NOBODY LEAVES WITHOUT SINGING THE BLUES.

I'M TUMBLING

2011-07-22T04:56:00.000+04:30

only-the-clouds.tumblr.com

PEACE BLOGSPOT, IT'S BEEN REAL

Wet Paper Bag

2011-07-20T09:54:00.001+04:30

Some nights I stare at the wall and try to stop thinking of you.
It backfires, obviously. Because now the wall reminds me of
how I can't stop thinking of you. The time has gone like
sea-trash with high tide. Faded like knee-scrapes into skin.
It's been long enough so that I have to pause to name years.
Yet still I feel like an animal in a wet paper bag.
Trapped in a tiny stagnant space. Smothered and still.
The walls are easily broken but I don't know
if I have the strength to wade through
the weight of this atmosphere. It hangs in my lungs
like cigarillo smoke. (You only smoked one once.
It was New Year's Eve and snowing. I slipped on the breakwater
and scraped my knee. You threw the butt at the surf
as the tide was coming in.)

Family

2011-06-02T09:41:00.003+04:30

Father needs laughter.
Mother needs peace.
Brother needs something to care about.

"tell me about father and mother."

Father likes to sing.
Mother likes to draw.
They both like to dance.
They are curlicue peals of light.
But they are thin.

"tell me about brother."

Brother's name was not always Brother.
Brother has so much caring.
But Brother has nowhere to put it.
So Brother yells his caring out.
To everyone else, it sounds far away.
But when it roars, it is louder than a thousand jet engines.
But when it flies, it is faster than a comet in space.

"what about sister?"

Who told you about Sister?
I don't know Sister.
Where is Sister?

current events

2011-05-16T06:15:00.004+04:30

a little noose in the boathouse,
already shrunken, already low.
a fray-haired girl drinking innocence
and drawing crosses on her ankles to make a shield.
a windy soul whose intents
begin to blow through the cracks.
poison clutching this house from the second floor.
"just make things easier for me!"

the soul of the woman i love
got put inside a madman
and now i can't grow up,
and i want to find some way
to express the mass of regret
drawn over my heart and shoulder,
but instead i just stab and slash
and catch him when he falls and
leave and fracture and embrace.

Nothing of Cities

2011-05-09T07:41:00.004+04:30

Fingers pressing on my chest
like holding onto a kite string to draw back the tension.
My ears are asleep behind carnival tents
but the flaps draw back just in the nick of time.
A dozen voices rise in rejoicing
while my raw throat sputters and sits on its hands.
Music notes like an eskimo kiss
and I wonder if that's all I'll ever need,
and I already know the answer.

Nightmares For a Week

2011-04-26T03:35:00.002+04:30

When I go back home tonight I will return
to making threats against myself. I will return
to inducing ferity, a new nature like an animal
pushing unhoned teeth through my gums.
I will return to forced sweetness. I will return
to little, obscure reassurances. I will return
to oldest fears resurfacing, hands and teeth,
eyes that refuse to blink, breath, coming
in gasps, the singular thought, no longer
drug-saturated, This cannot be happening again.
I will say this is for a story I'm writing.
And then I will not write about any of it.
If you knew the things that crowd my head.

A List of My Weird Fascinations

2011-04-26T01:37:00.009+04:30

-birds
-blood
-angry dudes
-suppressed rage dudes
-Hamlet
-Fear
-physical manifestations of mental distortions
-beards
-loss of sight
-drawing things on myself
-hands and teeth
-earthly spiritualism
-forward motion
-what we all have in common
-plaid
-dreams
-bromances
-Castiel
-things I cannot figure out

A Crippling Fear of Public Speaking

2011-04-25T17:55:00.003+04:30

I can't crack my knuckles.
Today I am trusting my brain
to buoy me but my brain
is not trusting my mouth.
My adrenal glands are not
trusting my rehearsal.
My eyes are not
trusting my focus.
Do I get points for speaking
through the throat-seizing tremors?
Does my ranking rise based on
how much sweat pools on my eyebrows?
Do they award merit for me
kneading my hands together so hard
my knuckles crack, and crack,
and crack, and still somehow manage
to stay stuck together?

Happening again. Fuck

2011-04-21T04:22:00.008+04:30

Unmoored, cast afloat, by phobias like these,
that catch my throat, drive me to my knees,
make me pray, or meditate, for something new,
but I'm too little too late, too desperate too soon.
Yet I continue to search. I need to be sure.
So that obsession lurks, for the constant lure,
the voice so coarse, the hands and teeth
that bruise with such force, and shape my dreams.

(Is it just me?)

inbflat.net

2011-04-09T06:25:00.004+04:30

The old man with the viola draws it to a close
on a stretched third.
It is beautiful. Unutterably so.
And I mean that literally.
You will never hear it again.
Something similar, maybe.
If you can remember it. How it went.
What you did.
Is that cruel? To give us a song
so beautiful, only to deny us from
hearing it again? I don't think it is.
There are so many more paths.
So many more chances.
It was good and now it's time
for the next thing. Always.
Always forward.
(Although if you really want
you can draw it closed with the viola one more time.)

Familiar

2011-03-24T21:15:00.004+04:30

I don't feel safe anymore. Like, I know rationally,
I'm okay here, nothing ever happens here,
things are all right here. But then part of me thinks,
what if, say, the roof cracks and caves in on my head,
or I fall and I can't move and no one ever finds me,
or there's an outbreak of some new disease,
and I'm susceptible, just for no reason,
just because of who I am? And it's all I think about now.
Like, whenever my mind happens to go blank for a moment,
then I get so scared, without warning, just out of the blue.
And I almost can't stand it, like it's always
verging on unbearable. Like I'm always
this close to totally breaking down forever.
And I wish I could fix it, or do something about it, anything,
if I could reach my hand into my insides and
move them around, to try and relieve the pressure,
or if I could take my brain apart and lay it out
and look for the dark spots, and cut them away,
like using a butter knife to slice the bruises
from a banana. And I keep asking myself,
Why is this happening to me? Why is it happening now?
I don't have any of the answers to these questions.
I don't the answers to anything. I mean,
what do I know, even? Who am I to say
that I'm safe here, or that it's gonna be all right?
Who ever knows that? And how do they know it?
And how can I ever know that? How?

romance dreams

2011-03-15T04:36:00.003+03:30

I listen to the mail truck driving away,
a little sad, and fold my hands,
give a little smile. My friend smiles back
knowingly. We both know what it's like
to sort of be in love with someone, then
listen to them drive away every night
with no gesture of returned affection.
To see them every day, support them,
become vital to them, even, when
the time requires it. To see them
bravely defend you with no inch of give.
And then they leave.
Behind me, outside the loading bay,
I hear an engine idling. But my eyes
stay firmly glued to the riveted floor.
I do not dare look for fear of having
all my fallen-in hopes erased.
But I see my friend staring past my shoulder
so at last I turn and look.
And it's him.
Returned, for some reason.
He leans out the mail truck door
and smiles at me, and I lose myself a little.
And then he is suddenly very close to me
but it is fine. It is all fine.
Being so comfortable with each other.
Content to do the depending this time.
And being absolutely sure
that this is it.

(in sum: after having terrible dreams forever, I FINALLY had a happy dream. A romance dream, to be exact.
Too bad it would also have made good fanfiction material. I don't know where that came from lol.)

The Sigh

2011-03-10T07:36:00.001+03:30

(note: I wrote this based on a piece of music by Schubert, and based on the "sigh" motive in classical music, which is a downward half-step used to symbolize sorrow but often creepy-sounding when used in dirges like Bartok did. That should provide some context, as well listening to the Schubert piece, which is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKVnL9JvuO8 )

Schubert takes his time returning home,
pausing, and it's not that he enjoys the pain
again, but that he cannot not remember.
As his eyes lift, he feels his throat drain
slowly, feeding the little pit of terror
in his gullet. Frozen, struck suddenly dumb,
he wheels backwards a little, deafened,
still turning, still moving, but troublingly numb.
Upon finally reaching his home, he sits
at the piano, to write. His fingers trace the keys.
But the note is too jarring. He slides down, startled,
and that's all he hears. No more melodies.
Nothing but this figure, the simple half-step,
creeping like a ghoul in his ear. The sigh.
He tries to move away from it, leaps a third,
but again the note falls, a drawling cry,
settling deeper now, digging itself a den.
Panicked, he stumbles to his feet and out the door,
needing to escape, but his head falls and falls,
half-step by half-step, then the diminished four,
lurching him off-balance and pulling him back down.
Suddenly he finds himself there once again,
where his eyes lift and his throat drains, but here
there is another, and he can't remember when
the last time was he saw another person, but now
he sees a man, weeping openly in the street.
Schubert steps closer to glimpse his face,
but a terrible sight —this man is me!

The same pale face! The same brown hair!
The same dark expression, the same despair!
The ghoul is clawing and wailing and sighing,
its sermon unearthly and its hymn undying.
He screams out, "Who are you? And why are you here?"
He swallows his nausea, but chokes on his fear.
Collapsing, he clutches at paving-stones
but can feel the ghoul taking his breath and his bones.
His ears, he is sure, are useless by now.
By degrees he feels himself sinking down.
The doppelgänger, meanwhile, lifts its socket eyes,
opens its rotted throat — and sighs.

Always There, Never Going Away

2011-03-08T03:38:00.004+03:30

Hyperaware of how my legs move too fast and
the awkward fit of my clothes.
Tapping absentmindedly to reassure myself of permanence,
exhaling in a rush of humpbacked relief.
Yet permanence still drags my bones to ground.
The last few years braided and pinned down my back.
I would cut them off and lose my strength,
but even now am not strong enough to wrench shut the shears.

Two Poems by Richard Wilbur

2011-03-03T02:24:00.001+03:30

"The House"

Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes
For a last look at that white house she knew
In sleep alone, and held no title to,
And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.
What did she tell me of that house of hers?
White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;
A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore;
Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.
Is she now there, wherever there may be?
Only a foolish man would hope to find
That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.
Night after night, my love, I put to sea.

"A Measuring Worm"

This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.

I never know where they come from.

