Kidney story. Thoughts. Muncie. Poem.

I started on a story that's told from the perspective of a kidney. It's in a cooler awaiting to be transplanted into a new body. Exciting.

Sometimes I tell myself that thinking is more important than writing. But that's only sometimes. Right now, I think that thought is total bull shit.

I'll be in Muncie tomorrow evening after I'm done working to visit a friend that's getting ready to move to Germany. I'll miss her.

Here's a poem:

There is a ghost from November

burnt into tan grass.

Like the outline of a lake

seen from an airplane, 

its shores are naked 

from tide.

Overturned row boat, fish scales

bugs and boot prints filled with water.

It's a ghost from November

that's a ghost because of

what's there.

How a relationship grows.

Pavement is on.

Pavement is usually on after 10

on work nights.

I'm shirtless, the fan 

on setting 1.

My nipple hair is pointing north.

Talking about 

We're asking questions

and getting answers.

Her left arm is across my stomach,

and 'Kennel District' comes on.

She leans her head onto my shoulder

and says, "I'm glad we talked."

My laptop screen is a white

void in her iris, pupils big

like a beaten dog limping,

then coming to rest on tree roots.

I don't think I said anything

and Steve Malkmus says,

"Why didn't I ask?"

Applying for a job

Fit your entire life into a word document.
Don't mention faith or anything like that.
There are rules, you know.
Print it on embossed cardstock
and place your life into a mailbox.

Forget about your life.
Climb onto a pile of dirt.
Drink lemonade through a straw
and stare up at the clouds
tracing them with your finger.
Cough when seeds get stuck
halfway up.
Don't cough when the wind picks up
and churns dust from a gravel driveway.

When you're done,
go inside and mop the linoleum
until you can see the shape of lightbulbs
in each tile. Scrub the sink with a
ball of steel wool, pick the filth
and soggy corn from its ends.
Drop them into the garbage disposal.
Oops, you turned on the switch
and didn't hear the phone ring.

There are some things you learn to deal with

Some days it'll rain,
and you don't plan for rain.
You'll leave your sunroof open,
ignoring the bull rush of grey clouds
rolling over your house.
Wind will gust like an ocelating fan
and cause leaves to stick against the windows,
making autumn decals.

You'll think, "My car is safe under the carport.
Jessica's Saturn is safe under the carport."
Then remember the hole caused by roofers
dropping a box of shingles through its roof.
You imagine the interior of your car turning
into the center of a universe,
sucking the beading water, acorns
and pollen into the console.

The vinyl seats that you tell everyone
are really leater are spongy and bloated
with sky. Seeds rest between the grey stitches,
attempting to burrow and sprout into trees.
You look outside at your car.
Through the hole in the carport,
open sunroof.
Maybe a seed will turn into a cluster of roots
then into a tree
which will fill the open sunroof
and hole in the carport.

God's dog and garbage

The sky looks dirty today,
as if God opened a vacuum bag
and shook all the dust and dirt into the sky.
Dog hair and paper clips and strings from socks
spread out across blue into Tennessee,
Georgia and Montana.
Light turns a dull toxic orange.

People are excited to see God's dirt
and know he has a dog.
Children rip limbs from trees
take the pointy end
and sketch out God's
labrador. His paws are wide,
occasionally clumsy around stairs.
He has bad hips, decaying gums.

After God takes his labrador to the park,
God walks into his kitchen,
makes himself a chicken salad sandwich
and turns on his a copy
of Van Halen's 1984 on vinyl
just loud enough so the speakers won't hiss.
He chews the crust off first and taps
his foot when "Hot for Teacher" comes on.

When it rains, God's lab rolls around
on the ground and licks his paws.
That's the thunder. God watches
his TV in the dark and that's lightning.

Remember when I said "Nude With Boots" was 2008's best album?

Oops. Very, very good. 

Lots of good music's come out so far this summer. Please go out and enjoy it. Open your wallets for good music!

Burning down a Pizza Hut.

Trust me, it's easy.
Disregard the squirrell
chewing on his thigh.
There's a five-gallon jug of kerosene
in the trunk of my Buick.
Walk around the perimeter of the Pizza hut,
the nozel turned downard with gas splashing
onto brown tweed slip-on shoes.
Make sure to get some in the lava rock
that surrounds the bushes, too.
And the windowsill.

Don't light the match until someone's
at the drive-thru window. The exhaust fumes
will give the flame a redish hue.
This means the fire will mix in with the
world-famous Pizza Hut slanted roof.

Look! It's a Taurus. Flick the flint downward
and drop it in between the crack in the sidewalk.
That'll give you enough time to walk away.
MMMMM...I love the smell of sparked flint.

Spending all day outside in the present, past and future.

Neal flings his sunburned legs to the end of his bed. His calves and feet hang over the folded jersey-knit sheets. Pink sunspots pulse like a dog's tongue hanging out of its jowels, lapping up mouthfuls of water. Sweat on his forehead beads and rolls into his eyes. The sensation stings and reminds him of the doctor.


