Leave It to Beaver Syndrome
shell-shock
"Sometime during my life, toilet paper became bathroom tissue." -George Carlin
"To forget would be to let them be born again in another form." -Sig-Weavie's character in The Village, which I had to watch fo' classe
Fear doesn't deserve us.
"Or dreams about my talking cat telling me where she is. Behind my mom's toilet or writing letters to me from Mexico." -KAITLIN MARIE BARNES.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Free Write Entires Week 9
Entry 1:
I was driving into the sunset and decided to keep going, broke
through some wall of light or another to ride waves, solar flares
we like to call Mama, Ma not familiar with these sorts of things,
don't have time to bother with this scientific shit she'd tell us
by the cookie co's oven, baking obesity into the mouths of babes,
reality is when the sun burns out like the oven light
mama will still be there, shoving sugar in our mouths
and mantras in our brains - and if they ever try to hurt ya,
she says, why you just get em with a lock in a sock. it's considered
a deadly weapon but we don't give a damn. we like she's already
there, beside us, slanging tube socks into faces of people
too rude to just ask nicely. seek and ye shall find, He said
and she told us. Mama told us that she met Jesus there right in a jail cell,
locked up for twenty for selling the drug that carved the wrinkles
in her hands, her hands older than she could ever look, she's no
good for much of anything but this: advice we'll pretend we forget
but write down to keep as jokes but when she told me not to burn down
bridges cus you'll be leaving the trolls homeless, i remembered.
All of us glued together by her smoke breaks
and deep breaths, our family built from her back wood
accent and carved by her reminders that there ain't nobody
that will love you more than the people who already do.
Mama got fired and we all came back anyway, some karmic
betrayl of the only person who ever knew
what she was talking about, the one who saved us,
the Jesus we met behind cookie caked counters
and in duck decored kitchens during our own
last supper: green beans and fried chicken, baby. you can count on that.
Entry 2:
Fun was the first word I could spell. Three letters
neat consonant, vowel, consonant like the kind we were having
big plans to go nowhere but exactly where we were, in wonderland,
birthday parties and lego sets (even though we were just three
girls), dreams or maybe not because all of it was the same
thing, being awake or being inside was all colors tied
around my wrist like limp balloons. And I was ten out
of nowhere, begged my mom to let me skip that birthday
and just be eleven now, forget those days - who needs
an extra year, mommy? Mommy got shorter and Fun gets louder
when you get turned up in years or days or seconds even
minute by minute until you are done listening to music
and just want to be alone. F-U-N, three letters for one
word, also necessary in funk where the fun leads
when you just forget to have it.
side note: the first word i could actually spell was green, just fyi.
I was driving into the sunset and decided to keep going, broke
through some wall of light or another to ride waves, solar flares
we like to call Mama, Ma not familiar with these sorts of things,
don't have time to bother with this scientific shit she'd tell us
by the cookie co's oven, baking obesity into the mouths of babes,
reality is when the sun burns out like the oven light
mama will still be there, shoving sugar in our mouths
and mantras in our brains - and if they ever try to hurt ya,
she says, why you just get em with a lock in a sock. it's considered
a deadly weapon but we don't give a damn. we like she's already
there, beside us, slanging tube socks into faces of people
too rude to just ask nicely. seek and ye shall find, He said
and she told us. Mama told us that she met Jesus there right in a jail cell,
locked up for twenty for selling the drug that carved the wrinkles
in her hands, her hands older than she could ever look, she's no
good for much of anything but this: advice we'll pretend we forget
but write down to keep as jokes but when she told me not to burn down
bridges cus you'll be leaving the trolls homeless, i remembered.
All of us glued together by her smoke breaks
and deep breaths, our family built from her back wood
accent and carved by her reminders that there ain't nobody
that will love you more than the people who already do.
Mama got fired and we all came back anyway, some karmic
betrayl of the only person who ever knew
what she was talking about, the one who saved us,
the Jesus we met behind cookie caked counters
and in duck decored kitchens during our own
last supper: green beans and fried chicken, baby. you can count on that.
Entry 2:
Fun was the first word I could spell. Three letters
neat consonant, vowel, consonant like the kind we were having
big plans to go nowhere but exactly where we were, in wonderland,
birthday parties and lego sets (even though we were just three
girls), dreams or maybe not because all of it was the same
thing, being awake or being inside was all colors tied
around my wrist like limp balloons. And I was ten out
of nowhere, begged my mom to let me skip that birthday
and just be eleven now, forget those days - who needs
an extra year, mommy? Mommy got shorter and Fun gets louder
when you get turned up in years or days or seconds even
minute by minute until you are done listening to music
and just want to be alone. F-U-N, three letters for one
word, also necessary in funk where the fun leads
when you just forget to have it.
side note: the first word i could actually spell was green, just fyi.