2011-02-21T20:54:00.010+03:30

He could feel his pores filling and overflowing. Wild, he scanned, swiped. The angel tried to escape. But he saw it this time. Its one foot almost out of this plane, almost in the next one, but it no longer mattered. He took off. Black and grey snowed briefly, stuck in the middle of a small flurry, a storm. The angel's human-face displayed familiar surprise. Stolen eyes widening. Stolen mouth opening by a fraction. He hurled it to the wall and followed it, his claws hooking through the button-holes of its coat.
Suddenly it began to speak. "False god." It growled. "So new you can't even keep from spilling out your vessel." He could feel his pores filling and overflowing. Blood that, instead of trailing, turned black and light as air. Then dripped off the ends anyway, or stayed and crusted on. The angel growled again, curtly. "Cage your bird."
Suddenly things began falling out from under him. He beat his wings in an attempt to stay aloft, but could feel them melting into pools on the stones at his feet. Yet his body, which for days had felt like it was disintegrating, was suddenly resolving itself. At once unburdened and much, much heavier. His talons rose in a familiar fury, then dove. His fingers hooking through the button-holes of the angel's coat. No longer able to stand, he buckled. Weighted.
On his knees now, he grasped at the floor, his already bloodied hands bloodied further as he scraped at the slow-spreading pools on the ground. Above him, the angel spoke again, his growl angrier now than before. "What the hell do you call that?" He shuddered, feeling the congealing sickness in his stomach, the fatal sloshing in his lungs. A heel shoving him onto his back. Strong hands lifting him up, pinning him on the wall with a solid thump. One that caused blood to spill over his cracked lips. He felt uninjured but grievously ill. Too full, on the verge of splitting. Over the gurgle in his throat, he tried to plead, but the words felt strange to him. This new language. The angel tightened his fists.
"You were supposed to exorcise them. Not tear them to shreds and splatter them all over the wall!" Thump. More blood over the cracks in his lips. He tried to tap his chest, to bring attention to his drowning lungs, but to no avail. "I don't even know what you did. I don't even know if they're dead. And if they're not, how the hell we're supposed to put them back together." Finally, he gave up on preserving his consciousness. "I lost it," he gasped. Swallowed more blood to feed the sickness. Too weak to even retch. "I didn't know. I'm sorry." With that he slumped, nothing left with which to move, barely even to try. Then suddenly he was empty. Emptied. The sickness gone, sloshing lost to the air. Still covered, stifled. Still weakness that was washing through him.
But greatly alive. No longer feeling martyred, he closed his eyes. Voices quietly conferred past him. That was not for him. He thought of other things. Safety. His wife. No more bad dreams. And no more rage. Not for him. Not for a long time to come.

Great Friends of Mine

2011-02-08T00:17:00.004+03:30

Two brothers on the couch.
Words bearing us out.
Things like spontaneity.
And how he's so much smarter than me.
The axiomatic things,
logic unspooling in strings,
a declaration at most.
A wayward riposte.
But this is exactly it,
the odd and clunky fit,
difficult to label
but precisely (precisely) stable.
I'm challenged and I fight
(though I'm no longer sure I'm right).
But we know now. We know.
This is the only way to grow.
More give and more take.
More icing, less cake.

Upon figuring out the root of my problem, I realize it is both a blessing and a curse.

2011-01-31T07:15:00.007+03:30

A little while after (a few weeks, in truth, and he had to force himself) he made a list of all the facts. The concrete things. There weren't many, not enough to fill the five-day void, which he hadn't even known existed until he saw the date on one of those electric signs they have outside banks. He wrote them down in the last pages of a notebook that was mostly full of south Asian sigils. He wrote down things as they came to him. Sometimes they would repeat themselves, entering into his mind over and over again until his breath came short and his hands twitched and fluttered like a flag before a storm. It took him a long time to get each item down. Eventually he found he couldn't keep going. He never finished the list.

-cold and underground
-sitting in a chair, with my hands behind my back
-slumped against the wall
-at the foot of a bed, cuffed to the post
-needles
-the nausea, retching, vomiting
-concrete floors
-counting pores
-waking up in the shower, with the water running
-fractures in my ribs
-skin darkened
-black, blue, and red
-scratches on my face and my chest
-the three piercings in my ear that weren't there before
-reddish hair
-hands bigger than mine
-shaking and sweating
-crying and begging
-the things I can't write about
-gaps, gaps, gaps, the whole days I lost, the time that's just gone. Where did it go?
What happened? What happened to me? What happened? Where did it go?

Choke

2011-01-29T09:33:00.002+03:30

Butcher's bridemeat fitting slickly around your hand.
Sewer rats and their unborn pups dripping from your hair.
Concrete like a homeless animal sniffing at your legs.
And a queen bee's birth canal expanding inside you.

It Happened Twice This Summer

2011-01-25T17:09:00.006+03:30

My biggest fears don't really have a whole lot
to do with me. They're pretty common, and not
very specific, though they manifest in
specific forms. You've probably guessed by now
what I'm getting at, with my recent titles (although these
poems, which seemed to me so vital to record,
to get these events down on a page, are really
important only to me, and my restlessness, and rage).
But while I am scared of guns, and Roth of the dark,
neither of those are what mark my days with
the feeling of being somehow less. Every day,
nearly every minute, I obsess over very small things.
Things you don't even think about. This poem
has nothing to do with the guns, or the blacking out,
or the paranoia to which I referred, or
the vanity I take in my own written word.
This poem is about what I fear most for me.
Not my friends, real or, like Roth, sadly imaginary.
I wrote this because I'm constantly afraid, having
my most sensitive history so transparently displayed.
My biggest fear in regards to myself
is they will look at my face, and be able to tell.

However, I begin to think that it is not fear that motivates this paranoia, but something less discouraging.

2011-01-17T04:45:00.004+03:30

First, he sinks. Quickly, like a fragment of cinder.
Fatigue wells in his eyes like jaundice.
Bruising sighs, sweet and cerebral.
Freedom ties her hair back. Fear rolls up his sleeves.
He feels compression wash through his ribs. Greatly alive.
But paralyzed. His nail beds scrabble.
Glacial, shallow against the green.
He engages. Finds teeth, catching, carves a lifeline under the beds of his nails.
Salt water slowly soaks into the green horizon.
He feels it on his forehead.
He engages. Builds a bridge with his shoulderblades.
Starts counting stars again, automatically.
Fear is ready with a punch in the gut.
Suddenly the paralysis has its hands in his stomach and throat. He fights.
Feels the worms in his limbs. Thrashing, writhes.
Retching. Almost. No. Gripping. Head heaved over. Paisley.

Paisley in red and blue.

His eyes well up and he starts swearing and he swallows and bites his lip and stops himself. His whole body hurts, but he has to move. He is not alone here after all. Blinking hard, he realizes that he has no place to go. His bare toes flex in the underground air. He needs to keep his head down. Put himself back together. But anyplace safe is far away from here. So he'll keep moving. No rest yet. Just running, and hiding. And healing. And making do.

How I Feel

2011-01-08T09:18:00.006+03:30

Color is critical. It fades in and out.
Arms lose their strength. Bodies lose body.
I crack my teeth on stones and draw blood.
I hear voices burn. The city hunts us. We fight it with noise.
My nerves howl and rattle their bars.
Bravery screams, "Where did the world go
when our fathers lost their youth? I will not give it up.
Not until my hands rot from wanting."

As it happens more often, it begins to weigh on me.

2011-01-04T08:51:00.010+03:30

clouds like small children. threatening to fall.
to turn into a grey ceiling again, where the pores look like stars.
feet clutching the wet ground. he smells gasoline & home.
freezing and abrased. his extremities are clubs and spades.
his dead fingers part the fog and prickle with rebuke, or some seventh sense.
his hand over his heart, he listens for the sixth but cannot feel reassured.
he reaches out but he is stuck. everything is dark, like diamonds or vampires.
people simply vanishing. he is alone on an intravenous island.
his shoulders haul his arms like blocks of giza. he is alone.
he will hide by himself in case he disappears too.
the bilco doors close and he wraps them around him like a shroud.
but it is too dark and things start flashing in his head. reddish hair.
he swats the air and his fingers tangle in something. afraid, he tries to pull away.
light. light. he is alone. his fingers tangle. something to hold on to.
in the mirror his face is red. red dripping from his eyebrows, drawing lines.
red rims under his eyes and red reaching for his irises. like a warning. stop.
he turns away. finds in his blind spot an open field.
he curls and feels his breath curling into dried skins in his lungs.
flattens his hand against the green expanse that threatens to get away from him.
over the edge and spill onto the concrete below.
turns his face into the felt. tonight i am sleeping here.
i am sleeping on a billiards table in the basement of someone who has vanished.
i do not know what day it is. i do not know the last time i slept.
i am alone. i am finally alone. no more reddish hair coming in the dark to

I think of it whenever my mind happens to go blank for a moment.

2010-12-13T21:51:00.009+03:30

It was strange.
For a second he could swear he smelled the Sound, like he was at a marina.
"That's strange," he thought.
And it felt like he was breathing cold air into his lungs. Cold, salty air.
But he couldn't hear the ocean. Or see it, really. Just gray.
"Wait a minute," he thought. "We're not near the ocean anyway, are we?"
When did he last see the ocean? "Was it when I landed? In Olympia?"
He wanted to look around. He tried to lift his head but couldn't.
He tried to smell the sea again. All he got this time was wet concrete.
Wet concrete and glue. "That's strange," he thought. "Maybe it's the drugs."
Come to think of it, where was he? "Where am I?"
This was troubling. He should be panicking. But he wasn't.
In fact, he felt rather detached. "Maybe it's the drugs," he thought.
He tried to move his hands but couldn't.
He tried to move his legs but couldn't.
"Where am I?" he thought. "And who is the man who is keeping me here?"

I have a very specific paranoia.

2010-12-10T23:35:00.004+03:30

He was splintered and winnowed and taken apart
to get down to the quick of his core.
Still he looks for the failures and flaws in the heart
of the one left for dead on the floor.
He is missing a light to shine through the cracks.
His sight has been warped and he's blind to the black.
There's no rest, no solace, no closeness here.
He would boil his blood to be rid of the fear.
Too fragile, and yet too staid.
Too rattled, and yet too brave.

