptical of women in general. Maybe if I was some Adonis, then I wouldn't have this problem. But, of course, if I was like that, what worries would I have over one female? Virtue inhabits a type of beauty, but I doubt that physical appearance ever indicates deeper truths. Like produces Like, at least that's my attitude towards the world. And so, lonliness only brings on more solitude, shallowness doesn't dig, it spreads, and being a difficult person will only net you the unfair loves.

That is why I am a Catholic. I am because I chose. It's simple as you want it to be. Divisions in religion lead to complexity and shatters faith. You cannot go through life dedicated to the idea of everything because then you're just pushing the role of the organism onto a single cell; life is too subjective to try to ignore choice.

Signing off,
Sean.

Skin

2005-05-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

They never say, oh what a fine
actor I am, and mean it. Not
everyone, but someone, only loves
in the sense a politician loves

his country-- for profit. Whether I stretch

out my lines
or cut them
short,

I am more than brave to be there.

2005-05-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

Confusio

First off, the idea of I and of you
is a rough philosophy, rougher than
dry limestone; it scrapes my palm too
much to handle in one sitting-- as

I was brought up to understand,
you need to work her over to pass
her. Now there is no better hand
to caress than mine and its prone

scratches like the greater thinkers'
hands which move backward from bone
to knuckle, under skin, over skin, hers.
I am logic's bastard dialectical born

from beauty and reason, become man,
like limestone-- nothing can be rougher than.

Only Young

2005-05-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

I sat as I was once young;
collecting trinkets, wasting
time, and watching the sun
in a languid arc, passing
its sultry shadow over me.

A collection of rocks. More
specifically, gravel, the fine
stones, chalky and dryly torn
from taste. Rocks from some mine
too far away to know its name.

They were jewels, worn
in some previous life-
style where jades adorn
the common things, a king's knife
smattered with coal

Mined by black men in hills--
their grubby nails dig
into slobbering dark and dust
for handfuls snugly big
that I will call trinkets
as I was young, only.

Cynical

2005-05-03T23:56:00.000-07:00

I cannot abide the cynical readers,
the coffeshop types stopped up
with critique. Pouring forth
all the proper examinations of
life's shoulds and folly love.

Believe Hal, believe, Hal-believers,
that you're honest and a cut above.
When lovers leave for the fourth
or fifth time, then I'll sweat
my watch a sea of time per sigh,

But until that time waves me down,
drowns me, stops me, soaks me full,
I can read honesty into everything.
Honestly. I swear it. On that rood
of the rose will I swear my mood.

Words are always enough. Honeysuckle,
buttercup, lilacs both white and purple,
are rhymers and mariners of the night above,
out of taste of the sour writers low.
May I never be too bitter for short-lived love.

I am Not One Who is Easily Impressed.

2005-04-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am Not One

You say you make your own
ice-cream.

I'm not impressed.
Make some poetry thing

that is sweet'n
cold as aches fill

the teeth, then will
I be impressed.

But you make ice-cream.

2005-04-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Dominai es Requie

These things I have marked
like shallow visions
sparked by endless markets,
are passing on to where
may be called the dead.

The desk is a cobblestone patchwork of brandy,
shotglasses, and other empty vessels.
But fear is all of the above and I wonder
if when I saw the angel of death come,
I wasn't already gone into the ether.

Now will I tell you of the event:
not through the door, but my window
came he, adorned in fables and phonemes,
whispering the chosen words I would
write down. Lifted one black finger did he

and brought it down again on my shoulder.
The jumbles I sought to explain were--
as it appeared then-- nothing nothing
to see. You stumble through the days
in gazing glory of brighter ways

and although you, the poet, stay
the rhythm of the black dog's bay,
these things you write will die away
and not a lover heard a thing you say.
Rhetoric washed over me and sandied

me. There are things in the world
I love that do not love equally
oh, for some God to say how, how
things are not symmetrical, or to give
a taste of the glory before I live

would be a precious metal to spell.

Courageous, Cowards, Catharsis

2005-04-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, no! How has this happened? I've allowed my blog to become a thing of preteen catharsis...the black background...the soppy poetry. My only recant I have is the rule of the Byronesque-- typically the man was somewhat of a poetic scoundrel. Now the rule has to do with Poesy, otherwise known as the entire flipping practice of verseification of anything from building a sandwhich to meditating under a cherry tree. As you can see, the possibilities are endless. Not only are they endless, they are ALL cliche! It seems to me that in order to write something poetically, you're surrendering your sense to a formula; either the thing is praised or wronged, but either way, something is exalted in always more than realistic terms.

Perhaps I've a bit too much of Yeats or Frost in my blood to be able to write something ordinary. Everything thing I keep secret screams to be taken out and straightened, but in order for this expungation to occurr, the formats must be chosen.

Sonnet, triplet, heroic couplet. I have a Book of Forms pretty much telling me everything I need to know about writing something into a small tattered coat of form. In fact, my poems are like twigs in coats because nothing I write now can ever hope of fulfilling the entire justification of one form. Ah, they were all invented eons before my primordial ooze and now there is nothing left to discover.