Sounds of hammers pinged against dented robin's egg blue siding. Kids pumped their squirt guns and ran circles around the base of his ladder. The soles of their shoes made tracks in the spots of the lawn where the August drought turned grass brown. Neal hoped a piece of siding would come off and fall to the ground, slowly swinging around in a fat circle like one of those tree seed helicopters that dogs chase after.

Kids annoy Neal. He does handy work in his town on the weekends to make up for what he doesn't get paid at the garage. A few weeks ago, Neal fixed the leaky spigot at his boss's lakeside cabin and regrouted the faux-granite tile in the enterance way. He always marveled at how straight he could get the odd-shaped pieces to fit that were cut at uneven angles. It was his favorite thing to do. Setting pieces stacks of squares onto the wet stone cutting saw, spraying cloudy water onto his safety goggles.

One boy tugged on the leg of Neal's shorts,"I can tell you're not wearing sunscreen. You might get cancer." He dug his index finger into his left nostril, "doesn't that bother you?"

Neal placed his hammer into the loop on the side of his shorts. "Not as much as kids."

Later in the afternoon, Neal will be headed to Bordeaux Lane where he'll fix a rotting wooden floor filled with holes in a woman's kitchen. The water-soaked panels will bow under his sneakers and hiss like a snake. The women will pat Neal on the shoulder and say "Good job, good job," over and over again.

She'll pay in lemonade and stories about her husband. "He was deputy sheriff for over twenty years when we lived on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. He was hit by stray fire during a bank robbery in 1983."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It'll be one-hundred twenty-five dollars for the floor." Neal will pick at the nailbed on his left pinkey. He will hope the woman to pay him for his work in something other than lemonade.

"Or maybe it was 1984, I'm not entirely sure."

Chapbook Cover

Here's a sneek at my chapbook cover. If it's a bit hazy, I apologize. It's handdrawn and tweaked in Photoshop. Both done by me. Trust me, it looks much better on the hi-def screens at work. I'm starting the page layout and everything tomorrow. My end-of-August release date is still looking like a go.

Horray for humans.

Three people walking through a door at once.

1.

A man wearing a tan blazer and jeans steps off a bus. His head sags to the right in an attempt to hold his cellphone between his jaw and collar bone. The bus's right front tire jolts up and the door closes with a metallic thud. A child rubs his hands on the window, drawing stick figures and dogs with skinny legs. His mother draws a stick of gum from her purse and shoves it into her mouth without unwrapping the piece.

As the bus pulls away, the man shuffles onto the sidewalk and stands next to me. He's furious. His voice is drawn out, low like the dieseling tick of the bus that's now at the next stoplight. 

"FUCK YOU! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?" 

He takes two small steps towards me. The man is now close enough that I can hear his cheek stubble grate against the number pad on his phone. I bend down and pull my Parkplace Fabrics tote closer to me. The man's clumsy dress shoes were dirtying the straps. Swearing continued. Spit flying from his lips. People around us began to sigh in discomfort and pick at their hands or dig through their shopping bags for receipts.

Another bus comes a few minutes later, this one covered in a large M&Ms advertisement. The man closes his phone, continuing to mumble fuck or shit every few seconds.

2. 

Two brothers walk out of a Meijer with a cart filled with grilling supplies. Jerry, the taller brother, counts his wad of singles and shoves it into the side pocket of his shorts. Maurice runs his fingers across a bag of Kingsford and looks up at a sagging gray cloud hanging almost low enough to touch the roof atop the strip mall.  

Maurice pulls his cell phone out of his pocket.

"11:43. We need to get home before the Ravens game is on. They're televising warm-ups today. Dad wants to watch Ray Lewis."

Jerry rips the side of a bag of Kingsford and rubs two pieces of charcoal together. The air smells like his backyard. His fingertips are black.

"Dad needs to stop yelling on the phone. He sounds like such an asshole. What was he even yelling about?"

Maurice drops the tailgate of his Silverado and pulls a rubber mat towards the end of the bed.

"I don't even know. He was pissed when I told him his barbecue sauce wasn't in the store. It's like he can't eat ribs without it. What an asshole."

Jerry and Maurice shoveled the bags of meat and charcoal and plastic cutlery into the bed of the truck. Blood seeped through the white bags, turning the rough black on Jerry's fingertips into a greasy paste.

"Dad just gets shitty every time he's between jobs." Jerry closes the tailgate and removes his cap. 

On their way home, Maurice calls his dad's phone a half-dozen times He's downstairs in the pantry chugging a warm bottle of Full Sail. The blazer is slung over a barstool with his cell phone vibrating against his garage door opener.

"You better not be calling to tell me to stop."

