I'm sitting here listening to my dad and his brother talk about stuff, and it's beautiful. I know that's a really generic statement that doesn't really mean anything. Knowing what my dad and his siblings have went through over the past 18 months, and hearing them talk about things is just really beautiful.

Primus is good.

Very good.

I'm listening to Pork Soda, and it's a great album. It's weird when I listen to my iPod while I ride my bike to work or class, I find myself listening to the same few albums. Like it's traveling music or something.

Pork Soda isn't traveling music! It's "Go and relax" music. There's a lot more jamming on this album, and Les Claypool's riffs are really creepy and virtuosic.  You should listen to it/buy it.

The inside and outside of the Earth is burning.

It's hot outside

and the sun is making people do crazy things.

I'm sitting inside with an old Carrier fan's

blades spinning fast enough to turn into one large blade.

But the air isn't cold, it isn't even warm. It's hot. 

The vinyl is sticking to my thighs and it takes

twice as long to lick the salt from each finger

on my left hand. My undershirt is turning a pastel yellow

from sweat.  A glass of flat cola

sits stagnant like dirty bath water 

I'm waiting for a brownout.

There's an apartment complex across the street

and all the windows have drawn grey shades

and mini-blinds. Some kind of terrier 

with a cream colored face runs hobbled circles 

around a fire hydrant,

a roman candle burning in between his jaws.

Kids are playing hopscotch and skipping rope

with ropes that're as red as their cheeks. 

Mrs. Hampton, the woman who owns 

the fruit stand two blocks down, 

waters a potted fern's wilting stems 

and her arm flab shakes when she moves the hose.

People are on the roof flying kites

yelling at the ice cream man who's probably parked

on the opposite street, reading a Sports Illustrated

and chewing on the end of a straw. The kites move

just like the dog: with heavy feet. A gust 

bends trees while their leaves turn over

onto their lighter green side. I remember learning

in grammar school that this means it'll rain soon.

The clouds roll over each other 

with gray overlapping white and black,

what I'd imagine the layers of Earth look like

from the inside,

churning and hardening like an experiment.

I lean my head an inch from the fan blades

and think if life was a movie

this'd be the part where people scream.

Good news

I got an email today from the editor from the SNReview. They accepted one of my poems for their Spring/Summer print and online issues. 

Nice. Keep writing, you poets.

Daily Operation

I think it'd be a really good idea if you purchased this album.  The Chronic can't handle this. 1992's best hip-hop album.

There are people.

I'm sitting here in my apartment thinking about people. The TV is the only light on. It looks like what I'd imagine seeing a galaxy implode on itself, if I saw it close up. Cars are driving by outside. Some are louder than others. Some are rusted sedans with trunks strapped down with bungee cords, some are trucks with open pipes dumping pollution underneath their beds, and some are black motorcycles that sound like jets.

There was a commercial just on where a girl was playing golf with some old guy and she kicked his ass. Although this is unrelated, it made me think about people. And there are a lot of people, six billion of them. More specifically, I guess, people I know. I don't know why, but I've been thinking a lot about people today and dying. Again, two fairly unrelated things. People die, and that's about as rudimentary of a comparison between dying and people you can make. 

What's weird is that through all the funerals I've had to go through over the past year and a half, death kinda washed over me. I remember looking at my grandmother at her funeral, and I couldn't think about death. It literally could not happen. My cousins and I would stand around cracking fart jokes, or go into the waiting area and talk about video games. It was like a family reunion, only with a dead person in the other room.

Seeing a dead animal usually freaks me out a lot more than seeing a violent crime on TV, even if it's a real death being reported on the news, not something in a movie. Driving past a deer without its head or a dog with a smashed torso always freaks me out, because that's death. A funeral is something after death, meaning death isn't final. Then the person is put on your mantle if they're in an urn, or sprinkled in a forest or something, or maybe they're just buried underground. At Granny's funeral, she was buried next to my grandpa, but his headstone was covered up by the giant fucking thing that lowers the casket into the final resting place.

For an animal or a piece of roadkill, they're just dead. There was no fanfare. Sometimes, animals will get buried by other animals, but that's instinct. I remember my ex-girlfriend said something when we were in high school about dogs walking away from their owners to die so they won't upset them. That's always been one of the scariest things to think about: having an instinct that tells you to abandon everything and die alone so nobody can find you.

What I have trouble with his the weird dichotomy of human and animal instincts. Creepy science types let people know that our "major difference" between other mammals is our ability to communicate VIA language. A lot of the other characteristics we have are parallels. Death is this odd juxtaposition of everything, though.  I've told my parents if I pass before either or both of them do, I want to be cremated and have my remains put into an intake manifold from a Volkswagen or something... for the simple fact that I can't handle tons of people crying. I'd much rather have people stare at "Dust-form Joey" instead of my pruny, pale face and cry. Plus, the thought of rotting and decomposing underground is just scary.