It seems rather harsh of myself to be criticizing a favored practice of mine so close to the period in which I will be one-and-twenty. The essence of winter sleep is different from the summer slumber, I stand firm that the crisis I have in my identity NOW is a necessary worry in order to prepare myself for a fine adult journey. To recall a grandly written line from being exhaustingly (and blankly) stated, "The world is turning too fast." Where are the essences of sleep? Perhaps I should ask my African room mate because he seems only too well versed in the matters of REM sleep.

The rant is ending, and the total existence of everything I work towards is now coming to a close. My god, the fear I have is that everything is nothing in terms of what one might call the first half of life. Before I was 21, I did nothing spectacular except mark the earth with my unexceptional presence. There is nothing to reflect upon, no pools set up in which I might see the image of who I was contrasted against the mug I possess. It's over. I've lived to 21, and not a damn thing will meet me here.

Triplets

2005-04-24T14:57:00.000-07:00

She wants a commonplace book for
her room-- at least that is what
she calls it. It sits crooked on her

bookcase propping up Ayn Rand's
Fountainhead like some fake leg
with the mechanical bits and

pieces facing out, the spiral
dangles over the edge.
Every so often she will

look at the book, thinking of
Shakespeare or Proust (men well
versed in the art of love),

and reach a bare arm. She'll
halt mid extension because
she feels the elbow pop reel

from the elongation. She said
it doesn't hurt, it never hurts
and why would it hurt? She said.

She'll retreat her arm, naked
and smooth as a paper towel from
all the invisible feminine hairs,

and swear her elbow, her mind,
and the book. Sleep is calling
and wrenching her guts into sublime

surrender. It will only be a
few more moments before she--
the let-go is sweet and rewarding.

She wishes she could write it
all down, but her head hits
the pillow and she is lit...

the poetry in motion is gone.
The essence of summer sleep
is the battle for ruthless ambition.

2005-04-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

There was a play that evening,
something classical called with a
cast like warriors of an arena;
they crept dead-like in either wing.

Oh, the actor's vanities serve
my verse with comedy, because
I can see through their cause
down to the gesture's swerve

of an upstage arm. Now the craft
they employ is a full body
experience; I am lucky
to have half my mind to adapt

a poem like many others. I
try I try to be wittier
than most who would love to flatter
The newer masters who deny

the older misers so clean with
form and rime and structuring
cement into a something
that confirms the poetry myth.

It is out there. The shinging bright
men and women acting out their
joys and falls, the fairer than fair,
write again the classical, right

again the night.

Reversal

2005-04-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

What is it I saw today, this morning
that caught me so off guard I should crumble?
See again. Revision. You were standing
Not quite right there, but quite away, able

to reach me with the fully gracious arm
though. And I-- I stood here shaking with the
strictest heart I had; expecting some harm.
No...no. Go back. Review the history:

What is it I feared today, this morning
that shook my shoes so that I should tumble
into the stool across my path leaning?
Sometimes, it seems, that under the rubble

nothing breathes, none for answers but trouble;
the question is a raging dying bull.
The sonnet remembers, it books the loss,
and solemn oaks cloaked in moss.

2005-04-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

What does Europe mean except for
the vaguely albino pop'lation
with a small bit of a better bead
on a landmass' unpopped core--

When Calv'ry comes in elation,
through aisles and upon a steed,
then I will have the answer to
your suff'ring, the indignation

of playing savages who feed
in dark on human flesh. Until then,
Pride is a bright and shining pin
tacked firm onto the faded tweed

Of your lapel-- should you happen
to have one handy and ready.
They know it for what it is,
Nothing said will or can open

Their eyes. This world invents wonders
too grand to be bitten by verse.
I should-- I would-- I could recant
these words, this belladonna plant

and see us apart from it all.

Sonnet 9? I've lost count...let's say 10 the BIG 1-0!

2005-04-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

Writing Sonnets at Night

It's night again, and the moon is a little star
giving way to larger worlds; it's ephemeral arms pull
a weight from behind the planets like an ant pulls
a crumb of bread. She-- a luminescent clock far

far away-- tugs playfully at the corners, but never
the body: she has a tight tight grip and a loose handle.
Nothing but a haze, a glimpse, a blank slate waiting to fill
itself like a vaccuum would, she refuses to sever

a knot neither can plot.

and I cannot finish this now.

A Collection of a Dark Night

2005-04-15T01:05:00.000-07:00

Free Write

Too many people do have the same name as I. "I" begins as a poetry of existence, significant in the only way that a bus running over an old retired veteran is ironic only if the banner is an "Army of One" ad.

Let me think a moment, here, silently
pondering the matter of the universe and
the smaller stars cradling smaller planets
serving as beds for the dust of infinity.

