Junkyard Week 8

What are Freedoms For? - this is a book title i saw in the library... in the wrong section.
ex nihilo - 'from nothing'
"If earth is in heaven, then where is up?" -Lori Lipoma talking about her experience as a child seeing the moon landing on tv
"If there were no clocks, would we know if things changed?" -MK McBrayer
"Did you know time is different from the top of the stairs to the bottom?" -R. Hendricks
"I won't wake up in time to watch you die." -Cara wrote this down somewhere this week which is crazy because of that Trethewey line that popped up in our week's reading "I was asleep while you were dying."

this week's junkyard seems significantly diabolical...

Improv Entries Week 7

Entry 1:
From Sandra Meek's The Mechanics of Failure

"Mostly/ there is no warning: planes slam/ into buildings, or you do your own/ crash and burn, lighting life down/ to a finger of ash."

Crash and burn, another failed earth science
test, an absurd subject, mr. lewis, the preacher
of practiced lies from the purple book and i don't believe anything
he or the damn purple book say and instead a latin mantra,
not the way tree bark grows or what is under my feet, sticks
like glitter to cracks in the floor boards, it's what cauks
the cracks in my gray matter: Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
And then, and by then I mean now, a second home to accidental heroes
used to unclean manhattan air, used to chaos but not disaster,
fall like jenga pieces to a ground now known as zero,
the number you can't count, the number after 6 in red
on the chapter 2 test i got back five minutes before
on dirt or some shit i can't remember. but i remember
feeling zero, not knowing what to do, rumors already spreading
tainted words, disfigured mutations like gohnorrea of truth,
wrong and unapologetic, curable on some level if you could
just track down the source and the girl across from me pulls
a Bible from her back pack, begins reading Revelations, out loud,
and I thought about the only verse I know, written in black children's font
on the linen i lay my head on at night, pictures in some places, a cup
for cup, grass for green pastures, a sun for days
before i knew what a psalm was.
When they ask me, when i'm old, where I was when the buildings fell,
what I did when I saw 110 tumble down into zero, I'll tell 'em.
I was in seventh grade science class, praying to a pillowcase.

Entry 2: From Sandra Meek's Couratijn River
"Such perfect balance, such/ perfect revolution: the eldest son lights/ the pyre, the old man burns on shore."

The eldest son lights a cigarillo with a match
by the bridge we all jump from summer after summer
into shallow water of an oh-fuck temperature, into clarity:
nothing matters. My hair was purple then and his chest
was covered in brown hair, finally, but before all the others,
my brother in crime and Jesus. His old man burned
when he got home, smelled smoke in his blonde hair,
gave him hell and a mark like a red lotus bloomed
under his skin by his eye. But nothing mattered
but us, us fived tied like old rope to heartwood,
a perfect balance of knowing nothing and taking
everything, tattered shorts and heartstrings
on fire, burning up the little bit of sand
left in the bottle. And just like it came, it went.
That was the summer i fell in love with everyone
and my harmonica, when we sang songs behind the Shyre
and on trampolines, left imprints of backside
in waffle house booths and he told me in whiskey scented words
i am not inside your head. i am your head. and we're going nowhere
slow as we got there.

Freewrite Entries Week 7

Entry 1:
Chuck asks me on Monday night before the weekly sacrifice
of pineapple and a few wouldabeen wasted hours: Do you think
they meant nothing is real or no-thing is real? pointing
at the misplaced letters of my zip up. and i don't know
whether i care or not, not that i don't care but caring is beside
all points. your opinion isn't worth shit, that's why everyone
gets one. point is, there isn't one. if i had one,
it would be good though, clean and smart like everything
that my everything says, i write it all down- one hundred days
of this waiting and waiting onward or outward
spillage of what you didn't tell me and what she did, first day
of this new year, told me things i can't tell you about books
and sidewalk conversation- but i'm getting too real right about now.
What I want to say is nothing, for you to read my mind,
lick the sugarplums in my head, chase out the raging elephants
that have been crushing the gray matter since i was six,
walk with me by singing froth dancing by shore lines
and you work your way into my everything. there's nothing
i do well except what i do for you, about you, and still:
there is no you. just things you left, things you leave,
things you say and give to me, your no-thing. you're nothing.
and we are the only thing that's real.

