Category: personal

Categories
book music personal work

Spin records like Capone

I’m convinced that were he alive today,
Al Capone would be a fabulous DJ.

Theo should have gotten his paycheck by Tuesday,
as I did; but as yet it hasn’t arrived.
And we need to pay rent today;
he’s floating some checks with fingers crossed,
while payroll says their hands are tied.

Reading the religion and politics forum on
The Crossroads, I often came across the idea
that the reason people don’t have money is because
they aren’t working for it. To them I say,
“Go read Nickel and Dimed.” These are stories
of people that work their asses off, 40+ hours a week,
and still can’t afford to pay a month’s worth of rent.

People are poor because minimum wage is low,
because server wages drop as low or lower than $1.50 an hour,
because breaking a limb can cripple you financially,
because cars and housing are unaffordable and
mass transit is unavailable, slow or unreliable.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that if people are
unhappy with their lot, they can do something to
change it. However, I think the system, also, needs
to change; and I strongly disagree that poverty is
necessarily a sympton of laziness. My radical, liberal
thought says: “Stop bombing, start fixing things at home.”
But hey, that’s just me. My true colors show.

–

So, with one gmail invite left;
I leave it here for the first interested
party to acquire. Enjoy.

Categories
dance personal poetic

Is that all there is?

If that’s all there is, my friend,
then let’s keep dancing….

Optimism and hope; my mind can’t complete the thought.
Is there such a thing as an optimism that is not naive?

Last night, Theo and I went down to Le Voyeur for
two-dollar beers and conversation. We talked about
existentialism (of course), Sisyphus, art, and relationships.
We talked about optimism too; that it is naive, but necessary.
For an existentialist, optimism is simply finding the way
to enjoy the experience; and a projection of the enjoyment
of future experiences (which is where it gets a bit absurd).
Really, I can only subscribe to optimism by analyzing
the flipside. Despair is cold, heartless, and dead.
Optimism may be silly, but at least it lives.

Anyway, I’ve worn myself out on the topic.
Not that I got anywhere with it.

–

If my sources are correct, tonight there will be
both swing-dancing and poetry-reading.
No one should have to suffer through such choices.
And they are, essentially, at the same time.
Still, they aren’t far apart, geographically,
so perhaps I’ll try and at least stop in at both.
Switch between cutting a rug and cutting a rhyme,
without batting an eyelash.

Swing word-schemes like a jitterbug;
if that’s all there is, my friend,
then let’s cut a rug.

Categories
love personal poetic

Remembrance of things present

Today feels like a dream,
of which tomorrow is the memory.

So I admit, I have no idea what that means.
Being tomorrow, that means that
today is the memory of yesterday’s dream.
That doesn’t make any sense either.
Anyway, it sounded nice when I wrote it.
Perhaps one day someone can explain my mind to me.
Moving on.

–

My dad left today, after a few-day visit.
It’s been a couple years (since I moved to Ohio),
and it was nice to catch up and see each other.
On the other hand, after more than a solid week
of visitors, it’s going to be nice to be able to relax
and get done what I need to get done. I really, really
would like to be able to sit down and finish my book sometime
soon! I’ve been reading the damned thing for over a month now,
and with a book as good as this is, that’s pure torture.

–

So, I’ve been thinking over my thoughts and reactions
on relationships and the female species. I’ve always believed
that some level of naive optimism is healthy in an
approach to relationships; indeed, I prefer optimism in regards
to all things, no matter how ridiculous.

Everything’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Optimism – Positive Thought – Hope – Rarr…
… it’s such a challenge to keep these emotions from
feeling sophomoric; to avoid cynical detatchment and a cold
perspective on the world and human interaction.
I want to believe in the basic goodness of the human spirit!

Why is this sometimes so difficult?

Categories
love personal poetic

Je t’aime, potates.

Two poems I wrote yesterday at Vita.

– Like drawing with a white pen –

Sketches capture souls,
like photos to the tribesmen,
like poems capture sentiment.

I’m the rough draft of my life,
shading incomplete;
random lines thrown out from my form
like an etch-a-sketch aura.
I offer myself up for completion.

