I've been spending the last few days imagining your body inside-out.

Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't.

Actually, I've been trying to decide what poems I should read and if I should wear slacks or something else. Who even uses the word 'slacks' anyway? Trousers is even worse.

The reading in Muncie will be great, I'm promising this to myself. I'll have chapbooks available for purchase. I feel like I need to be selling myself like this. Maybe somebody will get desperate and buy one. Or fifteen. They might need to clean up pet waste.

Lately when I bite my nails, I think about what biting my nails means. I don't do it when I'm nervous, which is supposedly when people do it. Maybe biting your nails doesn't mean anything, and the person who hypothesized that it's something deeper is just full of shit.

I think two of my cousins are visiting from Chicago this weekend, and I have Saturday, Sunday and Monday off, which means three things: drugs, beer and video games.

Score.

I have started on my next chapbook. The reading is soon.

I sure have. I have a few titles floating around. I think there might be a lot more fiction this time around. That could be a lie, though. Who knows what'll be in it. My only goal is to make it at least 75 pages. Everything else will be a bonus. Like finding a wheat penny betweeen the couch cushions, or giving yourself a haircut and not clipping skin off your ears.

**

I need to shave my beard before I head to Muncie for this reading. The feeling of anticipation is punching me in the jaw. Chances are, I'll be wearing a sweater. I'll probably drink a new beer and cheer when people finish their poems. I know that isn't professional, but I won't care. I'm not getting a lower grade for "excessive celebration."

I hope there are dozens of people there.

**

I'm giving this man directions at work, right now, on how to print something from his laptop. I hate him for this. I hate his stupid polo shirt, his stupid glasses, and the way he rolls his pant legs up past his shin. I hope he doesn't have friends, family that loves him. I hope he has a terrible addiction to something deadly. I want his body to betray him tonight. Women will become aware of his impotence. A virus needs to overtake his brain like a drafting race car and pummel everything he's ever known.

Seriously, fuck this guy. Quit asking questions. Trial and error, my friend.

Presents. Tribute thread. Scene from a movie or maybe it's just loud music from the record player. The Bible.

I got some great presents today. I'm sure you did, too. Chances are, if you're a parent, you bought your child/ren some fantastic toys that made them really happy. I remember when I was seven, I got this indoor bowling set. I set up all the blue pins in the front, the green in the middle, red in the back. I rolled the plastic ball against the hallway walls and clapped when it hit the headpin, causing them to explode all over the kitchen. Vases were knocked over a few times.

This year, I got some Volkswagen things. I got some non-Volkswagen things. I didn't want to mention Christmas because that's just redundant, but I did just mention it.

**

People like cars. It doesn't matter if you hate your car because it takes fifteen minutes to start in cold weather just because you're too lazy to track down the small vacuum leak behind the intake manifold. Maybe you're just indifferent. It gets me to work, downtown, to the bars you say. Sure, everyone's car does that.

But this guy's car is different. You don't need to know a God damn thing about cars to understand. Just click on the link. It's flash fiction with pictures. I want this link to help get the thought through your head that fiction and narrative exist outside of your fucking cannonized literature, your anthologies of poems and sonnets, your how-to-publish your fantasy novel guides. Fiction exists outside of pages and books.

**

My dad is downstairs in the basement listening to Cream and other music from before I was born. It's almost too loud. I can't imagine him down there nodding his head, plucking the strings of a bass that's not plugged into anything. It makes me imagine a scene from a movie where a family comes home from dinner at some sports pub, and they hear music. The middle-aged son walks downstairs and sees the back of his dad's head. He's sitting on the couch. He walks through a cloud of smoke. The TV is on mute, a woman's mouth moves. She's not showing her teeth.

He gets in front of his dead and half of his face is missing. His arms are cradled at his midsection. A snub-nosed .357 lies with the barrel facing up between two couch cushions. Cream starts getting louder. Eric Clapton plays a solo, and the son's mouth opens to scream but nothing comes out. Credits start rolling. 

My dad's probably not dead though, maybe just sad. It's his first Chirstmas without having his parents. That kind of sucks. Same with my mom. They were both alone today in a crowded house.

**

I got my first copy of the Bible today.

Poetry reading in Muncie. This weather is crap. 7 Things (from Dan Bailey)

So, how awesome are poetry readings? Pretty awesome. And they're even better when you're performing in one. And multiply that awesome-ness by 50 or 60 if you include some of your friends who read equally awesome poetry. What should this tell you? I'll be performing at a peotry reading in Muncie. At Motini's. January 7th from 9:30pm until somebody passes out drunk or falls over from excessive bad assery, which will probably be around 11.

Here's the current list of performers:

Joe Betz
Dan Bailey
Nate Logan
Joey Minutillo
Peter Cavanaugh
Jess Degabriele

I wish I had links for Joe and Jess... but I don't. Why not make one up? I could imagine Joe Betz having a really sweet blog, but I just don't know the web address. Either way, you need to come out if you're in the Muncie area. And if you aren't, make a road trip. Do something violent on the way, like ramp over a billboad while cops chase you, Duke's style.

**

At least all of this rain isn't snow. I can't remember the last time I had a rainy Christmas. It's warm, too. I'd imagine this is what Christmas is like in the Northwest, only without running on the beach throwing wrapping paper into the air.

**

Dan Bailey, world's coolest person, posted up a list of seven things about my past that I'm contractually bound to post.

1. When I was two, I cut my thumb open on a glass bottle. It required two stitches. My mom said I cried a lot less than most toddlers. This means A.) I'm not a pussy, and B.) She could be lying. She isn't, though. The scar is still on my left thumb. After 20 years, it hasn't shrank. It's a small scar, but probably looked huge on a two-year-old's thumb.

2. The first time I smoked hashish I wanted to disappear. I was with a good friend and his girlfriend. I remember he cut off a small sliver of tan Pakistani hash and balled it up with some pot and packed it into a vaporizer chamber. I took a few hits and didn't feel anything. After the vaporizer got back around to me a fifth time, it felt like 50,000 ants were as slowly as they possibly could up through my feet, my thighs, my chest and my neck, until they all covered my brain and died at once. I walked around a table in the basement for an hour without stopping. I was spouting off random baseball trivia and I recited my old address in Chicago over and over again. 2918 North 73rd Avenue.

3. Every time I see somebody join a religious group on Facebook, it upsets me. Doesn't the name "1,000,000 Christians worship God" sound really redundant? Just like the phrase really redundant.

4. Whenever I heard creation stories back in Sunday school, I always imagined God standing in a factory by himself, surrounded by baskets full of limbs and eyes and hair and penises. He'd walk around the room, grabbing handfuls of parts, assembling them on a shitty old workbench. All of the worst people who're born with defects came at the end of the day because he was tired and just trying to fill his quota for the day.

5. When I was five, I got in trouble twice for swearing. Both times for saying "Fuck." The first time, my mom was trying to wash my dity hands with scalding water. I screamed fuck, and had to stay in my room until my dad got home. He spouted off a huge list of words that I was never allowed to say, even though I've probably said them all 10,000 times. The second time, I told my cousin Scott to "Suck my fuck." My sister and oldest cousin tried to tell on me, but I derailed their attempts when I buried my own head in the sandbox.

6. I've only been on an airplane one time. It felt like we were taking off forever.

7. During the sixth grade, my cousins would spend the night at my house every once in a while. One night, it was raining really bad, and the wind was blowing like 60 miles an hour. I was scared, and made everyone go in the hallway and cover their faces with pillows, just in case all of the windows blew out and impailed us with glass.

More things published. Cold weather bullshit. Bull shit can be one or two words, cool.

One of my poems was selected to be in The Broken Plate. That's pretty sweet. I was an editor on the magazine last year. This was the first year outside submissions were accepted. Mark Neeley is the faculty member in charge. He's an awesome guy. One time in class he got really pissed at me, but I was high. Probably being a huge dick. Ask Dan Bailey. He was there.