Entry 2:
I looked up "wander" in a thesaurus and got
hopscotch. aberrate, amble, cruise, deviate,
drift, float, follow one's nose, globe-trot,
ramble, straggle, stray, trek, vagabond, walk the tracks
and an ad for sparkling bright some kind some shit
that will take the mustard stain right out of these jeans.
but. hopscotch? a word i've never used to wander
with, i think you're wrong .dom as don't you,
in this game, know exactly where you're going?
number 4 or 8, forward three steps to a pink chalked
square, here today gone tomorrow forever from a hose
or summer rain, the same rain that locked us
into the white truck, marshmallows in a game of chubby bunny
squashed you up to me, a match made in hell, set that summer
and the next two or three on fire, hot as georgia
asphalt burning everything we touched. i remember
in first grade knowing i should move forward
when my turn came, take to the numbered squares,
hop in one way or any to another box and if you fall
you just start over. but when his mind wandered
there was no hopscotch. there was only me without a hose
to erase him.

Junkyard Week 7

"I sold my soul on the internet for $6 and an EP. Totally worth it." -Jordan Gore.
"God is Mr. Mom." -Kristen Sims during Satan class
God is not a Republican. - bumper sticker
The Earth is fillin' up and there's mustard on my jeans. (this is a mix of something said in satan class and the fact there actually was mustard on my jeans.)
"I've never heard that sound before." -Jeff said this last week when Davidson's phone rang in class and i really liked the phrasing.

Freewrites Week 6

Entry 1:
"I've been trying to nod my head, but it's like I've got a broken neck, wanting to say I will as my last testament..." from More Adventurous Rilo Kiley

Nod my head, not my head. It's broken
in half, cracked right down my forehead,
china doll white face red lips or pink
if you put water on them, they change-
like all things. remember the dolls
that can pee or the pee-wee one
that had the drawstring and daddy
duct-taped its whole face silver
after that episode of goosebumps
and too much sugar. or, the one
that used to squeak til i put her
in the bathtub, she was my mom's
but i didn't get it, or the barbies
we gave haircuts to- leukemia, you see-
then threw down the stairs
because tragedy is more fun than
anything. we gave jafar a bath
until he broke in half, half of us
cared and the other half cried
because that's what we do best,
took us years of breaking our necks
to get ones we wanted, wanted
nothing to do with them when i turned
10 or earlier, i was too old
to play with dolls or to break my neck
for anything but boys or approval,
but now guys and dolls is my closet
situation, photos and old clothes in the corner
of the built-in but not walk-in
waste of space good for nothing but
storage kind of thing.


Entry 2:
"Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at cloud that way."
Both Sides Now Joni Mitchell

Bows and flows of angel hair
pasta and sand castles we talked
about building together on white
beaches, sand dollars for door knobs
and when it all washes away we would never worry.
Everything is food when you're hungry, you say.
We eat clouds for all meals, stare into the sun
until we can't see anything
but each other. Canyons of upside down
cake or smiles or whatever we wanted. The elephants charge
the horizon, for a hummingbird second, until they too
melt into the sea, like Jimi said, but we,
we never worry. We would never worry.
We make babies, in the sky of course,
call them by name, point them to that dragon we built,
or a fire hydrant. we don't remember anymore.
We chased demons 'til they turned to angels
'til they morphed into waves, "frothier version
of the skies," and on this cliff
only mermaids and sea foam hear our green clouded
whispers of whatever words we still don't know
how to say. You speak to me in lowercase, stain
my shoulder with whispers of things that scare you,
your hands trace the crease between my head
and my shoulder, whatever that is called. we could call it
anything, i tell you. we are new merpeople, not mere
people, just you and me to populate this cliff
hanging over this ocean i waited my whole life to smell.
we form alphabets from patient rain. we can see whatever
we like, you tell me. Clouds get in the way of
nothing, you tell me. we can go wherever we like.