I don't feel safe.

2010-12-03T04:31:00.004+03:30

tried to find myself some light but all i got was a new moon.
tried to get back on my feet but kept returning to the wound.
tried to find myself some happiness but couldn't find enough.
tried to get rid of the sickness but it's tough, man. it's tough.

One thing I have learned is

2010-11-17T04:01:00.008+03:30

you cannot leave your sadness in a corner.
If you put it in the corner and tie it down
and fill its mouth up with blood and bile, and
feed it drugs to shut it up, it will not go away.
It will sit there and stare up at you through its dark
crusted hair. (It lacks the strength to lift
its head.) You will feel its gaze on you.
But when you look over at it, it will
wrench its big desperate eyes to the floor.
You will catch it just as it looks away.
When you approach it with the syringe,
then it will stare at you. Its mouth will open
in recognition. And shock, maybe. It will
keep staring at you as you sink the plunger
to the base of the barrel. And it will tremble.
It always trembles. It will drive you crazy.
You will want to just outright kill it. But
you would never forget that. That is something
you would not be able to forget.

teeth

2010-10-29T06:43:00.002+03:30

i gotta tell you, you better watch out for this kid.
he don't grin with his eyes, he grins with his teeth,
cause he's a real sonofabitch, when he laughs
you might think he's laughing with you,
big guffaws straight from his chest, but
he's never laughing with you. when you weep,
even when you smile when you weep,
it piques his curiosity. he stares at you like
a black cat and he flicks his tail and
his slit eyes blink, blink. he never goes over.
he stands nearby. he never offers you comfort.
he licks his lips and runs his tongue over
the edges of his teeth. he looks non-threatening
because his eyes can get real big, but
when he gets vulnerable it's bad.
he eats people. he takes their skin to hide behind.

I Am In Here

2010-10-26T06:11:00.005+03:30

Two instruments: piano and saxophone.
"Truth is, I could use some help."
The saxophone never sounds like a saxophone,
more like a violin. Sawing, moving in runs.
"The worst part was how I kept losing time."
The young professor flicks his hand to the high
end of the keys, a quick, sharp needle-prick.
In one repetition he errs. No one notices.
"The bathtub had an inch of standing
water in it, rusty-looking, moving around my feet."
Now the saxophone starts emitting feedback tones.
"I went through a lot of shit when I was young,
and it's given me a really positive outlook on life."
The young professor's hands move as if stuck
outside a car window, running over a current of air.
"No, it's great. I just never knew what I was missing out on."
There's metal on the piano strings.
"The whole other-people thing."
Cymbals. Cymbals.
"I would wake up in these strange places. In a chair.
Slumped against the wall. In the shower, with the water running. "
The saxophone twangs. Abruptly, things come to a stop.
"I could have done it if I'd just been able to concentrate."
The bend in the saxophone sounds like whale song.
"You never realize how much safety means until you
stop being able to take it for granted."
The piano draws deep and tolls, like out-of-tune church bells
on a bleak Christmas morning, slandered by fog.

young restless

2010-10-11T07:53:00.002+03:30

eventually i (switzerland) escaped
from the put-upon tyranny, the single
handedness (me and my sunflower) that
my grounded harping-raft survived,
bravely and with negligible injury.
i wandered instead outside, crossing
the borders of china, africa (stepping
over the kangaroos) and i tugged on my
hat, in the 60 degree weather, pulling
sun from the templed sky. i strolled.
languidly, down the hill, trailed by
a squab, or a squabber, depending on
the alcoholic's mood. the pipsqueak
ran ahead. she rushed like something
unstable. a 40-pound landslide. me,
i sat under the single lightbulb and
took his questions, tugging faintly
at my cuffs. later, on the hammock,
they finally converged, like two waves,
shrieking and giggling in synchrony.
i pushed them, languidly, down and up.
i pulled on my hat and my band t-shirt.
what would i look like now, i wonder?

Tyler Clementi

2010-10-05T04:06:00.001+03:30

Today I walked with a hundred other people down to
the war memorial. When I gave the microphone back
to Pamela, my heart was beating really fast. I have
to remember to be thankful for that.

I tried to think of a title for this and couldn't

2010-10-02T10:08:00.004+03:30

The brown-haired boy flipped the pages of his book, a book he usually enjoyed but one that couldn't amuse him at a quarter past one in the morning. Hearing a pause in the background noise of words and intermittent laughter, he rose from his chair and walked over to his friend, who was much taller and blond. "Can I have my computer back now?" the boy asked, holding out his hand.
"What?" the taller one said, his forehead wrinkling. "No, I'm not done reading quotes yet."
The boy raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, but I want my computer back. Just use yours."
"What? I'm not going all the way up to my room," the taller boy said, as if the idea were preposterous.
"It's one floor up. Can I have my computer back now?" The brown-haired boy took hold of his computer, but his friend would not relinquish it, tugging back forcefully.
"I told you, I'm not done reading quotes. If you want a computer, you can go get mine." He held up his room key.
The boy released his computer and stepped back, an expression of surprise on his face. It wasn't at all calculated, not like the manipulative guilt trips he occasionally imagined himself orchestrating in other situations. He was, quite honestly, stunned.
"Seriously?" he muttered, retreating back to his corner of the room. Behind him, he could hear his other friends also questioning the blond, but still he would not relinquish the computer.
The boy decided to plug in to his iPod, hoping the music would help. And it did, a little. It dulled the words that the blond was reading off in the background, the words that he'd heard before and that meant nothing to him. He also played Solitaire on the iPod, sometimes placing his hand on his throat in an attempt to suppress his coughs. However, when he had played so much Solitaire that he actually won a game, he knew that this had been going on for too long.
Eventually, the blond told the boy he could have his computer back. The boy was usually civil, even amiable regarding such disagreements, but his friend's conduct had surprised him so much that he couldn't let go of it.
So the two of them fought, for a minute or two, and with no raised voices. The friend's argument was so alien to the boy, so robotic, nonsensical in his world, that he was forced to leave without making progress, so unfathomable were his friend's actions (and rationale). Walking out of the room and into the hall, he received hugs from two of his other friends, then turned and went downstairs. On his way, he couldn't help but wonder, 'Is my friend really that self-important? Or is this just another part of accepting that I'm never going to find someone else like me?' The boy pulled his hood up as he stepped outside, but by that point the rain had finally stopped falling.

anniversary II

2010-09-29T19:34:00.005+03:30

things i have learned recently:
loneliness, contrary to appearances,
does not solve problems. things are not
always as serious as i fear.
reconciliation is not so hard.
my self-made problems are
just as easily unmade.
so i proclaim today the first anniversary
of September 29th, a Good Day
and nothing's gonna stop me so don't even try.
(although if you want to join me,
i welcome it.)

In the other part of the dream, I was taking Japanese and Chinese at the same time, so that sucked too

2010-09-23T19:05:00.004+03:30

Last night I had a dream that some guy fucked one of my friends over, so my friend told me to cave his head in with a baseball bat. I was fine with it, but I did it digitally or remotely or something. So yeah, what the fuck does that mean?

earthgod

2010-09-22T18:12:00.007+03:30

all i get these days is blood,
blood in a bird's beak, blood
trailing from a coat-tail
on the ground, blood
mirroring on the floor
and flowering in the whites
of my eyes, blood pouring
down from burst pipes, bursting
upward as it fills my mouth and
i spit it into the air, blood
racing outwards at a whim,
gathering at pores and then
lurching forward as if drawn
by a magnet, blood reflected
in the reverential shine of a
freckled face. all i get these days
when i try to clear my head is
birds and bursting vessels and
blood, and blood, and blood.

the Devil in Ambergris

2010-09-22T04:01:00.007+03:30

Sweat shines on his face as
he promises himself he won't lose it.
I watch his raised-eyebrow cynicism,
his optimistic mistrust. His hair shorn.
"Well, when you spend a few months in Afghanistan."
Is this what I'm missing out on?
He's been trained enough so he depends on
his body but when the lights go out, his body is gone.
Never lost. What bullshit. It's unavoidable,
and so apparent here, the bellum omnium contra omnes that
everyone sees but never expects.
I watch his optimism start to slip.
He's seen this before, but didn't recognize it
until the mirrors took their first victim.
This place is supposed to be safe.
Bellum omnium contra omnes.
Sweat shines on his face as
he's losing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL_NcoCJgzo

2010-09-14T06:14:00.001+04:30

everything is black and white.
it's getting late and there's not enough light.
in the back stands a girl with a violin.
sometimes i feel the sand in my skin.
"the ugliest scene, the worst mistakes."
everything is in shades of gray.
i watch the girl and her curly hair.
"i tear, oh god, and i tear, i tear."
i swear i smelled petals on my way up the hill.
their fleshy whiteness. is it summer, still?
when i sing all i get is an echoing call.
i'm hollowed and sluiced. it's time for fall.
i need howling to cover my dead-throat rasp.
i need something that i can finally grasp.
that won't dissolve into a colorless blur.
"there's no innocence like hers, just emptiness and nerves."
"such a beautiful child. such an awful waste."
i'm washed and done. she's wasting away.

12 a.m., playing "just dance" for wii in the rainbow room

2010-09-07T05:47:00.005+04:30

my left leg is heavy and awkward, wrapped as it is
in plastic, velcro, and fleece. this song isn't so hard.
frantic, though. i watch james's clumsy energy and i
cheer him on. harold is a little further from the tv.
i watch his big shoulders and his hips moving in circles.
regret comes in little black grains but i filter those out
and discard them like spent coffee grounds. easy as that.
in a couple weeks my foot will be healed and i'll be able
to make a fool of myself too. harold won't be around to
kick our asses anymore by then. it's okay. even sitting here
i feel this summer haze of happiness filling up my spirit
like a hot air balloon. blue and yellow and white.