So it's really cold outside. The kind of cold that makes your skin burn when you wear jeans you pulled out of the dryer. Those jeans shrank a size. It rubs the top of your ass the way your ex- did. Finger tips feel like sand stuck in your toenail bed. Ouch. Whatever, though. It's supposed to be 54 on Wednesday, and fucking 61 on Saturday. Mother Nature likes supplying allergies, hives and bloated sinuses. What a wench. It's her business.

**

You know how some "radical people" (just type radical people into 'Google,' it might make sense) blame music or Grand Theft Auto on young kids killing their classmates or for punching their girlfriend in a movie theatre? Well, I never believed that shit.

That is, until I listened to this album:

This shit skies above you like Kareem's skyhook and belts you right on the jaw. Try running away from this album, I dare you. It's Anton Chigurh asking you to step out of the car. It's  wind blowing an apple tree bare. It's a lethal does of something.

Here are a few album recommendations:

Yeah. Bam. Buy this one, son. And this one.

I want to be that raw throat inside you that makes it uncomfortable to talk or breathe

My beard is getting long. It was helpful today. I was outside and with the windchill, the temperature dipped below zero around 2. I brought a new Jetta home today. A new old Jetta. New to me. Old to the previous owner. This Jetta will run again someday soon. I want to paint this Jetta a fantastic color, make it loud and unavoidable to anyone who's interested in it. Bringing a new car home was like a middle-aged single mother adopting a foreign infant, and rocking it to sleep while singing songs in a language the baby will never understand.

Only some parts of my body are cold. Like my right upper arm. And my back. Everything else is pretty warm.

I want to be a football coach whose face turns red from yelling on a cold day. I'll grab the quarterback by his facemask and get spit on his face when I make it clear to him that he needs to have more poise. He'll hate the word poise when I use it and he'll use my emotions as a sparring partner. I'll want to punch his face or choke him in front of everyone so I can make something an example of masculinity or toughness. There will be no winner or loser.

I've met everyone of my Facebook friends at least once. It's scary seeing just part of their face in the small squares. I don't want to meet any of those people and say, "Hey, you look different than you look on Facebook." That's not a flattering thing to say, even if it's true.

Capicola on sesame bread was for dinner. That yellow cake with chocolate frosting was for dessert, but I ate it first. The meat was so thin it was see-through. One of the seeds was stuck in my teeth up until I wrote that last sentence. I drank Sprite, but it was kind of flat.

I just took like a twenty minute brake from writing this post. I'm watching a commercial with some guy washing a dog's face in a sink. The dog didn't even look dirty. Oh well, most of us bathe when we feel dirty. Apparently there's a new Robocop movie coming out, which makes me feel dirty. It's time to shower.

I haven't been updating lately and that saddens me, but at the same time, I'm glad I'm alive

So, I haven't been updating everyday. I had a nice streak going where there would be something to read on here each day, but that feeling started to go away like two weeks ago. That doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot going on. Although, I've always thought of using a blog like a journal where you just write down things that happen everyday is kind of pointless. Most people don't care when you take a shit or if a friend died or if you're snowed in your apartment and you want to climb on the roof in your flannel and start screaming like you're being attacked from the inside-out by people you can't see.

I have been doing things, though. Lots of working. It's been nothing but bad news at work. FedEx is getting rid of a lot of things. They aren't matching 401k, they closed a store in Elizabethtown. Nobody gets good news and that's unfortunate.

This blog is turning into my favorite pillow. I can go a few days without being around it, but when I come home and see it on the bed, I jump head-first into it and bury my face, breathing in the fabric like it's the last air in the sky.

I'm going to write children's books about my cat. My girlfrend said it would be a good idea. It's been dead at work today, so I started scripting things. My cat will probably do anything. Other people should take the same approach my cat does.

**

It's like this song was written right now as a response to our economic plight, but not really. Either way, listening to it has been the highlight of this day.

**

I miss people. I want to be surrounded by the same four or five people all the time. I want everyone to be talking at the same time just so we hear something. I want those people to feel the same way I do, or at least know they've thought about having these feelings.

I'll be with those people tonight. My family is going out for my sister's 20th birthday. I want to eat a bowl of chili and drink some beer from a sweeating glass and get tired halfway through dinner.

Another one of those people will be home from Florida next week. Oh yeah, and Christmas is next week, too. I want presents. Everyone wants presents. They want to make a mess and wear new shirts and pants.


I think this post is over, for now.

Melvins. Sunday morning. Goodie Mob.

First this:

Then this:

If I saw this live, I don't think I'd make it 10 minutes through the concert. This is so metal. Awesome.

**

I woke up this morning at 9. Found out a friend from high school had died in a car accident. That's been the theme of the week. Waking up and getting bad news. I don't think it's possible for me to go a week without having an existential crisis anymore.

Just in case you have an existential crisis, the internet has all the answers.

**

They're awesome, hence the word "Good" in their name. Well, maybe that's not true.

Keep listening to music, please. How about somebody call me? I just want to talk and catch up on things. We can talk about writing or whatever.

Bad Religion. Crushed finger. When it rains, somebody gets a BJ.

I'm listening to Bad Religion at work, their '80-'85 collection disc and it's fantastic. The store is empty. There's lots of yelling. I haven't listened to this album, or any Bad Religion really, in a long time. I still know all the words to every song.

In high school I listened to Bad Religion every single day. My sister had a "How could Hell be any worse?" t-shirt and I always wanted it, even though it was way too big for either of us. Back then, I ate Dairy Queen five times a week. I'd come home from work covered in fryer grease, sesame seeds and smell like unwashed crotch. I'd get naked and lay on my bed, listening to Bad Religion. Sometimes the Germs, sometimes Bad Brains, Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Wire. But always Bad Religion.

I had abs back then. I loved different people back then and all I could grow was sideburns. They had no shape and I'm kind of ashamed to say I had them. All I cared about was coming home, hitting my bass as hard as possible and sing along with music. I was terrible at both and I didn't care. I just wanted somebody to hear my voice.

My cousins Bob and Vince moved to Florida with their family over the summer. Both were in a few bands together. Bob said he's moving back this summer, and Vince might be, too. We're going to make tons of noise and play concerts. I want to jump off stages again without a shirt on and get paid to have fun. Right now, I get paid to make copies. Occasionally fax things, pack cell phones and vases in boxes and send them in airplanes across bodies of water.

Bad Religion supplement:

**

This statement is true. It's raining somewhere right now. Somewhere else, somebody is getting a BJ. A big, fat BJ. Me? I'm sitting here reading Euro Tuner. I decided to give up on poetry this week. Maybe I'll pick it up again next week.

But for this week, I've concentrated on other things. Work, bank account stuff, being a grown up. I hate it, but I haven't written anything decent in two months or so, and it kind of makes my body hurt. Whatever.

Bring the ruckus and other things.

I woke up this morning and immediately felt the need to listen to "Bring the Rucuks." I had to wait until I got to work to hear it.

Inspectah Deck says this in verse three:

I rip it hardcore, like porno-flick bitches.
I roll with groups of ghetto bastards with biscuits.
Check it, my method on the microphone's bangin
Wu-Tang slang'll leave your headpiece hangin.
Bust this, I'm kickin like Segall, Out for Justice
the roughness, yes, the rudeness, ruckus.
Redrum, I verbally assault with the tongue.
Murder one, my style shot ya knot like a stun-gun
I'm hectic, I wreck it with the quickness
Set it on the microphone, and competition get blown,
by this nasty ass nigga with my nigga, the RZA.
Charged like a bull and got pull like a trigga
So bad, stabbin up the pad with the vocab, crab
I scream on ya' ass like your dad, bring it on...

