movies i will write #1

dear producers,

i present to you
my idea
for a movie:

the girl whose mother has only tabloids
but
she loves to read wilde
met
the boy who performed shakespeare
in 3rd grade talent shows
and who grew up
to draw graphic novels.
it's a war film
about love
and who's graves are important enough
to lay roses
upon.

city poem

looking for inspiration
in other people's writing
i came across a small alley
which i had never seen before.
a shadow, really, of the building it lay behind.
and there was a signpost,
a very old signpost,
that read "Old Brick Alley"
and by old brick
i knew that it really meant
abandoned ideas-
broken window ideas taking stones from local ne'er-do-wells
rhythmic ideas that had somehow shifted time and key
a cacophony of failed symphonies,
ballads, and commercial jingles
feral mean street-cat ideas
that bit and slashed as i held them at arms length
(they knew they were no good, doomed, built to sleep on the streets
without heat or food or any hope of being understated, refined
progressive members of society)
when all they needed
was a bit more of my brain
(oh, how i'd love to write a book
with claws
that cut and burn at the wrists
of anyone who picks it up,
snarls and spits,
draws blood and likes the taste,
but is beautiful and peaceful and perfect
when asleep)
and this Old Brick Alley
when I walked past
revealed to me
a secret-

at its end,
beneath the glow of a tin covered light
and dancing in the gun-shot shadows
of moths wings
was a rust old garbage can,
with a lid that was ajar.
and leaking from that garbage can
was the promise
of recognition,
of another world,
of a sapling that might begin to transform
the old bricks to soil,
the old alley to meadow,
the old city to a forest,
and all i had to do was look inside
and the lid was already ajar!

but i kept walking-
i even pretended to not turn my head
and when i got back to my apartment
i smothered my curiosity
with an old, heavy
down pillow.

________________________________


mimicry is often useful
a tool for survival
crafted over generations
and costing a hundred
or perhaps a thousand years
of misbegotten ancestry

i'm not sure what these are called...

"it's not dark enough yet", she said, and pushed him hard in the back. how had he thought that this would be a good idea? the moon pushed it's way through the trees overhead and some sort of night bird clucked when they got too close to the nest. "i'm hungry," he said. the moonlight silver reached the ground of the old hill. she pulled half a loaf of bread out of her bag.
"that's all you brought?"
"it's got raisins in it."
the moon howled. so did the wolves.
it suddenly seemed like a bad idea, a halloween visit to this place.


sets down the guitar

"dude, we're just writing songs," he said, and his head glanced off of the idea like a rock wall. "there is no agenda. no money. no marketing analysis of each track, spending millions to figure out which ones will play well on the radio- we're just trying to write songs. and some times that is fucking hard."

picks up the guitar


if you peek under the edge of the world
you'll see an upside down hole
dug by and leading into a burrow occupied by
the legendary
head-footed
snarl-proofed
upside-downed
ground hog.

he will tell you
your upside-down future
and your upside-down past,
but don't you worry
because when you turn something
right-side-up
you never know
how gravity
will make it feel.


i want hip-swinging rock n' roll
black n' white tv
summer mountains
and
sharks' teeth
the way it felt when we skinned our knees
playing when we were young
peeling off our scabs
being kids again

the story of saturn and the moon

"sometimes," said the boy, "i just want to be reunited with my guitar. when i've been away so long, and i can't make any songs, i get to be a little moody."

"well," replied the girl, "i'm shaped like a guitar."

the big moon is bright, but not full.
you're fussy, moon, always moving around the sky. why can't you stay in one place?
why can't you stay in one shape?
why can't the man in the moon look like a man at all?
saturn is so small from here, that it is easy to mistake it for a bright star.
does saturn ever move in retrograde?
don't we all sometimes move in retrograde?

important things to know about the orbits of humans:
they have little choice over the things around which they are in orbit. sometimes space and time are playing a game with them, and sometimes love (originally believed to be a comet, but now known to be a cosmically dense collection of souls and spirits)changes the chemical make-up of just-about-the-universe. the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin are far more influential than the brain.

they are beautiful. but only in this re-definition of the word:

saturn spins and shouts "you are beautiful! you are beautiful because you don't spin like me, and look at your color- what is that color called?"
the moon- "grey. i am rock. this is the color of the inside of rock. i am solid and unexciteable. i am grey."
saturn- "don't be so down. let me tell you a story."
"argh," sighed the moon. "another story."
"renetta was a girl. she was the fourth daughter of seven, and the 12th of 23 children overall. the family frenelle. renetta frenelle."
"a family that large, it would be impossible to remember all of the names," remarked the moon, snappily.
"don't get grouchy. it's only important that you know about renetta's large family, not that you know how her parent's kept them straight. for all i know, they were ALL named renetta."
"those are the first capital letters you have spoken to me all night," said the moon.
"maybe that is true," replied saturn. "but i only did so to raise the stakes of our conversation. the family frenelle was famous for the radishes they farmed. you see, where they existed, radishes were a delicacy, so much more flavorful than any other food on their planet."
"bah! earth has cheese and root beer and gummy worms," blasted the moon.
"there was something, though, that was different about the frenelle's planet that made it extraordinary..." continued saturn.
"and what is that?" asked the moon. "Do the radishes taste like maple candy?"
"the radishes taste like radishes," replied saturn. "no, what made their planet different was something more incredible. tell me the colors of all the eyes you've seen."
"well, that's easy," said the moon. "Brown, blue, and green."
"of course," replied saturn.
"I see millions of eyes every day," replied the moon.
"on renetta's planet, nobody had brown eyes," whispered saturn.
"well that's not very exciting," complained the moon. "everyone with blue and green eyes. that is even more boring than here!"
"ah, but you didn't let me finish," said saturn, with a scowl. "on renetta's planet, the only color your eyes couldn't be was brown. every other color, including the one's we can't imagine, was fair game. but not brown. every member of renetta's family had the same color eyes- dark emerald with veins of copper and gabbro. in fact, there were so many beautiful green eyes in her family, that no one paid them any mind. and with twelve girls to choose from, all with the same colored eyes, what would set her apart from her sisters?"
"ummmm, i don't know," hummed the moon. he was looking at the stars. he felt a deliberate poking on his dark side. saturn was jamming his finger into the moon's back.
"you need to this to this part. this part is important." saturn was serious, now. "one day, on the frenelle farm, a strange ship landed. renetta, working late in the fields, was the only one around to watch as a little door opened, and a ladder descended."
"this is sounding familiar," wooed the moon, scratching at the lunar rovers left behind on his scalp.
"and down the ladder," continued saturn, "came a man. from earth. which renetta had never heard of before. n-a-s-a, his shoulder patch read. at first. she thought he had one shiny black eye in the middle of his shiny white head. and then, when he lifted the visor, she realized that it wasn't his head at all, but a helmet, protecting the space man within. she gazed through the glass bubble between her and the man-" saturn paused, and spun in space to look towards renetta's planet.
"you don't remember the end, do you?" accused the moon. "you always forget the ends of the stories."
"-and she looked straight into eyes the color of which she could not name, and had never seen before. of all the colors and variations of colors that she had seen, this had somehow never existed for her. the space man, on the other side of his bubble, was equally mesmerized by the riches of renetta's eyes. the copper veins seemed to dance like fault lines. the gabbro looked as old and wise as the earth. the emerald, new and clear and intelligent. they could not take their eyes off of one another. they fell deeply in love, but that is another story for another night."
the moon was frustrated. he needed to know, even though it should have been obvious. "what color were his eyes?" she shouted. "what color were the spaceman's eyes?!"
saturn took a moment, poked the moon between the eyes, and touched the moondust to her forehead.
"boring muddy brown," she said, kissing the moon the cheek and zooming off into space.

things i like

cedar
sharpened pencils
sidewalks with really old dates on them
forgetting facts about american history
walking through tall corn fields
ice skating
coffee beans
oceans
your heart beat
sounds like
a brand new box of crayons
the sound of all those colors at once
i want to draw you a napkin map
to my house
we'll walk past living rooms glowing late at night
i'll tell you made up stories
that are also true
avocados and oranges
snapdragons
a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake
good poems that don't rhyme
old irish folk songs
lullabies
but mostly
the smell of your hair:

cedar pencil shavings
sunshine
earth
and sleep.



a very short monologue. for an actress. or an actor. whatever.

“so i stole his copy of marat/sade. The one he had marked up when he played the marquis in college. The one that changed his life. And the sadder of the things is- that when he goes back to look for it, if he goes back to look for it, he won't even realize that somebody took it- he'll just look, and look again, and shrug his shoulders and turn to his westward opening floor-to-ceilings and see the decaying ocean.”

