short stories

• when i was seven all i wanted to be was eight.

• i woke up this morning, sneezed and looked around for a tissue - there were none to be had.

• i chased a duck when i was in pre-school once - it bit my cock.

• the night michael jackson died, someone's facebook status said, "You can do it, MJ". I googled michael jordan immediately, but he was fine.

• my first kiss was behind the slides at the playground; we decided to stare into each other's eyes until we fell in love.

• the breakdown in cyndi lauper's "girls just want to have fun" gives me the chills.

• i briefly felt the satisfaction of having landed the ollie off the box before i stood up and looked at my hand; all my fingers were wrenched backwards and my eyes burst from my skull.

• the first thing i did when i took off my glove to see why my finger was hurting and saw that it was twisted around my other fingers in a manner not physically possible was whip out my cell phone and take a picture.

• when i fell into the rapids and the brown, frothing water was swirling like ten foot walls 360 degrees around me i screamed, inhaling the muddy, bubbling liquid into my lungs. no one heard me.

• i want to be sitting on a white-sand beach, looking out at clear, turquoise water, drinking a piña colada from a coconut.

• i briefly dated this girl i wasn't really interested in in ninth or tenth grade, and when she asked me if i loved her i said, "Yes."

• i've been listening to music in headphones again, even when i am alone.

dont count your chickens

a balloon
A small one
That will inflate
With a kiss

It will expand
And rise above
To new views
New frontiers

But tomorrow
Let go
It will flop
Agitated and cold

Flounder and fall
Becoming the used
Empty skin
Disabled at such a young age

Gray Ynn Meadow

its always strange,

walking a room full of determined producers ( at least for the 20 minute's they're in )

each one in they're own sphere of needs and wants

of course were all here for the same ball park reason,

some may have particulars that brought that here

but in the end were all washing off the same sweat.

I was sitting reading a book in my room by myself

I burped and then I said, "Excuse me"

starving

naked in bed

eyes open

trying to fall asleep

squirming like a turtle that is caught in its shell

six hours of staring at the ceiling

breakfast

an omelet and a bowl of cereal

cigarette

two dollars for the bus

firetrucks parked outside an apartment building

smoke billowing from a fourth floor window

the Barnes and nobles is the same as always

they don't have any books by Ann beattie or Kathy acker or pretty much any women

the Mexican restaurant is the same as always

enchilads are five dollars

chips and salsa are free

water is free

beer costs three dollars

the dollar store is the same as always

generic peanut butter cups are one dollar

holographic diffraction grafting glasses are one dollar

beer and cigarettes are not sold at the dollar store

i feel ambiguous

i went into work today and i couldn't tell if i seemed engaged or detached

i felt very detached in a very engaging way

when i looked into the eyes of a fellow worker i could tell that we were only communicating on a very superficial level

then again, he might have felt detached too

i am sitting at my desk and i am thinking of picking up my phone and calling alice

i have been thinking about calling alice for years now

i take a sip of my beer

i am not going to call alice

i chug the rest of my beer and call alice

the phone keeps ringing and then goes to the voicemail

i hang up immediately

perhaps she will never even know that i called and then it won't be awkward

i sit at my desk and stare at the computer screen

my eyes become glazed on the monitor

my phone begins vibrating

i jump out of the chair in shock

it is alice calling me

i sit back down in the chair and play it cool

i pick up the phone

"hello?"

"hi, bob, it's alice. you called me?"

"umm, yeah..."

"what's up?"

"nothing. nothing at all. why do you ask?"

"well my phone said i had a missed call from you, so i was calling you back."

"oh yeah, i did call you. i was just seeing what you were up to."

"oh, well right now i'm at the bar with my friends."

"oh okay."

"did you need something?"

"oh not really, i was just seeing what you were up to and if maybe you'd like to hang out sometime."

"oh yeah, sure. we should do that."

"cool."

"cool. well, my friends are talking to me now, so i better go, but i'll call you soon, okay?"

"okay. bye, bye."

"bye, bye."

i slowly close my phone and stare at it.

i wait for it to vibrate again.

i want her to call me back, saying she will leave her friends and come to me.

i fall asleep with my head against the desk.

why are those people laughing?

i squint my eyes at them, trying to figure it out

why is the wind blowing so hard?

i continue to walk in a straight line as if i dont even notice

why did that car just honk?

i check my fly to make sure my penis isn't hanging out

why does this food taste like it is plastic?

i throw my meal down in a trash can

everything outside of myself seems to be oppressive and i want to go back to my bed

i am walking back to my house

i pass a blonde woman with nice cheekbones

i walk into my house

i put my hands down my pants

i touch my penis

it doesn't move

sometime i think i will never get an erection again

when i think of the fourth of july

i think of assholes shooting off fireworks and thinking they're cool

i stand watching them while i smoke a cigarette, thinking that i am cool

when i think of america

i think of assholes shooting off fireworks and thinking they are cool

i stand watching them while i smoke a cigarette, thinking that i am cool

the moon is brighter than all of the fireworks

i like the moon

the moon revolves the earth

the moon is part of the universe

when you think of the universe you can think of god (if you believe in him, which i don't)

it's like god had sex with some space dust and forgot to wear a condom

and we were created by mistake

and america is the sum total of that mistake

i wake up and look at my wrists

the veins are visible

i am skinny

i sit and stare at my computer for two hours

i take a shower

i cut my nails

i put on underpants

i put on pants

i put on a shirt

a flannel shirt

i put on socks

i put on shoes

i go outside

i light a cigarette

i check my fly

i don't know when this will end and i am too depressed to care

the lawn can't mow itself

but it should

what can i get for you today?

slicing cheese

slicing meat

have a nice day/night

most days the sun falls and i don't even notice

the grass in the ground is brownish-green

it looks very dry

the sky hasn't rained in over two weeks

i walk through the field aimlessly

i walk one hundred and eleven steps to my left

then forty steps forward

then eighteen to my right

i walk up to a small tree that is in the middle of the field

i stare at it and feel blank

the faun walks out into the road

a boy on a bicycle pummels towards the faun

the boy swerves towards the curb

the faun jumps into the middle of the road to avoid the boy

a yellow SUV runs into faun

the faun falls to the ground, blood dripping from its head

the woman driving the SUV gets out and screams incoherently

i watch from the sidewalk

i light a cigarette

the faun's eyes seem to be crossed irrevocably

i begin walking at a medium pace away from the scene of the accident

the sun kills me as i walk along the sidewalk

i fall to the ground, screaming in pain and horror

this can't be it, there has to be something more

no, i think, this is it

i stop screaming

it still hurts and im still dying

but theres no need to scream

the steps in the office building seem to be infinite

i continue to climb to the highest floor

i get to the highest floor

i have reached infinity

i go out on the roof and light and cigarette

i go the edge of the roof and look down

i am acrophobic

i ash my cigarette onto the dots below

i think how much it would suck if i jumped down

but i really want to jump down

i want to either join the army or become a heroin addict

then i would have structure in my life

im running running running

a dog is chasing me

i had been walking on the sidewalk

and then a dog started chasing me

i had gone to buy cigarettes

i was too lazy to put on shoes so i wore sandals

it is easy to walk but hard to run in sandals

i can hear the dog's bark getting closer

a knife gets stabbed into the back of my leg

but its not a knife

its a dogs teeth

i kick the dog in the head

it whimpers

i start running again

The steering wheel on my car feels like it has always been there

So do the pedals

I push on the gas pedal

I speed past a pickup truck

It is navy blue

It is emitting lots of fumes

I blow cigarette smoke out the window

I turn left down a side street

Kids are playing hockey in the street

I push on the gas pedal and attempt to run them over

They avoid me

I turn back onto a main road

I let cars pass me

I feel like an animal running at the back of the herd

I feel like a machine

But not like a cog in the machine

I am a machine and I am fulls of cogs that i can't control

one of the most fucked up things i've written.

