a lil sumthin sumthin

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

—	Ernest Hemingway in Esquire, December 1934

the dumbest girl i ever touched

the dumbest girl i ever touched
felt like velvet and smelled like
what a perfect sunday morning
can only wish to smell like.

she was exotic, despised narcotics
but indulged me as much as i
wished to patronize her and her words
and her dress that was inches too short.

and when i slept in her bed
she would hold me so tight
she never got the chance to
feel me like i felt us climax.

and when she would wash the dishes
i would read her shelley and i would
sing her t-pain and she would hum along
when she moved onto ironing my pants.

to her i was a pharaoh and to me she was
my countrymen and we both believed
in our hearts we were frauds and tricksters,
constantly trying to remember our own lies.

today the sky is as blue as dorian gray's eyes
and the smell of sunday morning is as faded
as the painting of dorian gray's eyes and my
father's hands are calloused; this is my

inheritance.

she would question her thoughts,
and when i corrected her she would
laugh like a thief getting caught. we
would argue and she was always right.

when i hugged the dumbest girl
who ever touched me, she smartened
up. her grip loosened. her eyes glistened,
she smiled and i'm sure the revelation
felt like childbirth; she felt me for the first time

and
the dumbest boy who ever touched her
had nothing to say.

the universe is intended to be discovered

I hugged my pillow to sleep
and the scent of your hair was nowhere.
The universe currently exists between
my sigh and when
you close your eyes.

I am not asking to be Columbus
and you the New World.
You are not territory
and I have no sovereignty
to place a flag on your landscape.

I just ask you understand
that looking into your eyes
and listening to your thoughts,
amidst your vulnerabilities
and your insecurities and your
strength and resilience

I have discovered a world
unique, a world beautiful from
the inside out. I have laid eyes
not on a world flat -- one which
I was scared existed -- but
a world in which my stars satellite
with gentle illumination.

self portrait on Aug. 17, 2009

dream song 34 by john berryman

My mother has your shotgun. One man, wide
in the mind, and tendoned like a grizzly, pried
to his trigger-digit, pal.
He should not have done that, but, I guess,
he didn't feel the best, Sister,—felt less
and more about less than us . . . ?

Now—tell me, my love, if you recall
the dove light after dawn at the island and all—
here is the story, Jack:
he verbed for forty years, very enough,
& shot & buckt—and, baby, there was of
schist but small there (some).

Why should I tell a truth? when in the crack
of the dooming & emptying news I did hold back—
in the taxi too, sick—
silent—it's so I broke down here, in his mind
whose sire as mine one same way—I refuse,
hoping the guy go home.

Danse Russe by William Carlos Wiliams

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

about waiting

there is no destiny,
only hope.
there is no sadness,
only time.
pull back the curtains,
there is no prophet.
there is no loss,
only faith.

so i'll continue shooting arrows in a fishing pond,
doesn't ever matter if my arrows are gone,
i've got hands and eyes and sense of mind
to know what's in it is sublime.

mother's day

written may 13, 2007

before the weight of the world
saw your ideals unfit
you read books
making sure
i'd make it in this world
and now
the the weight of the world
is just a an article of clothing
you tell me
that i'm going to make it in this world

once upon a time you were beautiful
and men would promise you the
stars and the moon

and now you sleep alone
waiting for the world
to give you a respite
from the stars and the moon

i want you to know
you are beautiful
and if i could,
i'd give you the stars and the moon

but you're too smart
for promises unreachable
that doesn't mean
you can't reach for
what you once thought
was for fools.

because it's coming to you.

the more loving one by w.h. auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

about awareness #3

written feb. 17, 2008

hello dystopia,
i am the archbishop of afterthoughts after long afternoons.
i can tell when they're angry,
can
they tell
when i'm blue?

the nimrods build buildings
to worship pantaloons,
while i hide under blankets
like a makeshift cocoon.

i eye eyes
like a diary,
with secrets that shouldn't be told
i like our jejune mornings like a dog likes it's belly
on a pavement that's cold

can forever
ever be forever
(,possibly)
or
does the severed rhetoric allow it not to be

for the afterthoughts after aftershocks
tremble like tremors rrrrrrrr
rrrrattle hang-dry socks

and lovers lips lock
like their hearts are on the clock
an urgent declaration to untie stomach's knots
(and not before long, they undo button tops)

i can sleep on my own.
i am fully grown.
i cook my own meals
then i sit on my throne.
and our eyes realize before we feel inside,
(inaction is drastic when you have the insight)

so i'll answer your call
if you answer mine
but if you're still not inclined
i'll still leave on the light

a "love" poem

written march 13, 2008

you: inconvenience
incapacitating
all that makes me
me.
come back.

i touched myself
thinking of nothing important
and the days i take a
ride on public roads
are the days that
i yearn for sleep.

a monk by design,
i indulge in my dreams.
finding interests in the
insipid, fingers crossed
we agree.
i want "you" more
than i want
you,
as if ideas are more important
than the pleasant view.
love should never be an abstract thought,
it should be bedsheets messy.

