Tuesday, December 30, 2008
I've been spending the last few days imagining your body inside-out.
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.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
I have started on my next chapbook. The reading is soon.
**
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.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Presents. Tribute thread. Scene from a movie or maybe it's just loud music from the record player. The Bible.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Poetry reading in Muncie. This weather is crap. 7 Things (from Dan Bailey)
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.
Monday, December 22, 2008
More things published. Cold weather bullshit. Bull shit can be one or two words, cool.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
I want to be that raw throat inside you that makes it uncomfortable to talk or breathe
Saturday, December 20, 2008
I haven't been updating lately and that saddens me, but at the same time, I'm glad I'm alive
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.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Melvins. Sunday morning. Goodie Mob.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Bad Religion. Crushed finger. When it rains, somebody gets a BJ.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Bring the ruckus and other things.
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.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
I don't feel happy when you smile, alright. Feeling down and beneath dirt.
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.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Checking this out would be good for everyone involved. Internet in limbo. Steve Malkmus + Jicks.
What I'm doing right now isn't too important.
Friday, November 28, 2008
It can only get this dark at night.
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.
Monday, November 24, 2008
My mom has a Facebook account. Wasted day. Rush
Friday, November 21, 2008
As close to perfection as you can get. Future release. Chinese Democracy, finally? Stories I'm writing.
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
**
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:
Thursday, November 20, 2008
10 things this drawing could be. Peeing a lot. The music I listened to at work today.
Monday, November 17, 2008
It's November. Saddest song ever. I had a complete stranger critique my poem.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Moving and thinking: how to get there
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.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Ten things I want immediately
Monday, November 10, 2008
The night of sleep I had. Human-sized birdbath. Outkast. Pilgrimage.
Friday, November 7, 2008
The opposite of knowing might be guessing
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.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Michael Crichton. Chapbook banter. G1. Talking with customers.
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.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
I'm creating something right now.
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.
Monday, November 3, 2008
If you find me in a coma, please don't shave my beard.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Two things coming together near a mountain.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Thinking up band and song names is fun. People are onions.
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.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Super Scrabble. Gettin' up. Weekend alone. Thoughts on blog communities.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Something tangible. Kevin Garnett. Scrabble addict.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Desperation sports. Brain in a window. More World Series.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Things that get you pumped. Tons 'o links. Yes, I talked about sandwiches, not Blondie, in this post.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Cover teaser for 'Simpleton'. Graduate school. Etc.
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
Friday, October 24, 2008
People I didn't know wrote poetry. Not flushing toilets. Fellating my own ego.
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:
Thursday, October 23, 2008
When people you know are far away and alone
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.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
More blurbing. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Songs.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Football. New reads.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Update on Simpleton. I shouldn't be working today. Lists.
**
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.
Friday, October 17, 2008
We were meant to fuck.
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.