(inspired by the vaselines)

pussycat meow
i want to skin you
and make a hat for my head
to keep it from getting so moist

pussycat meow
i want to shave off all your short, coarse hair
as a funny prank
a surprise to the neighbor when he gets home

rooster crow
i want to hold out your neck
stretch it out good
and watch it spurt blood when it's all over

rooster crow
i want to wrap you
in a floury tortilla smothered in a medley of juices
and stick you in my mouth

pussycat meow
and rooster crow
in a boat with a guitar
while the cow flies over the moon

michael jackson

for some reason, i am very troubled by his recent death.
i didn't know him, you didn't know him. who actually knew him, anyway?
i think i miss him.
what about blanket?

i want to stay in bed every morning
and watch someone live my life
see if they shower
see if they eat breakfast
and what they eat for breakfast
see if they smoke a cigarette
and what kind of cigarette
and then kill them before lunch

when i see you cry, i want to cry

when i see you laugh, i think: should i laugh?

when you are sad, i want to be sad

when you are happy, i want to be sad

i am sad

i want to be sad

when i am sad, i want you to be sad

when i am happy, i want you to be happy

i am never happy when you are happy

but i will laugh when you laugh

epic war poem

part i:
if i want to go outside
i open the window

part ii:
i got shot in the chest
i wish it had been in the head

Love

I walk out into the bright, burning sun. I love it. I love all stars, but the sun is the one closest to me, and therefore I feel a personal connection to it.

I love sitting outside on a cloudless night and looking up at the universe. One of the millions of stars might have blue apes with machines guns running around on it. Or somewhere in the vast darkness there might be a black hole, leading to a separate universe where, well, I don't even know what the fuck would be there. And I love it.

I love getting drunk and remembering that my big small existence on this big small planet really doesn't matter that much in relativity to the obesity of the universe.

I take a screwdriver and screw my head back together. I walk back outside and light a cigarette. A skunk walks over to me and gives me a high five. In the street a car runs a red light and hits an old lady who was crossing the road.

None of it makes any sense.

And I love it.

Hate

I walk out into the sun. I love the sun. I hate artificial light. I spend most of my time under artificial light.

I find myself hating everyone around me. As I walk to class I just want to start beating the shit out of people that are laughing among themselves as I walk past them. Their laughter angers me. It makes me hate myself for not being in on the joke.

Which comes to the greater problem: I hate myself. It is through my own denial of hating myself that I turn that hatred outwards onto all the people around me.

Self-loathing. What a cliche. The very fact that it is a cliche makes me hate myself even more.

But this is getting me nowhere. Here I am, in the bright, burning sun, and all I can think about is Hate.

Growing up I was always conditioned to believe the phrase "God is Love." But if God even exists then I think the better phrase would be "God is Hate." If he didn't hate human beings then why would he leave us here to hate each other, kill each other, and miserably wait until death.

But this is getting me nowhere. The existence of God or gods is meaningless, inconsequential. I need to get to the core of the problem. For if I am just going to blame God for everything, then I am just finding another excuse for my hatred.

The solution to the problem is not to find the cause of my hatred but to move past my hatred.

But it's so hard.

And I hate it.

Stranded

I was stranded on a desert island once with my friend Noah. We had gotten really fucked up and then we took his motor boat out to this tiny island in the Gulf of Mexico, several dozen miles away from the coast. Then we got there and realized we were out of gas.

At first it wasn't that bad, because he had a fridge on the boat. We had some beers and then we laid on the beach and got sunburnt. He also had some fireworks left over from the fourth of July, so we set all those off and that was fun.

After a few hours we realized that we were really fucked. We had no fuel for the boat, and we could see no other boats in sight.

"Let's go explore the island," Noah said.

"No, we need to stay here in case a boat comes," I said.

"Oh yeah."

We stayed by the boat for a few more hours, and then it started to get dark. Noah had some sub sandwiches in the fridge so we ate those. We each laid down on opposite ends of the boat's floor and then we went to sleep.

The next day we didn't really do anything. Noah swam around the island. It was a small island. There weren't many trees, and you could see from one end to the other. We continued doing nothing for several more days. We ate some raw seafood that Noah had in his fridge, but we started rationing it, because we were getting low on food.

Finally, one day I consented to exploring the island. There were a dozen or so tropical looking trees, and lots of big rocks randomly placed all over the island.

After a week we had run out of all our food. For the first day or so I didn't even notice after awhile. Then I began to feel thin and sickly. I felt like complete shit. I wanted to kill myself. Noah decided he needed to be alone for awhile, and he walked to the other end of the island.

I tried drowning myself. I swam out about a hundred meters into the ocean and then I dove my body into the water and when I resurfaced I kept my face in the water. I did that for a good two or three minutes, and was rapidly losing breath. Eventually I gave up brought my head back up. I decided I needed a better plan, a way of killing myself that would be irreversible.

I tried using rocks to slit my wrists. But I couldn't find any rock that was sharp enough to do the proper damage. When I did find a somewhat sharp one I made several gashes across my left wrist and then my right one, but nothing happened except for the fact that blood started dripping everywhere. I put the wrappers from the sub sandwiches over each of my wrists to stop the bleeding.

I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I was fucking hungry, and I had no way of finding food. I tried catching fish with my hands, but that failed miserably. I decided I needed a better way to kill myself.

I took a pocket knife and cut the anchor from the boat. I found a tree with rock underneath it. I threw the rope from the anchor over one of the branches and tied it like they do in Western movies. Then I stood on top of the rock and put the loop over around my head.

Just as I was about to jump from the rope I noticed a white speck in the distance of the ocean. It kept getting closer and closer and eventually it was right next to Noah's boat, which was drifting in the water since I had cut the anchor.

The people in the boat didn't notice me and I didn't say anything because I was in dark, suicidal place in my mind. I heard one of them yell, "This boat must be abandoned." The tied their boat to ours and began riding away.

I looked up the tree at the branches and then down at the rock. I took the loop off of my head and stepped down from the rock. Then I went to go find Noah, to see what he was up to.

found poem taken from class discussion

listen to your thoughts - a kind of stoner experiment.
see which ones generate nubs that tease.
attuned to your epiphanic thoughts, read.
you are collated, shuffled into one giant piece of flesh.

the terms...
which terms?
there aren't so many terms.
what are the terms?
it's a negotiation.
what negotiation?
it's an agreement.
but what terms? what special language?

ordinary words show ignorance such as:
it is up in the air.

on the stage of intimidation you are still poisoned by questions.
tangents make up your main operation.
stories and anecdotes accumulate the echoes
of technical terms and what is unsaid.

punctuation bears no relation to our impressive temptations.

it is a matter of pacing.
fear and misgiving avert our attention.
what is the material of nervousness?
how do you build your authority on ignorance?

you really haven't got all the data on time.
you've got a disconcerting ability to shift your commitments.
you have a greater commitment to velocity than to commitment.

he walked through puzzles of pain.
boy, you guys are young.
it's better for the chickens to almost scratch a vulture.
if there is the possibility of saying what you really mean, do it.

an unfinished poem i began years ago that i completed today

inner turmoil like the fighting of the morning's last light -
that brisk kind of ship that takes you back to yourself again

the killing of the turmoil, fighting like the last light of the morning.
you briskly take that ship back for yourself again.

what kind of indifference moves me to stillness?
killing the ships of the morning, you fight against yourself.

stillness, like the last light of the morning
briskly indifferent to yourself and your needs.

fighting, you destroy the ship that takes you back
to yourself again, and briskly kill the last of the morning's light.
all is still in the glow of my indifference.

life

another cut-up poem but this one is taken from john cheever's journals

the city, my heart, begins to rise.
over-scrutinizing its seventy-first formulation of the world does me so much harm.

susie, journey, a very cold girl with damn-fool ships, white with ice.

in the city a bitter cold kept us from the imitation of ill-fitting ideas.
vaguely formed depravity, decorated with mirrors and spoiled meat.

i've written a cheerful patriotic finale - flags, tears, performed by shadowy ladies.
cliches, mightily offended by a bony tiny smile animated by the purest ambition.

a woman with an unusually deep and heavy beauty that promises intractableness
that suggests a horizion of artfully betrayed bones, hungry.

i dreamed about a game of mutisyllabic pressure.
the dream discolered by food, dirt and scandalous marital mix-ups.

i dreamed that last night was changed and that someone explained to me:
my father there, and how unhappy my mother.