Imitation Entries Week 6

Entry 1: From The Missing Child by John Poch ... which by the way, I think, is my favorite in the collection. Wish I'd written it.

"The mother dreams she is her own neighbor/ who has a living daughter. The father is driven/ livid by men in suits and women in jewels."

I'm a child missing in a department store
or zoo, how I remember it, too big for me
like the clothes living in mommy's closet except
the Japanese vest from when she was small
like me, my mom says "BJ's" but it doesn't really matter.
I just remember hiding behind suits
from my mother and father, too,
because they were alligators in people
suits, living and breathing but eating
our neighbors at night and I'm the only one
who knows. In my dreams, we are a normal
family, my mom, not an alien, but a woman
in jewels, my dad in a suit sans the Elvis
tie he wears to every funeral, my sisters
like me and I'm no longer a broken bird
but a daughter. My alligator parents find me
sleeping by a desk by customer service,
tell Sheree in the red polo "thank-you"
and while i'm driven home, i am cursed at
because alligator parents don't know
human moms don't use up all the bad words
from the get. they wait til you are old
and angry enough to understand them,
wait til you turn into a teenager
with your own tough skin raised in spots
from accidental oil spills and sharp fangs that spit
acid and salt seasoned words at parents
for fucking them up just right.

Entry 2: from John Poch's The Blue Angels
"Did God make them?/ They blanket, carpet, cover us/ at the air show. Decorators/ with a vengeance. So this is why/ the sky is blue."

The sky is blue because God said so.
There is rain because God's garden needs water,
or He saw His kids fighting, saw them cutting down
trees or something, stop asking for details,
He just was crying. That's just how it is.
The snow is His dandruff, covering us
in a blanket, a carpet, decorating our cities
with His glorious waste and forgiveness;
there's no Head and Shoulders in Heaven-
'cept His, of course, He has a head. Shoulders, too.
Dandruff is like vengeance too though- like,
gross and stuff. Thunder is God bowling,
or beating His wife, or yelling at people
who beat their wives, making them feel bad.
Night happens because God needs a nap. Dark
happens because God said so. And Jesus is in
time out, in the bathroom, with the lights off.
Of course God has indoor plumbing. God lets
the sun shine because His favorite color is yellow.
It's cloudy because God thinks we need a blanket
for when it's cold. And it's cold because
He's mad at us, and He said so. And then,
of course... What's lightning? Everybody knows that one.
God loves to disco.

Junkyard Week 6

"You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain/ You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane/ You know I'd give you everything I've got for a little piece of mind." - Beatles I'm So Tired
"Chase away the demons and they will take the angels with them." -Joni Mitchell
"Don't stress too hard. Bill Gates won't keep us apart. That's like a famous rap line almost..." -B. Bramlett
"I look like a pregnant man." -KFed. (NEW SEASON of Celebrity Fit Club started next week. I love weight loss. A lot.)
Yetzer ha-ra, Yetzer ha-tov... "God grades on a curve; He always gives partial credit." -Rick Halpurn... an Orthodox Jew who came to speak to my Satan class. It was a really insightful lecture guided by really memorable images and similes. This guy was awesome.

Imitation Entries Week 5

Entry 1: from Crows by Eric Smith
"The day can't black out/ the empty hours that are too much/ themselves, but in the ruckus/ of their flapping, we may find/ the hollow bones of our collapse."

In the ruckus of their hollow black outs, the hours
are too much. We find them collapsing like sand
castles and they find themselves guilty of too much
flapping and crying like babies- we can't help you.
We lock him for hours in the bathroom, find the blood
on his front leg where the bone sticks out, ring out
washcloths and regret, wipe off face with alcohol,
stare into those his eyes, black like he is in a room
with no light or love or mom because she left, turned
off the lights to save energy and so they would know
she wasn't coming home. He was a scarecrow and now
he is a pile of hay in the front yard, or bathroom,
i guess. He let them let him bite the dust.

Entry 2: from Various Readings of an Illegible Postcard by Christine Hume
"I sing or swing, Let's keep her dear!"