My colors: white on white;
a gray-scale mentality;
high-contrast invisibility,
like a chameleon blending in with itself.

Come paint me with your impressions:
my skin in hues of music;
my hair: tendrils of blue-period bleak;
my shadow: melting sunbeams over wildflowers.

Sketches capture souls
like poems, sentiment;
like you, me.

–

– Colors of the flesh –

Spines fluid; weaving mobility,
sweat down the backbone:
rain flushed down pipes; smells like Summer.
Gutteral chants to hearts’ drumbeats,
an ancient rhythm.

You: sultry, sticky-skinned siren;
me:

Hand hover over hope,
rub the flesh-colors out to expose
God’s palette.
We scream denials of external divinity.
Our colors are our own.

As breaths become strong and fragile
and break against the window-panes;
fingers interwine like spider-thread,
tighten, knuckles pale and red.

All energies collapse, eventually:
stars to suns in the cold black,
skies fall under their own weight.
We fall in gasps,
break windows with our silent screams,
and release our fire into the air
so that the day might rise.

–

A lot of realizations lately,
some hard to come to terms with.
Ideals to aspire to,
but I’ve come to realize that even ideals,
in and of themselves,
can be treacherous.

Struggling quietly with Voltaire’s:

“Everything is for the best,
in the best of all possible worlds.”

Categories
personal poetic

Rock steady, Bebop.

Yeah, so I was a big TMNT fan when I was younger.
Michelangelo was my favorite.

More work is possible:
job open at the Oly Public Biblioteque.
My fingers are tired of being crossed anymore;
I’ve just decided to get this job,
no luck involved.

Of late, lifestyle like a rockstar:
past-midnight shenanigans ’til 2,
life like le cinéma de l’absurde;
existence doling out decadence like
a chocolaterie: flavorful, but taxing.
[A secret: shhhhhh, (finger to my lips)
I’m not so Dionysian as I let on.]

I’ll slow things down, now.
Live life like easy as it looks;
practice moderation in all but enjoyment.
I love these quiet moments also.

–

I’ve begun to rethink my life,
from the beginning. I think now that
I climbed out of the womb the wrong way.
Looking back, I would have done it differently.
[Sorry, just being absurd; I’m tired.]

I have been thinking about my translations,
and that it’s been too long since I’ve done one.
[Je traduis le poésie francais en anglais.]
Perhaps some Verlaine, or a passage of Lautréamont.
Something decadent: lush images, poets lost in existence.

It’s widely believed that things get lost in translation;
no-one ever mentions what might be gained.

Categories
personal poetic

Like forced laughter when no-one’s listening anyway

Gee, with a title like that, I can just tell
that I’m going to be a bundle of joy today.
Lucky me. Actually, though, I’m referring to
a conversation I had last night with Theo, Tim
and Daniel about anti-depressants and A.D.D.
Theo’s been studying the different types of ADD,
what their symptoms are and where the problems
come from, and what sort of treatments work.
For some, drugs work, and for some drugs are
a hinderance. For almost everyone, drugs or no,
a change of lifestyle, including diet, exercise and
habits is a necessity for improvement.

Anyway, this led me to my naive ideal:
save the world through education,
literature (and art), and philosophy.
Herein lies a catch-22, as far as concerns those
who suffer from ADD; as it stands it takes
a certain strength of attention span to be able
to garner strength and character from these things.
Though I’m sure they’d help in the long run,
that does no good if you can never break into them.

Thus my idea, which is still, sadly, entirely
dependant on the frail idea that the US might someday
give a damned about how it educates its youth. Ha!
The idea: break philosophy, literature, art, et al down
into basic, interesting, and engaging packets.
Don’t make them read Plato’s Republic,
break it down for them, tell them how it relates to their
life, other philosophy; personalize it to them
[the idea that even then they’d become interested is where I get naive].
Even so. I think we need to encourage teachers less to teach,
and more to develop in students an eagerness to learn.
I think that philosophy needs to start running alongside
religion in the mainstream, even if it’s just the practical
philosophy you would find in the stoic shephard boy who guards his flock.
Stalwart, responsible, appreciative, courageous, and resolute.

We’re giving our children too many fish without teaching them how.
Those we’re even bothering to feed, anyway.