"always gonna keep in touch! never wanna use a crutch!" (or: This Is Why I'm Straight Edge)

2010-08-26T02:28:00.006+04:30

Listen, man. I know you like to go out and get trashed. So does everyone else, seems like. So you're not the only one. But man, I gotta tell you how I really feel. When you come around and you're totally wasted, it just feels like you're trivializing whatever we got here. I mean us, like people, like just being people isn't cool enough. Like you want to fuck around with your brain because your brain's not enough to have a good time.
So let's be honest, man — drugs are bullshit. It's just so fucking selfish, you know? Like, hey, being around you is getting kinda boring, I'd rather not be me when we're hangin out. And hey, if you wanna get high every so often because that's fun too, then yeah, I can deal with that. I don't wanna do that shit. I like being a real person. You wanna get high now and then, I can deal with that, I'm just not gonna join you.
But when did it become the default? When did growing up turn into every weekend, going out and getting shitfaced? Aren't we smart enough to find new shit to do, and not have to use a crutch to have a good time at a party? Apparently fucking not.
Whatever, man. Keep fucking around with your brain whenever you get tired of being a person who has to live in the real world. I'm not gonna do that shit. I'm smart enough and strong enough to have a good fucking time on my own.

(note: you'll notice that I'm not actually militant/an asshole about this in real life. But this is why I hate the drug culture, and why I'm straight edge, and also why I would be very angry if you got me drugs as my birthday present.)

call me old-fashioned, but... (or: "at least pretend you didn't want to get caught.")

2010-08-24T01:22:00.006+04:30

you think you have tricks but you're already old news.
i don't know about you, but i don't call this beauty.
you twist with your secret held close to your chest,
but when you display it you start to lose me.
so stop showing off your most prized possession
because i know just what you're worth.
your body is covered in diamonds,
but my hands are covered in earth.

racking spikes with zach (snippets of my day)

2010-08-21T00:53:00.009+04:30

When I get there at 7 a.m. he and Ricky are racking spikes. He collects one-handed and takes a drag on his cigarette with the other. He's not using gloves, but I put on a pair and then I take the spot across from him. I look again at his scar. It's a red-and-white kid-scrawl V, starting above his right ear and dribbling to a point an inch below his hairline.

"I've been cutting down though." Zach is 20 years old. "This weekend my buddy got a 30-pack, I only drank 6, he drank 24. I haven't gotten loaded in 3 weeks."

We're talking about music. We did that a lot today. "Last concert I went to, Kenny Chesney, aw man, it was so bad. Gayer than AIDS."
"...yeah, he's pretty terrible."
"It sucked, he was a total douchebag. And everyone there was drunk. Lawn seats, it fucking sucked. Everyone was just totally trashed."

Ricky knows about everyone in the factory whether he wants to or not. So he knows about Zach's scar and why one of his legs is shorter than the other. He's giving him shit about it, with his big burly Florida boondocks drawl. Zach's trying to sound less guilty. "And those guys in the ambulance, they were trying to take off my pants, and I was like, what the fuck, don't fuckin touch me!"
"D'ja think they were tryin to get at your pants 'cause you were bleedin all over the floor?"
"I woke up later, in the hospital, find out I was handcuffed to the bed!"
"Well, maybe you should stop being such a fuckhead."
They both grin like they want to laugh but neither one does.

I don't know how we got on this subject. "Like heroin. I don't fucking get it. Some of my friends from high school, they're on heroin, and I see them and I'm like 'what's up?' and they're like 'uhhhh go get eightball.' Or they don't even fucking recognize me, like, we've been friends for ten years. And I gotta see, you know, their mom, 'hey, how are you, have you talked to Jason lately?' Oh yeah, he's shooting dope into his ass. 'Have you talked to Frankie?' Yeah, he married a hooker. He's like 'oh, she works at Denny's.' One morning we wanna go fishing, says we gotta wait til 5 a.m. for his wife to get back, what do you do when you get back at 5 a.m.? 'Oh yeah, it was costume night.' Yeah, costume night in a fishnet full-body suit. And my buddy Jason, he went to rehab for 2 months, got clean for 2 months, then he went right back on the drugs."
"Crazy."
"It's fucking sad." The machine has stopped working again by this point and Ricky comes in to try and fix it.

He sings a lot (and terribly) (although his Rob Zombie impression is pretty accurate). I don't know any of the songs he's singing except when he sings along to the radio. "Hot Blooded" comes on and he sings along for a little while, then transitions to something else. Another familiar one comes on and, excited, he steps away from the table to hit his knees twice and then clap his hands. "WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU!" I rack the spikes with two hands to make up for his absence. Ricky's heavy Southern accent ranges across the machine. "You know who sings this song?" Zach pauses and cocks his head. "Uh... King?" I keep racking but my smile gets bigger.

The machine isn't playing fair today, as Ricky puts it. Zach gets really angry whenever it starts spitting out broken spikes, chucks them in the barrel with a grunt and goes, "These spikes are shitty!" Maybe he gets so angry because he hates doing nothing.

I watch him dump the broken spikes into the barrel. Hey man. Maybe you should find your brain. Wring the alcohol out of it. Build a life or something.

"No One Cares What You Look Like."

2010-08-06T00:11:00.009+04:30

That's the phrase I seem to be repeating to myself most often these days. I've heard the speech a couple times now — each time I've gone to see Therefore I Am, they tell us about it between songs. If I remember correctly, it's something along the lines of, "You guys standing there with your arms crossed looking cool? Come on up here and dance. You don't go to a concert to stand around and look cool. No one cares what you look like." When I go to concerts, I wear some jeans and my Minor Threat t-shirt (it's a tradition) and then when I get there I rock out like a crazy person. The risks: someone standing in the back will look at me through their sunglasses, tuck their flat-ironed hair behind their ear, and feel secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly think that they are lamer than I am.

Well, no one is looking at this kid standing in the back. No one's really looking at me either. And I would rather feel all the energy and frantic passion I get from moving around than be the coolest kid in the crowd. What does "cool" even mean? That you make all the right plays so that you're automatically better than everyone else? That you wear the right clothes, drink the right beer, and take instant gratification wherever you can get it? I'm not gonna follow someone else's set of rules. I am not better than everyone else. I'm gonna do whatever I want. I don't want to be cool. I want to be angry. I want to be angry that our everyday lives have stopped meaning something. And I want to mosh.

Listening to music works too, like when you're listening to a song driving home from work, and there's this one part that makes you grit your teeth and press the back of your head into the headrest, and you're pretty sure you're not the only one who's ever done that. But at a concert, that other kid isn't two hundred miles away. That other kid is right next to you and even if you didn't bring a friend to the concert, you're not alone anymore.

I mean that. We're all angry about something. Maybe you're stuck working a dead-end job because you can't pay for college, or maybe your big brother just lost a limb to an IED, or maybe you've got a stable life but you seem to be the only person you know who still cares about the Haiti earthquake. And you can't do a whole lot to change it. So where do you put your anger? Well, you put it in your hands and you go to a show, and the music moves you like it always has, except a lot more because the band is right there and there's no barriers between you now. Then you shove the guy next to you and he shoves you back, and pretty soon there's a pit going. And when you leave, you're sore and probably bruised, but you feel better than you've ever felt in your life.

Why? Because you can really, physically feel it now. The anger, or the pain, or whatever you've got. But it's not just yours. This is not just about you. This is about the kid who shoved you back, and the other kids you ran into, and the singer, and the band, and me and you too. It takes all of us to make that happen — to make each other move and shove and run into whomever is nearby. You wanted to express your anger? We heard you. That's why we've got black-and-blue marks on our forearms.

This is what I want. This is what means something to me. For some reason, it's against the rules to put all your emotions out there. It's weird. It's not cool. I don't care. I'm gonna go dance.

What is this story about?

2010-07-28T21:53:00.005+04:30

This is about me and the dead heat of August.
This is about calling her "baby" in my dreams.
This is about the spy whose friends were all stolen.
This is about esophageal cancer.
And seeing him in the waiting room.
This is about finding your home and giving it to someone else.
This is about the vibrations of lightwaves.
And the way my eyes pull back like eels.
This is about the Sunfish and the wind picking up.
This is about sweat.
And catharsis.
This is about water lilies in oceans and oceans.
This is about me saving the last one for you.

castles (http://castles.bandcamp.com/)

2010-07-24T09:09:00.004+04:30

if you can get onstage and play guitar with bare feet and your pant legs rolled up to your knees, and you sing so high and loud your voice cracks over and over again, and you are gentle, and you really mean it, then you can lift me out from myself and i will hang there in the air without a body. suspended.

i'm gone

2010-07-13T07:49:00.010+04:30

hey man, how's things?
not great. but better. i don't know. it's weird.
what's weird? what did you dream about this time?
well, i was in my room.
this room?
back home.
home. whoa.
yeah. i was in my room. trying to read a book. but i couldn't
focus. there was so much noise, like people yelling,
outside my door. but i wasn't there.
who was yelling?
people. outside my door. i think we were at a wake. but
there was someone there who shouldn't have been. like
sand in the outer layer of my brain. i couldn't
focus. i was trying to read.
yeah? and then?
then the yelling stopped kinda, it got replaced
with this big rushing noise like we were falling
down into a mineshaft. like a grand piano
dropped from the top floor. there was someone
in the next room calling the police.
so what did you do then?
i opened the door and wandered out of the room
in my t-shirt and superman pajamas. there was no one there.
and then?
i flew away.

clinical

2010-06-29T03:50:00.006+04:30

a glimpse of ancient soured skin beneath
a top button undone.
flesh jutting, hanging, making shapes
i've seen on bakery shelves.
spots cut through with furrowed
streaks like modern art.
youth crawls but age slides like
jellyfish in the bottom of a pail.
and me? don't worry.
me, i'm clinical.

i went to a thrice concert last night

2010-06-20T02:10:00.007+04:30

my hair hangs off my head in ribbons
my arms vibrate
constrained in steel mesh that i rage to rip down
rallying cries shoot me up and seal over
the cracks in the small of my back
my lungs will not be lanced
they fill and fill but not fast enough
as if someone was stomping my chest in
so they empty in this rallying cry
and our fists pierce the air like soundwaves

IN SUM: next time dustin kensrue comes up and shreds three feet from your face, i dare you not to go ballistic.

i have a family history of:

2010-06-14T05:31:00.008+04:30

stolen typewriters
falling in with the wrong crowd
alcoholic fathers with mangled ears
alcoholic fathers who love their kids to death
and sleep next to denial (her name is joy)
politicking
chauvinism
"i'm just saying."

anyone want to tell me how i seem to have ended up the most well-balanced one here?