another class poem

too self-centered to be suicidal:
"if you take me away, what is there?"

with a pure love for his physicality,
the question of death will come up differently.

what drives this logic?
shunting blame.

a remnant of the nobility
will have to take up an occupation.

a question of responsibility;
can it be a question of comfort?

he doesn't have to worry about social conventions.
but he does.

he can't really pick up his pen.

written during class with words from class its called Against the Grain

celebrate what is man made over what is natural
modern muse of impotence.
accumulation of lists: tiring, exhausting,
a barrier around oneself.
inter-breeding,
incestual poetry,
never-ending mimesis.
boredom: the effeminate father of all vices.
rejection of the classical, the Christian, the Enlightenment:
an inventory of decadence.
lavish indulgences can only temporarily relieve this boredom.
sodomy: another exquisite pleasure.
being fed up the ass: against the grain.

god is truth.

relativistically, god is about truth.
the characters serve their own type of good.
that's what the author does.
the same words over and over again.
he hates his immortality.
the cat just hangs out on the cover of the book.
obvious nonsense.
caesar wasn't eternal. he wasn't even necessary.
believe in the state, fundamentally.
but you can't really put your trust in the truth, anyway.
do you even know where it is?
give it metaphysical content, this creature.
have a walk on a beam of light.
he has light, and the master has peace.
there's a difference.
the narrative transcends life.

<(*-* <)

another found in class poem, this time from english literature III

connected by the same vessels,
eulogy is parallel to musing
within the context of funerals.

on an average day, an open-endedness
is where you are headed.

the framework is a little confusing.
why am I writing about this now?

go somewhere and write about it.
why am I exploring this now?
a genuine quest - who are you?

two models of beauty and the possibility of humor.
are you scared of it?

one of the best insults is a joke.
reach for the easiest word and use it.

we have to see your eyes, your eyelashes, your lips.
realization: you don't have to answer to insults.

yes, I did completely ruin this process.
and it will be handed down from mother to daughter.
thank you, inner turmoil.

nothingness can be overwhelming,
but set up your point of view.

you are bit at ease in the world,
which is a reflection of you in the deprived landscape.

interspersing of really sensitive moments
with mundane bar troubles.
ambivalent aesthetic sensibility is fine.

finding out in a public atmosphere that people actually care about you.
but you're giving it away, looking at the landscape, trying to fall in love with it.

this is not a linear narrative.
why am I asking this question now?

all of these poems are composed of words spoken in my classes selectively edited

CLASS POEM ONE: Japanese literature
falling into his own trap
did you catch what I just did?
drastic:

contrast aware of contrast
toe any party line, imperial in-between.
I cannot do this and I cannot do that
and it is creepy, image of distress.
choose to climb out if you could
and then five and then ten
and then thirty.

directly in the imagery,
he has a flag and he stands out (in his imagination)
distanced and elevated - insignificant refrain
of smoke, visible and invisible.

permanent stasis is the idea of death
as forever, not single moment remained.

no, skeptical Ko-san, you don't have to
stand out from the crowd of flag-carrying other folks
that represent the purpose of what we are fighting for:
opting to end our lives for the greater good.

CLASS POEM TWO: Japanese literature continued
he would stand on War
if only he knew more about it.
inconsequential details don't separate this reverie from this brutal reality.

dogs of War, no one can tell what I was thinking.
why would I be afraid?
they can't see what I'm thinking.
transparency doesn't exist.
tease until our intentions are made real.
no one will pick up on the little things.
total purging of our private intentions
a more complex figure if he were not to debate.

is this selling it short?
john mccain for president.
a lie.

aaaaaarrggggahhhhhhhhhh. universal suffrage.

suffrage. the right to vote.
that has nothing to do with what i am about to write down here.
sometimes i feel like, emotion.
it is a strong one. it envelops me. swallows me whole.
like a weight in between my shoulder blades, pushing me towards the earth.
a heavy weight champion on my back. a boxing title to beat me down.
i get so close to falling sometimes. but i've managed to stay on my feet, stumbling.
my toes digging into the soil to hold their ground, maintain balance.
the only problem is, then, that i get muddy feet. grit coating them, eventually drying and caking.
like atlas i try to keep my head raised, my arms stretched out above my head, holding it there. trembling.
sometimes i get an itch somewhere on my body. that's when it's really hard to do.
but i try, anyway.

what is happening to america

what exactly is happening to the old united states of america? a black man is about to be elected president? william buckley's son endorsed barack obama? seven years have passed since 9/11 and the terrorists still haven't let off a nuclear device in one of america's metropolitan area?

i cant tell if america is getting better or not? i want a black president. i want conservatives to have no idea what is going on with their political party. my dad is a lifelong conservative republican and he thinks he might vote for barack obama. christopher buckley (son of the godfather of the conservative movement- william buckley) endorsed obama. this is a guy who wrote for his dad's ultra conservative magazine, the national review. next colin powell will endorse obama and we will finally be out of iraq.

the iraq war has been the big event that has marked my slow but steady decline into adulthood. everyone thought iraq was an amazing idea in 2003 and then 3 years later we decided it sucked but we stayed there anyway. over 4,000 of my fellow countrymen have died, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of iraqis who have died (funny how we always forget about them). and yet no one seems to really give a fuck, we just keep spending billions and billions of dollars on the war and killing more and more people.

supposedly things are working out in iraq now. the "surge" has worked, from what they say. i dont really give a fuck. john mccain seems to think it was so great that we stayed there and killed more people and that he seems willing to claim all responsibility for whatever victory there appears to be to some people. i think we should leave.

and when the first black man gets elected president thats exactly what will happen. we will get the fuck out of there. thats why i liked obama from the beginning, because hes the only big-time, running for president politician who had the balls to be against the war back before it started. i feel like i can trust him.

but i still dont know whats happening to america? is it getting better? or are the good old american values still there too? we still seem to love capitalism and imperialism and patriotism and all the other isms. we just call them all different names.

maybe we should call america by a different name now.

this is a subjective translation of way a poem called ja nao me importo by fernando pessoa sounds

jesus gnawed me improperly;
a tear comfy quietly amorously creeps away
soon, navigate quiet cheap amble-y ports
every curt movement ameliorates stars

nevada needs rest.
dole quiet glances over aching,
checkered differences.
come far and pour lazy aid to the irate;
indifference.
a quick search for supine heat can mould such
fits of gentleness.
quiet me, den of roses eating separate dens of roses!

coming undone is hard.
in caves sense and ponder very
secretly every seeming
dead or other vapor.

end solely new and consecrated!
only quell the bright trap
of subtle mundanity.

"all-from, none-into"

In the time before sleep,
between the medicine, the worry -
the idea that I cradle some kind of feeling
in this belly, this crater where I have
hidden countless sighs and
terminated statements, glad to be,
at last, the secret-keeper.

The eyelids, so heavy lately,
the sun drags on them,
and I comply, let it make shapes
in the darkness when I let them close.
I lay in the grass and feel the earth
warmed, the grass cool, the whole thing
welcoming, sensuous.
I abide, I abide.