There's a freckle or two upon my weary arm--
they don't follow a pattern, these rogueish spots,
but careen chaoticaly from the elbows to the knots
of my fingers. They pleasure none and harm

No one. As a child, I would bite at them,
thinking them battered and embedded splinters;
I know now from learning by many winters,
that the freckle is not the spot on the hem-

lock tree decaying, but the signal of the earth
changing and redressing its minor pictures.
And so it is, with no star a system fixture
will remain past the miles of life left the earth.

For it is just a name we've given it. Alone
without our meaning, 'earth' is rock and rubble,
only apexes and abysses, cliffs and surf bubbles.
Of all the things apparent, it is world we own.

2005-04-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

Adonis in the Afternoon

Ernest Hemingway, with vine leaves in his hair, calls out to Adonis,
That he should come and drink a little, a little, he says

“The beautiful and the thoughtful are a dangerous combination,
Especially if the Gods ever got wind of it.”

Ernest laughs big and jolly through his hairy face,
Adonis is smooth on the chin, feminine and flower-like,

Not unlike a hyacinth or an orchid, in the face smooth as petals.

Into the Night

2005-04-13T14:20:00.000-07:00

Walking Out Into the Night

She knows the rain as something as soothing
As butterscotch on his tongue, grass clippings
In the passing breeze. The complete sameness
Of a face---its fleshy frame of madness
And the cooling breath of God.
I love like a stranger the night; open
Fields of ancient lights, like a garden of
Dead sights made in a glorious Summer
To welcome the cold dead burn of Winter.
Barefoot as I be on this cool May night,
I may now see how bent my feet can be
And my mind well moist with lyric, mostly.
The rain stands, but it does not. It rebels
And has wings and fights weakly gravity,
Pulling on the stars---the few stars alive
To see the stormy sight. But I am not,
I am not the thinker to think these thoughts.
I am so convinced in the thick dark life
I am someone else. Someone who, in life,
Knows the rain as something as soothing
As butterscotch on the tongue, grass clippings
In the passing breeze. She is a burning light,
A colorless rainbow. I am a hollow candle.
But love, like a stranger, walks me out into the night.

No Amount of X

2005-04-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

Sonnet 9
(the Previous 9th was Reworked)

No amount of shadows is thick enough
to cover her burning. She is the sun;
Yes, but the Dark swarms with generations
of victims. Dark is only killed
(it cannot smother, only replace),
and only Dark is prey to light.
So what should I think when night
succumbs to dawn in murderous
purple glow-- some sort of surrender
to a galaxy that is treacherous?
And so it is not sentimentality
that I make her a light bulb,
but a catchy eye-ball modernity;
her looks could kill the shadows behind me.

The Benefits of "The Sound of Sense"

2005-04-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

I have here, a snippet of a short story...now WATCH as it is transformed using Frostian rhythm.

---------------------------------------------
Bacchus stood up in the back of the bus.
He was expecting his stop soon and he wanted
a good lead before the masses coagulated
and hardened in the aisle, maybe preventing
him from escaping the bus. To his right,
an old woman took tiny sips from a Coke bottle
filled with a opaque yellow liquid.
The label was torn off the bottle,
but Bacchus knew the Coke by its shape.
A good many things in the world
were only known by shape.
They say Bacchus' shape was like a pear.
That's what they said before
he disappeared, of course.

He counted off the passing signs
through his nearest left window.
Bartram Street. Coleman alley. Another Bartram Street,
this one dubbed "North."
He tried to relate them all,
but it was useless, the order
of streets never produced the next street,
it wasn't a formula. One could only predict
through memorization because
everything was ugly and certain.

The old woman took another sip.
A man ruffled his mahogany leather jacket.
The bus driver scratched at his knuckles.
He kept scratching.

Everything is moving,
Bacchus thought to himself,
everyone is fidgeting. Anxiety.
She is waiting at the kitchen table,
crossing and uncrossing her bruised thighs,
the calves dangling from knees
like slabs of meat being smoked.
She would be nervous and anxious to see me.

Stressman Street.

After Stressman, three more streets.
Bacchus grabbed the metal support bar
running the perimeter of the bus' interior.
He liked the icy touch
of the steel length in his hand.
For some reason, lately his palms
had felt fiery and itchy towards the end of the day.
The bus driver was still scratching
his knuckles and Bacchus wanted
to see the driver press the knuckles
to the dashboard in an effort to cool them.
That would be great, to see a connection
like that between two real human beings.
Real humans interacting on a sublime level,
like a massive orgy of similarity and thought.
He guessed the other passenger's anxiety
must be due to the lack of this gracious connection.
No one shared anything, and if the bus driver
would only press his knuckles, if he would
only press his knuckles to the cool
dashboard or even the shiny bar
and lever connected to the door. But he didn't,
and Bacchus felt a depression
like whenever he talked to doctors
about faraway things.
-----------------------------------------
It's a decent experiment.