I sing or swing or put on my rings
laid inside hair ties on the vanity
or sometimes the bathroom sink, too
close to the toilet and hair dye but
near the hairbrush i keep forgetting
to use, abuse my toothbrush again
this morning like every other, wear
out bristles and whistle with the White
Album, songs without meaning or all
meaning, I'm still trying to figure out
how to get to the Glass Onion because
it sounds like a nice place to meet
Julia, my dear, let's keep it, that
periwinkle promise love gives or takes
or whatever it is we think we are doing.
I just want to know why this song always
skips but play it again, dear. I will sing
about how we were before when you spent
the night on my couch, all nights, most
nights spent awake until five or seven
or whenever the world we didn't like
would wake up and cook breakfast, our
midnight snack, i snatched you away
from the rest of the world because
they don't know our song and they don't know
anything. I will sing
to you and Ringo if he asks me to even
though he is my least favorite, like everyone
else i know or care to know- no matter
what they tell you i wrote it for you
and Green will always be your song.

Strategy Week 5

Eric Smith’s “Crows” works to display recursivity by repeating and repositioning the word “noon” from the first line and images of crows as the title introduces to build a rhythm and also a reference point for the rest of the poem. By recycling noon, an allusion to day or lightness, and crows, an allusion to night or darkness, the poet continues blending the two contrasting elements together throughout. In these lines “It’s just effortless to burst/ into the white shiver of early/ afternoon, open-mouthed,/ and expect someone else/ to do the work of crows” (217) the mention of noon in “afternoon” and reminder of the imager of crows create a harmony as to suggest both must exist. This recursivity works so that the sounds repeated give the poem value.

Freewrite Entries Week 5

Entry 1: i barely wrote a word of this draft in real life as almost all the phrases come from notes i've picked up from various sidewalks... but obviously i put this together. this is just the first draft but i think i want to keep working with it because the notes i find are just straight wild.

Sidewalk Wisdom - 12.14.2009

dedicated to jeff, whoever and wherever he is.

Friday nights in June he drinks brandy in a shitty bar with 2 hot
girls(not urgent to hook)from the office and writes his sidewalk
manifesto in red pen on a post card with his interview smile
electric and believable. Tell me everything. The wooden desk
the window sil, bipartite, psychosexuals, sadism, masochism,
american birth control league, Jesus/Hebrews/SEXT!, balloons
and androgyny squashed in chinese boxes carried by chicken pox
prostitutes. Sex is just night crawling through underground
parking ramps people start coming out of before they go in.
She believes in absolutes or none, the breaking of God's rules,
spirit opposing flesh or rejecting it, I'm allergic to Alexander
Fleming in 1929 and animals forced to inhale smoke and arsenic
for months, years even. These ordinary people will obey white-
coated monkeys in a fake test of questions and answers, obey
the animals. they cook until death- dogs and rabbits, kittens
in heating chambers. Project X factor, shock (LD50%). Jeff marks
a check for feeling good from the light buzz of micro-brew, MIMDS,
an afterthought etched in pencil writing at this noisy rock show.
This is what you leave us with, your final words like Jesus cried
at the crucifixion, your plea to not be left alone, left for
hipsters (clothed), beards (fat), not fat, not bald, contacts:
"Go Home, Smoke a Bowl, Walk Around, and Explore."

Entry 2: My Love Song to Jenna
She looked like me, you know. Sometime
before some doctor sculpted a miracle
of two new worlds of silicone and borrowed
flesh on her upper half, sometime before
she had sex with men- when they still
had sex with her, sometime when she was
still just another girl next door, before
she found her bad side in a tattoo parlor,
before she was branded with Heartbreaker,
sometime before she got letters from
devils who don't know her like I do-
perverted ministers and dedicated tithers
who pay to watch her as much as to feed
the hungry. Sometime before she gave
herself power through her own fingertips,
or gave her first blow-job, or gave birth
to a baby boy - she was just like me.
Before the slut and slander, she cried,
like me, in a middle school stall because
her mom left and she needed her first
tampon. Before she taught me to take
off my clothes, hold back tears if it hurts,
before she taught me to make love,
with caution, she was just like me-
a good girl. Or something like that.