Improv Entries Week 9
Entry 1: "To remember/ is to murmur, mourn, be/ mindful of things worthy/ of remembrance: it could/ put the fear of God/ into you, but what could God/ be afraid of..." from First Life of St. Francis III by Angie Estes
What is God afraid of? Clowns, like everyone else.
Snuggles the Bear on television commercials, talking
into drive-thru windows or going to front doors, committment
to girls who are prettier than him, failing an exam or a class or
Himself. Dreams where you fall for miles and miles until you hit
rock bottom or bottoming out of a bottomless pit or falling on your bottom
in front of everyone when I was in preschool dressed in gingham
holding a fake dog and wondering why they were all laughing,
glowing hands singing songs about Jesus, His reflection-
now a vampire, obligatory conversation on car rides home,
getting His period the day of His first beach date, the dentist,
the mall, the people, nothing but fear itself.
We know what scares God most because we all look
just like him. The chorus sings: I do not Exist, I do not Exist, I do not Exist.
Entry 2: You Can Tell "if fish are fresh by the way/ their bodies arch," by Angie Estes
if fish are fresh, which these aren't
by the way the smell you can tell, no fresh
fish or food period - we're all going
hungry tonight and every night, our bodies
aching for others and fresh flesh to hold
onto before floating off to dreamland
or elsewhere, no where but here baby, nowhere
at all - their bodies and mine lined up
like sushi or shoes she lines in her closet
in order, ROY G BIV, knows silver is always
at the end of the row because it's the lining
of her life like that on her jacket she borrowed
or stole from her sister she used to hate.
The arch of her foot was always higher than mine
my body no match for hers, delicate as sugar castles
they have to move from table to another on food network,
that part I'll never understand, who makes this shit
up anyway? my dad bellows from the kitchen, furrowed
scooping banana flavored ice cream into a ninja turtle
bowl i swear my uncle gave me because he used to borrow
us like we were shoes, fresh little fish he could
catch and release when he was done teasing.
What is God afraid of? Clowns, like everyone else.
Snuggles the Bear on television commercials, talking
into drive-thru windows or going to front doors, committment
to girls who are prettier than him, failing an exam or a class or
Himself. Dreams where you fall for miles and miles until you hit
rock bottom or bottoming out of a bottomless pit or falling on your bottom
in front of everyone when I was in preschool dressed in gingham
holding a fake dog and wondering why they were all laughing,
glowing hands singing songs about Jesus, His reflection-
now a vampire, obligatory conversation on car rides home,
getting His period the day of His first beach date, the dentist,
the mall, the people, nothing but fear itself.
We know what scares God most because we all look
just like him. The chorus sings: I do not Exist, I do not Exist, I do not Exist.
Entry 2: You Can Tell "if fish are fresh by the way/ their bodies arch," by Angie Estes
if fish are fresh, which these aren't
by the way the smell you can tell, no fresh
fish or food period - we're all going
hungry tonight and every night, our bodies
aching for others and fresh flesh to hold
onto before floating off to dreamland
or elsewhere, no where but here baby, nowhere
at all - their bodies and mine lined up
like sushi or shoes she lines in her closet
in order, ROY G BIV, knows silver is always
at the end of the row because it's the lining
of her life like that on her jacket she borrowed
or stole from her sister she used to hate.
The arch of her foot was always higher than mine
my body no match for hers, delicate as sugar castles
they have to move from table to another on food network,
that part I'll never understand, who makes this shit
up anyway? my dad bellows from the kitchen, furrowed
scooping banana flavored ice cream into a ninja turtle
bowl i swear my uncle gave me because he used to borrow
us like we were shoes, fresh little fish he could
catch and release when he was done teasing.
Junkyard Entries Week 9
"It was the frogs that taught me." -Christopher Anastoos (professor at UWG).. from this essay he wrote (obviously...) that Cara had to read for his class.
"I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born." Big Fish
"Even intimacy comes from the magazines." -R. Hendricks
Sexting is a crime in space
"For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men." -from "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benét
"I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born." Big Fish
"Even intimacy comes from the magazines." -R. Hendricks
Sexting is a crime in space
"For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men." -from "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benét
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Improv Entries Week 8
Entry 1: From Miscegnation by Natasha Trethewey
"I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name-/ though I'm not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi."