Question: How many public high schools in this country
offer a philosophy course, even as an elective. I’d wager not many.

Yes, well onward from doom & gloom.

–

This is a silly rhyme [it doesn’t rhyme, though];
I wrote it yesterday.

I’d gladly take hidden midnight rendez-vous’;
I’d become your secret lover in the blackness;
I’d be your full-moon muse.
Yeah, boys can do that too,
or so I hear.

I’d dance in the field ’til lightning strikes;
it’s our little secret.
I’d balance your reason with my Dionysus,
if you drank from my cup.
I’d sing you the songs that lovers sing,
softly in the starlight.

I’d become the enigmatic message left on your machine:
“Blue vistas under witching-hour darkness; come cradle me.”

Boys can do that too,
or so I hear.

Categories
humor personal

Synchronize Me

The word for the week truly must be:
synchronicity.

I’m certainly too existential to believe
in pre-determination. Even so,
sometimes things work out in such a way that
I can’t help but feel like there is a path
laid out before me, and that my life is going
precisely according to plan.

Now, of course, if I’m going to buy into this,
the plan life is going according to is my plan,
created by an amalgamamam (woohoo, I so slaughtered that word)
of choices I’ve made, thoughts I’ve had, and
words I’ve slaughtered. Maybe not that last thing, though.

My point was (once): events are unfolding in such
a way that I feel very happy to be where I am,
when I am, and how I am. So much so that I’m even
fairly sure that not getting the Info Center job
is a predicate to my getting something so much better
and fulfilling. For instance … umm, bee-keeping.
Yeah, I wanna keep bees. I wanna keep em, so they
cannot get away. I want to tie them to elastic so that
when they go out and get pollen, they come right back.
[shameless Eddie Izzard rip-off]

All these strange, tangential ideas can be
neatly compacted into one word:

Yeay.

Categories
humor personal

Oly-Stop Blues in C ~

Well, the news is:
no second job for me at the Info Center.
I repeat:
I was shot down like a worm in Mexico.
I guess they had four good, internal applicants
they had to choose from, in the end.
It’s too bad, that was really one of the best
interviews I ever gave. All for naught *big sigh* ~
So the search continues, my sign reads:
“WILL PUN FOR FOOD”.
You have to have an appetite for these sorts of things;
sometimes they’re hard to stomach.
Chew on that one for awhile …
it’s a lot of information to digest.
*cough, cough* I’ll stop now, I promise.

Categories
personal poetic

Sisyphian Dyno-mite

Visiting Port Townsend was good.
Somehow my family always inspires me;
unintentional, but I like that about them.
For instance, my little niece(4 years) and nephew(15 months)
are incredibly awesome.
I think I’ll go visit them on their home-turf sometime soon.

I’m hanging with Daniel, Jason, and my dad;
all sometime this week. At the risk of gushing (more),
my friends and family are all an extraordinary gift.
I still feel pangs of longing for that deeper connection:
coffee under the stars at midnight in a deserted field;
conversations about the significance of insignificance;
dancing in the afternoon thunderstorms, giving off so much
electricity we’d be completely oblivious to lightning-strikes.

Yeah, okay … wax poetic much?
My point was [is], I still feel these pangs,
but they’re not unbearable.
I need to get out and dance.

–

Sometime in the next couple of days, I should hear if I get the second job here at Saint Martin’s. If you’re reading this, send some good energy my way [I really need this job]. So far, work is anything but toil. As I may have mentioned, being between semesters we are quite slow at the moment. Things will pick up soon enough, of that I’m sure. I can’t say I don’t appreciate a little slow time, though. Life isn’t hectic, but my mind’s a whirlwind of untidiness, for whatever reason. I need to get out and dance. Work will pick up soon, a million-fold if I get this second job. No idea of the consequences this will have on my life and happiness [I’ve been needing the down-time]. Like all things in life, it will require an adjustment; I’m gearing up for buzy-ness as a positive experience. Working hard makes life seem more dynamic, somehow. One hard fact: I’m toeing the line of financial doom, ergo I need to start working my ass off. Maybe that’s a soft fact, I don’t know [buying into social structures and financial dependency; work & reward mentality]. I need to get out and dance, and I need to stop whining about needing to get out and dance. Going down to Vegas and losing all the money I don’t have on a single spin of the roulette wheel sounds fun, too. I really believe that the idea has merits [loss of money as liberation]. And my options then? Sometimes I think becoming a vigilante superhero would be fun. Unfortunately, I would always suffer from the quandry: kill serial rapists, or asshat politicians? I hope I’m not the only one that thinks that that’s a tough choice.

