What having a job should feel like.

I'm employed. And it feels great. Kind of like how this feels.

I wish that was my job. Although, I can't complain. Mine's pretty sweet.

Business acquaintance

Outside a man sits in a wicker chair

with his legs crossed at the knee

flicking ashes from a cigar. 

He thumbs through an address book.

I'm preparing brownies for a party.

The chain tethered to the ceiling fan

spins in a flat oval. My wife has her nose

buried in a checkbook.

She's thinking about the man outside

and his address book. She's thinking about 

calling him a business acquaintance, 

saying something like, "I met him once.

At a tech meeting in Buchel." This would

be an excuse to go outside 

and talk about their jobs 

until their cups of coffee get cold.

My wife gets up from the table

and I notice she's wearing my slippers.

I tell she feels bad that she's wearing them

and she knows it upsets me. She's more upset

about the unbalanced checkbook. 

This:

Plus this:

Equals a happy person! 

My friend Mark hooked me up with a bare head for my Golf. This'll let me start on a an engine build without having to park my car and remove the head from my Golf and buying a cheap, crappy daily driver while I work on this engine. Like I had mentioned yesterday, I'll be going into FedEx Kinkos Monday for a discussion about preliminary employment stuff. This break from everything has been nice, but as of right now, I'm kinda' missing work. 

But see, that stuff doesn't matter today, because my two friends Mike and Deanna are getting married. Weddings... GREAT!

Congratulations, guys.

New things today.

On Monday, I have a meeting at FedEx Kinkos, presumably to talk about my new job. Awesome. Yesterday night, Brianne and I ordered some of that new pasta from Pizza Hut and watched the NBA Draft. The Bulls selected Derrick Rose with the first pick, and that got me excited again for basketball.

Today around 2, I'm heading over to my buddy Mark's place, and we're going to work on his Caddy (Volkswagen truck) and also do some stuff to my Golf. It'll be nice to spend time with friends again, it's definitely something I missed in Muncie. Also, Brianne and I are heading back up to North Indiana tomorrow for our friends' wedding, Mike and Deanna. This weekend should be busy.

I want this guy to bring me a championship.

Things will continue to happen even if you don't make them happen.

I have a job interview today at 1 at FedEx Kinkos. This is exciting. I've made chapbooks there before. Working there probably isn't much different. If I get hired, I think I'll enjoy it a lot.  

I keep seeing commercials for The Dark Knight and it looks pretty bad ass. I'm usually not into the comic book adaption films, mainly because 95% of them are just boring, but this one carries a different vibe. 

I need to eat lunch before my interview. Working on a poem, I'll post it later.

What I'm doing right now.

It's about 10:30. I'm laying in bed getting ready to play some game where you pop balloons and win prizes. Better than a carnival. Brianne is sleeping, and she has three freckles on her arm that make a smiley face. That makes me happy.

We're both stressed out because being grown-up isn't fun and being in this super-cold bedroom isn't necessarily fun, either. I was growing a beard today, but I decided to shave it even though it made Brianne upset. She likes when I have a beard. I do, too. Only not during the summer.

I miss a lot of people in Muncie, not the city itself. Louisville is a lot more fun. Not that there's necessarily more to do, it's just a much more immersive environment. But... I should remember there are really cool people in Louisville just like in Muncie. Even though most of them don't write poetry or even care about poetry. There's nothing wrong with that. A lot of them do like Volkswagens, which is just as exciting.

Which reminds me, I ordered a few things for my car a couple of days ago. I went into Grossman Tuning and talked with John and Matt. It's nice talking to people who are enthusiastic about cars, especially Volkswagens. Most people don't seem to care about their cars. I wish they understood that cars have feelings, and they definitely get pissed when you treat them like shit. My parts should be here either tomorrow or Wednesday. This is exciting.

Writing this makes me think about the way I write. I don't do that very often. Usually when I write, I get this really fun idea and keep forcing it out until it's done. Think of taking a shit, a really huge shit that's been balled up inside you all day. You're at the zoo or something, and you just refuse to take a shit there because so many other creepy strangers take a shit on that same toilet you'd be forced to use, and you also don't like the idea of having your knees pressed to your chest with jeans and boxers wrapped around your ankles while some toddler peeks through the crack of the door at your balls. That makes you feel really vulnerable.