Narrow Rooms

2010-05-03T03:05:00.003+04:30

(this is an imitation of Mary Jo Salter. I was given the idea by her poem "Goodbye, Train")

I'm standing in a narrow room
packed with adolescents or college-age
kids, arms-crossed, T-shirt-wearing,

staring at the stage like animals
restrained. But when the band comes on
there are no leashes or cages left.

There are open-mouthed snarls, hackles raised,
but not at each other. We are all angry
at the same thing. We all have our reasons.

The narrow room turns into a river overrun
by frothy, heaving rapids.
The kids who get caught up collide

and push off again, hands on on backs
or shoulderblades. Some of them are carried
to the front of the room and collect there,

a small, frantic mass that steadily loses
its constituents to the current. But more arrive,
flung over top in absurd and reckless flight,

held aloft and then borne groundward.
This is not the time to hunker down.
This is the time to stick out my neck

for someone else's knees to clamber on.
(I'll support them on my shoulders.)
I will be one of them. The singer comes down

from the stage. He, too, is caught up.
This is the point. The bars and barriers
are washed away. We are all bruised

from collisions with hands and elbows.
We are all sweatier than we've ever been.
We will all lose our voices from yelling so loud.

I think about how lucky I am to be eighteen,
angry and battered by rapids, instead of silenced
and subject to the gentle predictability of the tides.

to my friends

2010-04-27T10:17:00.005+04:30

1.
sometimes i forget you don't like hearing the new slang
and sometimes paint doesn't come out of the walls.
so when you point your finger at me and say "bang"
i'll twist and grab my heart and i'll take my fall.
and yes, i'll stop showing you rugged-looking men.
as long as i don't have to watch "telephone" again.

2.
i don't get it either.
i don't forget it either.
i don't do stupid shit to myself anymore.
i don't sit on my hands or stand in the back.
this is about working at it.
this is about how nothing must go and
we can hold it all up. but only if we work at it.

3.
one day we're gonna go shove some dudes around
and yell a lot and get real sweaty and it's gonna rule.

June Morning (Wallace Stevens imitation)

2010-04-18T23:47:00.002+04:30

1.
Your veil darkened by rain, the steady
Tap-tapping on the tent-top overhead, and the
Teeth bleached to blind all conspire to
Wall me in and leave me there. I smile and
Lift your hands, imagining for a second
How hard I could squeeze them before
Your white teeth disappeared in an
Ungainly yell, and you searched my eyes,
Darkened by rain, looking for reason.
I spend hours alone and find no reason.
Instead I make small sacrifices to
My anger, the mangy, restless, atrophied thing
That I have walled in and left there.
The scratch marks have long since faded
Like raindrop-stains on gray linen suits.

2.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I hear a howl
Echoing in its small chamber: "There is no
Reason for you to find. I pad decrepit in the
Bottom of your throat and you feel like growling."
I built this house and now I live in it,
Gritting my teeth at arguments and burned eggs,
Feeling disgust when my children smile at me,
Bored to death before you even open your mouth.
Outside thunder rolls and sickly trails of rainwater
Lurch down the plate-glass doors. In the garden
The soil grows darker in the rain, while earthworms
Convulse in the grass to escape drowning.
My children want to go out and play, but
I growl at them and make them stay inside.

"Out, Out-" by Robert Frost

2010-04-16T02:54:00.002+04:30

(This is the poem I analyzed for my last paper.)

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behing the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -
He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. The hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

out of time

2010-04-14T11:18:00.004+04:30

when give and take turns into
sequined lamé letters tumbling
haphazardly down onto my head
i recoil and settle in my burrow
where boys cut off their hands
with buzz saws because at least
i can understand why that happens

nothing I write ever makes me feel like this makes me feel

2010-04-11T10:42:00.003+04:30

"Disease"
by Conor Meehan

When it happened, I didn’t understand why.
She’d been perfectly healthy yesterday.
Now there were all sorts of appointments and
doctors, and I didn’t want to be bothered.
I was just a kid on my summer break.
But at the same time this was my mother⎯
The woman who had given me my life.
She did not want me to be affected
By it, but how could I not be? I had
To stand there and lie; tell her I was fine.
I wasn’t. The fear of losing my mother
Ate at my insides. I hid it on the
Outside and put a smile on my face.
I guess I was trying to shield myself
From the pain. But there were times I wondered
If I really cared. I had to have cared,
Right? What kind of a son would I have been?
I went on living amidst everything
Even though I knew what was at stake. Would
I cry at the funeral or keep smiling?

Amnesiac

2010-04-11T00:21:00.001+04:30

(this week we imitate Langston Hughes)

I felt the electricity run from my limbs
And opened my eyes.
I heard some kind of sorrowful hymn
Right by my side.
It came from a woman looking all drawn and grim,
Clutching a crumpled handkerchief to her thigh.

She sang, "My very own amnesiac.
Your daddy, he won't be coming back.
I miss him like I miss you
When you wake up someone new,
My very own, my very own amnesiac."

I got the breath to ask her "What is this place,
And why are we here?"
No vestige of feeling showed on her face
But for one or two tears.
She said "Baby, I'll love you to the end of my days.
It hurts me so much but I promise I'll stay.
I'll always be near."

Then she held my hand and stroked my hair,
While I tried and tried as hard as I could
But still couldn't remember when I'd met her, or where,
Though I knew that I should —

I felt the electricity run from my limbs
And opened my eyes.
I heard some kind of sorrowful hymn
Right by my side.
It came from a woman looking all drawn and grim,
Clutching a crumpled handkerchief to her thigh.

She sang, "My very own amnesiac.
Your daddy, he won't be coming back.
So I'm stuck here all alone,
Just me and his ghost,
'Cause my baby can't remember his family or his home,
My very own, oh, my very own,
My very own amnesiac."

where are you

2010-04-10T08:18:00.005+04:30

hey man, what's wrong?
i've been dreaming again. not the normal
running away kind.
well, what did you dream about?
i told my friend i'd meet up with him and
he should text me when he was set to go. but
i was hanging out with some other guys
and when i finally remembered to check my
phone, i had seven texts. the first one said
"where are you." the next one had three
question marks. then he told me to answer
him already. the one after that said
"help, i'm drifting into space and i need
you to anchor me. where are you." and then it was
"i'm losing my grip. where are you man."
then "that's it. i lost it. i don't know
how much longer i'll have reception out here
so this might be it." and the last one had
been sent 5 minutes before i checked my phone.
it just said "Goodbye jess." i sent him a
text and when he didn't reply i went out
to look for him. i couldn't find him. i never
saw him after that.
hey. look at me for a sec, man. you
didn't do anything wrong.
i know. haha, i know, man. i know.

dandylions

2010-04-05T18:39:00.007+04:30

i don't speak i don't want to speak.
when i move the world sways.
when i get worked up it bucks.
it's confusing and loud.
i know there are people around me but
i can't see their faces.
i try and look but my eyes
don't do what they're supposed to
veer away on my way to connecting.
i get frustrated.
i need things in grids or i get worked up.
why can't everything just be organized?
why does it have to make me start screaming?
where does the screaming come from?
i don't have a voice i mean.
or at least one i know how to use.

once the world stopped swaying and
i could get my feet under me.
it was held down by an anchor.
the anchor was yellow and looked fuzzy.
i pinched it secure between my fingers
and pulled it up and looked at it for
a long time. eventually i heard what
the woman was saying. "brandon? do
you like it? do you like the dandylion?"

i started to eat it.
the woman grabbed my hand. i dropped it.
i looked at it for a long time.
"you can't eat dandylions, okay?"
the world started swaying again.

but i just wanted an anchor

Derailed (or: sing, sing, sing along if you once had it all)

2010-04-05T00:26:00.003+04:30

(this week we imitate Robert Frost by writing blank verse. the only rule is basically a constant number of stresses per line.)

Ever since you stopped calling for help,
It's hard for me to stand back up again.
When I would sit on summer sidewalk curbs,
I used to see all the things we'd get to do,
But now I just see all the things we've done,
Again and again until someone trips over me
Or a curious dog noses my shoulder and chin.
So I haul myself to my feet, clutching at benches,
Streetlights, sun rays, whatever will take my weight.
You're not the only ghost that haunts this place.
The day you left, you took my home with you.
Now the town where I grew up just confuses me.
All I do these days is get on my bike
And ride for hours looking for something familiar.
But these buildings are all half-dead amputees
And these people look at me like I'm terminal.
I'm told to move on but I just run circles
Around this little stretch of broken track.
But if I'm the only piece that doesn't fit,
Then please tell me, where do I go?
Please tell me, where do I go?

im/personal attacks

2010-03-31T09:48:00.012+04:30

i'm glad you're here anyway man. it's nice
having friendly faces around.
i thought you said they were treating you better.
they are. most of them. but some of them
it's not their fault.
well can't you tell them about it?
it's not that easy man. i can't just
do it. i get really scared. i ask
for answers but when i come back
all that's there is a blank page. then i
always erase my question. i'm afraid
other people will see it.
i thought you said you were happier.
i am. i definitely am. it's just
the ups make the downs so much worse, man.
like the trips home, running errands,
and acting, acting, again, over the phone,
at the receptionist's desk,
using my hat with the long earflaps as a tool,
jutting my shoulderblades out like a
failed attempt at flight.
i don't need classes.
i'm a pro.
at what? acting? failing? flying?
that's a dumb question.

innocuous

2010-03-29T20:51:00.007+04:30

is it okay if i have dreams about
shishkebabs and american summers?
of visiting the grocery store with you on a
hot afternoon? (i'm pretty sure
i was wearing flip-flops and shorts)
living like a suburban dad without
the triviality. drinking st. pauli girl
non-alcoholic on the porch while
the sun goes down and the mosquitoes
try in vain to batter their way through
the screen. going inside and turning
on the radio, dancing stupidly to some
bad 80s rock song. feeling like the
luckiest guy on earth. is that okay?

