I don't know what number this is.

Mother of pearl. I definitely just spent the last hour and fifteen minutes sitting in the computer lab writing a less-than-mediocre poem instead of doing the massive amounts of work that I have due tomorrow. Whoops.

You won't let me catch you sleeping.
We sit silently on the daybed
in the sun room after midnight, shrinking back
into the shadows, skirting the fuzzy lights
of the color television broadcasting in black and white.
No floor boards creak -- everyone's asleep -- but you
[and I]
stare intently at the screen, thieving fleeting glimpses --
attempts to catch the movie playing in each our eyes.
Glasses serve as shields but can't stave off wayward raids
and the night makes us susceptible
to imperceptible waves of sudden indefinable need
to ask for what we should not have
that is not ours
that should not be.
I won't give up, you won't give in: no surrender, no one wins.
So we just sit, side by side, in the bleakest early light.
The TV becomes a dream to me as I slip into a rapturous repose,
and you become a figment, a sentinel at his post watching over me
with a sincerity that I can't see. Suddenly awake,
you stay to watch me sleep, and somehow I can sense it:
your irrefutably unaffected affection sweetens my dreams.
It spreads through my reverie as you kiss my forehead
and slip away unseen. But the aura doesn't linger,
and when I wake in midday, the television is color once again.
Did you catch me sleeping?
Did you enter my dreams?
Or was it just a black and white movie
playing out on a color TV?

No. 12

Forgot to post this the other day. Wrote it down on my cell phone at the Jason Mraz concert during the shortest set in the history of the world. Figured I'd copy it off my phone even though it doesn't really say anything because I haven't posted in ages..

so give me all you got
because I’ve never had enough.
lift this weighty cup of hate and love
to my thirsty lips and tip
it back to feed my cravings
and fill the holes that
hunger has gnawed in my paper heart
like earthworms through the dirt
beneath the soles of my
tired feet that tread
water churning slowly
flowing to and fro
full of froth and foam so sweet
it melts like whipped cream
in a mug of dark, rich cocoa –
nectar or ambrosia that
dripped off spilled saucers on Parnassus
into the sea to feed the starfish and the whales
and the men who sail on waves
that grow and build before they crash
and drown all things in a blanket of
glorious darkness, cold and smooth
sugaring the land to sweeten the future
triumphs of the next life to brave the waters,
who plans and makes and lives anew
amidst blue winds
that paint the world
in brilliant brushstrokes of
royal violet and gold
so pure it’s whiter than light
the platinum plated love cup
that quenches all.

----------------
Now playing: Chris Ayer - The Revealing

Application of Kerouac's 'Belief & Techniques.'

21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better

27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

Hypocrisy alert: I've never read On the Road. I got about 50 pages in and never finished because I couldn't tolerate the indulgent nature of Kerouac's "spontaneous prose." I admire it in theory but actually trying to read it and then decipher it gives me a headache. However, I have no problem applying his techniques myself and writing beyond stream-of-consciousness in his "spontaneous" way. So if this gives you a headache...sorry. You don't have to read it or make sense of it.

I do feel a bit better having written it though.

all I want is everything, to snatch and catch and grab and squeeze all of human experience, everything there is, the highest highs and lowest lows, the deepest of emotions and oceans of love and hate and pain and peace and tragedy and ecstasy and madness – especially the madness – and oh the LAUGHTER, and capture it, hold it for a moment in the palm of my hand, in a fierce orb of pure life
and then RELEASE it.
unchain unbind the tiny microcosmic cosmic blast and watch in slow motion as the most dangerous fearsome weapon and greatest most powerful healer expands across the universe in an unstoppable unreasonable irrational force beyond all reckoning
flowing like lava, a nuclear holocaust flattening, washing over everything in its path but killing nothing and everything at once blanketed in whiteness icier than snow and warm in its grasp, not wrath, but true clarity
exposing the distance between us, the mere inches centimeters millimeters that feel like miles and the darkness that exists in the in between that pushes us apart like electromagnets fueled by the ungovernable blinding blackness in which it lives no exists like a parasite feeding off our doubt and pain and hunger
our hunger to devour, to express, as we starve desire yearn for everything contained in the LIFE released in that moment and chase it down like it’s the only thing that can save us and maybe it is, maybe that’s all that matters is the race, the chase, the pursuit that ensues when we awake and see and realize that what we feel is real RIGHT NOW and even when tomorrow comes and nothing is real any more, it doesn’t matter, so long as we keep on fighting the good fight in the neverending struggle that consumes us
and then time resumes and that fleeting life vision vanishes, the ephemera become phantasms and disappear in a flash, but liberated I saw it with my own mind’s eye, reflected in your eyes, because all I want is everything and everything is you is me is us is one is all. right now. forever.