2005-04-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

English Genius
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 86% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

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My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 73% on Beginner

You scored higher than 73% on Intermediate

You scored higher than 88% on Advanced

You scored higher than 95% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid

And I ask myself, "Why am I better than 73% on BEGINNER!?" The world needs English professors.

sonnet 9

2005-04-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

The Things I Cannot Help Myself To

She told me-- if she had spoken to me--
to not enamour her with stupid lines,
with child-like wonder in cliched
poesy. She demanded not to be likened
to any bird or else foul her temper
would fly. And as she limited the world--
as my world was unlimited at the time--
her lipped jaw flexed toward heaven till
the cheeks could bend no more and snapped
valleys of dimples, enough to lose myself
in them. I transformed her whole frame
into some pastoral painting, with the eager
trunks of black cedars glorifiying the sunset
over cottages tidy on reflecting pool sides.

Truer Words Were Never Spoken

2005-04-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
and then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to better.

Sometimes I have my doubts...but let's just break down this snippet:

Typical of Frost, the movements by the speaker are playful and shift constantly between paradoxes. This is Frost's unique gift as a thinker because he shifts his stance so much so that the paradoxes lose their finality until everything appears just as a state of flux. "I'd like to" connotates a preference but not solidarity with the choice (reference "Two Roads" to see the theme continued) as it is immediately followed with the paradoxical choice.

Frost realizes the dangers of wanting too much and wishing for both sides as he fears his wishes will be granted; "may no fate willfully misunderstand me," is a recanting to his own language and it is curious how Frost, while building his poem, undercuts the rhetoric he uses to construct it. It seems Frost is not enamoured witht he word play in the poem, but the useage of sentences to convey meanings. Sentences can be manipulated, gone back to, and inverted for the purpose of implying something "at play," and it is the boy he mentions "whose only play was what he found himself."

Thus, the rhetoric of the poem mimics the birches as grandly arching things in the setting of a forest. Frost says "though bowed /so low for long, they never right themselves," as if he knows the permanence of print in that the words and structure of poetry, once accepted, is accepted as it is forever, paradox and all. Like the birche's "trunk arching in the woods/ years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground," so is Frost's poetry making that subtle curve in attention and theme for "years afterwards."

Frost is no deep romantic, and "years afterwards" is nothing close to eternity. They might be seen for years, but the trunks will NEVER be righted, attended to or not. In a way, it is also a testemant to the impermanence of poems. The boy riding them "down over and over again" is like the poet returning to the same themes over and over again so that poem never stands as straight as it once did before being overused. These are acts of whole love.

Frost does not want to be "snatched away/ not to return" because although the poems would live forever without an audience, it is a worthy sacrific for love, as far as Frost knows because he "doesn't know where it's likely to go better" except on earth and earthly things.

All in all, the poem exists on a fantastic plane because it does not condescend about love and the such, but it makes poetry more real, more calming. Reading the poem, a reader gets the sense of worry and release simultaneously, a magnificent paradox captures by the one and only Frost.

The Cynical Audience

2005-04-03T20:57:00.000-07:00

I want a sonnet because I am in the mood for poesy.

The Cynical Audience

When the bows move in straight and tidy
motions, the music comes like after a
doubling over whollop from a walrus-sized
man thing. The orchestra here is fine as all--
dandy men and women paying their tributes
to Bacchalian delight-- but the stage
echoes a little deeper when they're on it;
Oh, I'd say like when a boy hollers
into a damp cave, hears the voice,
and begins to talk to himself like a thug.
That is so generic and unoriginal,
if it was not for the notes straddling
the measures from binding to bluff,
I would say, in one word, "bah,"
then wait for God to prove me wrong
with a list a million things long.

Diatribe

2005-04-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

What is so wrong about wanting a poem centered on sentences as units? Poetry is ultimately an expression of the art of language and how it is used, NOT indulgence of words. Some of us work hard to try to write something effectual and understandable, but there are nihilists in this world who would kill to reduce the unit to its dimension just so they never have to learn the bigger issues. You see it when emo kids write poems full of hurt and sadness because those are the only words they care to know. They don't care to learn the direction of language in terms of pessimism. I tried to make the comment on "Sentences of Sense" at a mock "Write Club" and I was immediately challenged by the idea of e.e.cummings. It seems there's only one writer mindless neo-poets refer to as their savior in nonsense and that is e.e.cummings.

Me: I think this poem would benefit from some structural cohesion like subject/verb/direct objects, so that way there's an apparent action instead of just words. In other words, I'd format these lines to make a sentence.

Useless emo-poet kid: e.e.cummings didn't use sentences.

Me: Actually, he did. It may look like gibberish, but you still read his poems and they read like sentences.

UEPK: What are you talking about? Cummings made up words! <---(proves my point on where the focus is with the new generation of poets)

Me: Yes he did, but he put those words into sentences.

Kid: nuh uh!

Moderator: I think what Sean is trying to say is that the poem needs a cohesive theme.

Me: No. That's not what I said. DO you people even understand grammar?

Kid: All I know is if it flows right...
(Enter my fantasy)
Me: What the hell does "flow" mean?

Kid: Um like when the rhythm's all good.