Chapbook

I'm currently working on a new chapbook. It'll have 12 poems in it. I should be done with the layout in the next week or so and have it printed up by the end of the month. I'm not sure how many copies I'm going to make as of right now. The first run will probably be between 15 and 20.

It's tenatively titled The Things CGI Can't Recreate.

I'll have a teaser for the cover soon.

Explaining weather.

Something is happening outside,
maybe it's raining.
Please bring a raincoat
and rubber shoes.
And if you're on a plane,
don't look out the window.
Unless, three miles below you
through the gray sheets
and tree canopies and birds
preening their wings
is a kid standing in the raincoat
and rubber shoes I asked for you to bring
watching raindrops spin around the brim of his hat.

For some people, like me, this is my job

I'm at work right now, staring at a man
pressing his bifocals to the bridge of his nose.
He copies the same black and white page
of a wife over and over again
on paper that's too small for the image.
Every couple of minutes, he looks over the counter
and watches me write this poem.
He probably thinks I'm writing an important
business e-mail to a client at Churchill Downs.

The man is using a highlighter now,
drawing circles on one of the copies.
Yellow swirl marks around eyes
like a chirrosis raccoon. This could be
the way he sees his wife.

Now the man is pacing around the table,
eyeing stacks of paper and dog-earing
the edges. He asks if the music playing
from my iPod that's plugged into an
individual speaker is John Coltrane
and I say yes. He walks closer to the counter,
resting his weight on his elbows and
pats his hand in rhythm with
John Coltrane's saxaphone.

A fire truck drives by with its siren on.
I look outisde and cars start darting
into the grass. Passengers inside
bob up and down like a boat
that's in the ocean all by itself.
I hope the man thanks me
when he's done making his copies,
and asks another question about music.

Electric Wizard

Woah, that's a tough name. Right? Definitely. Think about it literally. If you saw an electric wizard, you'd be scared, but interested, too. It'd be shooting sparks everywhere, catching the floppy canvas tip of his hat on fire. He won't notice because he's too busy shooting electricity everywhere and being omnipotent. That's what wizards do!

All of this is natural to wizards. So would it be natural for a band named 'Electric Wizard' to shoot electricity from their instruments and the vocalist to sing about potions and summoning demons? Probably. Electric Wizard is a great band. What I like about their music is that the first time you listen to it, you'll always come across a great surprise. Like the rhythm's repetition getting sidetracked for two seconds by a cool blusey riff that can't help but remind you about the first time you listened to Paranoid by Black Sabbath.

And I don't bother looking up the lyrics, because I'd imagine the things they sing about would cause me great anxiety. I mean, I KNOW what they sing about, but I just don't want any visual conformation.

Oh, side note. I found one of my favorite professor's websites. You can find it here. He's a fantastic teacher who loves to give students handouts. I like handouts, especially when they aren't just "busy" handouts. He writes a lot, too.

Ray Something is a make-believe man. Ray Something is destiny.

I want you to think of the musicians you listen to as your brain and its memories. You'll experience songs by an artist named Ray Something who you'll forget twenty minutes after listening to his whole discography. You'll forget his hairstyle and his strumming the coarse strings of his guitar with a thumbnail, but you'll remember the way his voice sounded like pennies in a blender. 

And his interviews. Ray Something gave great interviews. "Ohio!" he screams, "Ohio is the best state in the Union! Everyone makes music in Ohio!" This excites you because somebody else refers to our country as a Union. Ray Something reminds you of marriage because he said "union" and marriage is a union. Ray Something always mentions, in some sly garble of words, that he's single. He probably dates women who look good in sun dresses. Their arms are pale and thin, Free from marriage. You imagine a sickly thin guy whose arms are covered in blotchy freckles and a tattoo of a Saab-Scania emblem looking towards a the lighting system hanging above his head in a studio. He might grabs the tail of his jacket and what he's about to say will speak to you.

"FREE DRINKS! HA... THEY'RE ON ME!" 

Then somebody pops the cap off a domestic microbrew and the cap slides down the side of the bottle into a small pile of other bottles from other domestics. The person conducting the interview is refreshed. You want to be refreshed. You reach your hand towards the speaker and hope Ray Something is generous.

He's generous and you're soon drunk. Brown bottles with red labels clutter your feet and Ray Something will soon be a memory that you can't remember. But not yet. Towards the end of the interview, the microphone falls to the floor, sending a dense slash of feedback through the speaker. Your ears hurt and you cover them and duck your head into your knees, as if you were anticipating a car crash from the back seat. Ray's voice gets quiet: a song on the radio fading into an advertisement. A deer's hooves crushing the layer of dead leaves on a path near the front of a cave.

Ray Something talks about a deal he made with someone for something. "There's something in it for everyone." You hear him moving back and forth in his seat. You hear his weight moving and squashing the clasps on the bottom of the cushion. People are walking around and the interview is ending. 

"Hey, give me that directory. I'm going to order everyone some drinks and they'll be on the house."