----------------
Now playing: Stars - Ageless Beauty

Commencement.

Yesterday, I went to a funeral to celebrate the death of everything I know.

We stood stiffly shoulder to shoulder in standard issue uniforms around the burning pyre as they handed us receipts—proof that we had passed through town and stayed here for a while, and a one-way ticket out.

No one knew what to say.

The silence spread through empty rooms and barren halls where ghosts still dance on tabletops to the echoes of our soundtrack, the musical story of our time together punctuated with laughter and end-stopped with a teardrop.

After an hour or two, the fire began to dwindle, but still we stood staring until the last spark died and a cold breeze blew the ashes into the sea, taking with it everything but our memories.

So we packed away our uniforms and became ourselves once more, but nothing was quite the same, and they gently pushed us out and firmly closed the door.

Empty and uncertain, we looked at each other and shrugged, not knowing where to go next.

One by one we fell away without a word—no one dared to say “goodbye” because “goodbye” implies “forever.”

Until, we remembered the permanence of impermanence, and began again.


(Not about me, despite the first person. Just the general atmosphere. What else is there to say. And like everything else, it's a work in progress.)

----------------
Now playing: Vampire Weekend - Walcott

A poem.

I'm in the middle of hurrying to write 3 more pages about the Holocaust in media in the next hour, but I had a moment of inspiration(?) so I stopped and jotted this down. It needs work, but I like it. Especially the fat lady.

hidden gazes
stolen glances
across a crowded room.

soon, I say
I’ll walk on by
nonchalant
casual like.
trying not to stare at her…
there’s a lump in my throat.
she turns.
I duck and cover
behind the fat lady
with the red purse
and three kids who go running by.
I peer…
she's still there.
the brats spill fruit punch
on my shoes.
over the fat lady’s shoulder, I see
the laugh rises in her throat.
she chokes it back
but her eyes can’t lie.
amid the chaos they dance

and then
the fat lady moves

and there he is.
his dark eyes widen.
in the headlights, he freezes
crimson climbing up his cheeks
like a bounty paper towel
soaking up spilled punch.
I can’t hear anything.
just Bach running through my head
the lone cello…
I can’t see anything.
the fat lady has dissolved and it’s only
him.
the second lasts for hours in my mind
and when the music stops
he turns away.
I’m not blind.
you don’t want to look me in the eyes
because that’s the only place you see yourself
because you know I always see you.
I see you.
I see you.

New Poem.

Formatting's messed up as usual. Whatever.


my words
they're falling in pieces
meandering
trudging through mind muck
breaking up
smaller every second
syllables separate
disintegrate
dissolve
spinning
they revolve
tumbling
down
brain to blood
blood to lips
lips to air to ears
HEAR:
what’s in my brain
doesn’t make it to your ears
fear and nerves rattle my words
they race around mental curves
vibrating herds of garbled noise
jumbled
they are mine no more
the moment the sound slipped from my lips
I knew:
the words were from another
from a foreign tongue
or a clumsy puppeteer
borrowing my lungs
to fuel her mixed up message
to mess with my sentiment
scramble my meaning
my feeling
perhaps it will translate
untangle
unravel
between your ears and brain
aim for restoration
reassemble my narration
patience cooperation
come to understand:
my words,
they have a mind of their own.

“Have you seen them? The words cut open . . . there’s something living in these lines.”

A steamy mug of dark coffee—or five—
nursed between soft palms as the night becomes
the morning. Lines begin to come alive.
They dance a reel or two and twiddle thumbs
for their audience is dull and drowsing.
Together in a mass of curves and limbs
thrusting out at all angles, harboring
resentment in the hours dark and dim,
they protest in anger: “We are not one,
but many—individuals!” they cry.
“Don’t let us blur, with your weary vision,
into a moody mess of black and white.”
Stare at the sheet in hand, eyes full of tears,
blink til it fades to black and disappears.