"man on wire"

the film does a wonderful job of explaining why what phillipe petit did was so important: when art is made up of the right ingredients and intentions, death should be but a millimeter to each side. but between those millimeters, absolute peacefulness rules. of course, phillipe was walking on a wire hundreds of feet above manhattan and sydney and paris, and i am sitting on my bed with a keyboard. but the footage was an amazing representation of how i feel when i am writing: energized and exhilarated, understanding a little bit of everything, but forgetting just enough to be at peace and relaxed. so my death isn't the same as phillipe's, my risk isn't the same as phillipe's. but it should feel like it is. everything hinges on the next sentence or the next line. if it's well-placed, and balanced, or if it's correcting my balance with a shove to the left or right, then i am relaxed. and i walk across the wire. and if it's not, if my brain decides to betray my body, or my body decides to succumb to the the populist gravity, then i tumble, end over end, and all i can do is close my eyes.

was phillipe worried? no, because he'd never taken that wrong step before. he's an artist. and since it is truly his art, then he never has to worry about taking a wrong step, as long as he takes his own steps.

i believe that any artist is at his or her best when only their own steps are being taken. art can never be wrong when created this way. it's when others' steps are taken that an artist tumbles off the edge of the wire.

it's a beautiful and inspiring film, a home-movie look into the rarely-thought-of world of wire-walking as an art. and it's a pretty neat love story, too.

collecting

i want to find you things
metal things and stone things and things shaped like explosions
things that remind me of home
things that have oxidized
and things that have lost a bit of their shine
but are surprising in the right light
things that have been buried
things that have been forgotten
things that used to be expensive
and things that never were

i want to find you things,
and collect them for you-
not usual things
and not the things that
everyone else would think of-
because i want to see
what you will turn them into
and because
you
are not
the usual things.

strings, shapes

When we were three
a spider came to us in our dreams.

He said to me, “Boy. Listen to me.” His voice sounded like eight legs moving across bedsheets. “I am secret. You won't remember me, not for a long time. But you need to listen.” He told me everything about how it would go. “You will break your arm when you are five,” he said. “How?” I said. “In a tree by a lake,” he said. “Which arm?” I said. “Left. Below the elbow,” he said. “Which lake?” I said. He answered me slowly, turning his compound eyes to the moon. “I could tell you, but you won't remember.” I rubbed my arm. My hand was covered in cobwebs. “That's not all,” he said, “not even close.” The old ceiling above my head began to fill with stories, with spiderwebs. “Not everything is permanent. Some things are, but not everything. Not even close,” he said. “This place?” I said. “This place will always be here, but not for you,” he said. The old farmhouse raced in the wind. I imagined it always being, but spider interrupted. “Not like this. It will be abandoned, and the windows will break, and the roof will collapse. Then I will come back, and make it my home.” He told me that I would have trouble with the brake lines in the old red car. He told me that I was going to lose my grandparents, one by one. “I'm not sure I believe that,” I said. “But they will send you things. People. Ideas. Feelings. Just because you lose something, doesn't mean it isn't still somewhere to be found,” he said. One by one, the things he told me have been remembered. The way the mountains looked ahead of me on the highway. The important phone calls. A song that would be the happiest song I've ever heard would also be the saddest, and back again. “What shape is life?”, I asked him. “It's not really a circle, nothing is ever that perfect,” he said. “I build my web where I can, between clotheslines and gutters filled with leaves, where you will walk through it on summer nights... it's never a perfect circle.” I brush spiderwebs from my hair. “I am afraid of you,” I said. “You are much bigger than me,” he said, “even if you are only three.” He was on my shoulder now. “Do not be afraid of me. I am life,” he said. “Hold out your hands,” he said. I held up my palms. The moon was covered by clouds, when the spider jumped into my hands. The window in my room turned to look at the moon, which just then ran free of the clouds. The spider began to spin a web. Between my hands, his thread was silver. “I don't think you are going to catch any flies in here,” I said. “This web is not for that,” he said. I watched, and he spun the secret shape of life, between my hands. “It's not a circle,” I said. “No, it is certainly not,” he said. The web was everything it should be. Nothing more and nothing less. It reflected my sleepy eyes, which would always be blue. “It is time for me to go,” he said. “Would you be so kind as to open the window?” With the web between my hands, I opened the window with my foot. I could hear the old trees settling into the earth under the weight of the stars. “Keep that,” he said, pointing two legs to my web. “It was nice talking to you,” I said. He hummed as he tied a single strand of web to my big toe. “What song is that?” I asked. “When you are older,” was all he said, finishing his knot. And taking the other end, he disappeared out the window of the old farmhouse, into the night.

the impossibilities of earthquakes

i remember my first earthquake. my eyes were closed, and it was dark outside. i wasn't sleeping, because the dog was licking her paws next to the bed. it was warm, and all of the windows were open. the feeling i had was pre-thunderstorm. if there had been clouds, they would have been green, the way they get before a tornado. we know nature, but we don't like to listen to it.

the order of events:
1. a rumble like a bus, down the road, pulling away from a bus stop.
2. the bus grows. it no longer rolls, but it stomps. it is a bus monster.
3. the bus is not one bus monster, but a herd of bus monsters. they stomp up the canyon.
4. just before they get to my front door, the dog stops licking her paws. her ears go up, and she lets out a small bark.
5. the bus monsters pass through us like ghosts. they rattle the things hanging on the walls. they open the refrigerator door. they use the coffee table to tap out morse code on the floor.
6. and just like that, they're gone. i can hear them rumbling over the hill across the street. birds have taken flight. there is no wind, no due north, and my heart is racing like i've just fallen in love.

because, where i come from, it was always taken for granted that the earth was not about to move.

what they don't teach you in school: it's not only earthquakes that can shake up a world, and it can sometimes be quite a lovely thing.

definition

different[dif-er-uh nt]

1. (adj) different from all others. not ordinary.
2. (adj) unlike in nature or quality.
3. (adj) left-handed.
4. (adj) lovely.

"Toast with cinnamon is different, and a yummy way to change up your morning routine. It also makes my coffee taste better."

thoughts on today, 9-01-2009

my t-shirts are getting thinner, like the ones my dad used to use as seat covers in all of our old cars. the vinyl seats were brittle and sharp, and the t-shirts protected us when we wore shorts in the summer. we only tuned the radio to the am stations, and i learned all the words to the beach boys songs. i still think about that whenever i drive through la jolla. i never thought i'd be here, or anywhere near here, when i was little. california girls was just a song. now they're a way of life. my favorite old car: a red 1966 dodge charger. a fast-back that had gauges like a jet plane. the transmission was on the floor, and it had bucket seats that folded down in the back. i swear when i drove it fast that parts flew off. ask me. i'll tell you stories about it.

the new apartment has a view of downtown, and the sunset, and a little part of point loma. i have a list of things i need to do this year, in this place. being a starving writer is near the top. i'll write words pretending they have calories, and then i will eat them for dinner. but i can't give up coffee. i'm convinced that the coffee bean is an ultra-concentrated collection of words. dramatic-dark-matter. so i grind it up, distill it in hot water, and drink it when the sun goes down and when it comes up. something about that filmy light allows things to twist just off of reality, like a record skipping to a song you've never heard before. a song that you've written yourself.

my last night in the place

someday
i want a home
that's not so far away
and that doesn't change
(not even when things get noisy)
a home in the key of C
(when things get coltrane giant steps confusing)
i can always come back
to that note in the middle
a place that i can find
even if you spin me around
and pull out my eyes
a place that i will protect
with all of my life

i'm happy
i've learned to almost always be happy
but scared, too, and hopeful
and optimistic
(because our neighborhoods are alive with magic
that we don't see
unless we walk late at night
when the magic creatures
think we are asleep)
optimism is not "good things will happen to me"
optimism is "i will be good to others"

important to remember:
apartments can always be emptied

to my sisters:
all that anybody wants is love, home, and happiness.
and i haven't found the ultimate amounts of all three, of the whole thing,
but this past year
i've figured out how to get more of it
(except for the home part. i'm still working on that)
and it's pretty simple. it involves smiling more,
hugging more, and working hard- looking at things for
the beauties they bring
instead of the burdens-
realizing that suffering is one of the thickest parts of life,
but even something so stalwart can be busted into smaller pieces
with compassion
(compassion is the bazooka, the panzer tank, in the war on unhappiness. it explodes things like doing the dishes and typos in important memos, and co-workers who sometimes can't even read)
i wish you were closer
i'd play songs for you
and help you remember that
sometimes
being ridiculous
is close to being
divine

i'm not close to being the perfect person
but every once in awhile i write a sentence
that makes people's hearts beat a little faster
and that is enough for me.

a hint:
chill your zinfandel on hot summer nights

krysta:
i know you always tell me
that i am part of your family
and i am happy for that (you have no idea)
but don't ever forget
that you are also
a part of mine.

and goodnight, all those leaves that have fallen
and been raked into piles
waiting to be burned
(may rain fall and keep you for another day longer)

little poem

because i thought they sounded good
the wild blueberries up in the woods:

i didn't even think
about poison ivy
or thorns
(or crawling things falling from the trees)
i swam up to the
rocky shore
and caught my breath on the purple stones
i fought a bear
and her cubs
the sun was high
and i burned my nose
the sun went down
and i slept with wolves
as far north
as i had to go
i didn't know
(i forgot my map)
but please don't worry-
i'm comin' back

(and when i do,
i want to share
my wild blueberries
with you)

end of august/too darn hot

i put on my bob dylan hat
and step out onto the streets of the village,
well aware of the heat
but not caring.
i'm absorbing concrete
and car horns
(it doesn't cool at night-
sponge buildings soaking up sun all day
wringing themselves out at night,
red-hot rivers of cooling metal)
there are people taking pictures
and people balancing cats on their heads
and people finding shade in the subway.
it's this kind of day
that makes you want to take off
everything you have on
and jump into harlem meer
but i've got on my bob dylan hat
pretending to stay cool
but not staying cool
at all.