Me: Oh, fine, I didn't know you just scanned the poem now. Tell me about the rhythm. Is it iambic, trochaic, dactyllic? Does it emphasize irregularity in spots of lyrical resonance? How about the rhymes? Do you think the poem would work better with masculine slant or feminized off rimes?

Kid: Look, it just sounds good to me.

Me: You're done.

Kid: Aaargh I am slain!

Sonnet 8th

2005-03-31T13:38:00.000-08:00

Sonnet 8th

Harder Shells

She is as the beak of a tortoise:
vivid with burning-brown and golden scales
and a war-like hook sharp enough with poise
to puncture but just not enough to claw:
and so with the many little mellow wounds
she leaves my hands to scar overnight long.
I care for my hands, they aren't rough-hewn
like you see attached to the arms thick
of working men fresh from cement boulders strewn
and forged steel jungles, but my hand's nicks
are on their way to becoming soon.
It's not just my hand she bites,
but that pumping passion fruit meant to feel--
and so, full of holes, she leaves me to heal.

"Something Else" Sonnet 7th

2005-03-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

"Something Vague"

Something. A vague realization
takes place the instant the word
is uttered. It requires imagination
to picture something like a star
or a bird or even a flock of birds;
all kinds mixing in yellow-brown
orgy and flushing rose and the card'nals
flying with the blue jays high above
the road you walk on. Altogether
a cloud, a smog of feathers and beaks
like some terrible hand of nature
come to slug someone, just anyone
dumb enough to look at you with intent...
besides me of course. I'm something different.

Sonnet 6th?

2005-03-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

There Must be Something

There must be something
besides a moral elbow asleep
on another's naked shoulder tickled
as it were, with one or two spots
of dawn, which, as I thought
of something like a creature
padding low beneath the cover's edge
standing up to face my nose with his
ethereal deathly cataracts,
ended the dream with its typical
quick prodding nuances. Alone
in my cold bed, I am the traces
of muddy paw prints from my pillow
out the open bedroom window.

Juicy Fruit

2005-03-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

So I'm in a poetical mood with no exact form or subject in mind. Thusly I open my book of "The Book of Forms" and pick something...today we have aww screw it. Sonnet the 5th.

"Juicy Fruit"

There is nothing in a stick of gum, "Juicy Fruit,"
to taste like the taste
of a slick plum plucked from the boughs
swaying in between breezes-the leaves
move too, but only as echoes and the fruit itself
is a decadent bride being led into the nest-
as if Man would flavour more fully
the pulpy flesh trapped inside
a dainty bosom of natural purple humor
if he ever had true reign over decay and birth.

I won't taste a metallic wrapper if I should taste
the real fruit, bite ravenously into the core and waste
not a second moaning for a second taste and feel
the juices and think: This! this is what is real.

Sonnet the 4th

2005-03-13T19:50:00.000-08:00

This is Not as Useful

This is not as useful as it once was.
The faces on the pages -
which were empty pages before I came
In from the foggy world - are smaller seeds
viewed by a taller tree saying,
"I would like to reroot my frame again,"
Does not seem me. It does not seem to be me -
Is it so? The smallest morsel feeds
The strongest cedar or oak?
But God will
Have me see my seed in history;
as immoveable as a mountain range,
The faintest echo in my history
Overpowers the man I thought I'd be.

An Obligatory Update

2005-03-05T20:30:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've been commiting some poems to memory, and as that memory serves me, I recite them as I feel like it. Here is the first...and I swear there was no referencing to aid in the typing.

"To Ireland in the Coming Times"

Know that I would accounted be
True member of that company
that sang to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
With ballad and story, rann, and song.
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered-hem
of her, whose history began
before God made the angelic clan,
trails all about the written page.
For in the world's first blossoming age,
The light fall of her flying feet
Made Ireland's heart begin to beat.
And still, the starry candles flare,
To help her light foot, here and there.
And still, the thoughts of Ireland brood
Upon her holy quietude.

Nor may I less be counted one,
with Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
Because to him, who ponders well,
My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
Of the dim wisdoms old and deep,
That God gives unto man in sleep.
For the elemental beings go,
About my table to and fro.
In flood and fire and clay and wind,
They huddle from man's pondering mind.
Yet he who treads in austere ways,
May surely meet their ancient gaze.
Man journeys ever on with them,
After the red-rose-bordered-hem.
Ah, faeries dancing under the moon!
A Druid land! A Druid tune!

While still I may, I write for you,
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye.
And we, our singing, our love,
The mariners of night above,
And all the wizard things that go
About my table to and fro,
Are passing on to where may be,
In truth's consuming ectasy,
No place for love and dream at all,
For God goes by with white foot fall.
I cast my heart into rhymes,
That you, in the dim-coming times,
May know how my heart went with them,
After the red-rose-bordered hem.

BOOYA!!!!