M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i, letter by letter shamed and slurred into a microphone
knowing he had one too many one-twos, and it's too bad he didn't have some paper
or a pen or one of those memories that can see stuff, not just know it, but I'm not
to blame. I look down at my shoes R on one L on the other, in case you forget
my dad huffed a stretch back upward, my embarrassment like a beached whale in our
living room this morning but i remember every word he tells me, told me what he wanted
before he dies, already been alive too long, old enough to remember everything
i never got to see, see, that kid, he doesn't have this dad with the songs, the jokes
that help you remember how to spell state names or place mats with president faces,
this guy with a blessing they call bipolar he taught us girls
everything about all the things we'll never need to know. as that kid sinks
into himself i want to let him know what i know: my dad said when i was six
that if you can't spell elvis presley,
you'll never need to know anything about mississippi.
Entry 2: from Natasha Trethewey's Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971
"Why the rough edge of beauty? Why/ the tired face of a woman, suffering/ made luminous by the camera's eye?"
The edge of beauty is located at the corner of 16
and a panic attack, most beautiful after shed tears
over a boy, green lit ocean surrounding a black
island on her face as the older woman brushes back
loose strands, says other fish in the sea, but she knows
you don't fall in love with fish. you fall in love
with photographs, phone calls, that birth mark
on the back of his neck, the smell of coffee
because he's older, the suffering that comes
with giving it up or the fight that continues
when you won't, mom's warnings within you
illuminated when you say no to drugs and sex
and never the camera and his face when you don't,
tired eyes sunk back into a cherub face, raspberries
line the nape of your neck because he taught you
that you had that body part in the first place.
at the edge of beauty, all the lights are red
because the only thing there when you turn 17
is rabbit hole in the middle of the street
filled with knowledge of good and nothing ever is.
"I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name-/ though I'm not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi."
M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i, letter by letter shamed and slurred into a microphone
knowing he had one too many one-twos, and it's too bad he didn't have some paper
or a pen or one of those memories that can see stuff, not just know it, but I'm not
to blame. I look down at my shoes R on one L on the other, in case you forget
my dad huffed a stretch back upward, my embarrassment like a beached whale in our
living room this morning but i remember every word he tells me, told me what he wanted
before he dies, already been alive too long, old enough to remember everything
i never got to see, see, that kid, he doesn't have this dad with the songs, the jokes
that help you remember how to spell state names or place mats with president faces,
this guy with a blessing they call bipolar he taught us girls
everything about all the things we'll never need to know. as that kid sinks
into himself i want to let him know what i know: my dad said when i was six
that if you can't spell elvis presley,
you'll never need to know anything about mississippi.
Entry 2: from Natasha Trethewey's Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971
"Why the rough edge of beauty? Why/ the tired face of a woman, suffering/ made luminous by the camera's eye?"
The edge of beauty is located at the corner of 16
and a panic attack, most beautiful after shed tears
over a boy, green lit ocean surrounding a black
island on her face as the older woman brushes back
loose strands, says other fish in the sea, but she knows
you don't fall in love with fish. you fall in love
with photographs, phone calls, that birth mark
on the back of his neck, the smell of coffee
because he's older, the suffering that comes
with giving it up or the fight that continues
when you won't, mom's warnings within you
illuminated when you say no to drugs and sex
and never the camera and his face when you don't,
tired eyes sunk back into a cherub face, raspberries
line the nape of your neck because he taught you
that you had that body part in the first place.
at the edge of beauty, all the lights are red
because the only thing there when you turn 17
is rabbit hole in the middle of the street
filled with knowledge of good and nothing ever is.
Freewrite Entries Week 8
Entry 1:
I'm starting to have a brain fart- a bad start? i wonder if my mind is empty, have we said all there is to say? same worry of every worry wart who writes a word or six million a year, letters only twenty six to choose from, i write all my letters from them, i don't care how many words you say we've got because we've only got twenty six shapes that matter, twenty six responsible for everything we do, say, see, a bird or war, dad or mother, does it matter what we write if we can only write so much, nothing matters without math, 1+1 is Two, three letters later, what kind of math are we talking? i remember when i loved that boy (same as two) and our teacher with the cankles let her fat (same as two) dangle over sock ends and we all laughed all day because she was gross. but gross is five letters, one more than love, love one more than boy but same as girl, so who matters more? more is better if conditions are right, we like more goodness but i like more salt on everything. they tell me not to count the lines, that will just fuck you up but the thing is the only way i understand what i do is through the one thing i can't more than anything. when i add letter to letter to form a word like miss i make millions of one plus one, language from letter, and you are all missing my point. on skin, my fake paper, i write the two letters that make up all of you and in purple ink, i forge my own alphabet.