Last Days

2010-03-29T01:11:00.002+04:30

(this week we imitate George Herbert. basically pull a metrical/rhyme scheme out of your ass and follow that. enjoy)

How long have you been underneath his thumb?
He preys on you with cloying pleasantries.
Let your dark reveries loose.
Muster the deaf and the dumb.
With one light touch he brings you to your knees.
How long will you submit to this abuse?

He'll hold you close to him and take your hands,
But just so he can draw the blood from them.
Skim off the film from your eyes.
Gather the grit and the sand.
I know you have it in you to condemn.
Relinquish your subservient disguise,

And cast at him what armaments you've saved.
The vultures will make him a suitable grave.

sleeping sickness (or: 10 points if you can guess what song i've been listening to on repeat)

2010-03-20T20:18:00.005+03:30

i was thinking of drinking you goodbye
but to drown my sorrows i will
instead use a car underwater,
where i'll have some time to think,
i hope, on when the scales
glued themselves back to my eyes
or swung to tilt the other way.
no one's going to bother me down here
so don't bother looking.
i need to step back because i keep
trying to talk through the glass
but i'm all alone right now.
i think i hit upon the first step
to recovery but the water's
pouring in too fast. i need
a little more time. can you please
slow down the clock for me? can you please?

On listening to the False Institutions EP by Prawn too loud around 9 p.m., driving past Rhode Island's Only Truck Stop (or: stupid kid)

2010-03-18T06:00:00.006+03:30

"it's a sad, sad ending to a real bad story"
is this the right song for me to be
listening to? i've had nightmares.
my wife died the other night.
i've drowned. twice. but i can deal.
that's why i'm still writing about it.
i take things as they come and i hold them.
i'm not paying attention and i drive too slow.
i switch off the heat and hope not to remain a
sad, sad ending to a real bad story.

hard luck woman

2010-03-16T08:36:00.007+03:30

"she's a real woman." that's what
the bartender used to say. she makes a habit of
pulling herself up by her bootstraps.
she won't accept your coat but she'll
take it from you and then light a cigarette
to keep herself warm. you're lucky.
you're not one of the casualties.
not one of the ones she shot down without breaking
a sweat. she makes a habit of that too.
and you've seen her when she sweats.
like i told you before. you're lucky.
but it's not always that clear.
sometimes she finds the blood under
your fingernails and then she gets angry.
she never walks out though. she shows you.
she cuts you up and throws your pistol on the bed.
but you don't have time for this so just
call her babydoll and lock the door behind her.

Star-Crossed

2010-03-07T21:13:00.002+03:30

(in which we imitate Gerard Manley Hopkins, so I am forced to make up some emo bullshit that rhymes)

In youth I was told over and over again
That it was virtuous to trudge on, to persevere
Through doubt, catch and conquer fear
With the help of courage and friends,

But I can barely remember the last time when
My way forward was that noble or clear
As it emerged from the end of the previous year
To extract the shining now from the mires of then,

Because I can't stop thinking about your
Turned shoulder, the resolute tilt of your chin
Above your loose-knit scarf as you shut the door.
No, I can't keep from seeing where I've been,
But soon enough I won't be seeing anymore,
So if this is giving in, I guess I'm giving in.

some poems make me feel like an asshole (or: a jock poem in two stanzas)

2010-03-04T07:53:00.002+03:30

Fall
by Conor Meehan

It was a cool, crisp November morning
when he went away.
The goodbye was short.
I had school.
I didn’t know how.
Part of me wanted to believe
he’d still be there when I got home.
Part of me also knew better.

I scurried off the yellow school bus,
anxious to get home.
Maybe he’d be there.
He wasn’t.
I swam through the sea of
family that had gathered in the dining room.
Finally making it to my room upstairs,
I wept.
Lifting my head from the tear stained pillow,
I peered out the window.
His car was in the driveway.
He wasn’t.

Fever and dream

2010-02-26T00:36:00.010+03:30

(this week we imitate Jack Gilbert, a free verse writer.)

My head feels like a jet engine.
I spit the ground out onto the ground.
I miss when I used to feel safe
when I got sick. My cat would lie on my stomach.
He ran away when I was fifteen. Now I have nothing
but codeine and uncomfortable chairs.
No oases in sight, although
that may just be my vision going.
My friends are underwater and I desiccate.
My lungs feel like spilled cement. I start
wishing I could cough them up so
something would change. Think of asking the cat
to look for red spots in the dust. For now it's
just strings of spit, hanging like spiders
dangling from my mouth. This
is the company I keep. When I cough so hard
that my sternum grazes the upper bones
of my back, the spiders recoil.
My cat runs away to hide. Sometimes
he doesn't come back. I would look for him but
my head is spinning too fast, kicking up dust,
and I can't see.

holding someone's back hair

2010-02-24T08:51:00.005+03:30

i hate sharing. i'm a little kid
with a tenuous grasp on the english language.
i eat bubble gum for breakfast and
play 52 pickup with the vacuum cleaner.
i can spell azerbaijan. you guys
always catch me in a good mood.
being bogged down isn't so bad when
your friends are there to make
fireworks out of the cattails.
i tell little kids to get off the lawn
when they crawl into my birdhouse.
nothing's clean and everything is
in its proper place. so stop
yelling at me, you're not my mom.
where did you put the shotgun?
these poetry tomes are staring me down so
let's attack them in
a non-linear fashion.

archaic

2010-02-19T20:54:00.012+03:30

i stare
at the sparkling display,
explicitly decorated with the intent to
suggest. i stare. i wonder at
all the ways they've gone wrong.
we've been programmed to encourage
objectification. we obsess over the
exhibition but deny that we're looking.
i don't know how we became like this.
we make ourselves stand out like
birds in flocks against the sky.
we're taught that we, as humans,
desire other humans. it is in our genes
and it cannot be changed.
some people spread their tail-feathers
and do showy dances. some people
stalk and dive, unseen, from above.
they always leave by twos and they
never wake up alone. they know each other's
bodies but only sometimes remember names.
tonight i'm home by myself again.
i begin to ask myself where i went wrong.

I Love This Poem

2010-02-15T20:44:00.006+03:30

The Candy Man

I strolled by the factory
and all my eyes could see
was a bountiful sea of milk chocolate candies

My mouth opened wide
as I peeked inside,
and tears of Almond Joy came pouring out my eyes.

I went around back,
broke open the door latch,
and ran about the factory ready for an eating attack.

I heard a Milk Dud not far away,
deciding to go on my Milky Way,
until a guard stopped me and said: “It’s just not your day.”

I Snickered at the guard,
called him a big, fat lard,
and told him he’d never put me in the prison yard.

His backup came soon enough.
They slapped me with the cuffs,
and my heart broke into Reeses Pieces⎯Man, I was crushed!

The bail was 100 Grand.
My mom came to lend a hand,
and I showered her with Hershey Kisses to show how thankful I am.

-Conor Meehan

The Riverman

2010-02-15T01:08:00.003+03:30

(this week I imitate Thomas Hardy. basically lots of rhyming with imbalanced lines. oh yeah and DOOM.)

I've known many men
but every now and then
I find my thoughts returning to the Riverman again.

He was born and raised
into love, fear and praise,
yoked under his parents' fervid religious craze.

He grew up on his own
with a prison for a home,
but he found comfort in the river when he couldn't stand being alone.

He refused to stay confined,
so leaving the forest behind
and carrying a trusting and immovable faith, he bid his parents goodbye.

But his brand new life
under big-city lights
corroded the iron wills of him and his young wife.

His son's breath was seized
by the fatal maw of disease
and his wife chose over madness a divine, eternal sleep.

Now in the city still
he was forced to stay until
he could begin to pay off all his son's medical bills.

I used to talk to this man
when he would work my land,
crippled under the weight of things he couldn't understand.

He told me, "Son, don't listen
to the priest or the deacon.
They preach real pretty, but they're both of 'em just lyin'. "

I would catch him casting looks
down toward the deep woods.
I think the river was the one thing that he still understood.

He just needed to hear
that rushing in his ear.
He said he was leaving Jesus for a place far better than here.

He disappeared one day.
I was told he'd run away.
I can see him on the miry banks, kneeling in the mud to pray.

He stands and wades in now,
lets the water take him down.
The only thing he ever understood was that peaceful rushing sound.

take me to the river.

2010-02-12T09:29:00.005+03:30

you say you'll be there, you say
you'll take my hand but you
never show up when i need you.
you never show up. always
make me make my own decisions.
i'm a supplicant. i was born
from the mud, half a bone maybe.
i turn my palms skyward and beg.
here in the dirt in this hole
i don't want. i'm always
looking down. waiting for the
sunshine on the back of my neck.
i get clouds. descending to
blur my vision. my knees are
wrapped in earth. i'm just
holding out for your hand,
begging, promising not to
kiss you, content to just
ask. listen. but you.
you never say a word to me.
and you. you never listen.

oh jesus.
i'm gonna leave you the first chance i get.

fiddler

2010-02-07T02:41:00.005+03:30

(this is an imitation of Marianne Moore, who used specific syllabic schemes in all her poems.)

I lean up
against the
furthest wall.
My friends are already onstage, with
the rest of the choir,

the two gui-
tars, and the
sole fiddler.
She stands poised, breathes in, raises her bow
and delivers her

dulcet and
discordant
duet. It's
confusing to the ear but it's plain
and simple to the

part of me
that controls
the rising
feeling I get when exposed to loss,
exiles, wanderers,

the ones with-
out homes. The
fiddler frowns
at her music. I fold my arms and
watch the fireplace.

snail hunting

2010-02-03T20:39:00.010+03:30

tonight we hunt the rarest of snails,
who shies from the rays of the sun.
i warn you to breathe softly, my friend,
lest he hear you coming and run!

though i've traveled the world a hundred times,
i have never yet glimpsed a one.
i warn you to breathe quietly, my friend,
lest he hear you coming and run!

i have heard in the orient his trumpeting call,
floating by on the ocean breeze.
i warn you to tread slowly, my friend,
lest he hear your footsteps and flee!

i have seen his great teeth-marks dug into the bark
of african rainforest trees.
i warn you to tread lightly, my friend,
lest he hear your footsteps and flee!

he watches the night like a vigilant owl
and creeps like a panther black.
i warn you to stay low, my friend,
lest he hear you move, and attack!

he is leviathan, behemoth, and yet
leaves no slimy snail-foot track.
i warn you to stay still, my friend,
lest he hear you move, and attack!

the ichthyosaurs have all gone extinct,
the ammonites no longer survive;
i warn you to hide well, my friend,
lest you catch his rubber-stalked eye!

but in the darkest jungles all o'er the world,
still this monstrous creature thrives.
i warn you to take care, my friend,
lest he jump out and eat you alive!