Sonnet (it's not the best, but whatever)

2005-03-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

Frenzy

The old frenzied rage competes with myself;
not inside myself, but they bring me out
and into the world I have lived without ---
it's an odd landscape to see in yourself.
But all the love's lost humor and heart's shout
and the stern buildings hard to look above
make it sharp and painful for me to see
All of your nature's gentle artistry.
There is not a thing lives which does not love
in the quiet sense of a monastery.
The fires of rage are not complete
unless they have my heart to eat,
and eat it they will on feasting day,
the earth of my body in nature's way.

Wall Street

2005-03-01T19:12:00.000-08:00

Wall Street

It's about pornography,
I say.
Whistling dollar bills
spreading wide their crisp edges,
pleasing men with their center folds;
desperate to own attention.

And the men
the men
The rum-stinking men huddled on the floor,
in masturbatory sweat,
watching the numbers flash by:

Cinnamon Buns is up 20 points,
Summer Melons is down 30.
growing
and shrinking.
Stock ready to be sold.

XFE
MAY
TWK
They aren't even women.
Not even places where people go to earn a living.

The building itself is proud,
erect,
and bursting with potential children.

I've seen money put on a show,
Squeezing in,
begging the blue ties for membership
to belong in the act.

It is about pornography,
and the illusion that you're really there.

Lines From Class

2005-03-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

I wonder if anyone (including she) ever reads this blog thing? I'll leave you with that ambiguous little nugget :).

Modern Boy Meets Modern Girl

They connected on deeper levels,
and depths they were manning
required deeper breaths of breathing ---
she sighed before she said, (spanning

his space of breath, breath, breathe) ---
"Stop your breathing before you die.
hyperventilation is just excess,
And you know how I hate to see you die."

He ceased wheezing long enough to seat
in his leather-armed with the red-skinned flat
face for his ass in itchy wool padding
chair, and said, quite frankly and fast, "Fuck that."

To a Person Seized With Sadness

2005-02-27T18:23:00.000-08:00

To a Person Seized With Sadness
I.

Tragedy is an easy thing to make:
it recquires men too foolish to name,
and the deeper sleep we all must take;
Life's laments are all the same (as a rose
posted to any other namesake),

The quick darkening season's sigh erupts,
blasting the passing season's hopes to dust,
the cradles, a little emptier stand,
and the nothing stretches from land to land.

II.

Is this our darker day's damning descent,
Is the second Fall already fallen?
It is evident --- Winter breeds lament
like a rabbit without a threat of wolf
(or so goes on my "graceful" dissent).

The point, into the deeper belly thrust,
Is that not all that lives, lives to be just.
The days die longer when spent in mourning;
The icy night will melt into morning,
and leave behind a gift of rust.

Simple Poetry

2005-02-27T18:16:00.000-08:00

Simple Poetry

Lyrics come and go:
harder, then a stream;

One sees the flow
passing in a dream,

too quick to catch
or even seem

to know the patch
of gold which gleams

From the Fools gold's
Emptier beam,

to fish it out
and hold its lean

body flat out
and let it scream.

A Prayer to My Grandfather

2005-02-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

I wrote this, as Frost would say, in one chunk. I think it's the purest poem I've written philosophically, the beginning middle and end are apparent to me at least and the conflict eventually leads to a resolution, although it seems pessimistic at first glance...

I.
The star-crossed prayers of young and old
Are worth more to God than gifts of gold,
And all the bellies bursting bold
What secret hearts within enfold.

The withered dreams to God committ
Could make the bough of Heaven split
and make the gentle Atlas sit ---
In the green grass yet greener sit.

The mighty giant's shoulders ache
From the weighty wishes men make.
Man's hopes and wishes in God stake
(He suffered so much for their sake).

In Winter wind and winter chills,
Warmer hearts pray to window sills;
Without what their neighbor wills ---
Battling prayers or warring wills.

II.
There is much too much movement here
To ever hold a peaceful ear
To desert ground and hope to hear
The proof to men that God is near.

To scratch graffiti on the wall
And second wait to second fall;
The crushed cement and scattered all ---
All remains of your shattered scrawl.

The prayer of work is worth much more
As harder labor, toil, and chore ---
The simplest man of men before
Are relief to Atlas all the more.

The earth is heavy. I'll admit.
We watch the bough of Heaven split,
You and I, together set,
Too late to help. We both admit.

A Public Announcement

2005-02-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

I won't lie to you folks...sometimes the lonliness is greater than the all-encompassing night is dark. But we all have our little hopes don't we? For some, tragically, it's a spiral into drugs and alcohol, for others, it is over-saturation in sex. I am a shy character in heart and I'm not boastful and I have no reason to think my poetry is even good (one person even went so far as to suggest I didn't know what poetry was) To quote Hardy, "haha." It's a complicated thing, the desire to be desired --- the want to feel needed. Recently a friend of mine gave me a "mission" to make 2 new friends. I tried but I could not get over how artificial and callow it is to make friends for the sake of friends. Women like me as a friend, but I'm sorry, I don't like to be indexed into anyone's broad collection of "friends".