I hate having the belief, "You die and that's it." It's a little uncharacteristic for me because I would usually think of the most asinine scenario, like one I talked about with a friend where I'd just fly out in space on a rocket ship, going in one direction, cackling and becoming increasingly more insane. Just going out into space forever. As cool as it sounds, it's not all that realistic. Which makes the thought of just.... being asleep forever really crappy and depressing. It trumps this theory I came up with as a kid where in death, the last thing you see is burned in your mind, only you see it upside-down.

Moving in a few weeks just makes me think about "Muncie dying," and some of the people that I've met here. I might never see them again. Hopefully, I'll be able to think about bad ass things instead of .... my apartment being upside down forever. That would suck.

What the fuck am I talking about? Woah.

Trouble with animal crackers

I bought a box of animal crackers

from a vending machine. When I ripped 

open the flap, the inside read:

Do not eat if seal is broken.

I licked frosting of a zebras stomach

and chewed through a giraffe's neck

so he wouldn't feel awkward at parties. 

Me and two apes talked 

about grooming techniques.

I found the seal, broken in half

near the bottom.

His flippers rested on his severed torso.

I probably broke him in half

when I threw the box onto the 

conveyer belt in a hurry.

Google was no help

in giving me tips to save him.

My first three hits were

the British musician.

I clicked on his homepage

and he sang "Don't Cry"

but I couldn't help myself.

The seal was broken

and I felt sick to my stomach.

The Bulls are officially on the clock

Check out my ESPN sports blog here. My latest entry is about the Bulls winning the Draft Lottery, despite their 1.7% chance to do so. Needless to say, I'm excited. The whole face of the organization should change quite a bit before next season starts. As a betting man, I'm going to wager a guess and say Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon won't be back.

Doesn't bother me at all. This has been a pretty good year so far for Chicago sports. Both the White Sox and Cubs are playing extremely well. The Bulls' situation is turning around with their lottery success. Not to mention the fact that I LOVE that Mike D'Antoni, who was once the front runner for the vacant coaching position, skipped town on then and went to New York, simply because they were going to offer him more money. Have fun coaching that nightmare, Mikey. 

Although I don't talk about hockey too much, mainly because the Blackhawks are never on TV, they had a successful season that really bodes well for the future. Sure, they missed the playoffs, only by three points mind you. Their team is relatively young, and they have a pretty decent 1-2-3 punch with Patrick Kane, Jonathan Towes and Patrick Sharp. And although Nikolai Khabibulin isn't the worst goaltender in hockey... they might as well start 23-year-old Corey Crawford next year and let him get his licks in. They drafted him in the second round back in 2003, so let the guy start playing.

The future is suddenly looking a bit brighter for Chicago sports. well, except for that 100 year curse...

Mother Bird.

Eric is the kind of man that wakes up so early that it feels like midnight. He wrestles with the thin brown sheet covering his naked body and rubs the sleep from his eyes with a closed fist. A man rattling off news spills from a radio. The floor is cold when his feet touch the ground. Jackets stained with garage filth and jeans with holes ripped in the thighs and pockets lie in unorganized piles in front of his open closet door.

He looks out the window, down into the window boxes to see a mother bird flapping warmth into her wings, covering three eggs. She seems happy. The kind of happy mothers feel nourishing children. 

It never took him longer than fifteen minutes to get ready for work. Throw on an undershirt, pants, his black canvas jacket with the patches sewn onto the elbows and some boots, swallow a mouthful of day-old coffee, feed the cat and drive to work. Today, the cat slept with its paws tucked under its chest next to a full food bowl. The coffee pot was empty, except for two rings of tan scum. He couldn't find his uniform in the piles of soiled laundry. 

He walks back to the window and covered his midsection with his hands. The mother's beak scored the walls of the window box, probably starving. Rain starts coming down, banging against his roof like changing falling off a table. He thinks I'm fine right where I am, and this bird is fine right where she is. 

He remembers there's a pack of cigarettes in the silverware drawer he'd been saving, in case he decided to smoke again. He unwraps the package, and pulls out one cigarette with his index finger. His thumbnail slides against the paper, and he turns the cigarette over and dumps the brown flakes into an ashtray. They come down like the rain outside, first like a chef throwing a dash of seasoning into a mixing bowl, then in clear blankets.

The roof is leaking. Over the sink. He left a pot of broth to soak overnight, and the drops slash just loud enough to cause his head to turn.  I'm not safe from rain, not even in my own house. Eric wonders if the mother's wing will cover the eggs long after the rain stops.

Oliver waits 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."