But that's how I write. I grunt and strain and just force shit out. And just like turds, most of the time... it's a stupid dirty mess that most people don't want to look at. They just cover it with paper, flush it, and forget that it ever happened. That's a good thing, because sometimes you just write things that aren't any good. Even if you don't know what "good writing" is, because I certainly don't, you just know what you made isn't "good." 

Brianne just woke up for a second and she made a tired face and told me she loved me. That's probably a really good way to end this entry. Definitely better than writing about feces.

Elephants don't know the alphabet.

There's an elephant standing on its hind legs at the opening of a wooded lot behind my house. His tusks are covered in dirt and his trunk rises and falls when the wind starts to blow. I'm sitting in an enclosed porch, drinking tea from a Super Bowl XX mug. Dad is listening to Frank Sinatra on an old boom box while grilling pork chops.

The elephant doesn't know English. I know this because I'm talking loud on purpose, trying to get his attention and he rips leaves and bark from the trees, stuffing them into his mouth. Despite the communication barrier, I'd imagine an elephant would be a good listener. Their eyes are deep and brown, and their ears sink to mid-thigh. He's off his hind legs now, taking swift steps towards me. He covers half a football field in two or three breaths. 

Things don't start getting weird until the elephant gets close to the porch. Dad packed his pipe with Prince Albert tobacco and blew rings with lazy lips through the screen. The elephant tucked its head under a branch and dropped his trunk to the ground. There's only a small patch of dead grass between a large oak tree and a tall pole holding up phone lines, so the elephant sits in between the plooms of smoke. He starts to sink into the yard.

Frank Sinatra stops singing. The tobacco runs out in Dad's pipe. He says something about burning the pork chops. I notice the bottom of my mug is dirty. When I tip it upside down to scrape the scrum from the bottom of my drink, the elephant puts his trunk on the screen and snorts inward. The elephant made a loud noise, his way of being unpredictable.

Writing about elephants is hard

You know how I know?

I'm trying to right now. I'm writing a poem about talking to an elephant, and it's tough. But not discouraging. What would be discouraging would be if the elephant jumped out of my laptop and onto my face. He'd ruin my bed and kill me cat, along with killing me, too.

Maybe I'll finish this poem soon. That'd be nice. But first, I have to go run errands.

When you weren't holding an umbrella

It started to rain

and your camisole and dress hung to your body

like a sheet over an antique chair.

I looked at you from a window.

The rain fell 

in what looked like lines of static 

on an old film reel whose picture smears with age.

There was a slope in the sidewalk

and rain collected in a puddle at your feet.

They disappeared into the bottom of the puddle,

they made your feet look like cement blocks.

You made a face that suggested you knew what

was happening to your feet.

I was watching the rain and remembering a time on the beach.

My trunks were blue plaid. The sun was a yellow mark

hiding behind a lifeguard's chair. Mom and Dad 

bought me a shovel and pail. I wanted to dig through the sand

to see dirt. I felt like a Dalmatian without spots

throwing dirt through my legs.

I dug long enough to get to the other side of the Earth,

where I could watch you stand in the rain.

Rescinding comments

I take back being happy about being in this house. Aside from watching that movie with my parents, everyone else in this house has been spiteful and mouthy every time I've said something. Yesterday, I remembered that my parents didn't even say anything when I came home.

No, "Congratulations on finish

ing college," or "I'm glad you're home." My room was completely filled with shit (not literal, thankfully) that I'm still trying to empty and rearrange. I hate writing about these kinds of things, because it makes me feel like I'm sixteen, but these really bothering me. I put a lot of time and effort into school and writing, and aside from getting a smile when I mention something academic, my parents really don't seem to care or understand that those are the kinds of things that make me the happiest. 

Oh well, I'm sure things'll improve in a few days or something.

Plus, I do have something to look forward to:

Green for the monies, gold for the honeys! I can't wait to start this project.

Here.

I'm at home in Floyds Knobs. I watched There Will Be Blood with my parents yesterday, and they both enjoyed it. That made me happy. Being home is good.