maybe we should go to the beach again?

annebriated poem (read at your own risk- spacing is not accurate!)

i don't care what you are and what you're not
i want you to be my cosmonaut
we'll take off in a ship
you'll steer and i'll fix shit
that breaks along the way

magic grandma magnet fingers
bringing people together and closing
in on what could be
like being tucked in
at night

and about the water
happy on the sides of my beer glass
my mini air conditioner
some beer in
and we're talking about
porn star girlfriends
of her ex-boyfriend
and supporting each other fully
in our statements
of insobriety
and happiness
we don't do this often (enough)
“nothing more important than to know
someone is listenin'” they sing
quietly
because i have the speakers turned down
so that the neighbors can sleep
measuring the oscillations
of guitar strings
we can see
hearts beat
and eyes blink
“your mother has a basement full of sentimental value!”
Said angrily
makes us both laugh
cat stretches on the floor
and the sound in my brain
goes “strrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrecccchhhhhhh”
and it is perfect
another knob creek
and it looks like maple syrup
and tastes like
nail polish remover
my parents want to get
a dachshund.
It looks like this:
double dapple
adorable
or maybe
a sable
(hard to tell)
this poem
is shaped
like mt.
st.
helens
tipped up
on it's side
harry truman
not the president
was swallowed
by
the pyroclastic flow
as it
lived it's breaths
evaporating lakes
and steaming trees
like noodles
(a long haired sable dachshund)
it's all about
making people
smile
only one more time.
Really?

a busy, busy week

this week reads like a grocery list of things that need to be experienced, whether good or bad:
-find an apartment you really like, only to find it already rented out (twice).
-eat healthy. well, healthier than normal. but still find the time to go to in-n-out burger on sunday night.
-miss your grandma.
-ride your bike to work, even if it might rain.
-stay at the beach really, really late with someone you like talking to.
-hug mary and millie! twice!
-clean up after the cat, because even though he is technically your roommates, you love him and you love her.
-find something you like about work, especially when you feel like you just want to go home.
-write a story.
-multiple trips to multiple trader joe's.
-miss sammy's trivia night because you are 2,000 miles away.
-let someone make you cookies.
-drink a little bit.
-do what you love, even if you don't get paid for it.
-call your mom and dad and talk to them!
-find an apartment at the last second. one with great neighbors and a view of downtown!
-dance- by yourself, at a party, in your car, whatever.
-chicken soup!

and so much more... but those are all i could come up with before the end of the show. nine performances of FWC left, and then a mini-vacation. happy.

the bad poetry project

i had to make this happen: the bad poetry project

more later...

exactly like us, except...

Rules for an imaginary world:

1. It takes one year to die.
2. Everybody speaks in a slightly different language.
3. Metal grows on plants.

_________________________________

the tree climb went like this:
the limbs that were the lowest were still too far off the ground for her to reach. so she climbed up my back and onto my shoulders. from my shoulders she stepped into the arms of the old pine. she hugged the bark, and her cheek was sticky with sap. she tasted it, and was happy. up she went, and i didn't bother to stop her. some things can only be learned by climbing trees, and i wanted her to learn those things. it was time, i thought. a month before, she had begun calling to me in ways i didn't understand. the way she was putting words together was different than they way i had taught her- i was unprepared for this, even though they all told me that it would happen. the hill where the trees grew was dark, the moon was under blankets and the clouds were low enough to touch the tops of the trees. i had climbed the same trees, when i was her age, but during the day and without worrying about who was watching. i knew what she would find at the top.
---------
the way that dylan had died was a mystery. i didn't know when it happened, and so we didn't know when she would be gone for good. the middle of every sentence was steeped in drama, and i knew she had too much to say. "when you find someone that you understand," she used to tell me, "then you know that you can't let that person leave. they might be the only one." i was going to miss the way that she talked. little things were different, the shapes her mouth made when pronouncing the scientific names of plants, and the way she made vowels dance in the middle of words, those were things that I certainly didn't do. but without thought, I could understand what she was saying. When people ask me what it was like, all I can come up with is music. we spoke words and sentences and inside out philosophical phrases, but we heard it as music. I wasn't sure that I would ever find anyone like that again.
---------
it was well past midnight, and she was up high, out of my sight. i laid on my back, looking up through the tangle of dark branches, and watched the clouds move quickly away from the ocean, which I could hear crashing against the earth at the bottom of the hill. she called down by way of tossing pinecones and pieces of bark, and i was amazed at how safe i felt, with her way up in the sky. it was dylan's idea, to teach her how to climb. "she should know what's up there, at the top of the trees at the top of the hill." i was worried. i knew they watched the place, and that if they found her up in the trees, they would take her. and i wasn't sure if i would be able to find her again. a pinecone fell, close to my head, and made the sound of buzzing bees. she was close to the top now, and she was learning how to tell me that. the metal plants began to buzz, too, illogically beautiful.
----------
over breakfast one morning, a tuesday in september, Dylan said to me, "i don't know when it happened." i pretended i didn't know, but i had seen her body lying completely still the night before, and the day before that i had noticed that her cheeks remained cool and pale when we kissed- the redness was gone, and would never be coming back. my hand shook and i took a sip of coffee. "henry, i'm dead," she said, and placed two of my fingers on the inside of her wrist, where no pulse pushed life through her skin.

future king

sometimes i want to go to sleep and wake up back home
on any old thursday
in the middle of the summer
turn on the radio
and listen for the weather;
because i am supposed
to play ball
in the afternoon
but the morning is humid
and smells like thunder.

in other news, the cat keeps talking to me tonight. run into the room. slide across the floor. let out his trademark "meeeeeeeewwwwwww" with a low, irritated glance. run out of the room. find small objects and put them in my shoes. just my shoes. nobody elses. i mew back, and he runs over to me, nuzzles my arm, and purrs like a race car. i love him for it. sir lancelot buddy, future king of the critters.

...supposed to be

I just want to be a country-bar guitarist who drinks too much whiskey and sleeps in the back of his truck. The simple life. I want the smoke to be so thick that I can't see them from the stage. Ghosts that rise from glowing ends of cigarettes, the place smells like chocolate, tobacco, and spilled drinks.

(The neighbor has turned her cat into a dragon. I don't ask questions, and I am not surprised at the midnight crashes and roars. It can't be much bigger than a dog, but I have no idea how quickly it might grow. I don't think she has any idea, either, because she keeps asking me if the landlord has been around lately, and if he's asked about her cat. He hasn't, and I don't think he will. You don't fuck around with an old lady who has a dragon.)

I just want a heavy white mug filled with diner coffee and a waitress who got up too early and stayed up too late. Her story is written in her eyes with green ink. She has callouses on her fingers. "You played good last night," she says. "I couldn't see you through the smoke," I say. "That's the way I like it," she says. I leave her all of the cash in my wallet and the lyrics to an Acuff-Rose song. I can still taste the cold edge of the mug, and the bitter coffee. I smile.

When he woke up, he found it hanging on the wall of his small apartment. He didn't gasp, and didn't whisper to god, and didn't stare. He made a pot of coffee, and sat down on the floor, across from the painting. It wasn't there they night before, of that much he was certain. He was also sure that no one could have put it there while he was asleep. He had only been in the city for a few days, he didn't speak the language, and the one key to his apartment was in the pocket of the jeans he had slept in. It was some sort of masterpiece, he was fairly certain of that. The paint was old, but thick, and it moved when he looked closely, like waves, and never stayed in the same place for more than a few seconds. It should have looked out of place there, on his wall, surrounded by piles of paperbacks and 78s, but it didn't. In fact, he decided quickly that he rather liked it, and that he was not going to tell anyone about it. That night, he fell asleep on the floor across from the painting. He dreamed that someone was knocking on the door. He awoke to find a young lady sitting, cross-legged, beneath the painting. She had been watching him sleep. The color in her eyes moved like the color in the painting. "Hello," she said. "I like this place."

music can't hold my hand

tip rhythm
on its side
and out comes crashing
deep drums
and cymbals shining
like god eyes
and the darkness
ain't so dark
and you ain't so lonesome
but maybe it's not a hand to hold
and it ain't what you want to be told
but once you close those eyes
your dreams are all that matter.