You couldn't write that if you tried 10,000 times. It's the Miss Lonleyhearts of hip-hop.

**

Ball State lost their first football game of the season last night in horrendously anti-climatic fashion. It was like watching that squatter who won't leave your apartment tear through your pantry and eat your favorite snacks, leaving the wrappers in a pile next to the trash can. I'm upset.

**

I want you to spend three or four hours rummaging through this thread on the VWVortex. Tons of fantastic things inside. Also, some not-so-fantastic things. I guarantee you'll find your new favorite car inside.

**

I just took a break to eat my lunch. It's fajita nachos, which are delicious. I eat them every Saturday. This blog is over for now because I'm hungry and need these nachos.

I don't feel happy when you smile, alright. Feeling down and beneath dirt.

hey let me paint your nails.
alright i said. we sat in a room
with dust, chairs and not much else.
you hummed a song and i listened
to your voice get softer as you got tired.
i listened to cars outside rumble
over manhole covers.

i watched the lump in your throat
move like a sick pet. it moved
slow and helplessly over
the sounds you made
it whipered and had
a dry nose. i felt finger nail polish
run off my cutical.
it dried into a red rock.

on the last two fingers you grabbed
a cigarette off the end table
sucked it down with puffed cheeks
and blew smoke so the dust wouldn't be bored.
you kept talking to me and
the dust talked with the smoke.

your voice almost disappeared.
it was the hum of a fan or
something inconsequential.
you rubbed my forearm
and smiled
i saw this out of the corner of my eye
and looked at the smoke and dust
still talking. they were so close
it made the room stretch out
into the street.
walkers came to the door and listened
they agreed or disagreed
who knows. i just wanted your smile
to go away and the walkers' smiles
to stay on their faces
until their cheek muscles ached
just because they were a part of
a moment i never wanted.

**

I still have a few of my chapbooks left. I read through it twice today when it slowed down at work and the work made me disappointed. There were changes I wanted to make to every single poem, two of them I wish never existed. If I ever write a book I'm afraid this feel will happen everyday until none of the things I write even exist.

This makes me want to write a book because this blog would eventually not exist. Crazy.

Checking this out would be good for everyone involved. Internet in limbo. Steve Malkmus + Jicks.

I know a guy named Nate Logan. He published a book. Check it out. Nate writes good poetry. He gives great readings and he also has a fierce beard. At least, he did the last time I saw him.

Either way, it's exciting. 

**

I hate the feeling I get when wireless internet stops working. Tons of anxiety. Like a doctor is walking into a room holding a clipboard that's holding bad news. His words are short, empty and scatter your head like shotgun mouthwash. 

Earlier, webpages were loading in blocks and I hated it. I pulled a pillow over my face and pretended that the internet didn't exist. That didn't work.

We need internet police to ensure the sanctity of speedy web deliver. I need to read my blogs and watch my ESPN videos daily, damn it. I almost spelled it dammit, but seriously, fuck that internet meme.  

**

They need to tour close to Louisville soon.

One time, they said "Willie was found not far from the scene. He was panting like a pit-bull minus the mean."

Bam. +1

What I'm doing right now isn't too important.

Let's just say I'm fully clothed

but cold.

My nose is leaking like something 

from the ceiling. 

I can feel the breeze from outside

inside this room. Windows 

are locked tight.

"Fuck the police" is playing

and it's putting me in a pensive mood.

I want to call everyone in my address book

and make them listen to the first chorus

because that's all they could stomach.

"I don't understand this."

Then Eazy E will say,

"My identity by itself causes violence."

That makes perfect sense to me

since most of us are dangerous

after puberty.

It can only get this dark at night.

Before thunder strikes a road
covered in trees bending over like cut grass,
before the dog yelps running
through neighbors' yards trailing a rabbit's shadow,
and before the walls roll and shake
like the inside of a canon,
take two breaths into a half-open mouth.
Look outside and watch someone
invisible in the sky
empty a can of black.

It rolls slow like molassass in January,
like blood through constricted veins.
Cloud shapes like tattered earth,
a hint of opaque grey,
lines of yellow pulse and bump
as highways for birds flying
away from here.

Ten minutes later
everything is black.
When you place your head on a pillow
and start thinking about
whatever makes you fall asleep,
places on Earth start to look the same.
You're falling asleep in a white loft
in New Jersey when someone
in Kansas watches the black roll in
like a basement flood
damaging boxes of photos,
soggying sweaters and dollhair.

Birds flock and fly in conference
towards Nevada or Arizona,
churning gusts with their wings
that push the black back
long enuogh for them to land
next to a lake and get overtaken
by night.

My mom has a Facebook account. Wasted day. Rush

Thank God her picture is the unisex grey silhouette. For now. That way I can't envision a half-dozen drunk picture in an update, or a mass-message asking for a new cell phone number. It'd depress me to read, "Hey, I think I left my keys at Marsha's house. Like, what the fuck? Was I that tore up?"

Mothers don't talk like that, in any existence. Sorry. If your mom does, she's not a mom. Moms are there to wear aprons, shovel plates of cholesterol coated with syrup and rainbow sprinkles, or iron everything you own, even the striped socks with no heals. You know, the ones you wear when you play basketball at the park with Buddy and Dennis. The ones you pull up after you nail a shot from the elbow, leaving your arm raised up like a goose swallowing pond water.

She says its for networking. Sure Mom, everyone joins to "make it with people." To branch out, to share pics, to beat strangers at Centipede or that JetMan game. Sooner or later her wall will be illegible and the page will freeze because there are 150 applications on it.

Let's hope this never shows up on my mom's Facebook page.

**

I had to sit at my parents house all day while two men that smelled like bowling alley and athlete's foot install new windows in the living room and downstairs. Gusts of wind walked through my house as if there were sneaking into the kitchen to eat the last brownie. Nothing was accomplished today. 

However, the basement is now warmer. You can walk and feel warm pockets near the walls where it used to feel dead from wind getting through bad seals. Either way, it was a wasted day. I didn't get to do anything. I had to sit in my parents house and guard guns and paperwork. My dad is stupid like that.

**

Could you imagine performing in front of this many people? Jesus Christ. It's literally like you're inside a body and that's every single cell. Holy crap. Plus, that song kicks ass.

As close to perfection as you can get. Future release. Chinese Democracy, finally? Stories I'm writing.

About three times a year I make a list of the (usually 50 or 100) greatest albums of all-time. Sometimes it's just hip-hop albums. Sometimes it's everything else. It can be both, too. I'm listening to The Score by the Fugees. It'd definitely be on my list. These would be on the list too:

I Can Feel the Heart Beating as One - Yo la Tengo
London Calling - The Clash
In the Wake of Poseidon- King Crimson
Appetite for Destruction- Guns 'n' Roses
Giant Steps- John Coltrane
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables- Dead Kennedys

Madvilliany- Madvillian

That's part of it. I love lists. It satisfies my urge to implement hierarchy wherever I go. Lists make you president or ambassador, until you finish.

**

I cannot wait for this album. March 10th. New Yo la Tengo. New name. Prince without the symbol or the feminine stature. I could whip Prince's ass.

**

This is probably the best album review I've read. Intellegent. Sharp. Direct. Actually takes a stance on something outside of the finished product.

**

In Gang Starr's Rolling Stone biogrpahy that accompanied the release of their most recent LP, The Ownerz, an unnamed journalist described their most heralded release as follows:

"Daily Operation delivered darker, denser atmospherics while still never losing touch with the funk; in the era of gangsta rap, this New York crew rewrote the hip-hop playbook. Premier proved that less is more on the stripped-down opening track, "The Place Where We Dwell," while the rest of the album continued in the inventive vein of its predecessor, though with more claustrophobic production. On Hard to Earn, it seemed they could do little wrong, though after this album Gang Starr began a slow slide from relevance, but not a dramatic or devastating one. "

That last sentence irks me. Certain things are always relevant. Music especially. The Beatles are always going to matter. If nobody talked about the Beatles for ten years, they'd still matter, simply because of all the conversation that's been created over the past 40+ years.