I "have" a job through this temp-for-hire agency for Lockheed Martin, but I'm filling out so many different things that it's just freaking me the fuck out. I applied earlier for a job as a circulation specialist at the University of Louisville library.

The Cubs and Rays keep winning. Awesome.

This very well could be the greatest album ever made!

I talk about this album like your dad talks about ZoSo or What's Going On. It's that good! Trust me, I would never lie to you. This is the perfect album to listen to when you're playing Mario Kart by yourself at two in the morning or you're trying to get some pipe from a girly.

Working on a flash piece and a few poems. Maybe I'll post something later today. In the meantime, buy some music!

Doing things.

There are a lot of things I should be doing, like packing so I can move back to Southern Indiana and finishing work for my Senior Seminar. Instead, I want to talk about music. Everyone should want to talk about music! It's exciting stuff.

What's sad about music is that there are too many albums that people don't listen to. And most people like to make that the 'cool' aspect about music as an art form: they go out of their way to find a sound that's obscure, or an artist/group that isn't popular, and claim them their own.

Imagine some jerk wearing a stupid solid-colored t-shirt with jeans that don't fit and his dad's shoes, and he says something like: "Hey! Band X is great. You haven't heard of them, they're my band. They're my band because you haven't heard of them and I have!" You want to punch that jerk in the face because his jeans don't fit, but he's arrogant, too! Nobody likes arrogance.

Lucky for you, all of my jeans fit, and my shirt actually has two colors on it, so you can rest assured that me endorsing this album is a good thing!

Wow! Blue Cheer's first album, from 1968! If you need a label for the sound, we'll call it proto-metal. Kinda' psychedelic. They were from San Francisco, so that makes sense, right? Either way, it's a great album, great enough that I'd recommend it to you. Just in case you don't want to buy the whole album, spend 99 cents on iTunes and download the single "Out of Focus."

Do it! Quit wasting time. I'm going to be a responsible student and finish my homework. I think I'm going to get some Qdoba later, so if you're in Muncie, let's go together.

It missed our building.

A newscaster watches a meteor

crash through a billboard advertising club soda.

He looks over at his co-anchor, who is untying

a windsor knot from around his neck and says

"Alert the media!"

The co-anchor rubs an exposed palm

against the stubble on his cheeks.

"We are the media."

A homeless man picks at his hands

and pokes a sleeping rat with the heel of his boot.

Beneath the rat's belly shook the legs 

of a dying grasshopper.

The meteor misses the building and lands in a fountain.

Water explodes from the sides in teal and blue crystals,

blanketing the windshield of a tan El Camino.

As the rain slopes down the glass,

it pools in the car's raintray

for birds to drink

right before they turn into the skeletons

of songbirds.

SNReview

Thanks to SNReview for publishing one of my poems in their Spring/Summer issue. It's available both online and in print form. This is pretty exciting.

Check it out.

I have a stick though my head.

This makes me a tree.

Wikipedia says so.

There are bugs with six legs

chewing through the veins in my leaves.

Leaves on my stick make the stick

a branch.

But I might not be a tree,

despite what Wikipedia says.

I lack roots and bark.

If soil outside my house

begins to soften, I might dig my feet

into the ground and dedicate myself

to being a real tree.

One day, broken baseball bats

will make me cry because those

are dead friends. And I will

provide a place to children to make tire swings,

and a house for birds, I won't charge rent.

Since it's not nice to be by yourself,

my branches will bend and shake, 

inviting teenage couples to come

and kiss under my shade. A blonde boy

will close his eyes and make curl his lips,

trying to kiss around a big nose or braces.

If I plant myself 

in front of a window, 

it would be nice for a mom

to place potted plants

on the sill. They won't die, though,

even if my bulk blocks the geraniums

from the sun.

Waiting 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."

Somebody should invent an orange-flavored soda named "Kimbo Slice"

I started my summer class yesterday, and while four hours talking about "biography" isn't the most exciting thing in the world, it did make me realize I like being around the classroom and learning. With only 10 days left until I move back home and say bye to Muncie forever, and start an 'adult' job, I find it weird that I'm going to actually miss class, considering how irritating it gets. I guess when you get so used to a certain kind of stress, you get immune to it.

More poems coming soon.