an unbelievable story

"I've done it," the old lady said, coming out of her front door. I had just gone out to check the mail. She had deep scratches across her cheek, and she was tired in her eyes. Her bones creaked as she pointed one long finger straight at me, turned her hand over, and beckoned me inside. Her apartment was a cave, ficus and wandering jews and night blooming jasmine clawing at the door, darker and darker the farther in you looked. We had often wondered how many rooms, and in what order they were arranged. And certainly there were shelves and shelves of strange objects- "Come and see what I have done," she said. She brushed at the cuts on her face. She smiled a strange, sweet smile. There was a light deep within her cave, and I stepped towards it. A sweet smell invited me to take a second step. It was ginger and cinnamon, smokey and fresh, very old and very new. The walls were indeed steeped in shelves. Green eyes caught the light. A very small wooden man on an upper shelf with emeralds behind his wire glasses winked at me, and rapped me on the head with his can. "Go on in," he said. "You won't believe what you are about to see!" He sat upon a stack of books stacked sideways, and appeared to always be on the edge, teetering above the herringbone floor. "Danton," she said and flicked at him with a short white stick. "He never shuts up."
"Look over there," he said, pointing at a darkened corner of the entry. "Look, look! Watch carefully, now-" He paused, took a deep breath, and rapped his cane on the cover of his book bench. Very little happened. "He's still learning," she said. "He's so old, I hope he gets it before-"
"Wait, wait!" he yelped. "Something is happening!" And indeed it was. The dark corner was no longer so dark, had gone from pitch black to a muddled grey, and a shape began to grow. It was a cube, but elongated. A tank. A fish tank. A red stone within began to glow. "I've done it! I've done it!" Danton stood on his books, rocked back and forth, and leaped into the air. "Danton!" she cried as he flipped head over heels, "You've done nothing but illuminate! You've done nothing!" He crashed onto his back, and the books went flying. "Look what you've done!" Danton rolled upright, and stared at the old lady. It was a fierce, intense stare. Perhaps they were lovers once. "Look. What. I. Have. Done." he said. She stared back, and readied her white stick. As she lowered it to his nose, the red stone burst fiercely bright, and filled the room with a warm light. "Holy shit," I said. But it was too late. The old lady had already turned Danton back into wood, clothes and all. The stone continued to glow. The old lady picked Danton up, re-stacked his book, and set him upon them. "We'll have no trouble from him for awhile," she said. Within in the tank, something had begun to stir.

tuesday gets roughed up

the bed is pages and pages
and red pens
and cups of coffee

it is too hot for coffee
but it is too slow
to think without it

the cat likes to walk on the pages
(that come easily
sometimes
without thought
but other times
like wisdom teeth
cracked and pulled
from their comfortable places
in my jaw)
in some way
his paws give life to the words
and if he disapproves
he lets me know
by licking them
until they blur.

The only way I have of explaining is by absorbing everything around me- the sound the fan makes during it's relentless oscillations (maybe it wants to be set free. or at least turned off)
the jacaranda trees the come to life unexpectedly and put me to peaceful happy sleep with their scent, the simple, edged rhythms of every song I've heard today, and the desire to put it all together in one single, understandable cluster of words. So here it is:

it is easy to love the sound a guitar makes
but
difficult to explain why
it makes the sound it does.
Is that my job?

the same moon as rostand

in a used-book store in san diego:

a tattered old copy of cyrano de bergerac
some pages gone completely
but the important ones
there
(aren't they all important?)
and i read it
and read it
and read it
and spoke through the rhymes
like a spinning wheel
on an airplane landed upside down

and i promise
i'll speak only in verse
and put twelve syllables in every line i write
and you'll fall asleep to the sound of my voice
under the same moon as rostand

books

from a used bookstore in Eau Claire:

san francisco mime troupe: the first ten years
footlights on the prairie: repertory theatre in the rural united states, 1900-1950

i want to go back for:
my life in the russian theatre
a history of the federal theatre project
an early biography of bert williams

apparently, someone had collected all of these relatively rare theatre books as they were being discarded (discarded!) from state universities. somehow, they ended up at this bookstore. and then i ended up there, looking for something completely different. there were many others, too many to list and too many to take home in my suitcase.

discarded
i only read books
that have already been read
no strangers to
hands and eyes
bent pages
and scribbled margin notes
sideways and upside down
we are all
discarded books
shelves and shelves within us
dirty thumbs and broken spines
organized in our own ways
subjects printed by hand
on white slips of paper
stuck between
vonnegut
and
alexie
to seperate
stories
from
poetry

but you still have to look
because the book
that you need
that you've been needing
for all of your life
is already there-
not under the right subject
and not legible
and sometimes not in english
between
a volume of the bronte sisters
and a misplaced collection
of r. crumb
a bedroom of pages
like skin
inked with letters
spilling the secrets of
the ground beneath our feet.

the creation of the universe

the sofa remembers
every room its ever been in
but does it know
the color of it's skin
the pattern of it's fabric
or it's blanket of coffee and cigarettes?
does it know
that the girls
upon it
are going to sleep together tonight?
can it explain to me
the black holes, quasars
and the big bang theory?

(the big bang theory isn't close:
the creation of the universe
is more like waking up at 3am
to find your new lover staring at you
willing you awake
a thunderstorm of smooth skin
and hair that smells like
eucalyptus and olive oil
a little bit like your father's old shirts
willing you awake
because your lover is thirsty
and the book left on the bedside table
isn't satisfying
every word ever written
has only been written as a futile attempt
to explain the big bang
which itself
is our futile attempt
to explain
what it is like
to make love
with someone new
at 3am.
i am
willing you awake.)

my grandpa knows
the lake
because the lake is his memory.

the boy is trying to find
desperately trying to find
the error in his calculations
calculations which are part of
an incredibly complicated equation
(he holds his breath when he computes
he holds his breath when he asks for her number
he holds his breath when he goes underwater)
an equation which
when properly exploited
will divulge the most glorious
magical
and
dangerous secret
of all time.

he will tell her
and only her
late at night
when the moon goes dark behind clouds
and the world sleeps
their dangerous secret
will come to life
with one big
glorious
magical
dangerous
bang.

thoughts on today, 6-24-2009

in the two hours between time zones.

rewrites

aren't we all just rewriting
all the time
every day?

what we know
what pills we take
how many people we've slept with
and whose number just came up
(an area code in texas. have you slept with somebody in texas? have i?)

because changing a line
one line
even the least important line
makes it all different
from that moment on.

that's the difference
between
being alive
and being a character in a play-
i can't change my lines,
they've been said and heard
and all i can do
is let them be forgotten or remembered.

but in the plays that we write
we can delete
drag and drop
we can even
give the line to somebody else
or everybody at once.
and just because you've heard it once before
doesn't mean
that it will be the same thing
the next time you hear it.

because what if i change it?

so i suppose that one reason that i write
is because i know that i cannot change the things
that i have said or done in my life
(they're not all right, but they're not all wrong, either)
but if i don't like what a character does
or the way that she says something
i can add a comma
or a moment for them to breathe
delete them from the world forever
or write in stage directions, something like this:
she lets down her hair. a hidden vial of poison falls to the floor, shatters. she presses her finger into the pool of broken glass and dark liquid. she holds her fingertip to her lips. she smiles. lights.
so we leave the theatre
wondering if we would lick our fingertips
if we were in her place-

so this was all just a pre-write
to a rewrite
in a place where there are no buses
or ladies with shopping carts filled with
empty wine bottles
or drugs drugs drugs
in everybody's systems
(but those things are beautiful, sometimes, when the sun is going down orange and blue)
(and there are drugs here, too)

rewrite.

who catches the astronauts?

the flowers have no business being the color that they are

neither do your eyes

she had thick glasses when she was a kid
in the 80's
and a perm
and turned five on the day
that the challenger exploded
("the challenger did not explode," she told me. "the machine was torn apart, and the white billowing clouds were a result of escaping liquid oxygen and hydrogen." she is always telling me things like this, which makes her an excellent editor.)
she sleeps naked
even when it is very, very cold
but takes showers so hot
that i can never join her
when she opens the bathroom door
the steam pours out
and i imagine
the challenger exploding
(apologies to the editor)
and i would swim out into the atlantic
and catch her as she fell
my thick eye-glassed
curly-haired
astronaut-

but when she steps from the bath
wearing a towel, just a towel
i remember
that it is not 1986
that we are not five
and that she is in no need of being saved

editor's note: some television documentaries covering the challenger disaster actually added the sound effect of an explosion to the footage.

who needs an imagination
when you have a television?

is there a guy in charge of making sure that butter melts at toast temperature?

a story

She tells me this story early in the morning. It isn't the first time she had told it to me, but her voice moves like a dancer, and I love to listen.

"When I was a girl, there wasn't more than this room. Our entire world, a room just like this one. Only, when we looked out the window, it wasn't this lake or this sky. When we looked out the window, it was grey, and the windows, endless, of the building across from ours. It wasn't your eyes I looked into, it was my father's. And I was smaller, much smaller, and I didn't know that you existed. But my father existed. And my mother, and my brother, Piotr. Piotr always wanted to play. Nine floors down, he would run down, call up to my father from the street, run back up, and jump onto his back. But father never left the room. He would send me out, since I was the oldest, to pick up our bread. Four rations of bread, and I would bring them home proudly. In those days, where I am from, that was what we ate. Not family dinners around the tv, but bread broken into pieces, around the radio. When rockets or guns would happen outside, mother would close the window, and the world would disappear behind a black curtain. He was a big man, my father. Bigger than those rockets. Bigger than that building, and certainly bigger than that room, or this one. He had patches of hair on his shoulders. 'That is what makes him great,' my mother said to me, 'that is what makes him strong and brave, like a bear.' But he only said, 'Nonsense. That is just the way that some people are.' He was always like that. Everything he said always made sense. Pretty soon he never went out at all, unless it was late at night. I wouldn't have none he'd gone at all, except I would wake up to the smell of eggs cooking, and he would be sleeping at the foot of the stove. Piotr always ate more eggs than I did. Piotr ate more eggs, and became bigger and stronger, and soon he was running with me to collect our bread, and then running past me, and returning home with the bread, without me. 'Piotr should get the bread on his own,' my mother argued. 'He's faster, and they are shooting at children.' Father never argued with mother. He would only look at her, and a decision would be made. No words spoken. From that day on, Piotr ran for bread alone."

I kiss her as she is telling me this, inside of her knees and elbows. But some stories are too good to be distracted by kisses. She lights the candle that she keeps beneath the photograph of her family. "I am going to tell you the end of the story," she said. I had never heard the end of the story. The end of her family.

"Piotr made Mother proud. He was a finder. When I ran for bread, it was always 'bread, bread, bread,' and nothing else on my mind. But Piotr was a different kind of creature. Things that caught the sunlight, things that made noises he had never heard, a dog with three legs instead of four- all of these things took the place of bread. And often, he would bring them home with him. Usually, it was something small, like a ball of tin or half of a chocolate bar. Things we could use. 'You've done well, Piotr," Mother would say. Father would say nothing. He prayed constantly for Piotr, because Piotr needed to be prayed for. There were bullets and bombs and rockets, all eager to find a boy like Piotr. There were things we didn't know about Father. Why was he so quiet? Why did he never leave? Why didn't he fight, like the other fathers in our building? Was he a coward? I never asked these questions, and I still don't ask them. I was happy that he was there, his big arms and his hairy shoulders, and his shirts that smelled like the mechanic's shop...
Piotr took a long time to get the bread. Mother was often certain he was dead, a little boy who got caught up in a big war. His body would be pummeled by concrete and buried along with the city that used to be beautiful. But Father would always look into her eyes, and we would all know that Piotr would be home soon. Until the day that he didn't come home. It was dinner time, and we were hungry. Mother kept a piece of bread every day, in case something like this happened. But it was stale and it tasted like Piotr's voice. It was almost night, and if you weren't home by night, you disappeared into a world from which there was no way to leave. There had been no gunfire that evening. Just quiet, and stale bread. Until, we heard something we had never heard before. 'Put-a-put-a-put-' and Father spoke. 'Piotr found something.' And indeed, Piotr had. We opened the curtain, and the three of us looked down into the street, and there he was. Piotr was home, and he had found a motorcycle. It was small, and it wasn't running right, but he had brought it home. Under the window, nine stories down, he looked so small. 'Father-' he called out. 'Look what I found! But it doesn't run right and I need help carrying it up the stairs.' Father's face lit up, glowed, and became happy. We were afraid he might leap out the window. 'My coat,' he said, and flew out the door like a starling."

And here she got quiet. She ran her fingers through my hair. Her eyes were big and wet. Her mouth formed shapes that spoke for her.

"The last things I remember are sounds. The streetlights turned on. Like a hum. The put-put-put of the little motorcycle. My father pounding down the stairs. Piotr, suddenly sounding like a small boy, the small boy he really was, 'father, I didn't know if you could fix it-' A flash. Sometimes you can hear a flash. And between the flash and the gunshot, Mother pulled us to the floor. A second flash, a second gunshot. Boots on the dirty street. I remember the way the floor felt, dusty and rough and without hope. The window was open and the curtains moved with the souls of Father and Piotr, who had suddenly become part of the wind. There was a knock on the door. I hid under the table. Mother kissed the top of my head. She walked into the hallway and she is walking still. I waited until morning. They had left the motorcycle, Piotr's motorcycle, between two pools of blood, soaking into the broken pavement. I ran to it. I pushed one hand into the puddle that had been Piotr, and the other into the puddle that had been Father. It was sticky, and sandy, and warm because the sun was up. Put-put-a-put-put... I rode Piotr's motorcycle across cities, countries, rivers, and oceans..."

Some stories finish themselves, and slip away like cigarette smoke, and smell bitter but comforting but too real to have happened. This one would have ended "...all the way to you." But I kissed her before she could finish. She tasted like blood and sand and gunpowder. The sun was coming up, and there were sounds starting outside our window. A man selling papers. A small dog barking at the smell of breakfast. The dull mechanical rotation of the Earth, grinding against everything that begs it to stop. And somewhere, far off, there was a put-a-put of a small motorcycle, driven by a boy running an errand for his family.

done.

we've been fed after midnight
we've found loves
and lost loves
and found them again
in the most unlikely of places
between the pages of an old copy of 'to kill a mockingbird'
wrapped in a blanket stuffed inside an old bass drum
under the pile of old leaves after the winter thaw

we wear them
scratches on our arms and backs
names tattooed
and erased
and tattooed again
old love letters in the pockets of jeans
washed and folded
and opened to reveal
a map to a treasure
we've long thought we'd lost

they made a mistake
they fed us after midnight
and now we are on the loose
eating up the early morning
with too much syrup
and not enough pain
to keep us down for long.

the tree in the park

We were in the tree, and our bikes were beneath us, tires spinning because it was windy. The tree was a noisy place to be, when it was windy. The leaves gathered up their strength and did what they could to tear themselves free, but the big tree groaned and hung on valiantly, and only a few leaves blew away. And three dozen figs, which the squirrels collected. Your legs were longer than I remembered, or your shorts were shorter. It could have been both. "You ride a bike now," I said. "Yes, in fact, I hardly drive anywhere," you said. "Your knee is bleeding," I said. At one time, I would have licked it clean, and you would have laughed. But neither of those things happened, and I watched the blood dry in the afternoon sun. The scab was shaped like a state, but I can't remember which one. A state with a peninsula. The people walking by were mad at us, and they pretended that it was because we had left our bicycles on the lawn, and that we hadn't been wearing any helmets. But it was really because we had nothing to do, and we looked like we might be lovers. Which we used to be. Lovers, but like the knee licking, that was something of the past. "Do you still have the orange tabby?" I asked. The orange tabby that slept on top of my legs, and was constantly looking for her kittens, kittens which no longer existed. "No. We had to sleep her," you said. I liked the way you said it, just sad enough but remembering that she had been a good cat, and would have been a great mother. I pulled a leaf off of the tree, and placed it on your nose. You crinkled your face, and the leaf blew away. It was a nice day. Enough time passed. "Well, I think we should go," I said. "Ok," you said, and you climbed down a branch. "It was good to see you again," I said. And then, just before we touched the ground, "Wait. Do you want to pull off my scab?" you asked. "No," I said. "Are you sure?" you asked. "Yes," I said. Even though I wasn't sure at all.

thoughts on today, 6-06-09

Hurry up. Slow down. Wait- I want this to last. But I also want to taste it, to taste more of it. Now. But you can only taste it for so long, until it's gone. You can replay your favorite song again and again. Calorie-free. Go on a music diet, and you'll be dead in a week. But you'll die happy. Die listening to music. But this isn't time to talk about death. You will accomplish that without much effort. Ah, but living...

the magnet

is very, very useful.
and very, very beautiful
in it's smoothness
and the sound that it makes
clink (it sounds hollow, but it's so heavy)
when you set it
on the table.
Such a satisfying sound.
energy
that you can't see
but if you hold your tongue
out over it
for long enough
your taste buds
will start to dance
a wild party dance
a wilderness dance
a wild blackberry dance
and you won't be able
to get enough.

the magnet has a name.
it is hard to pronounce
and takes many years of mindful deliberation
to begin to understand.

so i choose not to wonder
how it works
or puzzle over why
but to take joy
(joy!)
in the magic
that it creates.

Basements I have been in #5.

If I were to tell you about this basement, you would say to me, "surely, that place does not exist." Behind every door, is a different world. And there are many, many doors. Shrieks, howls, laughter, crashing and banging of anything that can be thrown against a wall. Madness in the great ones and greatness in the mad ones. An underworld of imagination, where we've cut our shins in the dark and been blinded by all those lights. There is safety beneath the earth, safety in our numbers, and we ought to hang a sign for the outsiders: "Enter without your clothes (as you know them) and let us sew you something new. " Because only by being naked can we ever be clothed. A basement where we were all lovers, in every way and only occasionally involving sex. More sub, make the seats shake, if we stomp loud enough the earth will quake and shake some sense into anyone who has never been to the basement.