Ha. I’ve never even gotten into a fight.
I can’t imagine inflicting mortal punishment
in the service of a sense of justice.
There’s too much fatalist in me, yet.
Not a lot, but too much. The existentialist in me
thoroughly scorns it.

Were I truly a vigilante superhero:
I would go to battle; enlightenment my sword,
snapping the whip of creativity at the heels
of the ignoble villain.
Is it so naive to think that
I could solve the world’s problems with literature?

Sisyphus is uplifting [sorry about the pun],
but the world may never know.

Categories
internet personal poetic

You say lagomorph, I say rabbit…

… or lapin, because I’ve always liked that word.

This weekend I make the short trek to
Port Townsend, home of: my mom, good food,
the Puget Sound as it nears the Pacific,
the Rose Theatre, and my siblings
(for the weekend, at least).
I’ve one brother and one sister;
they’re both older, and super-cool
(my brother let me beat him up when I was a tyke;
my sister tickled me mercilessly, and
had her friends chase me around with lipstick).

I didn’t grow up with my siblings;
rather I saw them over the Summer and on
various holidays. So, though I think we know
each other well, we don’t have that “know everything
about each other” thing that similar-aged
grow-up-together siblings do. As such,
our meetings are always half familiarity
and half exploration. This is not a complaint.

Port Townsend is full of memories:
childhood days of carefree exploration
(I was quite intrepid), and my pre-college
days of creative indulgences, naive ideals,
and romantic sulks (also known as “failures”).
I was 17. Need I say more?

If you haven’t yet, check out the mystery that is:

I Love Bees.

In the end, it’s basically advertising, true.
But it’s still absolutely fascinating.

A poem from 8/15;
a young-woman musician who,
traveling through Olympia,
played while we were sitting in Caffé Vita.

–

Your sultry voice like butter melting:
highs & lows
and caught-betweens;
songbird-wings and a smile.
Thin-boned for flight,
breaks easy and transparent.

You’ve got on your samurai kid-gloves,
prepared for gentille swordplay,
wordplay; “May I?” “You may.”
Spin songs, trap hearts,
blown apart at the seams,
you laud the diocese.
Saints speak lunacies,
heresy, are remembered
for their honesty.
You should be so lucky.

When your Icarus-wings
tear apart in the light –
like butter melting –
where will you fall then?

–

It rambles, groans;
mutters vagueries.
It needs clarification,
I think;
but there it is.

Categories
personal poetic work

Like Icarus loves the Sun

Yesterday, as I sat at the window
inside Caffé Vita, I watched
a blind woman cross 4th Ave,
the main street in downtown Oly.

I couldn’t help but wonder
where she was going, what doing.
And so I imagined her,
weaving a straight line into
a local gallery,
and buying a painting.

The most perfect action ever taken.

–

Olympia has been good to me.
It feels like home, treats me like
a long-lost lover, rediscovered.
For me, that faceless throng is
a world of stories, telling themselves
in facial tics and snippets of conversation.
Even the morally destitute give me hope.
I couldn’t say why.

My job is excellent;
slow right now between semesters,
allows me a chance to get my bearings.
At 19 hours a week, I’m still waiting
for that second job to fall in my lap.
My supervisor here in the Library,
after just a week, is willing to put
in a good word for me
(the 2nd job is also on campus),
so I think I stand a good chance.

In the evenings:
darts in the garage,
music and conversation,
story-telling,
a beer to relax and
watch our neighbors across the street
[human story of a couple and two kids],
listen to our neighbors next-door
[irish tap jigs against hard-wood floors],
barbeque at sunset and
wonder what it’s all about.