It's pretty weird to think about what'd happen if the Beatles released an album now as a new group. They'd be indie. I'd be considered an elitist or some hipster jerk for listening to them. They'd probably be on Drag City or Matador. Reviews would be mixed. Non-stop touring, back-to-back nights in Milwaukee and Kansas City. Revolver would be the turning point in their discography. Their 13, White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean.

Five more albums then that's it. It's over and done for. Solo endevors, expensive drugs alone in hotel bathrooms. They would be the economic downfall, rise and collapse.

**

I'm working on two short stories right now. One will probably turn into flash. The first one is called "I promise this is being videotaped." It's about a husband and wife splitting their possessions for a separation. The other is called "Two blue shirts, two necklaces." I looked at this picture, and started writing. It's not about Primus, though.

10 things this drawing could be. Peeing a lot. The music I listened to at work today.

A mom came into work today with her toddler. She sat him on the counter and placed an order. I made her 15 color copies of a party flyer. Her toddler grabbed a bag of Skittles and started eating them. He shared the purple ones with me.

He dropped three into my hand. "Can I draw something?"

"Sure bud." I reached into the printed and pulled out two pieces of paper. All we had on the counter was a black pen, and two hi-ligthers. "This is all I got, can you make due with this?"

"Uh huh."

He pressed his face close to the paper and started drawing. Flexing the bend in his elbow, sighing and coughing. I handled other customers. Made more copies, faxed things, laminated somebody's diploma.

The toddler's mom walked over with her bag of cut flyers and scooped up her son. He adjusted his hat, tilting the brim to one side.

I closed some windows on the computer and started dusting the counter.

"I wear my hat like that, too." I pointed at the teddy bear wearing a football jersey on his hat.

He dropped his drawing on the counter and pointed at it.

"I might be back soon."

Door swung open, leaves rolled in onto the carpet. I put his drawing in my apron and went back to dusting.

He drew this:

It could be a lemon with the word it drawn on it. Or a recreation of Christ's crucifixion. It might be Panagea. It could be a football flying towards a diving receiver. Or a ghost's head. The wick of a candle blowing when a window closes. A computer mouse. A regular mouse with cirrhosis and no feet. It could be what the sun looks like when you look through one of the eclipse boxes. A blank headstone.

**

I drank a 44 ounce lemonade from White Castle today. Also two waters and some Vitamin Water. I've been peeing a lot. Take it for what you will.

Today at work, I listened to: Nas, KRS-One, Miles Davis, Rocky Votolato, Pavement, Pelican, Lupe Fiasco, and Beck. Today went from bad to good. More days should do that, only without the bad part.

It's November. Saddest song ever. I had a complete stranger critique my poem.

Yeah. Everything outside is dying and getting hard.  People get presents soon. Throats swell, turn pink. Kids will stand at the ends of their driveways and huddle with heads inward, waiting for busses in the dark.

80% of my clothes are for winter. All sweaters and jackets and long-sleeved shirts. I am going to wear these when I'm in Muncie this weekend. Hopefully there will be Herot and poems and other things.

**

I really don't know what the saddest song in the world is. I'd imagine the person who wrote it has no idea how sad it is. With the way things are going right now, I really don't want to think about sad songs. They'll just make my body ache and cause me to curl up under a blanket all day and not get anything done. 

**

So, I haven't had anyone critique my poetry or been in a workshop setting in a while. I found this forum where people post poems for mini-workshop sessions. I figured it would be nice to get a few things out there and have some other folks work on them. The fact that they were strangers was interesting: I mean.... you can't see their faces or expression. Different.

I posted one poem and the first response I got was terrible. The person completely ribbed my poem. Called it juvenile. Said it was introverted and that "it's a random pile of jotted stuff that only makes sense to yourself, with a few interesting images and ideas sprinkled in." I was accused of a feeble attempt to 'shock' my audience because I talked about organs and used the phrase 'dog dick red' to describe somebody's lips. I also 'insulted' people because there were two typos in the draft, and the fact that I brought something into a workshop environment .

Not going to lie, it was a bit disheartening. Don't get me wrong, that's what criticism is there for. It's there to address the various elements of a piece of literature, in hopes to give the author some insight on what can be improved on. But I honestly didn't see this person say one thing positive about the poem. They were hung up about punctuation. 

The last thing the person said was, "I hope you improve." What the fuck does that even mean? It kind of ruined my day. Right now, I don't feel good about my poems, and that usually doesn't happen. It makes me think my chapbook is worthless and the people who I sent it to and the few people that actually paid for it either didn't read it or hated it and want their three dollars back.

Damn.

Moving and thinking: how to get there

I see people who need help
and want to ignore them.
Offer help through a plain face,
the back of my head.
"Hey, I need some advice."
I want you to say this looking at the carpet
counting loose strands. Your voice
is the embodiment of the beginning of life.
Microscopic people eschewing
from adding body parts they won't need
for centuries. Change happening inside their bodies,
no one saying anything until their changes spill
from mouths like flooding rivers
doling out their waters in a field
that nourishes simply because
they have nowhere else to go.

"Why don't we make some pizza bites
and watch ESPN. I want the Lakers to win."
We'll watch tall men move
in long strides, flashes of yellow.
Yelling and screaming and people
exerting everything in their bodies
until they're just human-shaped
duffle bags carrying the things that move us.

Their insides are screaming
about a sore throat,
an abusive husband whose hand
moves slow like continents.
A lumbering gate,
tobacco can ring on his pocket.
I can look at your hands folded on your lap,
the way your shoulders dig into the couch
and know that you feel someone beating someone else
is wrong. You're wanting me to drop my head onto your shoulder
and tell you, "Nobody deserves that," over and over again.

The truth is, I look at beatings
as energy moving from mass to mass,
not a fragmented conversation,
a misunderstanding, a broken home,
or a trip to a vacant field where people
scream and shove until they're too tired to
exist. Naked trees will bend towards the sedan
like parents leaning over to kiss their child's head.
Birds are grooming themselves in the dark
and the wind will move fast enough to make
eyes tear but you still can't hear it.
It's just something that needs to happen,
unless you can think of another way
to release everything at once.

Other times,
I want to invite them over to my house.
We can sit in my room on the floor.
Shuffle decks of cards
and play three games of solitaire at once.
Hey, how about mentioning suicide?
Lean back against the wall
and paint it with what makes you think.

Ten things I want immediately

I.

I want someone to pay me to sit inside a room

with a shallow ceiling and no windows

and bang rocks together like I'm trying to start the first fire.

II.

A cloud needs to open up

like a child digging through the silverware draw,

brandishing a piece of Wolfgang Puck cutlery

and cutting along the seam of a throw pillow,

pouring waves of water into my grass

that hasn't been nourished in weeks.

Dandelions can sprout up, for all I care.

III.

Be the ultimate something for someone.

Maybe cup my hands

and let warm water fill the hypothetical flesh cup

and they can drink from hands in desperation.

Panting breaths like a dog with heart disease,

with a colon clogged by undigested kibble

and pine tree thistle.

Their tounge can lap the drops from my finger tips.

I wouldn't even want a thank you

just a look with tearing eyes would be nice.

IV.

Explain something I don't know

to somebody who knows.

Crawl into a professors lap and

nurture their soul.

Adequately explain something layered

using long words.

I want them to stroke my head

and rub the dead skin behind my ears

and say that's good

or I like this over and over again.

V.

Get overwhelmed with a case of

the gotta'-see-ems'. I want to run

through a crowded mall

and dig through trash cans,

spilling the pretzel wrappers

over the rim that's stained 

with rootbeer float.