Galbraith Hall, 2009.

there aren't enough odd people out there.

everyone wants to be normal.

so when you meet someone who is
a little different
its time to explore.

thoughts about art

would i give up my citizenship to be with the person i loved?

would i choose that person over my country?

absolutely. that is the problem with patriotism- it doesn't really fit into the personal space of our lives. do we take our country for granted? absolutely. is it still the easiest place to eat, sleep, and find a job? hands down. does the freedom our laws provide make living our lives the way we want easier? sure, unless you are a woman or homosexual or not white (or any religion other than christian). and god help you if you fit into more than one of those categories.

i was thinking about artists today. in the united states, artists are free to do pretty much whatever they want, without the fear of being shot. they might end up on no-fly lists or foxnews, but if they aren't breaking any laws, they probably aren't going to have their freedom taken away. this is great, no doubt about it.

but what does all of this freedom do to the art? if the artist doesn't fear for his or her life, does that mean that the art is somehow less passionate? and what about the audience. if they know that the artist was writing their song or staging their play or painting their picture with the risk of being persecuted, would they take it more seriously?

just some thoughts.

just jump across...

you





























grand canyon





























me

hug


for a friend.

the anticipation of grave-digging

she sees a marathon
and thinks,
"what are all those people running from?"
and why in the middle of the night?
"he said we'd have the place to ourselves."
their shoes glow compressed on the pavement, over and over again.
"well, best to keep digging," i said.
the dirt came down like rain.
first it came up, off of her shovel, sailed through the air in a parabolic arch of earth and gravel,
and then it rained down onto the soft lawn of the surrounding graves.
her eyes reflected the moon above the low grey clouds.
"the moon is sad," she said.
the thumping feet of the marathoners slipped into perfect time alongside the pebbles she was throwing.
"it probably wants to explore, get off it's leash, hunt mice in old barns," i said.
"yeah, that sort of thing," she said.
two things happened. both were sounds.
an echo as the spade of her shovel found the coffin
and
a crunch that was something between the snapping of a tree limb and the destruction of concrete.
"that's it, you've found it," i said.
"but that's not important now," she said.
her eyes were over the edge of the hole, standing on her toes, i could not see her mouth, but it was open.
"look, they are being chased."
over my shoulder, the last runner gave a sigh, and laid down amongst the graves.
that crunching noise grew closer in the dark.

drum rain song

sound the drums
like they've never sounded before
because drums
move the blood
and cause tiny
mood-altering changes
in the brain.
so
sound the drums
with whatever sticks you've got
and when they yell at you to stop
pound pound pound
until you've changed
their minds.

Hello, new Wilco.

Wilco (the album) somehow found its way into my eardrums this evening, and I am happy to report that skies are beautiful with a chance for abundant cumulonimbus, making it even more beautiful.

I watched a captivating little movie, Wendy and Lucy, about a young woman and her dog. Hardly any dialogue, Michelle Williams being insanely charming/arming, and an amazingly realistic portrayal of a Walgreen's security guard, by Roger Dalton. Not exactly a tear-jerker, not exactly dramatic, but you just can't help but study the characters.

16 words (first thing in the morning)

allegory
mussel
pogonotrophy
palimpsest
bumbledom
Kinnikinnick
mussitation
dinosaur
dissolute
nabocklish
cartogotransferential
xyphoid
qualtagh
schrimshandrix
pshycopannychy
crystalliform

put them together and what do you get?

More important than my poetry:

There are some things that are easy for us to ignore, going about our busy lives. I came across this article because I was woken up early by construction noise in our apartment complex. 5:30 am is no where near the time that I normally wake up, and I was not a happy camper. I even called my landlord and left an angry message. Not a good way to start the week.

Things that were important to me this morning:

Noise. I hate noise, and I can't sleep if there is any noticeable activity within twenty feet of me.
Handing in a paper. Five pages that I won't even remember writing two weeks from now.
My Neil Young t-shirt. Vintage, from the 1983 Shocking Pinks tour. The new love of my life.
Work.
School. Am I really graduating? Gosh, I feel like I've earned it. But why is there a nerve-racking black void waiting to begin the first week of June?

Oh, and I am in the middle of working on a new play, which currently looks like the abandoned pet project of a mad electrician. Live-wire characters tangled with un-grounded plot strings, hanging out of the wall waiting to buzz the unsuspecting playwright who wanders too close. How do I deal with that?

And then, amidst all of my suffering, a news article catches my attention.
Eve Ensler: War on women in Congo

To be completely honest: if I hadn't seen Eve Ensler's name attached, I might not have opened the article at all. It was cnn.com, early in the morning, and I just wasn't in the mood to read about the injustices of femicide.
Note to myself: Fuck you. My own personal version of suffering is nothing at all. Whether I got enough sleep last night is not reason enough to turn a blind eye to all of the other suffering in the world. The grades I get in my final quarter of college are as important as a single letter in the combined works of every writer who ever lived.

Here is what is important: We are all connected through our suffering. And while we do what we can to alleviate our early-morning back aches and our vacation-laden sunburns, it is not until we look outside of ourselves that we can truly overcome.

So here is what today is: today is a chance to alleviate somebody else's suffering. Give something of yourself to somebody else- somebody you are not connected to, a complete stranger. Something that requires effort and sacrifice. Decide for yourself, but keep this in mind: the more you sacrifice to lift someone else's burden, the more you are doing to lessen suffering the world over.

This is my way of saying something very simple. It often seems like we have no control over the things that we read about in the news. How am I supposed to stop the things that Eve Ensler addresses in her article? And what about the millions of unwritten articles addressing the other massive sufferings going on in the world? It starts with the smallest bit of empathy. Buying lunch for the homeless person sleeping in the storefront window doesn't seem like it will change anything, but it will change everything. Suffering ends with compassion. On every level and at every moment.

And that is more important than any poetry every written.

thoughts on today, 5-14-2009

thoughts i had today (literally):

"did i pay my credit card bill?"
"what day is it?"
"what month is it?"
"do i know anyone who has a couch i can sleep on in LA in july?"
"why should i throw away my coffee cup? i'm going to be needing another one in an hour."
"how the fuck do you tie a clove-hitch? oh, that's it. wait, fuck, no it isn't."
"she is either with her boyfriend or her brother."
"ice-man is my favorite x-man."
"ice-man isn't really my favorite x-man. he was just the first one that popped into my head."
"beast is my favorite x-man."
"i wish they wouldn't have put so much salsa in my breakfast burrito."
"why would john prine write a first person narrative song about a young woman wanting to get out of montgomery? i don't know, but i like it."
___________________________________

a past that may (or may not) have happened:

she said, "i'm an athiest." which came as no surprise.
(she kept a little bottle of tequila in her trunk,
and i knew she loved me when she gave it to me
for safe-keeping)
i tasted it, of course, and it stung my lips like bees
and my throat was alive with taste buds
which licked and recoiled and buzzed
and then licked again.

it was danger
(but when i think about it now,
far less danger then i had ever imagined)
and i liked the taste of danger.
and tattoos.

i don't know what happened to
the empty bottle.
i could extend some sort of metaphor to you now
(like a handshake)
but i won't.

but i will say
that an empty tequila bottle is not
the most elegant
efficient
or sensible way
to start a relationship.

but what do i know about that?

________________________________

what does this mean?

gently glaciated.

she dropped the cubes into his cup
and they shook and melted (they were too close to the stack, the lead guitar came out like a gatling gun beam and the bass hit the table with a mallet)
"why is it up so loud?" she said

and later: "It feels like a snakebite on my eardrums," she said
and he kissed her shoulder, but stopped, and bit hard-
"fuck"
"i can't hear anything"
"fuck- you bit me"
"i know. it wasn't an accident."
"fuck"
"how did it feel?"
she stands him up, face to face (i can see all of this because it is my job to see all of it)
hands on his shoulders, then to his neck, then covers his ears

"do this" she says, and bends his head to the left, exposing his neck
he knows what is coming ("hold still" i whisper)
"hold still" she whispers
and then she moves like a shadow
and as she does
her teeth take action-
they grow pointed
longer
and hollow
he has enough time to say something
"don't stop"- he says.
"don't stop"
which makes no sense
because she isn't about to

and it might just be the moon
but he looks pale
and she looks silver
except for the red
running from her shoulder
and pouring from his neck
making a little lake of vampire
on the sidewalk.

the zyzzyva plan

This is a zyzzyva.



the plan:

write a poem a day
from those seven poems, choose one every wednesday
mail that poem to zyzzyva, every wednesday
that is fifty-two a year sent to the slush pile
surely, one of them will survive.

here we go.

thoughts on today, 5-04-2009

the topography of character:
leather
granite, fresh from the earth and unpolished
the texture of orange peels (or the sound they make when opened)
the lady cleaning my teeth said:
"your enamel has the texture of orange peels." and i could feel it when she ran the metal tools over them, all of the little bumps, fortifications against my weakness for sugar cookies.
the sky was stratified
the bone bark trees grew in a line
black earth like coffee grounds
covers of old books, with the fingerprints of our grandparents when they were our age
above our heads
straight up
you can go straight up without stopping
until you run into
something out in space
moon powder
(wouldn't it be nice to be moon powder)

(for a few minutes, i forget everything that i have learned- and it is in those minutes that i get most of my writing done.)

nostalgic corners
of the boxing ring
(up against the ropes
or under them)
you never know
whose gloves are plastered
(sometimes your own)
or when
in your opponents embrace
you find the unexpected
(kiss on the cheek)

(plastered gloves)

thoughts on today, 4-30-2009

where do ideas come from,
and why do they sometimes not come at all?
sometimes they come all at once.
and once they exist, it is impossible to remember them
not existing.

where did you come from?
you're like a robert frost poem
just right, and making more feelings
than those simple words should.