Entry 2: Actually... Rich wrote something in his junkyard this week regarding a urinal and unborn children... "Wouldn't it technically be the life of your unborn child that is in your hands? Thinking of it this way, what does your life being in your hands mean? Think about it." So this is kind of riffed off that idea. Can you riff an idea? Does that make sense?
Life is in your hands, she says,
first grade teachers' seminar and i think
how this same lady slept in my hotel room
two nights in a row now, this woman like Ceberus,
delicate when sleeping, dangerous when awake
calling upon life from the bellows of her groin,
tempted and taken to me like no woman
ever has before. I'm not charming but she came
back with me, followed me like a baby
after music, to lay me in thirty dollar
per night sea horse sheets stained
with dead babies or would have beens
if you're an optimist, steal the covers,
drink my three dollar gas station wine,
and put her life in my hands instead
of how it usually goes, me alone with Alex
Trebec and his temporary desciples, 7:30
every night for years now, eating a cardboard
diet and watching something like life
fail over and over again in my small hands.
The words hang from her mouth like drool
as she catches my glare, unimpressed
and bored at the thought of whatever
we've done or what i haven't done
right because i am ascribed inferior
not by the Bible but a bigger Truth:
women cry because they have already won.
Ceberus had three heads, and I only have two.
I'm starting to have a brain fart- a bad start? i wonder if my mind is empty, have we said all there is to say? same worry of every worry wart who writes a word or six million a year, letters only twenty six to choose from, i write all my letters from them, i don't care how many words you say we've got because we've only got twenty six shapes that matter, twenty six responsible for everything we do, say, see, a bird or war, dad or mother, does it matter what we write if we can only write so much, nothing matters without math, 1+1 is Two, three letters later, what kind of math are we talking? i remember when i loved that boy (same as two) and our teacher with the cankles let her fat (same as two) dangle over sock ends and we all laughed all day because she was gross. but gross is five letters, one more than love, love one more than boy but same as girl, so who matters more? more is better if conditions are right, we like more goodness but i like more salt on everything. they tell me not to count the lines, that will just fuck you up but the thing is the only way i understand what i do is through the one thing i can't more than anything. when i add letter to letter to form a word like miss i make millions of one plus one, language from letter, and you are all missing my point. on skin, my fake paper, i write the two letters that make up all of you and in purple ink, i forge my own alphabet.
Entry 2: Actually... Rich wrote something in his junkyard this week regarding a urinal and unborn children... "Wouldn't it technically be the life of your unborn child that is in your hands? Thinking of it this way, what does your life being in your hands mean? Think about it." So this is kind of riffed off that idea. Can you riff an idea? Does that make sense?
Life is in your hands, she says,
first grade teachers' seminar and i think
how this same lady slept in my hotel room
two nights in a row now, this woman like Ceberus,
delicate when sleeping, dangerous when awake
calling upon life from the bellows of her groin,
tempted and taken to me like no woman
ever has before. I'm not charming but she came
back with me, followed me like a baby
after music, to lay me in thirty dollar
per night sea horse sheets stained
with dead babies or would have beens
if you're an optimist, steal the covers,
drink my three dollar gas station wine,
and put her life in my hands instead
of how it usually goes, me alone with Alex
Trebec and his temporary desciples, 7:30
every night for years now, eating a cardboard
diet and watching something like life
fail over and over again in my small hands.
The words hang from her mouth like drool
as she catches my glare, unimpressed
and bored at the thought of whatever
we've done or what i haven't done
right because i am ascribed inferior
not by the Bible but a bigger Truth:
women cry because they have already won.
Ceberus had three heads, and I only have two.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Strategy Response Week 8
As in many places within the collection "Native Guard," Natasha Trethewey's Miscegenation manipulates the larger poetic tradition of recycling language by recycling one word especially: Mississippi. This word calls attention to itself as it appears in each stanza and carries throughout the collection. The word "Mississippi" itself recycles letters and the double-consonant sounds, allowing the word to behave as a symbol for what the work as a whole is performing. The word "Mississippi" stands as a geographical symbol, which further implies cultural and historical meaning, adding to Trethewey's focus on the Civil War in the text overall.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
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...
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...
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, February 22, 2010
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.
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.
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