–

Creatively, I’ve been working on story-boards
for two strips,
which Theo and Tim draw, respectively.
We’ve a good creative environment,
communication and amusement.
We should have a few up on a website soon,
once our internet kicks in at home.
So, you know, stay tuned and all that.

–

A poem to part with, from 8/9.

Rata-tat-tata-tata-rata-tata-ra-ta-tat:
heart drumbeats
simple beats
easy as it looks
rata-tat-tat-tat –
beguile me for awhile
i’m easy:
tell me your stories like lies
of flies on walls
i too saw it all;
tell me your truths & heartbreaks
rata-tata –
life’s easy
getting by is getting by
but life’s easy &
happiness is easy as a choice –
simple beats:
rata-tat-tat-tat –
easy as it looks.

Categories
love personal poetic

Apollo, meet Dionysus

I’d not set out to be angry;
nor bitter ex-love,
nor petty penny-pincher.

Just leave me cast away these colors;
garish, defying hues that are not mine.
Then we can start this process anew.

Yesterday I wrote:

“Dionysus rests in deep pools of wine & slumber;
waits for you to lift your cymbals and,
with great passion, become a fabulous opera.”

On 8/3:

“Lend me your ears and your discontents.
Life’s in arrears as I make amends and
new friends. Cat Stevens tells me it’s
a wide world; hard to get by with just a smile;
but I’ll try for awhile.”

Categories
love personal poetic

Re:Café Muse

It may have been shallow, trite,
slightly chauvanist[?];
but not meant to be serious, nor art;
not attackable.
I’m stunned by waves of hostility
coming from the east.
When did things become petty?

Tooth and nail;
knives out, muthafu**a.

I know the next blow to fall;
I expect it. It’s still a sack
of bricks to the groin,
bringing up all the bile.

Even so, don’t hold back.
I know now that that’s been done
for far too long.

In the news today on NPR:
anarchists met in Athens, Ohio;
agreed against Bush & Cheney,
didn’t fully agree whether or not
to support Kerry & Edwards.

My point: even they remember how to agree. 

Categories
book personal poetic

Vita baby!

– Café Muse –

Your hair-fling bewitchment
beguiles me;
muse of hazelnut-latté eyes and
a whipped-cream smile.
Your kisses would satisfy
the most ambitious sweet-tooth.
That’s my heart you are steaming to foam,
my mind you excite with your
double-caffeinated flair.
Your siren’s song has me shipwrecked
on a dry-roast wasteland.
I raise my mocha sails and set out
into the foaming cappucino seas;
I’ll be back again
in the java-toothed sunrise.

–

My small homage to beautiful café girls.
The weekend approacheth, fist raised high,
singing its battle march in a clear tenor.
“For those about to rock!”
Our house-warming party is tomorrow;
you are all invited.

Mark Helprin really does write like an angel.
An excerpt:

They glided over dimly lit roads, springing upon shocked families of deer that had an air of offended innocence, and which they sent white-tailed into the forest, carrying their solid six-foot horns like little battleaxes with which they smashed down waxy bushes bloody with red berries.

Something neat and scary about a novel
that reads like poetry.
I’m mostly envious.

Categories
personal poetic

Ahniwa from OlyWa

Well-situated. Killer house, well-located.
L’azur, a hint of purple.
Weaver of blue immobilities.
I’ve rowed ‘neath the eyes of floating jails;
I’ve arrived home at last.

Boulder Poems

– Vic’s Boulder Cafe –

Small, blonde foreign boy;
agé de dix ans.
Already mastered the european casual:
lifts his shirt to scratch an itch,
shows off a tan stomach, unabashed;
scratches, stretches: fingers to toes;
lets his shirt fall and
without so much as a glance around
performs a flawless crotch-grab.

Later, as he speaks, his language
sounds northern: swedish or dutch.
His mother, a 6′2″ twig of a woman –
all limbs, a long neck to put
swans to shame, a face unmarred
by time and childbirth – stands
still, graceful, waiting for heaven
to chase her down.

– Boulder & Alabaster –

As long as I can,
I’ll breathe:
out: fog against the alabaster
of your skin, chalk yearning fragility;
in: the scent of our grinding together,
both the chisel,
both the clay.
We are our greatest masterpiece,
our magnificent opus:
you the sonata;
I the operatic laughter of the baritone
breaking against the orchestral pit.