"The Rape of the Facebook Friend Request: a Heroi-Comical Parody of Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' " by Tom the DJ (from my English class)

2010-02-01T04:12:00.004+03:30

What lustful pining spurs this awkward scene,
Sing out Muse! of things lewd and obscene.
A classic case of boy meets girl I tell.
Well, initially things were going well…
And now I should commence my little tale
Of love’s first spark ‘twixt plastic cups of ale:
In polo shirt and wearing cheap cologne,
Our hero yelled out above the drone.
His words received by yonder beauteous belle:
Step one of ten until his yen be quelled.
A line of poesy made the stars align;
He spoke to her his lovely pick-up line:
“Oh damsel there with tiny ping-pong ball,
You sink my cups! You sink them one and all!”
But always ‘tis the fate of lonely men,
That every party soon must meet its end.
Unable now this nymph’s sweet heart to seize,
He travelled back, but feeling ill-at-ease.
Returning home that fateful weekend night,
He leapt in bounds with all his foolish might,
But on arriving safely at his dorm,
His anxious feelings took insidious form.
What madness crept into his lustful mind
Bestruck by arrows of a shooter blind!
How calm composure amorous motive trumps,
‘Love-drunk’ was he upon her lovely lumps.
As passion from our hero now unfurled;
He cast his love into the cyber world.
A twitter tweet to her would sweetly coo;
While Facebook pokes replaced the billet-doux.
Continuing on this romantic quest,
He sent the girl a Facebook friend request.
What happened next our friend cannot recall
–Just distant memories of her Facebook wall.
In feelings tangled were his actions mixed,
So sent he her a bunch of naked pics.
His naughty words could not now be erased,
As they were etched for good in cyberspace. —Thomas Anderson

Prodigal

2010-01-31T04:09:00.004+03:30

(i'm taking an Imitations class in which we write poems in the styles of various famous poets. this week is alexander pope. basically, heroic couplets — iambic pentameter and exact rhyming.)

We walk the high road with no earthly care,
Defenseless to the frigid mountain air.
We took for granted skin, teeth, flesh, and bone,
Right up until we found that they were gone.
Now all that we have left are threadbare souls
With frozen breezes wafting through the holes.
So, deep in rapturous prayer, we walk and wait,
Exhausted, sightless, for the word of fate.
All our mistakes we lose and leave behind.
They spring up in our footsteps, curled and twined.
We must seem solemn to the passers-by,
Our pale and ghostly forms strange to their eye.
One asks us, "Travelers, have you lost your way?"
But no; we have no path from which to stray.
Their voices fade as we keep on our climb.
We lose their memory like we lose the time
To distant purposes that drive us on.
Our fathers said they'd meet us in the dawn.
There, all the chill of night will come undone;
So we must climb until we find the sun.

ludlow lions

2010-01-29T02:04:00.005+03:30

when i was a young boy i would lie in wait
in the tall grass on the bank of the pond.
half-hidden i would watch the little insects,
dandelion seeds float across the surface.
i would watch you part the lily pads with
strong strokes. we were best friends.
when you got out of the water you would stand
in front of me and smile stupidly as
droplets of water fell from your nose and
your torso and your swimming trunks. i'd
watch their snaking paths down your ribs.
i never really understood it. now i sit
alone on my porch. my hair looks like
dandelion seeds. you were my best friend.
i just wish you could hear me now. i finally
get all the things i felt back then. all the
things i felt when we were growing up. all the
things i felt at your funeral. i get it.
i understand.

emily snicket

2010-01-26T07:32:00.008+03:30

i hold my celibacy like a paintbrush
and pretend it is an instrument of
unique and providential self-expression.
i try nightly to remember home. when i fail i
instead think of the white house up the road,
ruined by fire, clothes strewn across the porch roof.
i listen to my voice crack and wonder
how long it will take to sand it down until
it is small, flaccid, non-threatening.
i look at the vesuvius shadow of an
insect i crushed on the wall.
i feel a sudden fondness for it.
and i wade through the rain like an artist
having overcome the human horror of solitude
and become a grave angel, sexless and alone.

miss counted

2010-01-24T08:38:00.006+03:30

when she leaned against his shoulder i felt
a drop of something, like an unfired bullet
slide down my windpipe and settle underneath
my throat. but the pain was in my gut.
a wrench like seeing the ghost of a dead
friend only days after you shed your
last tears. i focused on the bullet instead.
what really hurts are the lightest touches,
the things we love the most. it's a well-known
fact but only to those who found out the hard way.
her head on his shoulder.
echoes, just now coming back to me before
they leave again. i'm afraid they're
going to fade out at last and they
won't return for another time.

"sleep, troubled sleep, the troubled waking of the heart"

2010-01-22T09:27:00.005+03:30

the dredges grind upriver but i do not look.
instead i turn my attentions to things more
immediate. a function to predict the phase
of periodic abysses. how to take the first
step on what was so recently thin air.
i imagine you on the opposite side and
take pause in a vision of you feeling
the same puzzlement that sometimes
crawls up onto my porch and eats the
sunflower seeds i leave out for the birds.
in my vision you also distrust your first step.
but in the ancient amnesia we get closer.
for one moment before we fall out of phase.
we are just like always.
we forget to notice we're touching.

state of the union

2010-01-20T08:01:00.009+03:30

it was barely drizzling outside.
i had a hat and sweatshirt on.
my mom covered us both with an umbrella.
we got in the car and cranked the heat up
until we arrived at the restaurant.
the room was fashionably dim-lit.
we all talked about the earthquake in haiti.
we talked about how horrible it was as if
proving our compassion to each other.
"quarter of a million dead there" my dad said.
he popped another fry in his mouth.
our twenty-dollar dinners were prepared
to perfection.
my grandfather held my grandmother's
trenchcoat to help her put it on.
after i got home i turned on a hard rock song.
my mom walked into the room.
"what?! what is this?! no!" she exclaimed
as if in great distress. she held her fleece
bathrobe tight over her pajamas. i turned it off.
we watched the daily show and laughed at
the democratic party's bungling mistakes.
the men in suits. i sit on leather couches.
the television is turned to channel 148.
my laptop came with a backlit keyboard.
i don't know anything.
or maybe i know enough but i'm just being a
tight-fisted, over-privileged american.
don't tell me that i'm just as over-privileged
as anyone else. that does not lessen my fault.
how much do i have to give to be a good person?
why is my wallet still full of cash?

20 feet (or: the goggles, they do nothing)

2010-01-16T01:48:00.007+03:30

i couldn't see a thing but i've been
told blind faith looks good on me. so
i didn't stop.
it was a mistake.
first i lost the ability to integrate thoughts.
my legs became jigsaw puzzles standing on edge.
shotgun pellets brushed my face clean.
this is what we do.
we conquer hostile environments and use them
for recreation.
we give our stupid names to things that we
don't understand.
we think we've won when it's not even close to over.
the mountain calls down the ninth plague.
first i lost the ability to integrate thoughts.
my legs became jigsaw puzzles standing on edge.
i guess i was part of the hubris but it's not my fault
is it?
it's not my fault,
is it?

impaled

2010-01-10T05:07:00.006+03:30

i'm destined to be one more
rejected adolescent. a
stereotype or a parody.
i watch national guard
commercials twice a week.
i sit at my computer and
keep myself busy all day.
do fish care more about the
suffocation or the hook in
the roof of their mouth?
i look at other people's
photographs. soldiers
sleeping in the trenches
they've just dug or
children holding baby
goats and smiling at
the camera with no irony.
when they see flocks of
wood ducks gathering in
autumn, do cardinals feel
a pang of loneliness?
i'm dependent on other
people's work. i say
"i'm not allowed to
start doing mine."
i'm not good enough.
i've never worn a
uniform. i'm not ready.

six-legs (or: if you happen to own a copter gecko and are looking to get rid of it, i would be happy to take it off your hands)

2010-01-04T07:59:00.013+03:30

she stole my ability to find a place
for myself, a state of mind, the
strict and sprawled sense of belonging,
and when i try and write all the wrong
things come out on the page. my right
brain is showing its age.
i'm much too young to believe in morals,
to know who she is, even begin to
fathom what's right in front of me.
because these days all i see are bones and
some are buried, but some are thrown.
sooner or later i'll have to acknowledge
that i'm not the good man here.
what do you call it when you lose
your grip to one more deserving?
i'm perfectly willing to slip i just
wish i could stop her burning

retinitis pigmentosa

2009-12-30T10:12:00.007+03:30

i often stay up much too late.
after eleven p.m. i become an anatomical genius.
sometimes a taxidermist.
sometimes a serial enucleator.
either way i stop being tempted.
i use blood and vitreous humor as finger paints.
after two a.m. i become a greedy apothecary.
i brew sickness from tea leaves.
i steal babies from their cribs.
the lack of eyes thrills me.
some things can't be found in a supermarket.
animal hides. the right kind of tea leaves.
the solitary thrill. eyes.
where do you get yours?

joyeux noel.