I accept the actual, I live there
in a house I?ve built for myself
from days in murk and
misgivings, from the stable boughs
of my present future and from a little
of that fine moss I found one day
while appreciating things.

this one time...

so i was sitting on this hill, right?
well, i guess it wasn't really a hill. it was more like a knoll.
and, anyway, i was looking at this huge tree. like, a HUGE tree.
there were no leaves on it, because it was winter and there was snow everywhere, too.
and its branches were liked twisted vines of barbed wire reaching up to the sky.
i was like, "woah." and then looked at the ground in front of me for a while, just a patch of brown in all the snow.
i started getting cold, but i didn't feel like going in. and then i started to shiver in little spurts. like all of a sudden i would go "brrr" with my whole body, and then it would stop really quickly.
i looked around some more, and every 20 seconds or so everything would shake. because i was shivering. but then after a while of that, i was shivering continuously so i went back inside. i was a little upset with my mind because i couldn't control my body against the cold.
and, yeah.

a short history of the civil war

so this still-young nation that was based on equality and liberty and all that

french revolution bullshit

is, of course, based on brutally subjugating people to make lots of money.

and there is polite, but firm disagreement about whether or not this discrepancy is

acceptable. After tense compromises are made between the two sides there is a small but bloody insurrection that foreshadows the whole thing and then wham!

a bitter war is begun with idealistic trumpets, naïve tactics, pomp and even ceremony.

all this immediately ends in awkward chaos and five endless years of death.

the presidents and generals get more clever as the graveyards fill

and one side wins and proclaims its universal moral superiority

and then proceeds to get rich by subjugating the people they defeated

and the people they said they would liberate, but in more polite ways.

a guy in a chair was wheeling himself
up the hill that i was walking down
and i felt a slight pride for life
not for my own
but for all the people in chairs
who wheel themselves
up and down hills

all my poems are the same

she walked over to it and swung open the door
it creaked on its hinges

15-syllable 6 line poem

today i saw a ship sail out of the harbor of my heart
it went floating on, out of my sight and out of my mind's eye.
now i could no longer perceive this ship but i could still feel
the blushing pregnant brides and the nervous elder wives and the
wizened old men just waiting for my fall out of their God's grace.
i could still feel the weight of their looks and i trembled with fear.

crenshaw at king

Sinking ships in
sucking turbines.
Clouds and winds As
Margery drips.

The Gargling saints
Abide the pipe,
Bang, echo of
The churning tide.

Former demons
Convert divine

there is no certainty in anything but the depth of silence
so stamp your feet and scream

State of the Blog Address:

Ah yes i am so witty. Not really. This blog started like six months ago and there have been some good things posted on it. Really good things. Somebody thats not lazy should make a zine out of the best hits. I think this blog may be near the end of its run. If five people leave comments on this entry saying its time to retire then this blog will retire and there will be no new entries. I love you guys. Kiss Kiss Hug Hug

Two minutes later:

Nevermind.

two fifty two
its two fifty two
the minute is now over
never to be had agian
forever
The Pixies Rock!
hey Duncan

for a time, there was nothing. nothing was discernable from any vantage point. and not just in any of the major cities, but even in the woods and by the rivers and in the valleys there was still nothing. there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt. there was a source of knowledge, and authority, and it made the world work. we played imaginative games that echoed the principles we could see in this safe security - the good guys and the bad guys, us and them.

then there were lots of teachers, both good and bad. there is huge world that many people have tried to understand, and over time through refining those ideas we have a better idea of how the world works for more complicated, more mystifying reasons, reasons we can only understand a small part of one field of all the reasons. we were gonna have to think real hard and real long after listening to a ton of other people who had thought real hard and real long. if we got real lucky and were real smart and clever and dedicated we could maybe get to disprove the way other people said it was over years of long and hard work writing scholarly articles and making proofs. because what all those people before us had said had helped to make the world work all that time we hadnt been around for, so it had to mean something. it had to have made the world work. we played ominous games about destruction in plentiful, peaceful settings, in plush chairs, in comfortable living rooms.

then there was the internet. suddenly there were these discernable figures writing on blogs. i wrote in my blogs and you wrote in your blogs and they wrote in their blogs - or if not, livejournals, or facebooks, or myspaces, or forums, or message boards, or instant messenger, or e-mail, or youtube videos, or art on the internet, or songs or anything else. there were distant discernible figures. they offered explanations (often explanations of how other people's explanations didn't quite add up) of how the world must have worked because they were a part of the new way that the world works. the internet is the new way the world works. and so some blogger, speaking only through his blog and his e-novel and then later his printed works, which are the same thing except they are in print, and so now this blogger tells me how the world works, because he tells a story of the world that radically contradicts other world views and yet rings true for us, or at least, some of it does for some of us some of the time. his blog doesn't oppose the new republic or the new york post or the chicago sun-times or the british broadcasting corporation. now they all tell us how the world works. now we play guessing games about complex equations with lots of variables that we don't know the math behind. we play games of negation or of affirmation. we play games of who is right, of who gets what.

why do we play so many games?

write more stuff!

The windows have dozed off.
The night thick as paint
eases the smoke from your
cigarette down the Hudson.

The moon a silver dollar,
something to look at
while far off footsteps say,
“I wish you weren’t here,
I wish you weren’t here.”

The body by the bank of the river,
some wet movement sound,
the trees too still to investigate,
you are contented.

“I’ll lie here awhile
and talk with you,
the branches are loose and running
over the oil paint sky.”

I wish you weren’t here
I wish you weren’t here.

tickle my fancy

i started a blog.
because i am bored
and all my friends are back at school
it's not literary, or anything at all, really
it's whatever tickles my fancy
but the URL for that name was taken
so it is:
http://tickleourfancy.blogspot.com
i'm probably going to forget about it in a couple days
though.
which reminds me.
if you're ever feeling like listening to music that is good (most of the time)
and that i am into and have chosen myself to add to this list
that everyone can listen to then go to this.

i'd rather walk dogs for a living

at a desk
decorated with a heap of old newspapers
and a phone
buttons dirty with the marks of all the people
who punched its digits
sits one without a care in what he sees
lack of interest,
apathy,
are his motivators
how long will it be
before
?

an exercise in prose that just stops

but the worst thing about it was the all-pervasive SOMETHINGness of the place, the cold shimmery air and the feeling that spiders were always nearby. everything and its confusing din and clatter all the time. particularly the clocks - dear merciful god they get you going! the bourgeois juxtaposition of samovars and gongs and hd tv and rooms filled with old books about all the things that had been destroyed in this place, with norman rockwell prints and a dog's head proudly smiling in a decorated general's uniform that william blake might have drawn after a nightmare.
this divebombing approach to life where you give it a heavily weighted single shot and then after that you either hit it or you get shot up. metaphor doesn't mean anything. if divebombing and divebombers were eliminated from our society, our ills would be ameliorated, McMeals put on our tables, worries taken out of our heads.
our aims are not aimless, but our aims might be off. this is not to say that i am not guilty. that i do not listen to the kinks like i read geofferey chaucer. and that i do not go liquor stores and get carded. and that i can rarely live in the moment. and that i

listen, sir
i am PISSED OFF
it's like when you (me, they) are driving
behind a slow ass car
and the fucking road is curvy
and you can't just
ACCELERATE
and pass them (you, me).
it's like we're sitting there,
exhausted from the fight
but we still have a little fire left
so we decide that, clearly,
the best decision would be
to SHOOT each other's motherfucking heads off.
but listen a second,
i'm dead tired,
my wings are tied nicely with a satin ribbon that doesn't slip off
(an oxymoron),
and i just don't want to take the next step.
so i won't.
i am not going to budge, move,
or exponentially increase my velocity.
sorry.
i love you and everything, but like you said,
i am right.
(was that a lie? somtimes your truthful lies make me doubt myself.)
i wish you were a tow truck.

8.

lots of gas is leaking
from my car.
why can't i elope
with random people

I see in other automobiles
I pass. maybe I should go
buy a pack of reds with
my paycheck money.

or maybe I should
buy some blueberry haze.
would you smoke it?
I know you would.

I might hide in a box.
a cardboard box.

7.

it is 3 PM.
how many more hours do i have
before I take my Seroquel so it can
sedate me. it shivers down

my spine and numbs up my leg
and then it tells me
"goodnight."
you are going to be calling me

back sometime today.
we will discuss how stuff sucks
and maybe even get
philosophical.

i have idle sex every moment
with this machine it seems.

6.

when I think of you
all these stupid political arguments
with my father in his library
seem so pointless.

I'm afraid to punch
a wall, but I really want to.
bruise and disease
infect everything

no matter what. when I
think of you I remember that
we are all just fast floating
butterflies or autumn leaves

or hot air balloons
or high speed jets.

god bless whatever
horrible brick building
we decide to hold up
today or for the next

two thousand years.
calendars: i say burn them all.
there is no need for time
anymore.

this might sound bleak,
but today I was a victim
of road rage
and I showed a man

my middle finger and he was
surprised, but then he did the same.

4.

the great depression continues
on and on and on forever;
not really a black hole,
but it seems like it.