Junkyard Week 5

"Evil is like pornography, we know it when we see it." -L. Lipoma
"Any person who gets drunk off Southern Comfort deserves every pain they get... that's like getting drunk off Vicks 44." -R. Hendricks
"You can't grow up a Tennessee boy without rocks in your pocket." R. Hendricks
How to Disappear Completely
"There are only oceans to catch me." -Adrian Matejka from Seven Days of Falling
"like you always were and I was never."
"Preconceptions are a female dog." -B. Bramlett

Freewrite Entries Week 4

Both of this week's free-write sessions are in question form... but different approaches.

Entry 1: Text Messaging Found “poem”
You at the game today? You’re coming over later today, right?! When are you done with classes? Does it feel like you are walking around in a lucid state? When do you want to hang out? You coming tonight, lil hippie girl? How was the party? What should we do? My mom was like… is he the good looking one? How did you sleep? Did you know that the number one cosmetic surgery in the UK right now is to get your vagina reshaped? You want to watch Jeopardy b4 trivia and get our brains ready to win? Is there anything you won’t eat? Are you packed and ready to fly? How does the future look? You already bought the ticket, right? How are you, my love? Maybe there is something to this? Can I just sit and sing you “Mr. Tamborine Man” for the rest of forever? Where are you and why isn’t it here?

There is more to this one but it is hard to scroll through my texts... ha

Entry 2: AmRo
Emily, why are you so sad? Why won’t you come out to play? Do you like the birds Emily? Can you hear them from your window? Do you like their songs? Or do their conversations bother you, on and on of nothings and hunger you can’t understand? Do you remember when we were weightless birds ourselves cawing from tree tops to my mother at the kitchen window? Do you remember Sundays with me – I know it’s been a while but – do you remember the lake water staining picnic blankets and cut grass and play red rover with us? Have you caught cold, Emily? Or is it something I’ve done? Are you still mad about the time I didn’t know we were just playing haircuts? Do you remember my apology? Is it cold in your little room, or stuffy? Do you sleep well at night? Sweet Emily, doesn’t the 40 watt dusty air choke you? Do you miss breathing? Or did you find out this was better- like me- do you ever just want to stop? Were you scared?
Emily, the sun won’t come out anymore… do you think there is room in your attic for me?

Imitation Week 4

Entry 1:
Riff off Andrian Matejka's "Landscaped Postcard as Jimi Hendrix" part 2
"Dear Manic Depression,"

Dear Manic Depression,
Jimi was being polite. You’re a real asshole.
You keep me awake on the good days, the sun shoots its fingers through cloud breaks to touch
my blonde fur and leaves honey suckle kisses on my cheeks. All the trees wave me Good Mornings
and I cry because my chest hurts from swallowing the colors and the whole sky before
noon and I panic like a hummingbird locked in an airport bathroom and there you are, religious
mother in law, gum on the subway rail, heel in the sewer grate, gristle in these chicken nuggets
I waited all week to put in my mouth, your other half, uncomfortable and unwelcome,
and I forgot how to get out of my bed this morning because you slept there. And I forgot
how to fly. Well, I think I’ll go turn myself off. Thom Yorke told me, by way of a friend,
“be constructive with your blues.” So, I wrote you this letter, my partner in
everything. Listen up, asshole. We need some time apart.

Entry 2:
From Adrian Matejka’s “What the Dead are Mission Out On”
“Permanence, like the stains on a motel pillow./ Her voice, whoever she was.”

Whoever she was, she wasn’t what he expected
behind Door Number 2- A car, maybe. A dishwasher
or a nice china set, but a woman? In a black dress like moon
kissed diamond walkways like they have out in California,
she stood there and he thought about the one that did not get away
but walked away rather, slow without slamming doors or
singing curses, slow like how your mom tells you in third grade
not to pull off the Band-Aid. She left him with Better As Friends
and I Care About You Too Much To Let You Love Me, that,
and a plum dab of impermanence on his neck from the night
a week ago before her voice turned into a pillow stain on hand stitched corners.
All he had was an empty tank and no seatbelts- and the lady behind
Door Number 2. And he thought, this is what the dead are missing out on-
Lucky bastards.