'Cause this is really what I need to be doing with my time.

The businessman at Sunday brunch.

I’ll have the eggs over easy, bacon
on the side. But I’d like sausage instead
if you could—Can’t you do that? Yes, you can?
Thanks. On what? Whole wheat or white or rye bread?
Whole wheat. Can I get that toasted? I said,
Can I get it toasted? And on the side,
not under the eggs? And jelly, not red
currant, but grape? And yes, the eggs are fried
but runny. I don’t want them if they’re dry.
To drink? A Bloody Mary, please. Give me
celery on the side. I can’t decide
if I want coffee also. Well, we’ll see.
Maybe later, when you bring me my drink.
No, now, please. That would be better, I think.

Another poem.

Awful, but I felt like writing and poetry + 6:55 a.m. don't always mix. It's on the lj too. Something different for me--trying to work with actual structure and form, whoa! I'm not happy with the last line in particular but it'll do for now.

Also, I never really noticed just how hard it is to figure out the syllable breakdown of some words. My meter is screwy and a lot of the rhymes are soft, but hey. You try writing a Spenserian sonnet at this hour. Iambic pentameter is not as easy as you might think.


Staring at the blinking neon numbers,
dim chartreuse entrances—wide eyed lying
flat on my back as guilt washes over
my body like the flow of sea crying,
creeping stealthily toward dunes, sighing.
You never mentioned her—that’s not my fault.
You smiled, shrugged. Thought you were teasing
until I felt your hand on my thigh, taut
fingers squeezing gently, then brushing soft,
tickling my ribs. I laughed helplessly.
Your arm came ‘round me, but I did not stop
your empty gestures. You grinned drunkenly
at my indulgent smile. I know next day,
you’ll forget. I won’t. I should not have stayed.

A poem.

I wrote this a week or two ago and just forgot to post it. It needs work but whatever.

the hours fade away
peel
pare
husk
pumice to the heart
rubbed red and raw
the guards, they fall apart
dissolve into the dark
releasing brief relief
a voice to sing to speak
to mutter to uncover
to liberate and loosen
a tongue stiff but not forgotten
thoughts and words and longing
fears and hopes and wanting
chaotic and disheveled
they were crossed
with inhibitions
lost
in self suppression
fraught
with old tradition
until the night surrounded
unwound the tightness halting
the reticence untrusting
stripping weary wanderers
of their wariness inhuman
but now they see the dawn is coming

and each retreats.


The spacing is screwed up as usual but whatever.

Poem thing.

Hahaha. I put this on my livejournal but I'm amused by it so it's going here too. It started out hopeful and then my mood changed and now it's kind of ironic and a bit dark.


Let us go then, you and I . . .

Sail to the sunset
Slip into the storm’s eye
While madness whirls around us
Chaos racing wild
     without, within
At the heart of the horizon
The gold, the soulful
Smoldering of scarlet
     the pools of light
Like an island in the ocean
A falling fairy in the night
Carrying promises of the dawn
To a starfish in the storm
Swallowed by the sea
     certain of the sun
All will be all right
The light won’t let him sink
     he winks
So we dive into the darkness
Embrace the cold that shrouds us
Face to face with infinite pain
     immersed
     dispersed
Whisked away across the waves
Waiting out the roughness
Of a world torn up inside
Refuse to hide the fear
     near the daybreak
A lake incarnate
A mirror of glass so smooth
Drifting on our backs
     we sigh aloud
     side by side
     alive

. . . Til human voices wake us, and we drown.

On lukewarm November nights, the fog crawls off the bay as the sour water rolls over the divide to drown the rain-soaked streets. The wet road is blanketed in darkness—the streetlights do not shine. They do not light the way for wanderers. Standing like soldiers at attention along the waterfront, they only glow. The globes of mellow light diffuse into

thousands of particles, like boxy pixels blurred into superfine spun sugar. The golden clouds surrounding the spheres of soft illumination are warm, yet they offer naught but cold comfort. They seem to hold the wisdom and sympathy of all others who ever felt lost, but they are selfish and deceptive, for though their glow casts a rosy veil, this veil cannot eradicate the darkness—it can only separate lamppost from the night. The bulb burns bright, but its aura cannot turn the darkness into light. This aura is illusory: it twinkles with life to all who see it, but it is false and empty at its heart. It gives no answers, asks no questions, but stands indifferent to all who pass, and any who dares to seek more will only find darkness.