AAA batteries
will power this omericon machine.
the factory-made sugar cube meals
I stuff into my mouth

never really seem to do much.
this is the end of my flat square junkyard world:
a personalized television screen
and another television screen in the rear.

there isn't a bank holiday
or day off work for this festivity.

flanking around the forest
as wide as we can go:
our holocaustic cavalry.
not for you,

but you probably know
that thick meaty beef flesh and flesh
and flesh over bones
of which I speak.

I stayed in the first floor closet
only a little line of light
peaked in
but even then

the star of our solar system
faded into infinite purple black.

2.

from the uncertain
library desk
on which i write
on this thursday night

comes spontaneous
never ordinary
completely genuine jazz:
made in omerico.

always entertaining.
the fruits of our labors
were those seedless watermelons
born of our long and narrow tropical island,

that sandy public speedway
beneath the ocean dark.

1.

I chose instead
to live in an island fortress
as a reclusive king.
my phantom world war armies

met the slow slanted shredding
of cheese,
which is then frozen freezer cold
into some boring motion picture.

I couldn't paint.
I could barely even draw.
but in daydream imagination
and nightmarish nights,

I would look towards endless piles
of arson torched orange hay.

hitchhiking

we hitched a ride in the back of a pickup truck
inside it was an old television set
and a stereo system
i had to be careful when getting in
so as not to smash it to pieces

we decided to walk for a while
stopped and ate some deep fried crickets
that we slathered with beer
we posed with them for the camera
so we could make great facebook photos

down dimly-lit lanes and back roads
howling back at the barking dogs
hurling back their insults
cursing at the top of our lungs
before climbing onto our ways home

back into the prison camp we rode
but one of us was denied entry
because the guards didn't
like the features of his body
they were too familiar and close to home

we sat at the edge of an empty pool
at the end of the evening
quietly, for the most part
thinking about how on that night
we saw our histories change

through a window the
ambulance wail reaches me
smiling and alone.

caesar dressing
and white american
cheese on my salad.
i am happy.

a bald figure of authority leads
underground evangelical therapy:
what should i think?
i am sad.

uberoptimism
and a glass of cheap rum
will cure this socioeconomicopolitical downturn.
i am brave.

the mud of the soundscape
made into something
less concrete.
i am a fraid.

the noon sun grills
the snow on the rooftop.
the roads are being salted.
i am a wake.

this woman has three heads
and i am in three
different rooms.
i am a sleep.

i could search forever for a right virtue
but i could never find a right emotion.

or maybe it's the other way around.

a pantoum for the city

Our city, a tiny tireless ant,
There is no end to the exorbitant
Our little pains make them so jubilant.
Our labor a part of it - relevant

There is no end to the exorbitant.
Is the apple of your eye appearing?
Our labor a part of it - relevant
The doges take their gold gondoliering.

Is the apple of your eye appearing?
Only if done with joviality.
The doges take their gold gondoliering.
Dull brown shit is the world’s reality.

Only if done with joviality.
Even the simplest people love a thrill.
Dull brown shit is the world’s reality.
Yet its hard to swallow this simple pill.

Even the simplest people love a thrill.
We build ourselves up in an endless rant.
Yet its hard to swallow this simple pill:
Our city - a tiny tireless ant.

i am jumping in my seat

what do i feel?

my heart is
malleable like skin
but can crack like an eggshell
and inside wings are being born

fluttering and springing
they try to break free
their feathery imprints
visible on the skin

of a blood pumping muscle

that’s what I feel

english class poetry series - the villanelle

"That kind of thing is just obscene;"
Mankind is prone to labeling.
"Let's string up this new libertine!"

The state is here to intervene
Even for mere littering!
"That kind of thing is just obscene."

We just got this new guillotine.
Justice must be unpitying.
"Let's string up this new libertine!"

We caught this man selling codeine;
He's not even worth imprisoning!
"That kind of thing is just obscene."

This dates back to Saint Augustine;
Man's cruelty is hampering.
"Let's string up this new libertine!"

Even if you are seventeen
You will face much moralizing.
"That kind of thing is just obscene."
"Let's string up this new libertine!"

our shortcomings

wet whitewashed walls
a spatter of pockmarked red
iridescent shining against the bland
brown bricks of the city

screaming obscenities
a young Philip Glass
lifting light upon the bland
pacified people of the city

the ticking of a wristwatch
a useless generation
glaring bright faulty activism in the bland
streets of the city

New Shoes

I got new shoes
they cost $13.84

they are small
black
and leather

I worked the
last two days
wearing them

and my feet
don't hurt

sometimes
life is good

escape

something covers me
like a blanket to the eyes,
but it's not sunglasses
and it's not a vis
or.
maybe i'm just thinking
too much again,
when i should just vent this
abstraction with a pen.

venting all this steam
would take an engine,
and it would take a lifetime,
so i would want a pension.
but money is worthless,
it's just paper and metal.
i'd like a log cabin
to live and settle
down.

i'd sit, read, write, smoke,
and drink homemade beer.
i'd live with some animals
and without fear.

right now i live
constantly afraid
that all around me is an illusion
and we haven't come far from caves.

the newspaper is something
to get interested in,
or bowling balls
and knocking down the pins.

the end:

old people flirt
in the library.
i'm writing this down
in my diary.

i am an empty field
i am harvest-less,
fruitless,
i bear nothing.
i think it would be possible
to once again fertilize
should you return
should you return whole
should you return whole and warm
and enter my womb
and enter my soul
and enter my bone marrow.

i am afraid of forgetting
i am afraid of you forgetting me forgetting you
i am afraid of slipping past you
like a silk lizard on a temple floor:
part of the beauty
but estranged from the prayers whispered softly into the night.
i am afraid of floating,
floating past you;
i am afraid of floating alone.

assault

Single me out,
Extend your welcome name
And give me what I want
Summer sex cryin shame

Teetotal saint
And the cherry tree wind
Someone’s going down
Lie cheat steal win

Hide in me, let me
Single out your disease
Ramble your hair
Fall crinckle apple ease

Midnight craving
Couch yellow tinkle
It can never be
ginger surpass tickle

understand her confidence
nothing was ever her fault
summon your saint
Columbian drama salt

its like i am floating:
six swans carry strings in their beaks
strings tied around my fingers and toes
belly up.
the sky is getting a lot closer.

a small dose of self loathing

sighs in the morning throwing myself out of bed
another day i don't want to put myself through
this dull aching feeling tapping throbbing in my head
not a pain but a sensation i'm quite used to
by now this should all have been accepted
i would be smiling happy walking like them
but instead have i only resented
all of the fulfilled people i condemn

importance of smiling and frowning

importance of smiling and frowning

it is good to smile
so as to admit that
a pencil size joint
of cannabis and tobacco
or the female body
when it is at its greatest
wax
poetry
form
is still just something that get me off

because i evolved from an ape

and not from a clam

and somewhere shallow or deep beneath the smile
is buried the brain
and an inevitable and infinite casket
and then i frown
and i am overcome by many things:
the urge to throw a dagger
at myself
in the mirror,
and breathe slowly,
in
and out:
my own anger,
lack of courage,
dismay.
whatever.

something

after awhile cigarettes remind you of kissing anyone
and living in this place feels like we're
whispering in each others' ears
so we live like we are --
and suddenly everything and nothing is big news.

5 quick shits

gravity.
physics.
the safety administration building
has kept me so safe
that I almost want to die.

money.
laundry.
we should burn all our money
and burn all our clothes.
(I will keep a view coins
that survive the arson
and a thong for the beach.)

drugs.
traffic.
if drugs were legal
I'd probably be dead
but who's to say
I wouldn't have died
from road rage
against a rolls Royce.

with machine guns
kill the population.
we will all be tortured
after life as in the Middle Ages.

all the children
on the public
computers are staring
at me as I sit
at a corner library table.