There will be mothers sitting in tandem

around a fountainhead of a frog

and toddler leaning over

spitting water in the shape of an X.

I'll rifle through their bags

just because I need to see presents:

the action figured forged from crimson and alloy.

The gun that shoots plastic darts,

the roadster filled with blonde dolls in 

denim skirts. Sweaters, button-down stuffs

I just need to see it because it's something.

VI.

Run full-speed at a sliding glass window

and get Frankenstein stitched-up.

It needs to feel like a movie

I'll have the feeling you get when 

you're laying in the hospital and the IV 

in your arm pumps something clear

into the bend of your elbow.

Suddenly, everything feels wrong

and the bottom of your stomach feels like 

someone blue sitting alone in a diner

drinking something cold with a straw.

VII.

Tape each leaf back onto a tree

so they won't get cold in winter. 

Drive by, see me outside wearing layers.

See my lips dog dick red from

November wind inside a valley.

VIII.

Down an entire six-pack of

whatever sounds good at the time.

I want to clutch the can like

it's a husband's hand while giving birth.

I'd like to do this in public.

On a street corner, spinning

and pirouetting around a stop sign,

screaming limpdick at everyone who walks by.

IX.

Provide insurance information

to a couple outside their house while

the stucco smolders and glows like a child's toy.

Their tones won't change, and I'll get louder

when wood starts to splinter,

turn black and fall to the ground in heaps.

I want to sell something 

I know nothing about.

X.

I want to be out in the ocean

in a boat just large enough to hug me.

The boat is empty. I would never get hungry.

Dreaming about food would

quell my stomach.

Piles of steaming bread,

corn. Made from frail, pale hands.

Blue would stretch on forever.

I would go until something stopped me.

A fleck of dirt and sand.

The night of sleep I had. Human-sized birdbath. Outkast. Pilgrimage.

I hate nights of sleep where it feels like you're just laying in a ball and there are voices in a dark room and whatever bodies accompany the voices. They're rooting through your dirty laundry, sniffing the heels of your socks. They're making noise with heavy shoes and talking. All night people are talking and you hear them the whole time. When you wake up, you don't remember a word they said. Kind of like a dream you had 30 seconds before you wake up: you know you just had one, but can't remember any of it.

In turn, I didn't have a good night's sleep. But that's nothing breakfast can't fix:

It's pretty much 150% B-vitamins and guarana. The later really isn't good for you, but whatever. Tastes good with an onion bagel & cream cheese.

**

I've been thinking about going to a place out on Interstate 65 in Clarksville called The Concrete Lady. Not just because that's a super-metal name for a business, but because they sell huge concrete sculptures that people can buy. A half-dozen gorillas making the Godzilla-on-top-of-the-Empire-State-Building pose. Rhinos, zombies, small Volkswagen Beetles, children, angels, farmers. You can turn your garden or front yard into a lifeless civilization of concrete moulds painted tumbleweed tan and green.

My request is to get a birdbath large enough so I could use it to bathe myself. I'd place it in my yard next to the apple tree and clean myself every morning. People could drive by and not be ashamed of anything. They'd drive to The Concrete Lady and by themselves a birdbath, and everyone in Floyd County would start bathing in their yards so shame would disappear. Problems with money, spousal abuse, neglect, addictions, anguish would all disappear because you'd ride by on your bike and the inconsequentials would be gone. Mothers pushing their toddlers in strollers would only see flesh and hair. Bathing would be a second birth. 

**

This is my mother fucking jam.

I've said it like a million times: you need it. A map isn't necessary. Just start somewhere and end up somewhere else.

**

I'll be coming to Muncie soon. Probably November 22nd and 23rd. Those who are there, plan accordingly. Beer. Poems. Hip-hop.

The opposite of knowing might be guessing

This man in front of me on the bus
has loud thoughts.
The kind of man
that would cut down a tree
so he could see nature better.
He was in jail, once.
For whatever.
For stealing copper wire and using it
to make deck furniture, maybe.
He beat someone,
stole their dress shoes,
he ate a cheeseburger
and drew circles with ketchup
on the tater tots
then left without paying.

With a voice of sandpaper
meeting a calloused, gloveless hand
splitting logs with an axe that's sharpened daily.
He dresses in brown.
Brown cap, brown socks and undershirts.
Somtimes yellow-stitched brown denim
nothing designer.
Mows large yards with Honda pushmowers,
pretending the plastic grass flap
was a salad shooter nourishing civilizations
beneath the blades of grass.
Tiny people dine
on browning iceberg lettuce
and slivers of cabbage
with no dressing.
The man looks forward.
Rests his head on the glass.
He stares at things fifty stories high
and when the bus sulks past,
glass turns into silver oceans of faces.

Michael Crichton. Chapbook banter. G1. Talking with customers.

It's always sad when somebody dies, especially a writer. So it's definitely sad to hear Michael Crichton has died at the age of 66. Truthfully, I never read much Crichton. Not because I didn't like him or anything... I always seemed to browse by his stuff for casual reading. I did read Jurassic Park, though, and part of Rising Sun.

Sad.


**


I might but putting some of my chapbooks in my mom's shop for sale/free/people just need to read it. Frightening idea. I sent a copy of my chapbook to Muncie pal Dan Bailey. When I sent it, I thought about the day in Mark Neely's poetry class when Dan and I spent 75 straight minutes doing mad libs while everyone else listened to a poetry video. Such cool shit.


Did you get that? Let me mail you my chapbook. Hide it in your top drawer like your stash, like your girlfriend hides her electric blue vibrator from your impotence. I want this chapbook to become the center of your universe.


**


I usually could care less about cellphones. They're like computers: every month, there's something new, faster, silmmer, fancier, complete with more buttons. But the stars must've been aligned in some galaxy because I renewed my contract and after fucking around with the TMobile Google G1, I bought it.

Bitchin'? Yeah. It's one of those phones that you take into the can when you know it'll take you 20+ minutes to empty your bowels. Email, texting, pictures, music, everything.

**

Speaking of Michael Crichton, a customer today at work was actually the one who informed me. He was carrying a dingy paperback copy of Jurassic Park and cracked some third-rate joke about selling it on eBay, since it'll be worth something now.

Oh? I wrote the guy off. He told me Crichton was dead. Cancer. I always get this anxious feeling when somebody talks about the recently desceased. Then the guy started talking about Crichton's writing and it was the best critique ever. This man wasn't pretending he had all the answers.

In fact, he had none. He just talked about how the writing made him feel. "The kitchen scene in Jurassic Park made my wife and I die. We surely thought those kids would be dead." I started thinking about the scene in the movie (the book's rendition wasn't clear for me) and I could see the velocaraptors breathing on the kids faces, and their skin was flying back like when you're going down a hill on your bike. The corners of your eyes get dry, your feet go limp, trees get shorter and squattier.

And CGI dinosaurs made this man feel that way.

New president. Finished chapbook. Dr. Dre.

So, we have a new president. Fantastic. Although, I'm pretty sure you discovered that news elsewhere. Either way, I'm excited. Everyone should be excited. Yesterday was a fantastic day.

**

That's my completed chapbook. There's a pile of them sitting next to my bed in a shoebox. I printed 22 last night (all I had time for) and will finish the rest today at work. Some people have contacted me about getting a copy. I'll mail it out today. 

**

Journey with me into the mind of a maniac

Doomed to be a killer,

since I came out the nutsack

-Dr. Dre

That's what I'm talking about.

I'm creating something right now.

A chapbook. I'm printing my chapbook this very second. Pages are spilling into the print catch, and I'm watching them pile up like debt or presents on a kitchen island. At this very second, I have a literary boner, and it feels weird because I hate fellating my own ego.

Either way, if you'd like me to send you a copy, please email me your address, or just post it in a comment. I'll ship them out quickly. If you get a copy, please blurb about it. I'll make a more worthwhile post later tonight.