----------------
Now playing: Spring Awakening - The Guilty Ones

La di da. Can't sleep.

I found something I wrote last fall, and added a couple paragraphs. Not quite sure if I like the addition or not, though. I'm thinking not, but whatever. It is what it is.

Above all else, he possessed an irresistible charm that endeared him to everyone. Chatting with him was never strained, overly-polite small talk; he had an intimate way of drawing you into conversation and speaking to you as a familiar companion, and was capable of making anyone feel like the most important person in his world and all others. He listened in an engaging fashion – you could not doubt he was captivated by every word that tumbled from your lips, even if he wasn’t. He laughed at all the right moments, with that precise mixture of genuine amusement and friendly warmth that can take years to perfect if not inherent. He was a classic tease, in an innocent and easy manner that could offend no one and attract any one, and every little exchange belonged solely to you and him, filling you with that deep, secret pleasure that comes of sharing an inside joke that lies beyond the grasp of everyone else.

Greeting you always with a warm, bright smile that lit up his eyes, you never could believe he wasn’t truly pleased to see you. For the three minutes you spent talking, his attention was yours only: you belonged to him, and he to you. Around him, you felt inspired and cheered; he instilled in you the reassuring notion that you were accepted – by both him and yourself. He loved easily, and was easy to love – or at least, it was easy for you to believe so.

After all, this is what everyone wants most: for love to be easy. For him, it seemed, love flowed like wine from a tap. He had the charisma of a politician, but the frank sincerity of a brother or old friend, and his easy nature somehow highlighted the good in everyone he encountered. In his presence, men stood a little straighter and spoke more graciously, and women laughed with more warmth and smiled more generously. His own smile could melt snow on the coldest day, and everything seemed to glow when he walked into a room. Everyone felt his presence, though none could quite identify it – part of its beauty is that it was indefinable, incapable of being labeled.

Yet, this irresistibleness held him apart from all others. Though it drew others nearer to him, it pulled him farther away. His gift of charm and grace was also his curse. He prompted sincerity, generosity, and goodness in others, but he knew this was not the way the world worked. There was no disillusionment clouding his view of the world: despite how they acted in his presence, he knew that the people among whom he walked were different when his back was turned. In his presence, their sincerity was real, but the moment he walked away, it rang false and fell away, and the people became their own selves once more. And so it was – he was alone.

----------------
Now playing: Pride & Prejudice - Dawn

I painted a picture. It's called "Front Porch Life." It shall probably be revised and reposted at some point.

Years from now, when I have grown withered and small, all I want is a porch.

A porch that wraps around a house, where sit rocking chairs that creak from beneath their red-and-yellow cushioned seats, and hangs a swinging bench that sways in the evening breeze, begging for a sip of oil at its hinges.

The roof covers the porch, which is deep enough for watching storms while bundled up in quilts with a mug of steamy tea and honey.

There is no balustrade but the bushes planted in front of the porch – thick, thicket-y, thorny rose bushes of all shades of pink and red, from which stand out one white bush and one yellow.

In the summer their scent is overwhelming, so you cannot even smell the overgrown mint floods the two small steps, though it is constantly crushed to bits by stampeding feet that elicit its sweet juice.

It freshens the stale air.

I want to see the bay from the side, but I want the front to approach the road so I can see people coming and going, and invite them to stop and chat.

They will walk up on the white, creamy stream of broken quahog shells, and cast dancing shadows in the warm, golden light that falls from the lanterns lining the curvy path.

I want to sit there as evening falls and the warmth begins to fade, listening to crickets sing and rushes stir as I knit for someone else’s expected grandchildren.

I want to sit with you in silence and feel that peculiar chill that only crawls in with a summer night until you pull a faded quilt from the old chest for me and wrap it around my shoulders.

But mostly, I want to sit and remember how we used to sit on red and yellow cushions on your front porch and be silent together. How we would talk deep into the night until your mother called down from the window above for me to leave. And we would sit quietly a while longer and then I would finally leave, but it would not matter, because the next night I would come back, and we would live our front porch life again.

"All that hatred down there...