@ making tea

the steps are simple
boil pour stirr

blow sip burn
too hot to wait

let it steep
the flavors brew

blow sip swallow
she hates the taste

-naqeeb stevens

a message from god himself

bathroom linoleum beige white tiles
contemplating our life in the kala yuga
i won't kill myself

looking down bare feet gray tarnished grime
"what is happening," bellows the homeless man
on broadway lifting cup of loose change to the sky

i lived once among the whines of the altruistic
doling goodwill sweaters drab faded benediction
to all who would accept them the lost generation

soot stained fingernails scratch at layers of loose skin
bathing in holy feculence thwarting damnation
peeling chapped lips

nothing left but cold damp collapse
fucking and pissing and breathing realizing
everyone's shit stinks

Affirmation

Affirmation

She had no ink
ling that she w
as made of i
nk
So nestled herself between the
d and b.

(Was comfy there.)

She did not stand for
nothing, he wrote.
S:
I:
M:
P:
L:
Y: she did not stand.

Ideals

She says: "I think I am torn between my two parents. Idealistically."
He says: "I think I am torn between my two butt cheeks. Idealistically."
She says: "Asshole."

untitled

everything was fixed conveniently,
with just a bag of medicine to hold.
the smallest dose
for the things i host

lift me
one more mile.

watch the basement flood with dirty water,
the wood warps and whines and the paint peels.
no change of mood
in my solitude

i will waste away
to a smile...

the dimness will creep back into a corner,
day will glaze the floor with tobacco crumbs and dust.
i'll be asleep and be spared
lying in the armchair.

just avoid moving.
and after a while,

you've arrived
just in time,
with all the right supplies
to make you
mine.

the importance of optimism

when you look outside the window
and all you see is a wasteland
an earth tinged with speckles of superfluous life

then you could be sitting in the wrong room

but i'm not that positive

two o'clock

i am drinking a beer
my first beer of the night
at two A.M.
A.M.
AM
I AM.
YOU ARE.
YOU ARE NOT.
YOU ARE NOT YET.
it's Pabst.
that means that i will hate the way my mouth tastes
in right about now.
oh, now.
it's so easy to think about the past/future
and so hard to deal with the
right now
right now.

earlier,
there was this little white,
hard crumb
stuck on/in the carpet
you were lying on
i could see it
between strands of my own hair
and i wondered what it was made of,
if it would crumble under applied pressure
if it would break between thumb and forefinger,
its parts scattering like the ducks you screamed away.

or would it stay whole,
like a
half-full glass of milk
on the stainless-steel counter in your kitchen
that you forgot to drink
after your poured it?

six o'clock fuck

i am interested in the way
you are obsessed with my smell
the way i reek
when i don't shower,
the way i wreak
havoc
when i don't do it your way.
what is my way?
my way is the way of the condor
it is the high life
the fly life
the life where i can be alone when i'm next to you;
the life where i can seethe and boil
only to simmer into a mindless puddle a few hours later,
only to be let down again
by my own routine.
when the high is over,
when i am tired,
when my clothes don't match my nails or shoes,
i think about what it would be like
to not have your clothes to pick up off my floor
or
what it would be like
to not have someone to remind
to do this
or not do that.

i've never smelled this bad before.
i think i will put on some deodorant
or shower
before you get here,
just to deprive you
of some stinky happiness.

Instantaneous Message

I will come with flowers.
overflowing arms of them
and I will drop them to hug you

I want to say to you that I did it,
and that there is peace everywhere. And we can go
outside and there will be the people, so happy.

People will be pouring their
money into the garbage cans too,
and friendly people will give the
homeless their extra clothes
and their extra rooms

I wish I could see this
too

I want to wait by the river for a boat
to come and bring me to you

just like you

overlooking the flat tops of buildings
watching the lights of people's apartments
turn on and off
accepting fully that there is nothing to be done

in this place
the gray streets go on
and on without ever ending
people walk down them in no direction

just like you
for them the skies are clear
everything is alright
content in their make-believe...

permanence
significance
existence.

Crying Drunk

I would like to think everyone who writes for The World Looks Better in Pink for letting me write poems on this blog.


Crying Drunk

Last night at work
after the rush was over
I stood next to Luna
I said, “The good boss
is here
we can get drunk”

She replied, “I only drank once,
with The BF in a hotel
Captain and Rum
The Fresh Prince was on
I started to cry
he settled me down

then we had sex
and I began crying again
I couldn't stop
I laid in the bed
and couldn't stop.”

“Oh. Maybe we
shouldn't drink.”

i am a vegetarian and believe in killing as a first resort and a first resort only

only i can understand

how i poop
how i pee
all the civilizations i nuke to oblivion in my mind

only you can see me
how i hide
from the muddling of voices
into some sinister prank

and everyone that sees me is a star
and everyone who cares
gives me some strange brand of power
gives me the right to take life

Nobody Cares
I Care
I Think I Care
Maybe I Don't Really Care
Do You Want A Free Macy's Gift Card?
Oh Dear

it makes me sad to make her happy

Hers is not to waddle
But she walks from side to side
and when when she runs
Her elbows move her stride

And she collects scraps.
and a garage sale fanatic.
But what is in her books ,
What truly makes her ecstatic:

Her magazine cut-outs
Of all the household items she desires
What she collects:
Piles and piles of advertising flyers

laundry poem maybe

my new favorite activity is:
separating the whites from the colors,
pouring in the bleach.

every day i get the same headache,
but i've stopped pitying myself,
because things have gotten so goddamn clean in there,
it's like winter.

and i think the headache might be the season breaking rank,
or the bleach.

beyond your flowers of flaming truth beyond your latest ad campaigns

there is no beauty
in the relics of tyrants
and rats jumping ship

the flaming truth of
man's capacity for good
things is not very new

the epic wars we never fought

the epic wars we never fought

irony
is the clock that always ticks
slowly forever late saturday night
minute to minute
i would love a banana boat
to live on
so i dont have to meet the beef
in its butchered exhaustion

why else would i live
here on this species eat species planet
when i could build a spaceship
and fly to an abandoned wasteland factory house
that is white
with black and gray lining
that leaves much to be desired
but can feed a robot

what else would i do on this small ocean
of grass
of seaweed dried to a dank pulp
that smells like poop
from the next door neighbors dog
that always barks when i leave
to get in my car

i forget what model my car is
i remember it is orange
and that i drive slow when im sad
and fast when i am angry
today i was angry
and then i was sad

i took my pills

they make it seem okay

i want to drown in an epic hurricane wave

i want to fasten my seat belt
and fly in a plane

i want to eat lots of tacos
with fake meat

i want to kill grizzly bears
when they come towards my log cabin

i want to go vote on election day
but i will be lazy and hit the snooze

i want to discover the meaning
of grouping days into sevens

tomorrow is sunday
i am not going to church
the day after that is whatever
i dont care what i do that day

in the sky there is a superhero
with turbo power zooming
through blue sky and making
a cloudy streak
that other people care about

i was driving on the road the other day
then i ran into some men with pitchforks
and fake beards
i asked them if they were karl marx or some philosopher
and they gave me madddddddddddddd
looks

their eyes are like lasers
they beam me down until i faint
into a lazy middle class intellectual
computer addicted trance

Flakes of Wheaties
Soggy In Milk
Milk
Milk
Milk
Dripping down my chin

16 titled haikus

Long Arm

the police come like

the first frost killing every

bug in the forest.

Modest Mouse

the artic sea is

not as deep as quagmires

of the blighted heart.

Criticism

“it all seems very

subjective,” he said. I said

I didn’t think so.

Heaven’s Gate

there will be no march

on heaven’s gate, no storming

the ramparts of death.

Fights

you said I was not

a very good person and

I said, “yes, yes, yes!”

Magic

the draw of drugs and

devious devices is

the desert of life.

Peacetime

new jersey, nineteen

forty five; war done, get dead,

find a wife instead.

The zoo

my friends peruse the

catfish, but it has secrets,

just like we all do.

America 1

America is

Slavery and war and whores;

Let god cut our hair

America 2

god’s judgement is swift,

but he thinks bigger than us.

so watch out, upstart.

Empires

blood spatters across

the Aztec temple; here is

civilization.

Tension

we do not all want

the same things from the world; thus

there are policemen.

Arrogance of Youth

worry away your

best years with a dumb smile

soon everyone dies.

Pompous Earth

fuck the world and its

brashness in suggesting that

I want part of it.

Ideology

ideology;

also known as the cause of

most of our problems.