Dig deep,
past the clay.
There is water here.
I promise I’ll hold on
just as long as I can.

/Boulder Poems

The hiatus is back off, again.

Categories
book personal

Sparse hair and an air of disparity

Okay, so I lied.
It’s not yet Friday
(as my keen-minded readers have surely noticed),
yet here I am, blogging! The humanity!

It’s Wednesday, yes, and I am in Boulder, yes, and it is sunny though it will rain today, yes, and this library is quite big, yes indeed. And as interested as I was in seeing what the library would be like, I admit that it was only an ulterior motive, a far second to my terrible internet addiction. Yes yes yes.

Tomorrow my odyssey begins anew,
blessed by Pallas Athena and all that,
you know. I’ve been making good time,
so perhaps even Hermes is looking after me a bit.
In the meantime, Boulder is your quintessential,
very tres hip college sort of town,
with myriad street performers like so many
toy robots, wound up and let loose in
the busy plazas.

I had coffee and a blackberry-chocolate scone,
two cigarettes – so far today.
I crave sustenance.
My driving arm is crab-apple red,
which is better than sea-cucumber purple;
I have two days yet to work on that.

The Boulder bookstore is large and
reminds me of the bookstore in Cambridge.
However, their selection of graphic novels
is far inferior. Pity. And I’ve a horrible
compulsion to buy books (lots of them), though
that would just be one more thing I would have
to tote along with me for 1300 miles –
and I’ve got a budget you know, and all that.
Sooooo, no books for me. *big sigh*

That sums up my traveler’s notes thus far.
Nebraska is still my least favorite state,
ever. My car WILL survive the next two days
(I hope), and Olympia will be there waiting for me.

Watch out for cyclops and sirens;
I’ve seen my share of the latter.
Now, back to the underworld I go,
and all will be grand if
I can keep from looking back.

Categories
love personal

So long; farewell; baby, bye-bye…

Well, this is it, here and now.
I’ve packed, and I’m ready,
and tomorrow morning begins a grand adventure;
or at least a long, long drive.

Farewell Ohio.
Farewell Oberlin.
Farewell Emily,
you most of all.

No updates on this blog ’til after Friday.
Cope, I know it’s hard.

I love you all –
goodnight!

Categories
love personal

Li-ke-Ho-rn-bl-ow-er-sl-ed-er-ho-se-n

Twenty-six hundred miles from now,
my life will have changed,
incontrovertibly; what’s more,
irrevocably. And your life too.

I feel a bit like I’ve been pulled into the wrong war. My body ripped to shreds over a conflict that is not, fundamentally, mine. So do soldiers feel on the battlefield: whose war is this?

I’ve got a lot of anger now,
that I need to learn to deal with.
I’ve got too much silence that
I need to learn to control;
or let go. It leaks from my pores.
Expect from me but silence,
at least for a little while.
I have no marks to differentiate:
my silence from my noise.

Goodbye; Farewell, Ohio.
Partings are bitter,
salty. I hope that when I emerge,
newborn, on the new frontier;
that you will see a stronger side of me.

“I am here to live out loud.”
-Emile Zola

Categories
love personal poetic

Battle without honor or humanity

She knows that all spinning tops
must fall. Nonetheless,
she snaps her fingers;
begins to fit the noose.

Had I the choice, I
would have mastered perpetual motion.

Categories
personal poetic

Hotter than Meursault on the beach

I envy the mind of whoever
thought that up as a pick-up line; 
I doubt I could pull it off.

“Tick-tock, tick-tock.” says
the green crocodile, smiling behind me.
Time passes spasmodically,
without explaining itself.
Thoughts are mercurial;
hesitate on the razor-balance of
too rushed and too idle.

It’s in between the good times that
I feel like Sisyphus, and even like
Meursault. Times like now when all
movement is a relentless thrust upward,
and great energies are expended for
some purposeless toil.
This is what stars feel like. 

Things make more sense in hindsight.
I wonder if Sisyphus,
ever stops his push and turns
to look back down the mountain.