...All that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart."
- Sonny ("Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin)

Sometimes it feels like the world is so empty. There are lifeless people, shells that don't hold anything, wandering around, chasing something that doesn't exist. Everything is an illusion and nothing truly exists and no one can feel a thing. There is no worth; there is no reason to persist or try. No one knows anything but what they think they see and hear, and all words have no meaning behind them - they are but empty vessels floating through our ears.

Other times it feels like the world is so full. Full of life. Full of love. Full of faith and hope and inspiration and reason. Intangible everythings. Peace and freedom and spirituality and purity. Some shadow and darkness, too, but it's outstripped, outshone, by the lilting grace of everything else. Then it feels like the world is so full of everything that nothing could possibly hold it in, and it shall explode into a supernova that glows with flames that are streams of golden, luminous life and dreams made palpable, that literally flow from our fingertips and lips and eyes and hair and heart. And this phoenixlike blast will be a blessing, a celebration and rebirth of all that is good.

Perhaps like a phoenix, though, the world is left in a state of ash, completely devoid of wonder - emptied - until the good people of the world fill it up again. They renew it over and over within themselves until the world is full once more. And unless the good people patiently and tirelessly work to refill, the world will never reach this apex, where only for a moment, all is right, and we can't want for more.

No. 11

I forgot about this. It's from last week.

cold truth
warm trust
externally combust
hot sparks emit gold
amid flames red and bold
streaked with blue
...

lj

Don't like it much. Could be worse though.

----------------
Now playing: John Mayer Trio - Something's Missing

Oops. I almost forgot.

Now for post 2938 of today.

I almost forgot I wrote another poem instead of doing homework when I woke up 2 hours ago.

Again, I don't like it very much, but whatever. Here it is. Read it and feel confident that you can produce something better. Hahaha.

lukewarm beer
and a cigarette
deserted they lie
night
cool, salty
fades away to sunrise
cries of gulls screech
beseech the ghosts of guests
on dim damp beach
none there to bear
witness
all stumbled away
faded bluejeans
...


livejournal

That's all. For real this time.

So I was bored in class...

It was 20th Century American Foreign Policy and we were watching The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. It was kind of interesting and pretty good, as a film, but I was just so tired and bored. I doodled and wrote random things and ate dark chocolate M&M's and tried to remember what Simon & Garfunkel's song "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was McNamara'd Into Submission" is about. (I just looked up the lyrics. I still can't tell you what it's about.)

Anyway, I wrote 2 poems. Well, I wrote one, and then I started one and finished it at work. They're eh. But it's been a while since I posted anything of substance so I'll put them up anyway. For all 2 of you who read this. Hehehehe.

No. 8

memory f l o w s
wine from a cask
dry fruit in a drop
bold flirtation
intoxication
...


No. 9

blue note
→ grace
lights upon your face
diffusing serenity
singin through the pain
rhythm
rhythm n blues
cerulean n midnight hues
...

Okay, I lied. I kind of like the second one. Sort of. (It kind of gets better after what's there, I swear.) No. 4 is still my favorite.

P.S. The formatting looks better if you go to the actual journal page here than when it's that blech Verdana font, I just put those links there because if I add other posts, you'll have to scroll/search to find the poem in question.

Un poème.

mouths open

gasp for air

bright eyes tear

breath reeks

( parmesan cheese )

( garlicky cold pizza )

exhaling melody

...

livejournal

On a completely separate note, I really hate 1) the Optimum online commercial, the one on the beach with the mermaids...you know which one I'm talking about... and 2) the freecreditreport.com commercial with the guys in the car. They're effing obnoxious and I now even more deeply resent the advertising/marketing industry because of them.

Another new one. No, two new ones.

peace in an image
reflect
freckled details
finely formed
evidence of light
life
contrary to outward image
reflection

...

livejournal



So apparently writing poems inspired by pictures is my new thing.
I guess that's okay. I mean, writing a poem is a way of conveying an image and a feeling, a mood and tone, and ideas. A photograph is a way of using an image to convey all that without words. So I guess that works.
It shall have to, because I like doing it. Haha. It makes me feel peaceful.
Can you guess what photo I was inspired by for this?
It's on Facebook, and it's one of my favorites. It's kind of old. It's not hard to figure it out. It's pretty obvious, actually. But that's alright.
( :

Also, should I start naming these? Or just number them? Or what? Suggestions, please.
<33

P.S. Second new one...I don't like. I'm putting it up anyway for the hell of it. It's different. Also it's not even decent.