Again, a short post. It has been a busy week of writing, working on projects, and doing happy life things.

a few thoughts on today, 4-27-2009

titles of poems/stories/plays that i will write:

big goes boom
the house on cross corner
aaron and the aeroplanes
the death of major moser
poem without words


an idea: while everyone else is off at the death cab concert, how about me and you stay up late watching whatever we want, listening to bands that make strange sounds, and otherwise dreaming up a pleasant little world on my bedroom floor...

thoughts on this weekend, 4-26-2009

israel, 1983, pt. I

all we had was a 1970 carta's holyland touring map. which was alright. by the looks of it, none of the roads we were on had been re-routed or re-paved for decades. it was hot, though. the map had, on the bottom, happy men in cartoon cars, windows down, flowers in their caps. and a woman, holding up the sun, long sandy hair, and a pale blue mini-skirt with matching shoes. we had landed in haifa and, after climbing the shalom meir tower, rented a car and drove east towards lake kinneret. a rule: if you are headed out, and nazareth is on the way to wherever you are headed, or slightly out of the way in a southernly direction, you are obliged to stop. nobody in the car was jewish, or had any objections to hanging around the town where jesus grew up, so we took a right at gilam and played the grateful dead on the open road.

if jack kerouac
had never learned how to read
he would have been
a car wash poet.
not able to write down
the songs he sings
while drying headlights,
he would have had to trust
the suit men in dark chevy's
(who steal his words and take them to their trysts)
and the family wives in station wagons
(who whisper his words while making love to their husbands)
a different kind of legend
without that endless scroll of open road
typeset and steady and unpuncuated
but inherited instead
father to son
mother to daughter
from the top lip to the bottom
through the teeth of lovers.
if jack kerouac had never learned to read.

we complicate
(don't complicate)
and tonight's color is black
which is simple
and fills up the space between the blankets
(and absorbs heat and light)
with the fanfare of funerals and the midnight sky
next to the moon.

thoughts on today, 4-22-2009

sir lancelot can sense my happiness- he was waiting for me at the door and now he is flying around the apartment with big wild eyes. i think we have a telepathic connection. he is my daemon.

when mat and i get old, he is going to play the drums, and i am going to play the saxophone. we will tell stories across the piano bar, and it will take five hours for our eyes to adjust when we wake up in the morning.

i know lots of cole porter songs. and i don't just like them, i love them.

restoration theatre was ridiculous.

the first line in a jd salinger novel about tonight:

She drank a shirley temple and succeeded admirably in being adorable.

thoughts on today, 4-21-2009

because we've all put the bends on repeat and suddenly it's 3 am.

there are a lot of circumstances under which that can happen. some are sad, but the best ones are happy.

i'm juggling projects right now, and i think i dropped one and it rolled under the sofa. the cat is trying to get it out, but his paws don't reach back there. next time i clean the floors, i'll find it covered in fuzzy dust.

i heard a song i really liked on the radio. i thought that maybe i had discovered a new band. and then i found out it was bright eyes.

a poem that i wish i had written

and a cool page i came across while doing some research

thoughts on this weekend

when we were kids
it was all summers and shorts.
there was never a thought about
the abandoned house
across the bridge
except
"what can we play there?"
far away were the pains of the empty windows
and the holes in the boards
where we hop from beam to beam
and tug at the raspberries that grow
through the dining room floor.

when we were kids
winds like these
were aimed at our brains
and called to us in languages
that our moms and dads didn't understand
(i remember the spring that an army of yellow and black garden spiders took over our hill-
we couldn't play there without fighting them off. In the morning, their webs glowed all dew soaked and looked like strings of ice. we could see them, and run them through with stick swords. their numbers were inexhaustible. the next morning there would be twice as many.)

there aren't many places like that now
where i can hear that same wind
but when i find them
i know right away.

why write rough drafts? life isn't about rough drafts.
things that are best unrefined:
refrigerator drawings
charlie parker
cane sugar (and food in general)
Hetch Hetchy
jackson pollock
dialogue
going for a walk
taking the subway
theatre
back to the refrigerator drawing again
unexpected phone calls
love letters
honey

there are some things that are meant to exist just how they are.

the girls in summer dresses
sit on the bus stop bench
(but they would never take the bus)
its hot and they want to rest
and in the city
a bus stop bench
is as natural
as a cabin by the lake.

sometimes i just want out. out of the city, away from the ocean, back to the great lakes (in which reside no animals that will try to eat me) and back to people who say "sofa" and "supper" the same way that i do. sometimes i just want to wander around and eat my emotions like those waxy chocolate bars i used to sell in fifth grade. tonight, they taste like burnt pine sap and the legs of the summer spiders that my sisters and i chased away with sticks. in my dreams, those spiders have grown as big as buicks, with compound headlights and eight legs made of rubber from the Uniroyal plant that closed down in 1989. they are driven by librarians from whom i have stolen books. they are driven by ex-girlfriends whose things i have forgotten to give back. they are driven by badly written lyrics and by bus-chasers that i pretended not to see. they are driven by characters whose voices i that have failed to hear and by the childhood caves that i have failed to explore. sometimes i just want out.

and then, just after the sun goes down, i hear it. surrounded by the buzz of the dying city, it is carried over the mississippi, through the maze of the plains, and under the rock of mountains with spanish names. it is my voice. crying out. it is a battle cry. escaped from a summer morning two decades ago, and i hear it with the ear drums of my imagination. those things i want out of now are the yellow and black garden spiders of the summer. and i've got my stick, a branch of that old tree that always knows what i need. and i have what i need, right now. everything i need to know, i learned when i was seven. and that makes me happy.

little thought, 4-17-2009

nobody listens to the radio any more...
sad dials unturned
and tuners unlit
(i don't even know how the radio on my alarm clock works)
i'm gonna figure it out tonight
and let somebody else
pick out my music.

thoughts on today, 4-16-2009

I'm going to keep this short- I'm not feeling well!

My little sister and I both have a touch of the flu (or something), but we're 1500 miles apart. Weird. It's funny, because when I'm sick, I make sure that I rest a lot and get sleep, all that good stuff. So you would think that it would give me lots of extra time to do my homework. Hmmm...

And who knew that epic musical theatre could be so interesting? Sometimes I have to remind myself to not be narrow-minded and stubborn.

Ok, sleep time.

thoughts on today, 4-15-2009

let me go back to something i wrote earlier today. its not cheating, because i wrote it. and i even wrote it today.

disappear with me into old pictures of harlem-
we'll stay for decades
but we won't age.
"this is what i looked like
when i was young"
this is what i look like now.
what you look like now
is the pages of a book
i haven't written-
the question is (the questions are):
how many pages will you be?
will i still be writing you
when i die?
will i let you read it?
which characters will you speak for-
who will get
your words?

ummmmm... celine dion is best experienced through a thick slice of picture window.
sometimes i get lost. i know i am going to get lost,
but
i also know that everything is going to be alright.

i like people with amazing brains.

thoughts on today, 4-14-2009

we are slaves to two things in our lives:

1. physics
2. love

everything else is just a manifestation of those two things. i put physics first, because it can ruin love. and by love i don't mean just romantic love. i mean like the real thing. if love were a fabric, it would be denim. romantic love is something less durable. i don't know much about fabric, but if you wash the romantic love fabric too many times, it starts to fall apart. and that's physics. but wait. i'm not discounting romance. it just needs to be backed by something stronger. like denim. with lots of stitches and some rivets. god, i love rivets.

what if someone asks you: "show me your rivets" how do you respond to that? do you take off your clothes?

and not just receiving love. giving love and having love is maybe more important than getting it. you gotta get it, don't think that you don't. it's like coffee or gasoline. but, if you learn how to grow your own, then you've got an advantage. you can harvest it and hand it out to people who need a little extra on any given day. and loving things that you do... that just helps create more love for everyone.

some woody guthrie for everyone tonight.

Id like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of california stars
Id like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of california stars

Id love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, Id give my life to lay my head tonight
On a bed of california stars

Id like to dream my troubles all away
On a bed of california stars
Jump up from my starbed and make another day
Underneath my california stars

They hang like grapes on vines that shine
And warm the lovers glass lke friendly wine
So, Id give this world
Just to dream a dream with you
On our bed of california stars

the cobain connection

i try to do everything with the best intentions. i'm not always succesful, but i try. the best way to judge beauty is through the eyeballs.

a lot of discussion on kurt cobain today. he died on april 5, 1994 (had to look it up, don't know off the top of my head) which was just last week fifteen years ago. fifteen years. fuck. nobody in class really remembered it, which is totally understandable, since I was 13, and most of my classmates were under the age of 10. so why does the music of nirvana puncture the lung of time? so many other great bands came out of that era... mudhoney (on right now, really loud), alice in chains, soundgarden, screaming trees! (of course pearl jam) most of the people who saw these bands live at the places that would let them play are thouroughly middle-aged and mellowed. grunge didn't really permeate into wisconsin until 1996 or 1997, and then only by way of pearl jam after they had already released their best music. minneapolis had a scene, but nobody my age could drive, so we were stuck with our dads' old who and zeppelin records, stacked on a base knowledge of beatles, stones, and dylan. not an unrespectable musical lineage, but unrevolutionary by mid-90's standards. i didn't even understand nirvana or mudhoney or soundgarden until i moved to seattle at 19.

what am i even talking about? oh yeah- that urge to pick up a really loud guitar and turn the amp up until is is buzzing, and then making the neighborhood shake with angst. but more than that- how about doing it with an acoustic guitar with a cover of where did you sleep last night? now we are getting back to leadbelly, who was way more magical and important than paul mccartney can ever dream of being. so i connect cobain to those kinds of musicians- the ones who come from the corners, and who can't really do anything but play their music. usually, it kills them. (robert johnson. jimi hendrix. jerry garcia. mozart. chopin. charlie parker. some lives are measured by heartbeats, and some are measured by the number of notes you have played. if any one of these guys had played even one more note, i'm pretty sure the world would have shook itself apart.)

the transfer of emotion to music and back to emotion again. it happens when the guitar or saxophone or harpsichord becomes part of your brain. jimi hendrix really did think through his fender strat. just watch him play. i wish we had video of chopin. there might be some of charlie parker? i'm not sure about that. it is impossible to tell where their bodies end and the music begins. hands to strings to the air to our ears. and from there, where does it go?

in a lot of ways, cobain is a version of thoreau. i even think that old henry david would have dug a little nirvana every now and then.

thoughts on today, 4-13-2009

the magic of Milk

we all have the same things in our eyes. just look.
the cashier at midnight. the man who stands out of the sun in front of the closed up shop. every actor who has ever played ophelia. our grandparents. the soldiers in all the armies. the dalai lhama. our neighbors we've never met. the people we love. the people we are afraid of.

we've just got to look. and never stop.

thoughts on today, 4-12-2009

i thought about writing something all philosophical, about how and why people come into our lives, and how it ties into a universal consciouness, but i thought that this would be more fun. so here you go.