2009-12-25T00:14:00.004+03:30

i get confused so easy these days
just trying to figure out the right things to say.
i used to think i was a genius but
i don't when to talk or when to shut up.
so here's a secret you never knew.
some late nights i stop being over you.
take it as a compliment, bien-aimée.
you're the sweetest heart and the brightest shade.

his mother doesn't want to get any more cats, she thinks it's too sad

2009-12-20T08:17:00.004+03:30

he spends his time looking for dead animals.
in the woods behind his house.
once when he was little he found a bird.
it was late in the afternoon and the
sun still hadn't come out.
he'd never seen one up close before.
a dead body. a bird.
he poked at it with a twig.
crouched there beside it.
he picked it up in his hands and held
it against his chest until he could see
the bird move quietly with his heartbeat.
he wondered if it was alive again.
he didn't understand. it takes more
than a heartbeat to make something alive.
he put it down and stood there for a while.
"jordan? jordan!" he didn't understand.
why did he have to leave?
there wasn't anything more important than
standing here. holding his twig.
staring.

he still looks for dead animals.
in the woods behind his house.
a mouse maybe or a leopard frog
to hold up to his heart.
his hands become the same color
as its skin. nothing mourns.
there's nothing more important than
pretending it's alive again.

i talk to myself at night

2009-12-19T11:08:00.011+03:30

hey, what are you looking at?
do you know what it's like?
what what's like?
being called, man.
called by what?
come on man, just listen.
i can't hear anything.
whale song. clear as day. come on, man.
i still don't hear it.
ah well. maybe it's just me.
hey, man —
what?
have you been having a lot of dreams lately?
yeah. it's flaring up again.
what are they like this time?
well sometimes they're really sad. but sometimes they're not. like sometimes they're really realistic. and then i'll look out the window and they'll call me.
call you?
yeah. telling me to come down to the sea. sometimes when i dream it's really realistic. like i'll be talking to you and then i'll look out the window and hear it on the wind. clear as day. calling my name in a way more beautiful than anything i've ever heard. whale song.

may cause marked drowsiness

2009-12-15T10:39:00.013+03:30

i still remember fondly back when just looking
hurt so much. i never knew what i was
doing. now i just listen to unsentimental
records about birds and the snow.
i can hear the rain in the background.
the last presidential address. all my
professors telling me to make something
of myself. the words we always used to say to
each other coming out of other people's mouths.
there is a track called "love song."
it's 55 seconds of a music box
playing some tune i don't know.
and when it's over i want to hear more
but it's over.

咖啡haus: a true story (or: how a man from boston and his piano changed my life. http://www.myspace.com/thetumbledsea )

2009-12-12T10:23:00.007+03:30

they say that music cures your pain.
like the kid playing the saxophone and
spinning in his socks across the wooden floor.
the best friends with frizzled hair and
alpaca hats who pluck their little ukeleles
like they can't afford guitars and don't care.
entire symphonies pouring out of one boy,
one voice, one pedal and one violin.
the guy tapping his conga drum and the
girl on the acoustic singing pop songs
that sounded good on the radio but will never
sound as good again after you hear them like this.

what they don't tell you is some things
hurt no matter what.
like the way singing duets makes me feel.
the way the point of my sternum hits
the uppermost vertebrae in my spine.
the children whose hands i'll never hold.
how i can't seem to make my friends smile
the way all my other friends can.
runaway cats, dead sleep, the hidden part
of myself that i forgot i can't show.
so i'll just sit here. i can't play the piano
but i can listen to how the strings sound
when they ring.

i think you're just taking this too seriously

2009-12-06T11:23:00.011+03:30

hey man, sorry about that. i just got real
disoriented for a second there. yeah, no,
i'm fine. what were we talking about? right.
my ex. my ex-what? exactly. haha, i know
that's not what you meant. what did i mean?
sorry man, that was dumb. i shouldn't be
talking about this right now. i keep losing
it. you know man, just my vision keeps going
in and out. i already saw my doctor, she
told me there's nothing they can do. i keep
forgetting to focus. focus my eyes. and
when i cough i keep losing my grip. all these
things i keep when i'm sick. i can't hold on
to anything when i'm well. it feels like a
movie-set model of hell but at least i can feel it
so i don't want out. hey man, i'm real sorry about
that. what were we talking about?

two weeks and counting

2009-12-05T06:50:00.008+03:30

sometimes sickness grabs you by the collar
throws you up against the wall and cracks
your sternum in two with his elbow. it takes
weeks to heal. all i can do is lay in bed
and think of my favorite things. friends.
windy summer days. pet cats.
books to read. red cars. holidays.
but sometimes we can't have all that. so we
take what we can get. friends.
the last days of autumn. a warm bed.
a new kind of piano. red flannel. two hours to sleep.
when i cough my sternum bucks back into
my spinal cord. i feel it when i put my
hand on my chest.

love song to punk rock (or: in which i reference a bunch of punk CDs that no one knows about)

2009-11-25T04:15:00.005+03:30

i found these stacks and stacks of CDs
with these angry dudes yelling obscenities
wearing plaid pants and ripped shirts and messenger hats
and i wanted to be angry just like that
but i always heard the lyrics wrong
and all the songs were only two minutes long
but it's okay, i know what they're saying now
about getting bloodied up and being clamped down

and i learned how to rhyme like a preadolescent
to stick with the booze, avoid antidepressants
i learned about the american jesus
and exactly where the path of hate leads us
i learned how to dance and how not to sing
and how to clean and ruin everything
and i learned i was born 20 years too late
but my heart is strong and my edge is straight.

no more children (or: in which i start at the end because i can't write a coherent story for shit)

2009-11-23T07:15:00.009+03:30

hit me in the back like a sledgehammer.
you know me, i don't believe in bulletproof vests
or painkillers, no talk-around bullshit.
burned back. concrete. where is this?
at least we're all here, right?
the few who didn't explode.
but you know as well as i do that
these assholes are never gonna let us go,
so we might as well show them what's what,
swallow the blood,
buckle our shoulders back together,
pretend our hands still work,
punch their teeth in while we're still alive,
fuck them up because it's our best chance to
no, the only reason left to survive.

on friday i found jason singing all by himself. the pond was frozen. bigfoot appeared.

2009-11-14T07:58:00.010+03:30

don't know how to explain it except it's
sort of belated and pretty pathetic
but it's okay, i've gotten into the habit
and it's okay if you've gotten used to it.
maybe i'll take john k samson's advice
and praise the things i can't forget
by remembering, sliding on driveway ice,
falling down, standing with my back soaking wet,
by asking the past four years where i left her,
and what the hell i've been saying,
by following women down to the river
and praying

distress (post-revelations)

2009-11-12T22:26:00.007+03:30

you keep telling her
that it's under control,
that you've stopped seeing the fires,
enemy patrols,
hearing the bombs go off down the street
killing kids who refused to retreat
but when she's gone you put yourself back there.
fifteen years doesn't make it better.
you can still see the ashes in the air.

but you have the cure, the haze,
the calm in a little glass bottle
you stole from some army hospital.
you keep saying
"this is hell, this is hell"
but no one understands
and that's not what you need to hear.
you try to still your shaking hands
with drugstore heroin,
make the safety disappear
until you're free to fire at will.
but you just keep on killing that kid you killed.

this is not something you can handle.
there is no reason, no excuse.
but you'd rather live the dilaudid lie
than have the only truth you can remember
dissolved in the fluid inside your eyes.
and you've already sent out the SOS call,
tracked the letters in the static snow.
you keep saying
"this is hell, this is hell"
so i'll say what you need to hear.
true and sober.
"i know, man.
i know."

你为什么不找我？（或者：最近你好吗？）

2009-11-11T07:45:00.014+03:30

i locked myself in my room
for a week
felt like walden pond down here
for the clarity
i looked at old photos and i
felt the same things i've felt for months
i kicked out all the criminals
and took back the solitude
i read about how evolution
does not have an apex
we are not the best we are just
the newest model
here's a truth
we look just like we did 100,000 years ago
and we stare at the same uniformitarian seas
for hours and hours
here's another truth
the one thing that makes us unique
is our ability to imagine
what our futures look like

i lost my future
maybe if i retrace my steps i'll find
where i left it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Fc5AMZpBE skip the interview part at the beginning

2009-11-06T06:30:00.007+03:30

i'm losing all my friends.
i'm losing them to self-consciousness,
quenching of the puerile thirst,
long distances, much too long
for my whispers to span.
i guess that means it's just not in me
to be a father.
i feel like i've been caught
in a trap made for fools.
the one spot of optimism
i forgot to rub out.
i used to resent it but
i miss the black and white field.

i am not your guardian
or your best friend.
i'm not even close.
today i am only a man who knows how to feel.
i've already dug myself the grave.
just do me one last favor:
before you wave me goodbye
ask the caretaker to keep my plot
clear of color.
i froze my body to make sure nothing would grow.
here i am condemned
but at least i am on the mend.
so i hope you'll forget the things i still lack.
like color. like friends.

will you weep when you feel this love you have killed? oh, until we all come crashing down, we are what we are. (or: who killed the neanderthals?)

2009-11-05T09:00:00.008+03:30

there's no security in our dorm rooms
or our miniature refrigerators.
this is just one way we learned to cope.
sometimes it's enough but sometimes we get hurt
and they tell us we have to learn from it.
but i'm not strong enough to cope
and i'm not smart enough to learn.
i feel like a pre-human,
gracile in form,
with the bits of my brain in all the wrong places.
they say we took over because of our
"complex social milieu."
but i can't figure it out.
how to relate to everyone else.
i'm 1.6 million years behind

millions of years and all we've got
are badly built backs,
haphazardly built brains,
opportunistically built guile.
but who's doing the building? and why?
where were you when it all went down?
i hear the snaps and pops already.
my back is killing me and i can't
organize my overflow of ideas and i can't
stop wanting to kill small animals.
they never asked for our approval.
just threw us together and waited.
one day we're going to go extinct and
our miraculous brains can't do a thing about it.
they never asked us.
they never asked us.

dr. spencer reid (or: the cutest puppy you have ever seen)

2009-11-03T07:23:00.005+03:30

unafraid of the air on your ribs
equipped with sleight-of-hand,
bad aim, honesty, a snapshot of the abyss,
some empathy you dug out of middle school
because crazy is no stranger to you
and the smart ones are the best liars
when she can't distinguish your smile
from the truth, when she asked
if you heard the voices too.
and we all get nightmares.
even your best friend.
even me.
and no, it's not fair.
sometimes eight girls die and you don't know why.
so just think about the ones you saved.
close your eyes and believe.