If you find me in a coma, please don't shave my beard.

I feel like a bag of dicks right now. 

Like I'm trapped in a damp Aldi bag 

with other people who may never please someone again.

Right now I'm two-hundred feet in the air

and black dots move around below me 

like Etch-a-Sketch dust:

clumps and circles connecting lines

making angles. 

In the air 

but looking through windows.

Through four distinct panes of 

yellowing glass.

When I look outside, my window is 

a jersey-knit black sheet 

with barking dogs and a woman dragging 

a full trash can behind it.

I can listen to everything like its nothing

when it is something,

even if it's a magazine with

smudge pages, 

or someone's photograph of strangers

or a sketch of some bridge with cars

parked bumper-to-bumper,

making industrial noise.

Fuel fumes. Metal tips

belch petroleum clouds

into circling cylinders.

Still black outside.

Shih Tzus chattering teeth

and pawing at grass damp

with sagging clouds. 

Inside a black room

anything could be written on the wall.

The wall could be painted any color,

the writing could be any color

and when you sleep,

I can imagine you paying tiny men

to paint the inside of your eyelids

so they could be any color but black.

So when you find me asleep somewhere:

at work in the breakroom with my head

pressed on a printer manual.

With my apron untied and pens at my feet.

With my boss rubbing my shoulder

the way my mother rubs shoulders,

you can just let me sleep.

A coma, sure. A coma.

Sometimes they're fine.

Man-made coma to avoid pain

from extreme injury.

Please pretend I was thrown from a horse

or had something inside my heart grow

into a colony of bad things

and those bad things traveled 

with small tank treads

through my veins

into the back of my eyes.

The tank treads pushing hair follicles

out of my cheeks, and into the shapes

and textures of bird nests in the beginning of fall.

You can ask all you want

Can you hear me?,

in order to gauge my consciousness.

Or wipe the drool from my lips,

or rotate my lifeless body to

rid my thighs and hips of red sores.

Just don't shave the only sign of life

I have.

Two things coming together near a mountain.

I'm trying so hard to write a poem right now and nothing is happening and I think that's bull shit. Today football was on, and I watched it until twenty seconds ago.

The Bears won. My dad made a good face. The face somebody makes when they win a a really cool umbrella as a door prize.

There was more enthusiasm about my chapbook yesterday. I wish there was a picture taken of my face. There have been a lot of good faces in my life lately.

***

I love Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Bam. Watch it.

Thinking up band and song names is fun. People are onions.

True statement. Yesterday, I got home from work and wrote songs. A few. I opened a blank Word file and just started typing. Some of the songs were about dogs, I wrote one about a mountain. They probably suck. I mean, it's hard to judge a song just by the lyrics. Tonight I'm going to write a song, or maybe a short story or poem, about being the fire fighter who has to drive from the back of the truck. You know, the part with the huge ass ladder that's steered by the two tires. That guy's probably really lonely. Could you imagine driving to a fire, knowing that somebody's entire life could be burning, and you have no way to express those feelings with anyone else? Fuck talking on their headsets... I want to see people's emotions.

Last week, I made a post on my Volkswagen club's site about my chapbook, just to see if anyone would be interested in getting a copy. Within two days, seven people said they wanted a copy. This is twice as many people who wanted my last chapbook. For something like this, 50 percent is a great thing.

So anyway... writing a song takes like five minutes, maybe. All I could think about was what to call the songs. You can write a shitty song, but if the title is alright, people are still going to give it a few listens before they forget the song is on their iTunes playlist.

I want to think of the most perfect band name or song title ever. Shark Dick. Clapping Thighs. Who knows?

**

This is a fantastic idea, but I'm probably the 14,000th person to think about it. People aren't onions, though, because if they were, I'd sprinkle them on my chilli and go to town.

Super Scrabble. Gettin' up. Weekend alone. Thoughts on blog communities.

If you even give one microscopic shit about Scrabble, this story will make you gird your loins for love. The ultimate game. Ruthian power. Michael Cresta blowing your mind like Danny and the Miracles. That kind of stuff makes me super jealous as an avid Scrabble player. I think my high score at this point is 330.

**

I love A Tribe Called Quest and anything associated with them. Naturally, when Q-Tip releases a solo album, my feet start to sweat. I hear sounds, almost like squirrels in my roof or a Cavalier's starter clicking over in the same tone as a .44 magnum's hammer blasting out a round. It's out November 4th. First single can be heard/watched here. 

**

I buy a lot of things I never use. There's a stack of year-old DVDs I haven't watched yet. There will be time this weekend to explore those movies and my writing. Since I finished my undergraduate studies, time for movies has disappeared. I saw W. last weekend with Brianne and two of our friends, and it was fantastic. Although, I'm an Oliver Stone fan, so there's some bias. Either way, there aren't too many popular filmmakers who can create figures and situations that allow an audience to remember that we all live through times that are facsimile. Lust, health, sadness, dying, disappointment, providence. 

What pisses me off more than anything about living in our country in the time that I do is that everyone blames problems on the president. They blame it on politicians, on lobbyists and bankers and the wealthy and immigrants. This movie should help people remember that George Bush is a human being. He wants to please his parents, he wants to do things that he can be proud of. It's great to know that when it comes down to it, he probably doesn't give a fuck. He just wants to get things done.  He's everyman in the universe, only he wears a suit or button-down shirt everyday.

Whatever man, enough about politics. I'm going to watch Leon the Professional, Inland Empire and maybe something about kids this weekend. I might also watch Ron Artest's fists blur into the side of a complete stranger's face. That video will never get old.

**

All I do now is think about writing and scares my muscles stiff then forces me to close my eyes and wish that someday I'll have a job that requires me to wear a brown suit instead of an apron and blue, cross-stitched polo. I read a lot of blogs. I look at the blog rolls that slide down the sides of blogs and notice a lot of the same names. Tao Lin. Noah Cicero. Sam Pink. Etc.

I place value in names. It stems from my love of sports, I think. If I notice somebody's name and they say something about me, my head gets lighter. I listen. Their critique of me matters, regardless of what it pertains to. It could be about my socks, how much gas is left in the tank of my car, grooming techniques. For about a year now, I haven't been able to shake this desire of wanting ridiculous blog traffic. I want 100 people a day visiting my blog. I want stupid comments about beer and handstands. I want to be so busy with this blog that I forget to sleep or clean my sink.

What I'm saying is pretty shallow. I feel like a twelve-year-old popping zits in front of friends for a laugh. I think this is the first time in a while that I've questioned my ability as a writer, and that scares me. Not scaring me like I keep having dreams where I'm writing something and my laptop comes alive and gnaws through my knuckles, or I start typing sentences and my eyes bleed. 

Feeling no-good is terrible. An urge to sit and write for twenty hours and create a book or manuscript that would solve hunger problems should walk through my door and sit in my lap. I would hand-feed this urge Little Debbie treats and drill its cavities soon after. Together we might make something fantastic or nothing at all.

I don't know how to feel about writing right now. My chapbook is done, though, and will be printed November 3rd. First run is 50 copies.

Something tangible. Kevin Garnett. Scrabble addict.

Yes, that's a chapbook. That's my completed chapbook. There's a copy of my first tangible draft. Not a manuscript, but a book that you can hold and read. I'll have the final prints done in abouta week. Only a few more minor changes will be made: saddle stitched spine, cardstock cover and 100% cotton pages. When I say you need this chapbook, you truly need this chapbook. I want you to hold this in your hand like a wad of twenties or cock. 

I've posted this chapbook up on several other sites. Others are interested. I'm still not entirely sure how many I'm going to print maybe 25. 

**

Kevin Garnett is hungry for flesh. He's also the inventor of the phrase 'QWERTY.' Maybe, maybe not. I do know, however, that Kevin Garnett is the embodiment of basketball. I want you to leave a comment talking about your favorite sports moment. 

