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.