Short poem. Update. Other things

I'm neglecting this blog,
never a good thing.
It gives me a sick feeling
like my stomach is dropping out of my ass
or I just licked a battery.
Ultimately, I'm not neglecting my life
which is the most important thing.

That poem was about things. I remember a teacher told me a long time ago, "Never use vague words in poems. I want to see what your saying and describing." I was an asshole back then and thought, "Man, that's total bull shit. I can put whatever vague word I want in a poem." I wasn't trying to piss the teacher off. I sent him an email a while back. Mentioned graduating with an English degree. Mentioned getting poems published and he said he was proud. He rememebered me having long hair and I said my hair was long-ish again.

Right now I'm at work and the Canon Imagerunner won't shut up. I hear the feeder wheels spinning their layer of grease off, it's a stupid sound. Outer space sounds that never stop. Like robots having sex with metallic dicks.

That last paragraph was a great example of what not to do when you're writing. What a positive thing to tell an entry-level writing class. I remember one day when a teacher said "You need to know the rules before you can break them," and I said, "Writing a poem doesn't have rules." I felt so smart.

Here's another poem:

When you eat jerky,
you don't think of it as a former animal.
Texture of carpet, like eating a dried tongue.
Dried tongues sealed in a black bag.
A Native American on the front,
hand resting on the trunk of a rotting tree.
Wild dogs with sparse fur licking the
points of his shoes.

The former animal
never thinks of itself as potential jerky.
He or she stands in knee-deep water
swatting an orbit of flies with its tail.
When a man comes from the barn waving a stick,
he or she can't help but follow the rest of the cows
to a clanging bell.

Sad News

Writer David Foster Wallace was found dead in his home on Friday. You can read about it here.

Fucking sucks.

Not much writing has been going on lately. Tons of Volkswagen things, which may not be important to you, but it's important to me. Lots of working, too. Sometimes at work I make pretend customer profiles in our Pre-Production Assistant and imagine what kinds of products they can make. I pretend they're mad because their thumbdrive won't open. Taking off the cap, chewing it in a circle. Drawing backwards when it cuts their gums.

They're mad, but I finish their project. I bind their pages. In color. Double-sided color on legal-sized cardstock. EC4 cardstock, color code for Sea Spray. Kind of a periwinkle with black and tan speckles. A bird's egg or fragment of stone at the bed of a creek. Or stuck in the tread of an ATV tire.

I have a former professor who blogs here. You should read his blog. I like when he writes about nachos. I had nachos a last week at work because a new Mexican restaurant, Senor Iguanas, moved in behind us in the shopping center. We ran them some copies of their take-home menu on green paper, so they gave us some free food.

Good nachos, sorry there's no picture. I'd say the only real weakness was the fact there wasn't enough cheese. The refried beans got hard really fast and the chips were soggy like newspaper spinning in an open sewer drain after a storm. Still good, though. 

Read his blog, read about Volkswagens, and do some writing. 'Cuz I said so.

Manhood.

If manhood had horns,

I'd grab manhood by the horns like a bull

and tie its head and face in knots.

A bull's face as a sneaker,

worn at the sole, covered in tile grout.

And if manhood had horns

and was a bull,

I'd have its sagging brown testicles

in my gloves. Spinning and surface

flinching like sullen Earth.

Turning itself over in my hands

like a God that holds testicles.

Don't ask yourself a question,

like "Does God hold testicles?,"

because God does hold testicles.

He held your testicles in his hands

and turned them into plains

and pushed two sets of testicles together,

built them up into a hill,

then bunched his fists, moulding

the hill into a mountain over 

a million years.

And flattened the mountain

into a plateau with the side of his hand.

Everyone's manhood is a part of the Earth,

your manhood could be Billings, Montana

or just a tree.

An apartment building somewhere

Imagining something you've never seen before is imagining something you've seen before. A building with windows covered in dew tailing down the glass like transparent blood, children hanging arms down and scraping their elbows against yellowing stucco. Picking scabs shaped like states, balling up dried blood into circles. It's too hot outisde. Nobody is using the fire hydrants for showers, slickingh air back behind ears. Flies orbting piles of trash.

Mothers shake skillets filled with strips of meat and yell at the clock. Dad drags his finger across a newspaper ad for a used lawnmower, "2001 model Husqvarna. New drivebelt and battery. Worn seat cover, bald tires. Make offer." He puts on reading glasses and skims again. Skim milk in a glass.

Meats burns in a skillet and children continue to drag elbows, ball blood and scream at piles of trash. Somebody is across the street buying bus tickets with a sandwich bag filled with old pennies and arcade tokens. He thinks about a time twenty-six years ago in Idaho, riding a horse through a storm. An old horse with knees without cartilage, bone rubbing bone. Spurs into muscle. Drawn breaths behind rotting teeth with oats and grain stuck between. Thunder rolling along clouds like the beads of water down the apartment complex glass.

Mistaking your dad for somebody else.

This could be a bad thing for you

but it's a good thing for me. See,

I woke up every morning as a kid

with a picture of Ryne Sandberg over my bed.

The bleachers are blurry.

Fan's faces like oil spots and sauce stains.

Bur Ryne Sandberg's face is clear.

He's rubbings his hands across the bill

of his helmet to get pine tar on

his batting gloves.

He holds his bat like an axe,

chops balls in half

and their pieces fall into right field

at George Hendrick's feet.

His face looks like somebody's dad's face.

Cheeks covered in lines and dirt

with a two-day-old beard.

Not the type of dad's face

that would kiss your forhead,

but the type of dad

who spits on his hands before he digs in the yard

and throws handfuls of seeds onto

the lawn's dead patches.

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.