(some things that haven't happened)

be my magnet.
if i have tiny metal shavings under my skin
i want you to be the one to pull them out.

we'll put our heads together and share our memories
silently
like really old films
(insert words here)
we'll hear our brains
like pianos
keeping up with racing eyes
and charlie chaplin
stopping time
to make us laugh.

she brought along a pocket full of sand.
"it's important, because it's gritty."
she said it was from the place where she grew up.
in the bottom of a shot glass, she poured the whiskey. and then a pinch of sand.
"what's that?"
"it's my home. it's me. it's where i learned to swim."
the moon turned the whiskey silver. it tasted like being born,
learning algebra, and memorizing shakespeare.
she kissed me on the mouth.
she wanted to taste it, too.

thoughts on today, 4-11-2009

at midnight
slow, sad songs
in the cemetery.

nobody can see us,
but they can hear us.

(old irish songs,
lullabyes for the underground)

i miss all of my old loves.

basement #3
everything you can imagine
including
a mysterious and evil woman
living under the stairs.
banjos, guitars
and newspapers from the day after Kennedy was shot.
a dart board with too many holes
and a thousand little bottles of liquor.
A wall of pictures. Everyone in our family
and everyone in their family
pinned up to the wall
in black and white and sepia.
Cigarettes. I love the smell of cigarettes
because it is the smell of
the basement.

thoughts on today, 4-10-2009

"please don't cry, we're designed to die
don't deny what's inside
on and on and on we'll stay together yeah"

"I am a child, I'll last awhile"


Stage directions, scene 3, Can Neil Young Save Us Now?

May 4, 1978
"Soldier" plays.
Three students. A photo by John Paul Filo.
Four National Guard, across stage. Rifles raised.
Time is black and white.
Pulitzer Prize in the flash of an eye.

Two students mourn the third.
A rifle bullet brought him down.
Jeffrey Miller rises. He holds a textbook.
From his pocket
the only color on the stage
a yellow daisy.

Jeffrey Miller
watches the guard.
Raises flower to them,
moves towards them.

One by one
looks them in their eyes.
They do not move.

Jeffry Miller places the yellow daisy
in the rifle barrel of National Guardsmen #3.
Kisses him on the cheek.
#3 comes to life. Lowers his rifle. Removes his helmet.
Jeffrey Miller removes his sweater. They trade, sweater for helmet, book for rifle.
They trade places.
Jeffrey Miller raises the rifle to his shoulder.
#3 lies on the ground.

Time is black and white.
Pulitzer Prize in the flash of an eye.

"Soldier" ends.

thoughts on today, 4-09-2009

i want to go back in time
and send people i like
old fashioned postcards
with 3-cent stamps.

"new york is lovely in the spring. the buildings here are like cities standing up and stretching out their limbs. and the subway... no one back home would believe it. Much love..."

imagine the charming confusion that would ensue.

my little sister (25 but forever 8) has decided that this will be the summer that she falls in love with baseball. if you are from california, you can't imagine the happiness of opening day- it means that the snow has melted (or is melting) and you can smell the earth again. it means another summer of staying up past your bedtime and listening to games on the radio under your pillow (yes, i used to do that). i can still see the games in my mind, and the elation of my team winning and the end of the world of my team losing. if anyone ever wants to go see a baseball game, just let me know. i will take you. it will be amazing.

oh, and that little guy in the picture... that's gonna be my next (first) tattoo.

two problems with LOST...

(minor spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen any of season 5)

#1. The characters are too heavily reactive. According to the story, things only happen because the island wants them to happen. Which pretty much makes the character's individual stories unimportant. On top of that, none of them are even trying to break the island's control. In fact, they seem to only want to give in to it. Because of this, all of them come across as whiny and unsympathetic. None of their individual back stories are anywhere near strong enough to convince an audience to love them. I sincerely hope that each of the characters gains some amount of control over his or her own lives, and in the end, defeats the island.

#2. Over-explanation. It was obvious during tonight's episode, for example, that Ben Linus stole Cesar's sawed-off shotgun in anticipation of a moment when having it could turn the tables. So why does he, not two filmic minutes later, explain it to John Locke, who saw the tables-turning with his own eyes? It is a serious understimation of the intelligence of the audience (a moment of realization followed by a clunky and pompous explanation). The writers should play fast-and-loose- give the viewers something to chew on all week, instead of a clump of answers followed by a week's worth of anticipation for another clump of answers.

thoughts on today, 4-08-2009

It is only the fourth day of doing this, and already the title of "thoughts on today..." is feeling redundant. So that might change soon.

Options:
There are always two or three. If you are at an intersection. Left, right, or straight. Of course, if you are trying to get somewhere, then the logic is easy. Make the turn that takes you closer to your destination. But it isn't the same for story telling. There are always more options than you think, and the best might be the least logical.

Let's say that you are writing a story about Mary falling in love with Steve-O. (A warning: she's going to make him drop the "-O" as soon as they are hitched.) So, as the writer, you pull up to the intersection in your '78 Pinto, windows rolled down. The light is red. (Already, you have an option. Logically, you wait for the green. But maybe you are turning right. Is there any on-coming traffic? Or maybe you just feel like breaking the law---- i.e. do you want to raise the stakes?) Of course, you're destination isn't the Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru, it's getting Steve-O and Mary to the alter.

Let's stick the altar inside a cute little house of worship just around the corner. All you have to do is check for traffic (by making sure that Steve-O isn't already married, and that is bachelor buddies won't lead him astray), make a right hand turn, and there it is. Into the church they go, and Steve loses his O.

Efficient. Even effective, if all you are trying to do is get them hitched. Hmmmmm... but what about the other options. Well, for a left turn or a straight ahead, you have to wait for the light to change. (Steve-O might currently be dating Amanda. Or maybe Mary is trying to get her career started before settling down.) You've got some time to figure those things out while waiting for the green. In the mean time, what if Steve-O runs into Mary a little bit prematurely, at a karaoke bar? He doesn't have a great singing voice, but he belts out "Thank You Fallentinme Be Mice Elf Agin", and Mary hasn't heard that song since... well, since she saw Sly and the Family Stone play at her State Fair in '98. They decide not to wait for the green light, and by the next morning Steve-O is looking for his boxers and Mary might be pregnant.

But I am getting way ahead of myself. Pinto. Red light. Went through it. Got pregnant. Slammed ont he brakes. Mary can't have a baby now. What about that position she wants in London? What about Edward, the upwardly mobile marketing manager who has taken her to dinner (twice) and mentioned a lake house (multiple times). She looks up Planned Parenthood. It was back there, you should have taken a left- What she doesn't know is that Steve-O's roommate, Kirkus, likes to hang out at Planned Parenthood. He's working on his dissertation, which is all about infatuation, and he is particularly susceptible to falling in love with girls he feels need to be saved. By him. Now, Kirkus forces Steve-O to read his drafts, and also tells him everything about the girls he meets. So Steve-O finds out about Mary, and decides to stop her from having an abortion. Or maybe he doesn't stop her. Or maybe he is too late. Anyway, you are beginning to see where a left turn takes you. You can literally go all the way around the world without encountering the chapel. But you will get there, eventually.

Straight ahead- barreling down the road, Mary has the baby. She convinces Edward that it is his (remember him?) and she takes up residence at the lake house. She begins to write letters to Steve-O (this is starting to sound like a Nicholas Sparks novel), but decides to burn them instead of mailing them. She starts the damn lake house on fire. (And burns up any chance of this actually becoming a Nicholas Sparks novel). Mary nearly dies, but her baby dies. Steve-O sees the story in the paper and realizes... well, it's pretty obvious. So you are beginning to see what happens if you go straight ahead.

In all of these options, Steve-O and Mary end up (eventually) getting married. But the stories they will tell their Grandchildren are drastically different. And that is what I am getting at. If your characters could tell their own stories, how interesting would those stories be? And it all starts with options, exploring options, and finding some that aren't apparent or aren't logical.

whew.

life is...
distortion with melody.