**

My girlfriend has me addicted to Scrabble. I'll play anyone. Even Kevin Garnett. He'll eat my ear after I beat him three times in a row.

Desperation sports. Brain in a window. More World Series.

Sometimes sports casters say things that are so beautiful, astounding and perfect that it makes my stomach burn and my feet feel like they're no longer there. For example, I'm watching the Monday Night Football game due to there being a rain delay in the World Series, and a player for the Titans just fumbled the ball and a Colts player recovered it.

But Mike Tirico, one of the most affluent, smooth sports casters around, said, "Oh no! Alge Crumpler lost the football.... there's a scrum. Recovered by Indianapolis!" First off... sorry for using two exclamation points so close together, you're only supposed to use eight in your hole life. That aside, I love how the situation wasn't drowned in football lingo. Anyone who might flip through the channels and watch a pile of guys fight for a brown leather bean rolling on artificial grass could understand what's going on outside of a fumble.

Alge Crumpler momentarily lost his livelihood. It's like a part of his soul was ripped from his body, and 21 other men had the chance to touch it. They had a chance to pull it towards their heart. Bodies turn into weapons. Into cruise missiles burning smoke onto a blue canvas, then crashing into banks of earth with their fragments displaced. 

I made a post a few days ago where I stated that I hate when academics downplay the artistic integrity of sports. A night like tonight is exactly why. Two extremely important games are going on. Poets, authors, academics, theorists, etc., need to remember that you win and lose in writing. In theory, in rhetoric. Sometimes, you write a poem, and the journal or magazine you send it to is the Patriots, or the 1985 Bears or the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. You're choked into submission. But there are other times where you throw a bomb from the warning track, you complete a screen pass with twenty seconds left and run as fast as your body lets you. Your limbs start feeling like immovable mass, lungs burning through from invisible jabs to the gut. Somebody likes your poem. You have a fantastic conversation about a story you read, or you go to somebody's reading and it's fantastic. You might win. I hope you win.  

Also, poet James Wright wrote a fantastic poem about football. It's linked on a blog here. The first time I read it, it felt like I forgot that what I was doing was reading. Everything just felt like emotions and nausea. It was one of those things that all humans could understand, even if we lacked the ability to convey the situation through language.

I want you to start looking at sports differently. Go onto YouTube or something, and check out classic games. It'll take you five seconds to find them, and your entire body will feel weightless.

**

I wrote the phrase "brain in a window,"  and I took the statement literally. Seeing a brain in a window would scare me, but not as much as seeing a heart. My mom told me a story once hen I was younger about a night in a hospital she worked in where there was a bucket of brains sitting in a room by itself all night. It's probably not true. 

Could you imagine seeing that, though? Imagining a brain working gives me anxiety. It seems impossible. Like when you have somebody explain how a car runs or how my laptop lets me type this sentence. 

I keep thinking about things that I'll never be able to understand. Always meeting them with great anxiety. Yikes.

**

The game was suspended tonight due to rain. 2-2 in the sixth inning. I'm terribly excited. It was the kind of game that I want to watch with my friends that don't enjoy sports because the game had so many wild things happen that weren't normal.

Things that get you pumped. Tons 'o links. Yes, I talked about sandwiches, not Blondie, in this post.

Man, one thing I absolutely hate is being forced to try something new. Let's say you're at Steak 'n Shake with some dudes, and you run to the bathroom right before the server comes up to take your order. You're in the bathroom for a while, and when you come back, there's some sandwich sitting at your place at the table that you've never had before.

So you're thinking, "Man, fuck this sandwich. It looks awful." Friends douse bread with condiments. Kids across from your table knock over salt shakes and grind the bottom of their cups on little mountains. You're the only one not eating. You sip at your shake and spin the straw around the ring of strawberry paste towards the bottom.

"Dude, you're wasting money on that sandwich? I'll eat it." One of your friends loosens one notch on his belt and grabs at your sandwich, tearing off a piece at the bottom.

You watch his hand, as if it were some alpha male gripping a pup in its jaws or the Earth opening at a rounded corner, sucking half a city into shallow dirt. "Here, just try it."

Tear off a piece, grind it into pulp. Lettuce, some red onion, peppers, some thick cajun sauce. Two or three different meats. It's delicious. As soon as your throat pushes the lump down, the larger piece is hanging from your buddy's lips. I guess now you can order your usual cheeseburger with extra mustard and a side of cheese dip.

So maybe next time you won't be so antsy about trying something new. I mean, I'm still going to be antsy. I hate change. I usually hate new food, poems, cars, weather, windows, whatever. It all freaks me the fuck out. What's awesome is when you try something new and it punches you so hard in the face, you have to call your mom and have her remind you that you're her baby.

These things pump me:

Awesome. Rad. Bitchin'. Sweet. Better than most. Don't say I didn't warn you, this is awesome.

I'm going to watch the rest of the World Series in my room and sleep for a long time since I have tomorrow off. 

Cover teaser for 'Simpleton'. Graduate school. Etc.

Here's the cover for Simpleton. About 90% done with editing. Wanna read the manuscript before it's published? Let me know and I'll email you a copy.

I hope you're looking at this cover the same way my dog does a piece of peppered turkey that's fallen out of my sandwich onto her paws. Trust me, I want you to read my words. Nothing makes me happier. I don't even want to know you read my words, I just know when people do. It's my motherly sense. I sit at work creasing people's brochures, and then my balls start to hurt, like when your girlfriend mounts you, but goes down your thighs too much and pushes them between your thighs. Stomach drops like change into a toll booth, but your face still says sensual, not ruptured testicle. My eyes water, mouth dries like field drought.

"Somebody's reading my blog/poems/someplace I've been published. Woah."

Everyone needs this feeling.

**

I've looked into a few graduate schools for Fall 2009. It scares me. I have some schools in mind, like the ones I would eat a glass smoothie to obtain an acceptance letter from their English department.

University of Louisville, Indiana University, other places.

**

Watch Game 3 of the World Series tonight. Evan Longoria and Chase Utley will thank you if you do. Heck, they might even thank you with a homerun, and that would just kick ass.

Fuck medication. This doctor understands that the food you put in your body is more important. And everyone always makes fun of me for not taking medication when I'm sick

People I didn't know wrote poetry. Not flushing toilets. Fellating my own ego.

You remember Boy Meets World, right? Everyone's favorite sitcom on ABC's TGIF. So since I'm a Wikipedia addict, I started reading through bios on some of my favorite shows from when I was a bit younger, and found out Shawn (real name Rider Strong) has actually had some poetry published. Read it here.

I mean, I wouldn't put him up there with some of my favorite poets, but you better believe when I was a kid stuffing my face with cheddar flavored popcorn, avoiding the crushed, nasty burnt bits of seed and black at the bottom of the bowl, then chasing it with a mouthful of Surge, it never came across that Rider Strong actually wrote poetry. That'd be like thinking Diana Ross was a professional wrestler, or Peter O' Toole was one of the original B-boys in one of the five bouroughs.

The urge to critique Rider Strong's poetry is blowing my mind like an axe kick to the teeth by Prince Albert. Er, the wrestler. Not the dick ring.

Fuck that. But either way... Rider Strong writes poetry. I want to do some sick workshops and drink pale ale with him, the aforementioned Peter O' Toole, and DJ Kool Hurc.

**

I can't stand when I walk into a bathroom and see piss or poop into a toilet. It turns my stomach. I want to print a huge sign that says, "Every bathroom isn't your kindergarten bathroom." Every guy would read it and be like, "That sign is so right. I'm going to flush this fucking toilet."

**

So, I think other people need to read my blog. It'd make me feel great. Like running up at a 90 degree angle Fred Astaire style. Like being the first cro-man to start a fire with sticks, or somebody's mom making a bad ass pan of brownies, and you just happened to get off the bus just in time to get the first one. Uh, yeah. Feel free to link my words. If you do, post up a comment or something.