COMMUNITY CENTER b/w OTHER MINOR REQUESTS

Community Center

it was i who he not me
probably
say we
be invisible:
breathing out the cold,
precipitation out our throats.

and it was they who maybe we
who fell apart at the seams
at the sketches of their dreams

sometimes he gets down on his knees
and says please please please
but feels guilty of his pleas

so he will breathe and breathe and
breathe and breathe and
breathe (please) breathe (please) breath
(please) breath please heed no retreat

for
it's not defeat it's
the sound of bustling feet

it's the need it's
the need.

and they who can be us who
wants them to understand we
who wants to be we, be it him
or her and you and us is us is us
is us is it is it (it is).

Other Minor Requests

I wish I had eaten
a gumdrop once in my life
so I can know how sweet
"sweet as a gumdrop" means

or imagine Thoreau's
quote ("marching to the
beat of a different drummer")
that the beats all like
bmPbmPtch-- BmPBmPtch da tss..!

I imagine sleeping and controlling
my dreams before they decide
to dictate today
because today can not suck
and can't I just hope to root
for the good guys (the real good nice guys
not this "nice guys finish last" heresy

because if you are concerned about the
concept of last place then your niceness would
not exist in a perfect world) for I hope
that each other is what we are, that everytime
we nod, we nod in stereo.

-Robert Heinlen

“Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they’re almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Both at once can produce unbearable turmoil…”

a minor request

if the world will eat me alive,
may i have the decency
to devour it whole.

we enter the planet as orgasms,
so may i leave it on a climax.

w/ dignity

every night from age 12 to infinity,
he would pray to someone (he
wasn't too sure who) and ask
"please, let me die with dignity".

maybe he had days that moved transcendentally
and maybe he had days that
would suck the marrow out of his joy
but the request was posed consistently.

and sometimes he would sleep in his bed
or sleep in a stranger's bed though one
time he woke up in an elevator and even
when he awoke he prayed he wasn't dead (not yet)

though oftentimes he was okay and sometimes
he was afraid he wasn't but if you asked
anyone around him they'd beg to differ but
what do they know about him aside from his asides.

and whenever he thought about you he thought about
more than you he thought about more than death
he thought about the way the world should work
he stopped thinking about himself and his doubt.

and whenever he saw you he thought about how
he wished he knew how to make sure you could
feel the way he feels when he was around you, the
way everyone should feel between before, then, and now.

now his prayer's the same but his definition of dignity
has changed (for better or worse) and the idea
of waking up weightless might be naive but
the idea of dignity is a boy who feels relieved.

there will be days when he will be too busy to have thunk
because he needs to make money and because he
is scared if he stops moving he will die and if he stops
thinking he will be worse than death, he will wake up sunk.

"and if you do not see how beautiful, wise, confident and strong
you really are then shame on you because it's not hard
to do things before you die for someone that makes you feel
the way you make him feel" is what he said before he prayed (hard and long).

there is no nothing -- no thing -- noting that there is everything (everyday)
inside (that nothing), that emptiness, that space between now and later
(that he hopes he savors) and now and then (that he only now comprehends)
so he will lie down tonight, knowing everyday he's not okay (and that observation
makes him okay) and that he's dying every day (though he's dying in his own stupid ideal way)

watching ghosts at 2:30 am

FFWD>> to 4:32

more misawa via herb

The most vivid scene of the night was Saito, 43, who had to be talked out of announcing his retirement that day, getting on his hands and knees to a large framed photo of Misawa, crying and being apologetic. It was actually at that point when fans realized that Misawa died directly related to the move, as opposed to the possibility it was a heart attack suffered in the heat of battle.
There have been an endless number of high profile pro wrestler deaths over the past 25 years. There were the drug deaths, the accidents in and out of the ring, and even a high profile murder. Many were the result of the lifestyle of being a high profile pro wrestling star and falling to the easy temptations. Some, like Eddy Guerrero, may have been, as Dusty Rhodes said right after his death, that he died trying to be a main eventer, essentially steroids and Growth Hormone to try and overcompensate for his small stature that was the only thing holding him from that status. Misawa was the first to die not from trying to be a champion, nor from the lifestyle of the spoils from that success, but because of being the champion.

moarrrrr quotes

“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.”-Henry Rollins

.

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”-James Baldwin

“If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose” -Charles Bukowski

Happy anniversary, Dubliners

Today is the 95th anniversary of the original publishing of Dubliners. The publishers were concerned of the contents of his short stories and this was his response:

“It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.”