Milk and Cookies

the milk is all gone,

the cookies; stale. All is shown

as it is; wasted.

songs for real and invented people

Sad Song for Non-Lovers

Note: I spontaneously wrote three love songs this morning, one for Fernando, one for the Rejects and one about a happy start with a sad ending. I only can remember one. I've decided to begin recording things I say because I lose so much of it to my faulty memory.

R E J E C T e d

these are sad lyrics to a sad song
cause i asked you on a date
and you refused to come along.
so I went alone
and then I cried myself to sleep
and in my dreams
I gave away
my heart for you to keep
and when I woke up
these words were in my brain
so i sang them to the empty room
then threw the lyrics down the drain.

but here they are--
as i remember them!
enjoy my words, you little bitch
because i still carry your flame
(musical interlude)
(spoken)
ATENCIÓN:
These are sad lyrics for a sad song
You made my heart hurt
I can't believe I've been so wronged

i asked you out!
and you refused me!
i know i'm pretty
so i don't get why you used me
for your silly games
why did you make me cry
why did you leave me all alone
and make me think that i should die
cause i don't have you.

but i still want you
but i still want your hair!
your silky sweater, your red dress
that green feather in your hair!
you are a dream machine:
what love is made of.
how did you become obscene,
a monster I'm afraid of?

I don't forgive you
Because you made me cry
Because you made me write a song
Because you made me think that I should die...
But I forgive you,
because your eyes-they are so pretty
because you promised me a date:
an evening walk about the city.
So its okay--you are forgiven.
I'm resigned to be alone
in this world among the living.
When I die,
I hope I find you.
I hope you wear your red dress and your grandchildren surround you
and I'll sing them
this sad song that I wrote you
and you'll smile and tell me you'll devote your
life to me
and that Heaven's home is Ours
that we'll hold hands
and kiss to pass the hours.

That is my day dream.
It is my night dream, too.
I wrote a sad song, and I wrote it all for you.

These are sad lyrics to a sad song
cause I asked you on a date
and you refused to come along
so I went to sleep and in my dreams
I wrote,
I wrote,
I wrote,
this sad song for YOU.

were we there?

"there was an earthquake!"
"there was an earthquake!"
"the ground shook"
"I was there! I was there"

"there was an earthquake?"
"yes the ground shook"
"the dishes rattled"
"I was there, I was there"

as i lay awake
2:11 to be precise
like a wave passing under
the ground shook

"there was an earthquake!"
"there was an earthquake"
"were you there?"'
"did you feel it?"

my mother comes home
from work that day
and confesses to the truth
i had awoken to

"i saw the news,
and i heard them say"
"there Was an earthquake
earlier today"

"yes, there was an earthquake,
I told you, i was there."
"didn't you feel it?
were'nt you there?"

"I thought it was just you
that had broken through"
"I thought it was just you,
and your imagination too."

my beating eyes

my eye shutters.
thats what i call it.
just under my eyes,
in the bags i carry.

see when i look
through the camera
my intent is to
capture a momment

a momment of peak
interaction, of connection,
between them.
and between them & you.

capturing the momment
means opening
that shutter door
to let the light in.

what ends up happening
is i close the door
to mine eye
to let the light in

think of it
as a hallway
my door open
light passing through

i close my door
(which opened outwards)
to let the light pass
on to the world

so capturing a momment
means letting it go
it passes my door
that of a bystander

so what have i
sacrificed in order to
let the light pass
the shutter door

whose blood is
marked upon my door
my eyes begin to
shutter. as in retreat

and now what
is my excuse for
the pulse like beat
just beside my nose

My New Pair of Used Shoes

My new pair of used shoes is brown
I saw them on Friday,
some kid at a concert
Obsessed over them that weekend
Checked them out on Tuesday
Tried them on Thursday
And bought them on Saturday.
My new pair of used shoes came with holes
I don’t mind holy, shoes they have character
But in the rain, character was useless
My socks were wet
I caught a cold.

-naqeeb stevens

there is a three quarters dimly shining moon

there is a three quarters dimly shining moon

i can sit under a tree in the dark in the middle of somewhere i dont know
and there are lights and buildings and cars that i can see but i am sheltered
by trees with leaves and it doesn't matter what color those leaves are because
it is the darkstarryblackblue night.

i find it a matter of tears and galloping horse laughs that decides how we feel
most of the time. i just sit under this tree and think about how it has no wide land
to grow even a few offspring who could carry the family line on for several
hundred years and live to see my life and death and the lives and deaths of my daughter.

i plan to only have daughter and she will be one of the stars that i can see
as i walk over to a spot in the grass where all the other suns (sons) in other
galaxies are apparent and distant and then slowly gain reverent place.

june 07

sounds, not fleeting, more like
aural occupations

leftover notes from headphones
the sweet electric hum of something
your murmurs, sleeping

text message to a girl

i am an animal.

i have a paper to write.

how will an animal do this.

i am putting my cell phone on silence.

candy apple eyes

Candy apple eyes;
That’s what they called her.
At least until that subtle day,
Her heart began to slumber.

And yes, it was
Like any other day;
The kind where everything you heard,
You could not say.

and of course by that
I mean absolutely nothing.
And now the question is:
How often was I bluffing?

Candy apple eyes;
That’s what they called her.
On those windy autumn days,
and your hair was in a blur.

and yes let me remind you,
of that sandy mustard day,
when the swings watched and waited,
but no, you could not stay.

and as your hair comes over you
so does she feel your eyes.
and no she’s not the same
no matter how she tries and tries.

candy apple eyes;
I heard you by your locker.
On that terribly gray morning,
You were let go by that fucker.

And there you saw me watching,
Listened to my stillness.
And with your eyes you asked me
The cure for your illness

Candy apple eyes.
That’s what they called her.
and if we let you know me,
I promise you a lover

my paper can write itself

born in the USA
doesn’t make me American
it just makes me another
poor,
light-skinned,
easy-to-tan half-breed without an accent
that you won’t recognize as
a Foreign Subversive.

5 line poem about NO IT CANT BE

fuck i just realized that i am 20
i have been 20 since july! what the fuck!

paper america

I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream - grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City. The high towers of the land - the other end of the land, the place where Paper America is born. I stood in a subway doorway, trying to get enough nerve to pick up a beautiful long butt, and every time I stooped great crowds rushed by and obliterated it from my sight, and finally it was crushed.

-jack kerouac

Lapse

But should I stay and wait
for our turn next up,
or jump to my feet and cut?

But would that help what
I’ll start, we’ll part;
I’ll finish; the way we’ll end up?

It seems prudish to you?
I’m set on the brink?

Lapsing hues color your complexion pink.

Nine razor line lies;
how many times

did your mind blink?

Evolution

Black is the ease that squeeze molds over matter.
Technology feasible in it’s constant growth bigger.
Wires exposed above sparking verbal constant battle.
Sound that grows but slows when the plug is pulled then
Triggered.
Smooth is the feel the caressing hand claims
The blame is to the fool who paid the man
Who holds the reins now in shame sitting; Cash in hand dollars gleaming.
Cooperation’s beaming, paying fractions earning feeding, gleaning, brains
in chains data spinning; Technology wars
evolving, winning. Life
and reason cased freeing; logical mace burning, seething;
seeing.
Metal, plastic, electric grace; new age tactics puzzle, face;
Blind, gone as time; each rhyme now rolls better: darker, smoother, warmer, wetter.

Life
Spins but not mechanically, I
grin, shift my feet loose:

chaotically.

Greater Grinding Grater

Sharp sound bright, night now officially over.
Wetness is warm, soap with slight clover hint quaffing.
Moves with might, infinity; tight skin covering

over intestines. Pressed, incidents fade to past; feces.
Happenings hammered, anvil of present presence ring.
He writes with mental pen in fated ink, faded.

Breakfast: Twice fried egg on toast; butter.
Late for first class; mental books scattered.
Answers three questions correctly.

Nazca lines carve his destiny.
What happens in a day happens eternally.

Eyes closed but watching through lids of cellophane
compounds of the future, enhancing the enhanced:
A lens curved to the impossible.