I'm listening to this at work:

When people you know are far away and alone

I'm alone in a living room
looking through spiderweb dew
tearing down foggy glass. Dogs are panting
on porches, licking the pink pads of their feet.
Bowls filled with mushy kibble,
sons taking out the trash. They're blowing
pretend smoke rings and pushing their fingers
through the middle.

My wife called me earlier. She's still in a hospital
with her sister. We talked for about fifteen minutes.
I coughed to redirect conversation from her sister
to the dirty pile of clothes on the bed,
the scuff marks in the enterance way.
She left a pair of dull sterling silver earings
on the corner table and I spun them
around my index finger when she sighed.

These couch cushions feel like burlap against my thighs.
My cell phone is still open in my lap. CNN on mute.
Kids are still outside hurling bags of coffee grounds,
tampons, cans and banana peels into huge blue
rectangles. A couple is across the street walking
a malteese, laughing about work or something unimportant.
The last thing I remember you saying on the phone
was a brief description of how your sister
tried to bargain disease for housekeeping favors.

"She's so alone in here," I heard you drag your fingernail
against the keypad," all she's doing is crying. She
can't even see that I'm here. This is the loneliest place."
No more kids outside throwing away trash.
No more collies growling like idling trucks.
I watch a newcasters mouth move
with nothing coming out
and this living room becomes the lonliest place.
No one is here to bargin with
or bargin for.

More blurbing. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Songs.

Sam Pink blogs. He writes and breathes and lives and sleeps behind four walls. He does things just like you and me. Which means when Sam Pink is kind enough to send you a chapbook called YUM YUM I CAN'T WAIT TO DIE, you read it.

His work is exciting, loose. Sam Pink's collection is dangerous. It's the thing I found in a shoebox underneath my bed. It's covered in dust, it's still tightly wrapped in plastic, breathing in choking gasps, spitting out vowels and other things growing in dumpsters. A great suggestion would be to not show Sam Pink's work to your dad or anyone else's dad, for that matter. Mainly because, your dad is a square, but more so because coming home and finding his defragmented torso bits exploded all over his La-Z-Boy because of the sheer destruction of YUM YUM I CAN'T WAIT TO DIE would depress you for weeks. All you would do is sit in your room, eat popcorn and listen to Natalie Cole.

This chapbook is a series of micro-narratives. Maybe fables, maybe introspective narrative. Ultimately, this is a collection of statements. Examine them and apply them to your life. While I read these narratives, I couldn't help but apply them to an academic setting. 

Reading Sam Pink's work makes me want to call it my own and bring it into a class so girls can yell about nothing making sense, and guys can say cool things like, "Yeah, I get this. This is alright. Great line breaks." Then I can say what the fuck. The professor would be real slick and move his glasses up and down his nose a few times and mumble "Woahhhhh, woah. I like what's going on here," and the ambiguity of that statement will rock my world because I'll have no idea who's saying what or what is even going on here.

Follow the links, read the words, enjoy the moment. It's that simple.

**

Could you imagine being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? 

Socks? Check. Sweet shorts? Check. Mad hair? Yeah. Wikipedia says Kareem is, "a successful coach, author and actor," and when I read this, I say to myself, "Yeah, actin' like a bad ass!" Plus, Kareem is a master of figurative language. Proof seen here:

"It's like when you're seasick and you have that feeling in your stomach. 'With a migraine, that feeling is in your head.''

How 'bout you suck on that poetic dick, Dan Brown?

**

All of these are worth watching. They all rule/shred/get your head bobbing, etc. I think this idea came from Dan Bailey's post from a few weeks ago where he put up a bunch of cool shit he liked in high school. Man, I loved being into music in high school. You didn't give a shit about anything, it just mattered if music got you so pumped up that you wanted to punch through your closet and rip all of your nice collared shirts.

Among others.

Football. New reads.

When people tell me they don't like watching sports, I can never understand it. Ever. You need to watch sports. You need to go to stadiums and drink six dollar domestic beers and eat cheesesteaks that're simply piles of shaved steak thrown into open-face hotdog buns.

You need to be drunk, cheering, wearing a t-shirt in December. You need to be cheering for men running around with steam rolling out from the sides of their helmets. If you've never been to a football game, go to one. It doesn't even matter what team you root for. Just go.

On that note... I root for these guys:

And this guy is my absolute favorite:

**

I've added a few new people to my list of people with blogs that you should read. It's Sunday, and you're probably watching football, so during the next commercial, read them. Everyone has interesting things to say.

Which reminds me, if you read my blog and want to link me, please feel free to do so. I'd love to have more people reading it. 

Update on Simpleton. I shouldn't be working today. Lists.

We're absolutely dead at work. Dead. I have nothing to do. I'm working on Simpleton right now. Just got the cover finished, I like it a lot more than the original. I'm working on page formatting right now. Either way, I'd like to have it done by the end of the month. No idea how many copies I'm going to make. You want one? Tell me. You want to blurb about it? Do it. I can send you a .PDF of the manuscript. You want to ignore it? Sweet. Go make me some brownies.

**
Saturday's weren't made for working. Unless you drive a cab or you deliver babies. Everyone else should be outside doing yardwork or running in the woods or fishing. Those are the things that make Saturdays productive.

**
I used to make lists for everything I did. I need to start doing that again.

Etc. below:

Congrats to Alexi for his spread in PerformanceVW magazine.

Sometimes I feel like this.

We were meant to fuck.

I could tell,
just by the way I clutched your breast in my fingers
the way someone clutches a five dollar bill
blowing across a convenience store parking lot.
We sat at a sports bar.
Two empty stools between us.
I slid you a glass of gin,
then another.
I remember saying,"You looked thristy,"
but I didn't look at you. My eyes
were fixed on a high school football jersey,
reading sribbled handwriting and the scores
for a handful of games.

We talked in short, choppy sentences. Your
hands were thin, you were a nail biter.
After 11, we ordered pizza, extra green peppers.
I ate the small corner pieces.
Later, my jaw felt heavy.
Like cinder block bones, like a dry felt-tip marker.

During last calls, I asked if you wanted to come home with me.
"Sure," you slid a cardigan no one arm and walked towards the door,
"That's worth two free drinks."
I'm glad you didn't complain that my passenger's seat was broken,
and that the heat didn't work.
We had our head on each other's shoulders
walking up the stairs, leaning against the wall.
I used every key I had twice before
we fell into my living room. The front door stayed cracked open.
No lights on in the hall.
You leaned over me on the floor, undid my belt.
Tugged at me belt loops.
"Give me five minutes."
You kicked over your purse walking to the bathroom.
It was way too easy for you to unzip your dress drunk.

"Is this a rape kit in your purse?"
I rifled through loose pennies and cigarettes
and pictures of dogs and turtles.
"Yes, it happens sometimes."
You came out of the bathroom in just heels.
Both of our bodies were warm.
We scoured and kissed sloppy and made
noise in a room that needed white noise.
When you sat on my thighs,
I couldn't help but look back over at your pruse
with its innards spilled on the floor.
A rape kit in a ziplock bag,
dirty change, lipstick with smudges on the cap,
people's phone numbers and napkins.
Things like this weren't supposed to happen
until you grabbed my dick the way somebody's dick
is supposed to be grabbed.
We crawled onto the sofa and rocked
it against the wall. Frames fell onto my head
and we didn't stop.

Then it was over. I felt like a teenager
pulling at the hair on his wrist.
The teenager chewing the inside of a retainer.
You climbed off my waist and turned on
some rerun of Real World/Road Rules Challenge,
watching it until your eyes closed.
I left the TV on
and watched our shadow move on the wall.
Your leg twitched and I finally felt
like I could fall asleep.