ttyl driving

popping ichor laced lashes open,
salted tears stinging their freedom through
swollen vision.

sterile white, burning breaths,
in, out
in,
searing reds rip through my fingers,
nails-..
screws. Finger screws.
Trapped in this broken body.
Tubes as though my doctor is Frankenstein.
If humor is not dead, neither am I.

4 sleeps from now, I’m entreated to see
the slivers I look through in a mirror.
The only bits exposed through the plaster cocoon.

10 sleeps later, I am cut loose.
my limbs are still jelly.
I am not a butterfly.

I won’t ever walk again.

anti.social.nature

My slow scraping shoes…

marking time like the drummer boy
of an army awaiting the inevitable,
but soldiering on anyhow.

Those shoes

they’re mellifluous white noise,
juxtaposed with the honking and
and the coughing and the shouting
and the gray
and the smothering cold and blinding gold
of the breaking of the day
which seems it will never end as it bleeds into
the hundreds that made up yesteryear.

skrsch, skrsch, skrsch.

skrsch- they drag,
skrsch- they slow,
skrsch- they stop.

Everyday staring at my shoes,
satisfied by every passing pair,
because they were carrying by eyes that would never catch mine.

Until today.

Before me, a pair of sensible black leather shoes,
stopped equidistant from what was between the tips of my brown leather brogues and hers

-cracked ground-

ruptured like a cinderblock by the hand of a practiced artist from one of those movies I watched as a kid.

“Sclerenchyma – strengthening tissue in a plant, formed from cells with thickened, typically lignified, walls.”

…
…

I-…
…

“Sclerenchyma, it’s how plants, break through the concrete. They’re little, but they’re a lot stronger than they look. Tiny, little guys can break through damn near anything.”

…
I-…
…

“Hi!”

I was never struck so dumb as the moment I slowly scanned my way from her sensible shoes-.. Oxfords
if you were wondering,
to her too tight, blue jeans, gripping her thighs
like my virginal little fingers couldn’t have even known they wanted to at the time,

sticking
for a moment to her black leather belt and golden cherry tree buckle,
my stomach bluttering like a million flutterbys as I passed hers,
my heart stopping as I realized I’d reached the bit of crop top skimming her still breasts, unlike mine, which were heaving because I finally realized that the desert in my throat was from hyperventilation and like a fool I’d stood stunned for-…

Hi.

“Are you alright?”

I was just admiring the little flowers growing out of the pavement

“Yeah. Sorry, about earlier, sometimes when I don’t know what to say, I just start spouting facts hoping I say something interesting. But somehow I felt I had to say something.”

Yeah,
I get that.
I never know what to say
either
So
usually I just say
what I’m thinking and
people leave if they
don’t like it

“Oh? Well what are you thinking?”

flecks of green
shattering ubiquitous gray,
gave me hope for a future
where each day we are not the pall-bearers
in a corporate sponsored march
to the industrial dirge, playing
at the wake of freedom,
as the other virtues mourn her loss.

“Oh.”

Yeah, I’m sorry-..

“You’re beautiful.”

When I Tried Courage.

One time, I told my friends not to egg a house,

And so they didn’t, but mischief on their minds and in their hearts and hands,
they egged me instead.Mother said, “Better no company than bad.”

There was this other time, I stood up to the girls giving Sarah a wedgie,
And they stopped.
Unfortunately, their will to wedgie did not cease with their actions.

Beating like my heart, my feet hit the pavement thud after thud. I felt my blood pulsing through my toes, and all my air passages were raw with the erosion of the wind I greedily scraped into them to fuel my escape. Speed or tears blurred my vision, I couldn’t tell.

Three blocks I ran.
Three blocks they chased. I faltered, and there was no mercy.

I’ve decided that being the hero is hard, and that maybe I will only do it on occasion.
Apparently a lot of the work is pro-bono.

At the end of the ordeal, my face covered in tears, snot, and my granny panties which I now wore as both hat and harness, I looked proudly at my reflection in the puddle I had cried for myself.

Mother reminded, “Being a hero is it’s own reward.”

Stiff Upper Lip

Dear Mallory,

Today, I thought I saw you. My heart skipped a beat. It felt like I was about to crash my car into your existence and at that moment I wanted to call out “hello” in my excitement and horror. Then I wanted to hide from you and the fact that I had messed up. And even though all the while I knew it wasn’t you, for all the anxiety and misery and fear it caused to think I could have bumped into you and made bad get worse… I wanted nothing more than for it to be the case. Because I never knew that the last time could or would be the last time.

And I didn’t mean to care.

I didn’t mean to love your laugh. I didn’t plan on being fascinated by your tattoos and loving the way your glasses fit your face. I didn’t mean to be warmed by the sound of your voice… Or charmed by your love of hockey.

And now I wish for silly things. Things like remembering what your favorite NPR show was. And what exactly your tattoo said because I remember thinking someone who wore that philosophy was probably awesome company… And it was true, for the time. I want to hear your laugh again. And get frozen yogurt. I want to converse about social justice and see what you think about things. I wish I didn’t for the first time regret having sex with someone… Because it was fantastic. I didn’t mean to have sex with you. I didn’t mean to like it so much. And I didn’t mean to trade it for the chance of getting to know you. Because getting to know you was one of the few experiences I was having that the prospect of simply made me happy.

I have fantastic half memories.

But I suppose to you I’m the guy that all in 2 days: banged your head into a wall with his pants down, poured salsa in your tequila shot, dragged you on an errand for his mother to the ghetto grocery store, and then proceeded to drunkenly, amorously hop in your bed one night.