Thursday

2005-02-17T19:39:00.000-08:00

Mephisto call-backs were keen. I only expect so much and if I do not get it, then I'm fine to ride off into the sunset. Some guy spit on me. But it was in the context of the scene. Still...a man spit on me. What a crazy world.

So here it is---"lines of poetry I write in class instead of paying attention"

I listen to the whistling thistle sing
Songs I would die to prescribe to you;
And know that, from you, one rich eye could bring
Out fluttering desire's dreams of you.

I will give you a second to gag, groan, or just leave the page...OK?

Robert Frost

2005-02-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

I'm still in the middle of the Jay Parini biography of Robert Frost (no time since school began) and I notice in Frost's philosophy and technique a lot of the things that made Yeats the Poet---with a capital P, people---and also the differences. Idealistically, Yeats addresses perfection head on, there is no shy conversation; however Frost, in his simple view of worldly things, takes the perfection in the thing. You have in two poets, both the desire to see the ideal and the ability to handle it. Look at this!

Frost:
I sang of death---but had I known
The many deaths one must have died
Before he came to meet his own!

and Yeats:
While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye

Wow...it's not enough to pore forth over these few lines that contain, in my opinion, the whole of each poet's talents. You just...admire them.

And a Poem

2005-02-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

Here is also just a quick couplet verse. Doesn't mean anything except the night is cool...enjoy

Those elm and pine through brick and glass
reach, wanting, waiting for the darkling flask.
They all move meekly towards the aftermath
of lamppost posits---lightly in the path
of road, safe and ordered, into darkling
grass. Moon beams flush and dead suns sparkling.

It's Tuesday...Well it WAS...

2005-02-15T23:24:00.000-08:00

But here it is...your Shakespeare thought of the week.

In Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", the theme of fishing pops up twice explicitly and is referred to subtly throughout the rest of the play; this sport, as it's called, relates to how Shylock will do his business---the baiting and repetition of monetary details.
Fishing first appears in Act 1.1 when Graziano attempts to cheer up the dulled Antonio. He tells him, "But fish not with this melancholy bait/ For this food gudgeon, this opinion" (pg. 1092 1.1 ln. 101-2). Antonio is indeed melancholy and his thematic attachment to fishing and other sea activities (he is a merchant of Venice after all) connect him to Shylock.
Once Antonio declares forfeiture, Shylock wants his bond for a pound of flesh fulfilled; when asked why, Shylock responds, "To bait fish withal" (pg. 1115 3.2 ln. 45). The two, Shylock and Antonio, are inexorably linked to the sea and the base imagery of fishing is a synecdoche for the greater process of trade and larger business endeavors of the sea.
This link is essential in the play because it ties the two characters together as foils. Shylock may not explicitly make his money on the seas, but via his rates and loans, the profits of the ocean eventually come back to him. He is no merchant himself, but he would use the merchant's flesh to carry on the businesses in the sea because he cannot.
The play ends in Belmont, across a body of water; Shylock, destroyed, cannot follow after the happy couples. In the end, the sea which bound Antonio to Shylock, ultimately separates them.

New AIDS Scare? WHAT!

2005-02-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

New Aids nightmare shocks US

The man - who has not been named - is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of partners. He complained of feeling ill in November, was found to be HIV positive in December and had contracted full-blown Aids in January.

I had to re-read this sparse paragraph a couple times. "unprotected sex" and "hundreds of partners" are two phrases that spell D-O-O-M when juxtaposed. What was this man thinking? Honestly, I feel that if he doesn't develop boils and leprosy on his skin, he'll just keep on doing what he's been doing, namely, spreading AIDS to the entire world.

But keep in mind that AIDS is not NEW. It's not like scientists just discovered HIV yesterday. almost 30 years and this planet still had degenerates like this guy who have no earthly clue. It's like people who still leave their cell-phones on in movies; sure when it was new it was understandable, but 30 years into the future still repeating the same idiot mistakes makes you a grade-A retard.

Not to mention this little announcement of Fate is comparable to God smiting. Come on, "hundreds of partners", this man didn't just bang 50 chicks or even 100, it is "hundredS" with a plural S. It's like a disaster movie and the worst case scenario has just happened:

General: Lay it out straight for me Dr. What are our chances of containing this debilitating virus.
Doctor: Well, General, I would say our chances are liminal at best...
General: Damn it Man! Don't sugar-coat it. Give it to me straight!
Doctor: Okay, the human race has a 70% chance of survival on a good day.
General: What's the bad day?
Doctor: Worst case scenario: HIV is contracted by the biggest stupidest man-whore alive and he spreads it to everyone in New York. With that many possible hosts, the viral variations will be astounding!
General: Good God man! Arm the nukes!

And so it turns into Independence Day or the Omega Man or whatever. So as a spokesman of the world, I'd like to say, "Thank you, Mr. Over-Sexed-Sleazeball, for destroying the dignity of the human race and proving, once again, that like Athens, Medieval Europe, and Rural Africa, pinheads precede plagues.

4 More Lines 4 More Lines!!

2005-02-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

"All in All Under Wind Would Fall"

As the stars start suicide diving

by the pole's high horizon's cleft,

under the starshine light night driving,

I want a lullaby for what's been left.

This wood, under hard wind would fall

houses the Blessed Spirit, point in all,

Till steeple, pew, lectern, and wall

all in all, in crumbled chaos bawl.

As the whipping wild winds subside,

and the weeping stars in all have died,

The casual creator looks with pride;

the souls prostrate upon the earth side.

A Sonnet I am Working On

2005-02-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

"A Pieceless sky in Peaceful Lay"

A pieceless sky in peaceful lay
all over in blanketing blue day;
save two clouds, side by side,
till baptist winds blew them away.

If I were god in crowning,
the earth to see it browning--
crumbling, the sun-star hiding

into neutral tones drowning.

I would keep that beast Winter to kill,
the free and gentle fools who fill
too much with pleasant pointless joy
to hope lazy happiness I avoid.
Except for hard love's dizzy sleep,
secret under a blanket blue I keep.

---------------------------

Your Shakespeare Thoughts for the Week

2005-02-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

Comedies are typically resolved in a quick and efficient matter; however, Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona’s finish seems not efficient but arbitrary and hasty. The impending conflict (Valentine’s banishment and Julia’s scorn) is too great a plot development to be defeated with a simple five line apology; Proteus is not sufficiently redeemed textually, but the additional question is whether or not the traitorous Proteus should have redemption.
Proteus claims “hearty sorrow” (pg. 128 ln 76) but his audience should be more skeptical of this announcement on the basis that Proteus has lied before (quite plainly too, “I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady, but she is dead“ (pg. 119 ln 98-9)). His constant deceptions make Valentine’s ready acceptance of penance almost seem a foreboding omen of future deceit. However, this does turn out to be the case, instead, Proteus is in turn taken back by Julia. “O heaven, were man/ But constant, he were perfect. That one error/ Fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’ sins;” (pg 129 ln. 108-10) is his offered apology to Julia, simply paraphrasing her statement in the preceding line, “Woman to change their shapes than men their minds” (107).
The language maintains its poetic quality, but the plot suffers from Proteus’s abbreviated agony. One wishes for an extended cut of dialogue from Proteus to defend argument of his inconstancy so that his turn from villainy may better be observed by his audience, theater-goers and actors alike.

And your Irish word for the day is
du'il = Hope

The Skeptic Inside is a Chancer Sore (an exercise for myself really)

2005-02-06T12:31:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me not five minutes ago that the intrinsic leaning of this self-styled journal of mediocrity is a faulty omen. It's fine and good to catharsise personal feelings, but never let that be the cause, action, and result of being. Aristotle says that in the pursuit of everything is the pursuit of happiness, but one must always strive for excellence in the priori thought. In other words, emotions are a starting point but never let yourself wind up in the same place.

I think it would lead to a meloncholy. A smart person I know told me about a "beard of apathy". Well...she didn't say it, but disregarding the context of what she was talking about, the image sticks.

The phrase itself is mediocre--both in metaphor and in language. It conveys a good sense of description to the person it attaches to. We learn this character is obviously unmotivated, but the syntax of "beard" before "apathy" reveals a motivation towards the apathy. I will explain. One gets the sense the person is a poet, or in the early stages of becoming one, with an affliction for tweaking language. It is all this person can do.

The next stage is assumption. Let us proclaim this product of Poesy as a Byronesque subject. He longs for that which is unknown, pines after the unattainable, and is generally of a bi-polar aura. A paradoxical human because poets should BE, but this poor man is always waiting for inspiration; the passion boils over his side every moment of his life like steam-hot water escaping a copper pot; the ectasy of poetry is a gutteral heaving of thought and blind furious scribbling; his releases are spaced farther and farther apart and less and less durable; all of this combines in his homogoneous blood of sweat, fire, and g0d-almighty's hand of SOUL--yet the best, the BEST he can come up with is...

"beard of apathy".

The skeptic inside is a chancer sore because it provokes thought and only brings more pain, it distracts the mind from Faith and brings it to simple mediocrity. This poet is lovesick and devoid of control. There is no action in his voice because he would rather be a subject of his own thoughtless verse. I once called myself "a shadow of man" until I realized there is no art in that.

Art is imitation of life, yes, but to me, aesthetics is half pleasure and half control. The thing which brings the most beauty to the audience is the thing which is in the most control of the artist. Super-modern anything is not art because it is like our poet here: they see themselves in their own world. That is what I love about Frost.

Read "Birches" and you'll see an old man walking silently past icy entombed stalks of trees bent majestically earthward as if in prayer. Feel his nostalgia for youth among the worshipping trees and people'll see this is the poet as he sees himself in this world. Ahhhh...now to rest on such a supple transcendent image.

Note: If you read this, pardon me for stealing that nice little quote. I thought it great to use as a little exercise. ;^)