Waking he remembers nothing.

not like it has a title or anything

this is the image of new lust,
of new fat lip,
of newborn hand clutching breast.
this is us swelling,
growing towards what we need.

the unrehearsed come-on
that says loud and clear
hate and love and
fighting and fucking
all at the same time,
the fact that in our language
there can be so many words
for the same thing.

this is the image he said
was burned into him,
of the blazing station wagon,
streetside, no one watching.
this is my burning car, this is
surreal and radical,
and i want to turn off the gas
pour on the gasoline and
light a match in the front seat
so people know what’s going on.

and what’s really going on, bottom line
is that there are pieces of us we
clutch as hard as our dignities,
yet so so so much want to let go,
wanting to tell each other
about that misbehavior
that moment of wading into the ocean
while someone was drowning
and all we could think was
“stars…”

maybe today

I’m five years old,
I want to ride a tricycle.
All the big kids ride them.
In Two and threes.

I’m in love with my teacher.
Whenever I’m thirsty,
She gives me water,
And I say thank you.

Elementary school is strange,
But I can run around.
And no one thinks I am weird
I’m supposed to play football.

Jr high and I join the soccer team.
I raise my hand when they ask
“who here played club or ayso?”
I was leaning on that hand.

There’s an “inner-city” kid
Who doesn’t raise his hand,
And I begin to hate myself;
I can see my own eyes.

I’m in high school,
I dropped the soccer team ,
I didn’t practice between seasons,
Running was easier.

Now there are more eyes.
All looking at me.
I don’t raise myself to meet them.
I only feel them, when I judge

College comes along.
I dropped all my sports.
An MD advised it, so
I took that as opportunity

So I go back to running around,
Because now I have to.
Only, it feels like a treadmill
But it helps me sleep.

I’m outta school,
I work in the city,
I sit in traffic,
And can’t make up my mind.

I don’t want to sell my work,
I don’t much like it either.
They say the composition
Really brings out their eyes

It’s been years since school,
The reunion was days ago.
I haven’t decides if my indignant self
Is defensively jealous, or angrily regretful.

I stare out of windows,
Sometimes I think.
About what I should think.
And how.

And now I’ve got wrinkles,
And there are anthologies of my work,
But I couldn’t get myself to write
Anything definitive at all.

So I guess I gave up on definitions,
I have some sort of vague idea.
My eyes just seem to wander around,
Something between that and avoidance.

Maybe I’ll run again,
I still don’t know where to.
Or maybe I’ll get some wheels,
And drive till my eyes close

hey mister

“Hey mister! Hey mister!”
“I want ice cream mister!”
A thirty something young man
Turns from his nail bitting.

“Yea son? what kind do you want?”
“ehh…gimme chocolate chip.”
“No, mint chip and chocolate Fudge.”
“Alrighty then.”

Gloves on now,
as he turns and sighs.
one for the dream he caught
one for the freedom he let go

He had a smile for that boy,
A seven year old overall shorts wearin,
Lanky, short haired, brown eyed boy.
“hey mister!”

“yea, whats up?”
the face looked up,
and his mouth depolarized
his eyes stayed the same

Like pinches on his eye edges
maybe quizzical, maybe fearful;
maybe hopeful, either way,
something hung from them.

“Can I get some toppings”
“Well sure, what kind do you want?”
“gimme sprinkles! and worms!”
“I want gummy worms!”

“alrighty then” and back to work
he looked down at his hands,
making sure they were stable,
or at least shook in the right way.

And his face was melting like his ice cream,
The snack which he did for 6.75.
As gravity paid an extensive toll
On his thinning pale, not white, face

“Hey mister! Hey Mister!”

(the dark)

it is not yet light

my brain's been racing
i've been up all night.
yet, with genocide
do i sleep
and awake.

the slightest second,
but only
a camera flash
of the Sun.
now I
bake.

can you
comprehend
the insanity
and being
in the wrong mind
for a moment

and calculate
all the right debts
and all the
sandwiches and soup.
all the right muffins
and doughnuts

"I wont!"
whatever you are
going to do
leave me in
the rabbit hole
or fox den.

i will sit
in my blender
and make a milkshake
of my own
oranges and apples
blend

reason
to wake up in
The Other Mind
it can be
found
in reality.

i
worship
fear
and anyone can
see a futile mutual love
I can't get out of me

it is much more fun to be a son
than to be a father i would guess
nothing alike
nothing less
and i will go shoot myself in the chest
while wearing a bullet proof vest.

-andrew worthington

the gallopingly bad ballad of free

The Ballad of Free

In Oaxaca where weeds grow tall
There lived our gentle Free;
The wind was not so fast as he
The air was just as free.

He grew up lean and nimbly as
Strong, sweet Mexican corn;
But his parents separated
And his life turned forlorn.

He moved to California,
But found it frustrating.
He and his mom could not afford
The high cost of living.

Soccer was freedom in high school.
He kicked, he jumped, he ran.
But nights brought pain; he sold cocaine
And so the end began.

Running track freed our hero Free,
But sports could not save him.
He tried to survive day to day
But life yet seemed grim.

Till he went to Bard joyfully;
College; drugs, dance and song.
Friends abound, Free ruled his earth
With laughter he’d skip wide and long

Yet Free’s world turned tragic at once;
He loved photography.
He couldn’t pay for film to shoot
His teachers grew angry

He smoked and drank and whirled about
While his family fought.
The college put him on warning;
His problems thus were wrought

He helped sell drugs to make ends meet
But could not concentrate.
His carefree way of life was now
Caught up in his dark fate.

Security did take his name;
His troubles made to crimes.
He talked with Deans and teachers all
Yet got no help in dimes.

His grades were poor but just as bad
As sons of richer men.
So clearly money drove the school
To kick him out right then.

Against all good he was asked
To leave his bright new home.
His best of chances removed
He cried, and went back home.

-by brosephine (i think)

i am an inanimate object

i no longer read magazines in the bathroom. i hardly even take a good novel or textbook in there anymore. usually its my computer that accompanies me to the shitter. we've been together now for i'd say about a little over a year. i hardly go a day without seeing it. we will be announcing our engagement any day soon. then we will spoon and spoon like we have never spooned before.

i go to the drinking fountain and sea water comes out. i ask a man why it tastes like salt water. he says that they-do-it-for-real here. hmmmm. that's an interesting take on water. i fill a bottle full of the salt water and then tightly turn the cap closed. i will have to show this to someone. someone will marvel at this. perhaps the bank teller will. yes, i am quite certain the bank will love this!

i go to the bank and the teller tells me to give them money. i say that i didn't bring money and just want to talk. they say there is no time to talk, there's only so much sunlight, and they give me a pen to sign my paycheck that i didn't bring. i go across the street to the grocery store and buy tampons and condoms. as i am in line waiting i also decide to buy a gossip magazine and an eight-pack of peanut butter cups.

but i don't have money to pay for the peanut butter cups so i walk out of the store with the tampons, condoms, gossip magazine, and peanut butter cups. as i leave the store a man says hey. he wants to know where i am going. i tell him i don't know. he's says i have to pay for the items. i say i did.

-andrew worthington
.

ten minutes too late

Ten minutes too late.
Damn I hate the bus some days.
Its hot, bums are stinking and its three o clock
Time to deal with these wanna be thugs
Aye cuz
Look at the niggas shoes
His shoes been through more shit than yo girl
Damn why they hatin so hard
Aye what kinda shoes are those besides fucked up
Aye cuz

I blink my eyes
Glance to the right
An old lady
I cant believe this old ass lady

This old ass lady is gonna cross the street
Lady, don’t you see those cars, they comin right at
you
You gonna die old ass lady
All your bags gonna fly up then,
Rolled over, smashed to mush

Old ass lady, old ass lady
Cant you hear those horns beepin
Those men cussin
Are you deaf old ass lady
Are you blind old ass lady
You don’t see that blinking red hand
That fast ass car, swerving
You old ass lady

I cant believe this old ass lady
She actually made it across the street
This old ass lady, done did dumb shit
But she made it

I blink my eyes
Glance to my left
These wanna be thugs
Still talking shit

Aye cuz
Aye cuz what kinda pants are those
Aye blood we just missed our stop
These wanna be thugs, just missed their stop

-naqueeb