I wish you’d have told me how you felt at the time.

I wish that when I asked you to breakfast you’d said yes. Cause it was meant to be an apology and I just wanted to clear the air. I wish you’d given me the chance to fuck up in person, instead of assuming that I would. I wish I seemed to you like I was worth getting to know better. For some reason, I can’t quite explain the only thing I knew about you was that you just seemed like you were worth getting to know better.

Sincerely,
Me

PS I really mean it when I say I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did to give you the impression I didn’t respect you and it deeply troubles me that I did somehow.

PPS If it means anything to you, I’m demisexual.

Daily Post 10: Shame.

Hot Pockets and video games. That’s all I have to say…

(but really who knew they still made these things?)

Tomorrow will be a new day…

Poetry: Inspiration

“Finding new inspiration for poetry is hard. that is all.”

– A poem by George Coker

Poetry: …Parte tres

So guys..

I went to the open mic. It was… ok. I only stayed for about an hour and then left to go watch TV with the friend I dragged along. Most of the poets we heard in that time were… strange.

Don’t get me wrong, I love strange and poets are a kooky bunch… But some of these guys just felt out of touch. Some tried too hard to conjure imagery, one had a need to be liked, another was just plain dull.

Granted I heard some fantastic stand-up style humor and a few witty observations… but I must say that I wasn’t the only guy there to nod off a bit and one of the performers(who wasn’t very great anyway) got off the stage and started checking his email while the next(much better) guy went.

The experience has made me realize 3 things:

1. Want to write better poetry.

2. The problem I had with poetry, is that it is too often inaccessible to those who aren’t poets themselves.

3. A lot of bad poets, like a lot of bad actors, perform masturbatory acts that mutilate the beauty of the work they could be doing.

I saw a lot of verbose bullshit that, instead of conjuring imagery that evoked anything, just made me scratch my head wondering if there was a reason to be saying anything at all. I heard people stroking themselves, thinking they were sounding intelligent, all the while offering nothing even remotely mentally stimulating.

Where are the seeds that sprouted into inspiration this young man’s mind oh so many years ago? Contemplating the transience of existence in “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and the extended metaphor of life’s difficulties in “Mother to Son.”

What happened to clever limericks like Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse”?

The hookingly eloquent, intuitive nonsense like “Jabberwocky”?

Since everyone I listed is dead, I’m adding Sherman Alexie. “Fire as verb and noun” is amazing. If you’ve never read it, do it. The man has been published for a reason.

I’m issuing a challenge to artists, to really make art.

Poetry: PARTE DOS!

So, after bitching about how poetry is a shitty medium for reaching lots of people, I realized that I should probably go support my creative writer brethren.

Tonight, I’m going to an open mike event in San Francisco on Hayes and Cole at the Sacred Grounds Cafe at 7:30pm. It’s all spoken word and I don’t know if anyone who’s reading this will actually show up, but I’ve been once before and the quality of the work was fantastic. There was some audience participation and I think you can even get up and present if you’ve brought something to share. It’s a great place to test out spoken word.

Who knows, I might even get up there.

Poetry

I used to write a lot of poetry. I don’t do it as much anymore. It’s possibly because I’m happier, possibly because I’m busier, and possibly because I’m too lazy to write poetry.

Poetry itself is a strange medium. You can say any number of things in any number of ways… and what exactly counts as poetry is really up to the person reading it. I find poetry in any well crafted bit of language that is intended to be art whether it’s a collage of newspaper clippings, a sonnet, an epic, or two quotes of a politician juxtaposed to show his morals decaying as his assets grow.

I love it.

There are two problems for me however:

The first problem is that the things that drive me to write it are few and far between these days. Not that I don’t find myself outraged at the state of the world or that I don’t love my girlfriend so much that my heart feels the need to express it in verse(because my love of women just gives me that high). I just don’t actually feel driven to say anything about it for the benefit of others.

Which actually leads to the second problem. I simply don’t know where the audience is.

Sure I could go find them, but re-adding poetry to my ever growing list of hobbies as something I care about being good at leads me to wonder if I should actually make a point of trying to publish. I when I do write poetry, I either care so much I want to world to see it, or I give up on caring doubting the world ever will. I just feel I ought to pick a different medium.
I’d love some comments on people’s thoughts about poetry.

Zexton Davis on Writing

I just wrote an entire post and deleted it. I could ctrl-z it back. But I’m doing this thing where I create something, destroy it, and subsequently create what will invariably be a clearer, cleaner, more concise version:

 

I wrote a letter to the love of my life a little while ago. I realized in writing to her, that she is my target audience. Hopefully, I will reach her. Hopefully, I will move her. Hopefully, next time she sees me, we’ll have glorious sex.

All of that however is not why I wrote it.

I, in the process of confessing my love and being vulnerable, began a shitty blog post half-way through writing to her. It was about how my last post, the first of this year somehow, was seen by less than 6 people in as many hours. It was sappy and honest and vulnerable and there is nothing wrong with that. I questioned myself and why I write and who I reach and if it’s worth writing if only 5 people read.. and then if only 1 person read. Hopefully, I would’ve reached a few people. Hopefully, I would have made them think. Hopefully, they would’ve liked it and read more.

All of that however is not why I wrote it.

The reason I sat down to write to my love and then concurrently and subsequently this post, is because I had something to say. That is the reason we write. Leave your insecurities at the door. Don’t write because you want to be heard. Write because you have something to say. The people who are meant to find it eventually will. If you’re going to keep doing this you have to believe that deep down or your desperation will make you suck. Stay true to yourself.

References: Emily Dickinson’s poems, Nick Drake’s songs, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau