I'm sitting here listening to my dad and his brother talk about stuff, and it's beautiful. I know that's a really generic statement that doesn't really mean anything. Knowing what my dad and his siblings have went through over the past 18 months, and hearing them talk about things is just really beautiful.

Primus is good.

Very good.

I'm listening to Pork Soda, and it's a great album. It's weird when I listen to my iPod while I ride my bike to work or class, I find myself listening to the same few albums. Like it's traveling music or something.

Pork Soda isn't traveling music! It's "Go and relax" music. There's a lot more jamming on this album, and Les Claypool's riffs are really creepy and virtuosic.  You should listen to it/buy it.

The inside and outside of the Earth is burning.

It's hot outside

and the sun is making people do crazy things.

I'm sitting inside with an old Carrier fan's

blades spinning fast enough to turn into one large blade.

But the air isn't cold, it isn't even warm. It's hot. 

The vinyl is sticking to my thighs and it takes

twice as long to lick the salt from each finger

on my left hand. My undershirt is turning a pastel yellow

from sweat.  A glass of flat cola

sits stagnant like dirty bath water 

I'm waiting for a brownout.

There's an apartment complex across the street

and all the windows have drawn grey shades

and mini-blinds. Some kind of terrier 

with a cream colored face runs hobbled circles 

around a fire hydrant,

a roman candle burning in between his jaws.

Kids are playing hopscotch and skipping rope

with ropes that're as red as their cheeks. 

Mrs. Hampton, the woman who owns 

the fruit stand two blocks down, 

waters a potted fern's wilting stems 

and her arm flab shakes when she moves the hose.

People are on the roof flying kites

yelling at the ice cream man who's probably parked

on the opposite street, reading a Sports Illustrated

and chewing on the end of a straw. The kites move

just like the dog: with heavy feet. A gust 

bends trees while their leaves turn over

onto their lighter green side. I remember learning

in grammar school that this means it'll rain soon.

The clouds roll over each other 

with gray overlapping white and black,

what I'd imagine the layers of Earth look like

from the inside,

churning and hardening like an experiment.

I lean my head an inch from the fan blades

and think if life was a movie

this'd be the part where people scream.

Good news

I got an email today from the editor from the SNReview. They accepted one of my poems for their Spring/Summer print and online issues. 

Nice. Keep writing, you poets.

Daily Operation

I think it'd be a really good idea if you purchased this album.  The Chronic can't handle this. 1992's best hip-hop album.

There are people.

I'm sitting here in my apartment thinking about people. The TV is the only light on. It looks like what I'd imagine seeing a galaxy implode on itself, if I saw it close up. Cars are driving by outside. Some are louder than others. Some are rusted sedans with trunks strapped down with bungee cords, some are trucks with open pipes dumping pollution underneath their beds, and some are black motorcycles that sound like jets.

There was a commercial just on where a girl was playing golf with some old guy and she kicked his ass. Although this is unrelated, it made me think about people. And there are a lot of people, six billion of them. More specifically, I guess, people I know. I don't know why, but I've been thinking a lot about people today and dying. Again, two fairly unrelated things. People die, and that's about as rudimentary of a comparison between dying and people you can make. 

What's weird is that through all the funerals I've had to go through over the past year and a half, death kinda washed over me. I remember looking at my grandmother at her funeral, and I couldn't think about death. It literally could not happen. My cousins and I would stand around cracking fart jokes, or go into the waiting area and talk about video games. It was like a family reunion, only with a dead person in the other room.

Seeing a dead animal usually freaks me out a lot more than seeing a violent crime on TV, even if it's a real death being reported on the news, not something in a movie. Driving past a deer without its head or a dog with a smashed torso always freaks me out, because that's death. A funeral is something after death, meaning death isn't final. Then the person is put on your mantle if they're in an urn, or sprinkled in a forest or something, or maybe they're just buried underground. At Granny's funeral, she was buried next to my grandpa, but his headstone was covered up by the giant fucking thing that lowers the casket into the final resting place.

For an animal or a piece of roadkill, they're just dead. There was no fanfare. Sometimes, animals will get buried by other animals, but that's instinct. I remember my ex-girlfriend said something when we were in high school about dogs walking away from their owners to die so they won't upset them. That's always been one of the scariest things to think about: having an instinct that tells you to abandon everything and die alone so nobody can find you.

What I have trouble with his the weird dichotomy of human and animal instincts. Creepy science types let people know that our "major difference" between other mammals is our ability to communicate VIA language. A lot of the other characteristics we have are parallels. Death is this odd juxtaposition of everything, though.  I've told my parents if I pass before either or both of them do, I want to be cremated and have my remains put into an intake manifold from a Volkswagen or something... for the simple fact that I can't handle tons of people crying. I'd much rather have people stare at "Dust-form Joey" instead of my pruny, pale face and cry. Plus, the thought of rotting and decomposing underground is just scary.

I hate having the belief, "You die and that's it." It's a little uncharacteristic for me because I would usually think of the most asinine scenario, like one I talked about with a friend where I'd just fly out in space on a rocket ship, going in one direction, cackling and becoming increasingly more insane. Just going out into space forever. As cool as it sounds, it's not all that realistic. Which makes the thought of just.... being asleep forever really crappy and depressing. It trumps this theory I came up with as a kid where in death, the last thing you see is burned in your mind, only you see it upside-down.

Moving in a few weeks just makes me think about "Muncie dying," and some of the people that I've met here. I might never see them again. Hopefully, I'll be able to think about bad ass things instead of .... my apartment being upside down forever. That would suck.

What the fuck am I talking about? Woah.

Trouble with animal crackers

I bought a box of animal crackers

from a vending machine. When I ripped 

open the flap, the inside read:

Do not eat if seal is broken.

I licked frosting of a zebras stomach

and chewed through a giraffe's neck

so he wouldn't feel awkward at parties. 

Me and two apes talked 

about grooming techniques.

I found the seal, broken in half

near the bottom.

His flippers rested on his severed torso.

I probably broke him in half

when I threw the box onto the 

conveyer belt in a hurry.

Google was no help

in giving me tips to save him.

My first three hits were

the British musician.

I clicked on his homepage

and he sang "Don't Cry"

but I couldn't help myself.

The seal was broken

and I felt sick to my stomach.

The Bulls are officially on the clock

Check out my ESPN sports blog here. My latest entry is about the Bulls winning the Draft Lottery, despite their 1.7% chance to do so. Needless to say, I'm excited. The whole face of the organization should change quite a bit before next season starts. As a betting man, I'm going to wager a guess and say Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon won't be back.

Doesn't bother me at all. This has been a pretty good year so far for Chicago sports. Both the White Sox and Cubs are playing extremely well. The Bulls' situation is turning around with their lottery success. Not to mention the fact that I LOVE that Mike D'Antoni, who was once the front runner for the vacant coaching position, skipped town on then and went to New York, simply because they were going to offer him more money. Have fun coaching that nightmare, Mikey. 

Although I don't talk about hockey too much, mainly because the Blackhawks are never on TV, they had a successful season that really bodes well for the future. Sure, they missed the playoffs, only by three points mind you. Their team is relatively young, and they have a pretty decent 1-2-3 punch with Patrick Kane, Jonathan Towes and Patrick Sharp. And although Nikolai Khabibulin isn't the worst goaltender in hockey... they might as well start 23-year-old Corey Crawford next year and let him get his licks in. They drafted him in the second round back in 2003, so let the guy start playing.

The future is suddenly looking a bit brighter for Chicago sports. well, except for that 100 year curse...

Mother Bird.

Eric is the kind of man that wakes up so early that it feels like midnight. He wrestles with the thin brown sheet covering his naked body and rubs the sleep from his eyes with a closed fist. A man rattling off news spills from a radio. The floor is cold when his feet touch the ground. Jackets stained with garage filth and jeans with holes ripped in the thighs and pockets lie in unorganized piles in front of his open closet door.

He looks out the window, down into the window boxes to see a mother bird flapping warmth into her wings, covering three eggs. She seems happy. The kind of happy mothers feel nourishing children. 

It never took him longer than fifteen minutes to get ready for work. Throw on an undershirt, pants, his black canvas jacket with the patches sewn onto the elbows and some boots, swallow a mouthful of day-old coffee, feed the cat and drive to work. Today, the cat slept with its paws tucked under its chest next to a full food bowl. The coffee pot was empty, except for two rings of tan scum. He couldn't find his uniform in the piles of soiled laundry. 

He walks back to the window and covered his midsection with his hands. The mother's beak scored the walls of the window box, probably starving. Rain starts coming down, banging against his roof like changing falling off a table. He thinks I'm fine right where I am, and this bird is fine right where she is. 

He remembers there's a pack of cigarettes in the silverware drawer he'd been saving, in case he decided to smoke again. He unwraps the package, and pulls out one cigarette with his index finger. His thumbnail slides against the paper, and he turns the cigarette over and dumps the brown flakes into an ashtray. They come down like the rain outside, first like a chef throwing a dash of seasoning into a mixing bowl, then in clear blankets.

The roof is leaking. Over the sink. He left a pot of broth to soak overnight, and the drops slash just loud enough to cause his head to turn.  I'm not safe from rain, not even in my own house. Eric wonders if the mother's wing will cover the eggs long after the rain stops.

Oliver waits for the mail

Oliver parted the blinds with his index finger 

and watched the mail lady crouch,

shoving fistfuls of mail through the slots.

His birthday was two days ago.

Aunt Sue promised a card 

covered with a baseball field

with a child proudly showing off

his dirty knees and ripped

t-shirt. The card is never important, though.

Oliver would always rip the envelope open

and turn the card upside down. 

A  brand new twenty dollar bill

would fall into his lap.

He ran to the foyer and hiked up

the waist of his pajama pants 

so the moose prints around the ankles

wouldn't drag. The slot flew open

and pieces of yellow and white mail

fell onto the ground in an unorganized pile.

"Hey mail lady, where's my birthday card? 

I turned eight two days ago."

He looked through the slot,

watching her stop on the bottom of the stoop

and lean towards the door.

"Maybe tomorrow."

Protracting school.

I like how you protract going to school

by painting your toenails. You shove

balled-up napkins in between your big

and second toes. After ten minutes

of generous strokes, you throw your legs

onto the table, curl your toes and say

ladybugs, pointing at the black spots.

It's raining. The window

above the sink is leaking into a potted

orange tree that never bares fruit.

Before you throw on a pair of sweatpants

and walk ten blocks without an umbrella

to a lecture, the ladybugs on your feet

will fly to the window and shake their

antennae at the pooling water.

I imagine you stopping on your way to school.

There will be a group standing

beneath an umbrella, rolling the smoke

from cigarettes from their lips. 

People will talk about their toes

and what insects their toes look like.

You'll grab a long straw connected 

to a box of wine on the hood

of a green Nissan, and suck warm

red into your body as rain rolls

from the chute of the umbrella.

An elegy for bulls.

They move like mountains with feet,

through a field 

that lays on a long seam of brown

like a yellow quilted checkered 

with tan patches. There's a pond

with water that ripples when fish

try to gobble bubbles they think

are bugs without wings.

There are three bulls, one standing 

at the shore up to his knees, his

tongue falling out of his lips 

lapping up mouthfuls of water. 

The other two sit with their horns

pointing towards the wind,

watching blades of grass rip

from the ground.

Grey clouds roll over patches

of blue and spill balls of light 

into the air. Bull horns catch

wind as it bends leafless trees,

their naked tops touching the ground.

An invisible knife cuts the cloud

bloated with water, turning the road 

running along the field into

a black mirror. The bull removes

himself from the pond, walks over

to a tan patch and becomes

what happens at dusk.   

You're on a stoop and I'm across the street.

I'm staring at the back of your head and your hair parts at your shoulders like waves crashing against the bow of a boat's rotting planks. He touches your face below your eyes and kisses

your cheek where I used to kiss your cheek. 

It's cold out. He wraps the collar of his jacket around your head like a vampire and I sit in my white hatchback praying to God he really is a vampire. It would certainly make sitting on a side street in below-freezing weather more exciting.

You probably bought a dog. I bet there's a yappy maltese named Harriet chewing the frayed ends of a checkered throw pillow on your love seat, waiting for a pat on the head and a bowl of water. Hopefully you don't dress it. I heard dogs and cats don't like it when their feet don't touch the ground.

He's leaving now. I shouldn't have worn these gloves. The fingers are cut off, I bought them this way. Every thirty seconds I have to cup my right hand, cover it with my left, and blow for a few seconds. My jacket is zipped up to my chin, the tan corduroy jacket with the collar that buttons. It doesn't match my pajama pants or this Toronto Blue Jays hat. 

I actually came by for a reason. The last time we talked, you kept staring at your feet and said it'd be best that we didn't go to each other's place of employment. You said I can't double-task at work. Typing memos and eye-to-eye contact and chasing coffee just doesn't work. I respect that. 

See, I wanted to ask you about wearing clothing we bought each other. I had sex yesterday. Tess stripped me down to my boxers, the ones you bought me from Banana Republic... they have the camel on the crotch. This sounds stupid, but I saw your face staring up at me in that camel's eyes.  The same face you made when you brought them home.

~~~

It was a Thursday. I was making a bagel when you came in and threw a pair of boxers that almost landed in the tub of margarine. 

I hate camels. They look too stoic.

I thought they'd look cute on you. Wash them and wear them tomorrow, please.

I shoved the knife into the container and spread a generous layer of melting yellow across the bagel. The coffee pot started to hiss.

They aren't going to match what I'm wearing to work.

You dug a clenched fist into the stovetop. 

But those things don't matter.

Then why do you color coordinate your bras and panties with what you wear to work?

That was the last thing you said to me that night. I went into the living room and watched a baseball game until I fell asleep curled next to the Afghan we got as an anniversary gift from the landlord.

~~~

I just wanted to know how you felt about wearing the clothes. The other things you gave me are folded up and stuffed into outlet mall bag under the stairs. I only wore the boxers because my washing machine broke, and I didn't have enough quarters to go to the laundry mat. Wearing "those" clothes might be some unwritten rule, I don't know. This is all new to me.

MMM BREAKFAST

Apparently taking pictures showing off your breakfast are the kinds of things library employees do over the summer. Anyone jealous of Nutter Butter?

Yeah, flaunt it.

cartographers talking about cartography.

we live in a world

where people sit at desks and make maps.

1:1 scale maps 

on paper that never ends.

women named ellen and men

named keith draw straight edges 

on pages dyed to hide the pieces of brown

that look like the pieces of brown they draw

onto the white.

drawing a house takes patience

that only resides on curled lips

and eyes that push together like

an eroding mountain. a mountain

drawn with ink from a well

shaped like folded hands 

holding drinking water.

we all draw maps of hawaii

we're ashamed of.

ellen draws contours in red

of volcanoes upside down

like a tan carton of eggs.

keith draws the same thing 

on a different continent,

labeling it with a sticker

covered in numbers. 

he thinks to himself

that he can do much better.

i can do better than this map,

there are better fjords 

better fields that still have

wild flowers.

Patse Rain/Bee Cloud

A girl lays out in a brown lawn chair
wearing a boy shorts cut into a green triangle
and a white shirt that covers her navel.
The sun is a pale yellow hole
in a blue plain
cut in half with a streak of orange.

She lays on her stomach
while bees land on her toes
as if they were daisies.
Feelers dance in circles
like a mother’s knitting hands.

Bees peddle dead skin cells
onto their faces. They swarm
together into a cloud of black
shaped like a hand ready to
grab the sun.

The black cloud rolls overhead
and the girl waits for the rain
to come down thick like
clear paste. She pulls the collar
of her shirt to her lips and
swipes at her daisy toes.

Woah

Today was the first time I truly jumped head first into the job search ordeal. After applying for a managerial position at Aldi in New Albany... I applied for six other jobs today. Mostly entry-level management in retail positions, and I think one in an office somewhere in Louisville. I honestly can't remember. That'll probably be the most frustrating part of the whole job search: remembering where you've submitted resumes to.

This really irritating kid always comes down here when I'm working and asks me the most inane, repugnant questions. He's always down here with his mom, and he asks me the most trivial things about stop animation and old video game technology. A few weeks ago he came down here and asked me what I was doing and I made the mistake of telling him I was watching an auction on eBay for a mint, complete copy of Crono Trigger for the Super Nintendo. He didn't shut up for a half hour.

Despite the irritating kid and other people I'd love to hit square in the gums, I'm really going to miss this job when I'm done. Only three weeks left.

Feelings

I can't sleep.

I tried writing a poem today and it gave me this weird, uncomfortable feeling. Like when you're in a room with complete strangers and you don't want to talk to anyone. That feeling just overcame me again, and it's kind o making me sick to my stomach, too. The feeling was just awkward, like I had no idea what I was doing. I tried writing the poem about alphabet soup, and nothing was making sense. 

I rewrote the same few lines like ten times, and it felt like the poem just kept getting worse. And I got some poems rejected. It usually doesn't bother me, but the same person has accepted my poetry before, so that gave me an uneasy feeling, too.

I dunno, the weather sucked today, and it just made everything crappy. Even work was crappy, but I think that's just because I was so fucking bored with nothing to do. Every one of these paragraphs begins with the word 'I.'

Except this one.

Genius in alphabet soup.

The can is white and red stripped
like a barber’s pole with plain
green text that reads
First Choice Alphabet Soup.
This is lunch, along with
a slice of dry whole wheat bread
and limeaid.

I take the handle of a can opener
and peel the lid back so it folds
over and touches the side of the can.
Ds and Ms float in the condensed broth
like islands of sand, pushing the parsley
and chunks of chicken like volcanic waste.

Spelling words in alphabet soup
is hard. Never enough vowels,
too many Xs. I spelled ‘cartwheel’
at lunch one time in grade school.
My friend Francis couldn’t read well.
I wonder if he understood alphabet soup.

Alphabet soup is powerful. It turns
spoons and the sides of a bowl
shaped like a turtle’s shell
into a piece of paper. Paper
that spells words like fuekfl
and throlx. This is where
Dr. Seuss got his genius.

Grades + school stuff + other things

College grades were posted today. Finished with As and Bs, which... considering all the bull shit that happened this semester, I can't complain. So officially one more class, and I'm done.

Yesterday Brianne, my sister and I went and looked at a place for her to live in Old Louisville. Its on Second Street in a really great neighborhood. I really liked the place a lot, exactly what I'd be looking for if I was ready for a place of my own. She should be getting the application and all that stuff from the lady and hopefully Brianne will get to move in towards the end of the month.

My dog kept me up all night, so I think I'm going to take a nap today. And play Grand Theft Auto IV. Definitely. 

That picture is the cover the Fucking Champs' first LP, IV. All it is is straight metal, two guitarists and a drummer, which is great. You should listen to it. I saw them live last year in Detroit, and they were fantastic. Their other two LP's V and VI, are great, too. Their label is Drag City. Drag City is a great label with tons of other good stuff on their like Silver Jews and Pavement.

Listen to music! Good music! It makes you feel better.

This is about work.

Being done with classes is great. I already miss learning and shit, but not having the constant stress of knowing you have things due is really nice. I was talking to my dad about getting a job, and he was like, "You're going to hate having a job in three months when the newness wears off." 

He's probably right but I think what my parents forget is that school never stops. Sure, your classes are over at the end of everyday, but when you get home, there are papers to write, projects to finish, speeches to rehearse. That shit never ends. When you're done with your job, it's not like you have to go home and keep working. You go home, and shit's done.

I'm at work right now and it's very boring. Nobody is here. I'm just sitting with April and Lindsey doing nothing. I am listening to music, though, and that's nice. A Ghost is Born, the Wilco album from 2004. It's good.

People see my Tampa Bay Rays hat and always joke that the TB stands for tuberculosis. I still haven't laughed at that joke yet.

OFF TOPIC: This guy on GameFAQs in the GTA IV forum had a signature that said "Destroy everything you touch today." Interesting idea.