December 2010
29 posts
5 tags
this is what my brain looks like when I'm at work
I hate how society makes artificial pleasantness a priority over sincerity. Genuine niceness is amazing, it makes the world go around. The hollow, plastic, passive-aggressive artifice intended to pass for niceness makes me ill to my stomach. The human race has completely devalued emotional honesty in practice, despite the fact that nothing enriches the soul more than someone simply dropping...
November 2010
33 posts
9 tags
My grandfather told me “There’s only two good days in car ownership: The day you get the car and the day you get rid of it.” He’s right. Getting a new car is a relief if the vehicle is purely functional and some kind of intense thrill if you’re a devoted car person (I can never relate, I’m always in the former camp). But after a limited shelf life, it feels...
12 tags
We will give ourselves To the warm night impulses That have been building Like shadows we melt into One under the soft moonlight
6 tags
Your life was alive and potent with confusion and vibrancy back then. Everything was full of depth and meaning and an urgency that tugged at the sinew of your heart and filled your lungs with a fiery breath. The smallest details mattered. You waited hours to feel the strings under your fingers again, the bright silver nickel-plated steel held power beyond the functional, there was a latent...
8 tags
I can feel you as you lean through the dark and icy cold of late autumn nights. I can feel you as you permeate my being and press up against the wall of my heart. With or without meaning to, you cross miles and continents and years and centuries, tireless and undying, as quiet as a midnight vesper but with the impact of an atom bomb taken internally, breathed in to detonate again and again, even...
6 tags
I slip into you We are warm and liquid lust Hearts pounding away
6 tags
crapsey cinquain
Snowfall Delicate drops Alone, small and fragile Accumulating, becoming Blizzard
5 tags
Bill hated his boss. The old man’s name was Wertz and Bill hated him because he reminded him of the cold, dispassionate, loveless parts of himself, of all people. In him, he saw only avarice and a dull, subhuman insensitivity that hung over his every interaction and tarred his relationships. Wertz was devoid of empathy and he moved through his days with a steadfast dedication that allowed...
6 tags
awkward, bastardized tanka
We find choicer beer And drink far into the night We laugh too loudly And share stories with no point The best parts of our young selves
10 tags
first thought, best thought and Clint Eastwood
I’m always fascinated with how Kerouac’s “first thought, best thought” manifesto applies to various artforms and disciplines and I noticed while watching the DVD of bonus material for Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby that everyone who works with him talks about his nearly zen methods for mining pure instinct and achieving amazing results that lack the belabored heavy...
7 tags
It felt good being so ignorant to the difficulties and realities of adult life that we could ignore the future and dwell only in the present, letting our love be exactly what it was, never questioning it or challenging it, just celebrating it and each other. To say I was naive would be an understatement but you made me happy and I was too certain of the way I felt to even picture the world...
8 tags
Darkness surrounds me Undertow drags me below I’m thankful for sleep
(This haiku is inspired by the fact that I just worked a 16 hour shift and I have to get up again for another shift in three hours… crawling into bed and suffocating under my blankets sounds really nice about now)
8 tags
I want to be closer to you To press my beating heart next to yours And feel our bodies becoming home for one another I want to kiss your forehead and your face And whisper into you my heart’s truth I think about what I would say to you then To let you know what you mean to me I want to breathe my longing and my desire Into your lungs I want to exhale onto your skin The joy and comfort you...
7 tags
“Devoted readers of superhero comics scream bloody murder when I dissect their...”
– Brian Azzarello
6 tags
He watched as months turned into years and the years stole his neighborhood away from him. This neighborhood used to be filled with life and the promise of stability that a family could bring you. This neighborhood never promised wealth but it promised decent pay for honest work and friendship and block parties on Friday evenings, with kids opening fire hydrants and the air filling with music...
8 tags
I am made of wounds and scars And little sorrows stitched together With jokes and hopes and nonsense I am a patchwork rag-doll Of broken promises and empty days But not always I can be transformed and lit ablaze Reborn and newly warm with a spark of life Strong and upright and mind a whirl With the bright, glaring future-dreams Of the young and the carefree Whose music and sex Turn nights into...
7 tags
Grayed, dirty streets People rush past, hurried and numb They are a spider’s web Of interlocking problems and solutions Functioning like machines, humming and glowing Too busy to notice the empty, the null That aches alone and forgotten At the corner of their own street Inside their pounding, desperate hearts The part of themselves, of their collective organism They choose to pretend...
9 tags
The sky looms pregnant With promise of harsh weather Huddle and prepare
1 tag
I can’t help but let the periphery of my thoughts be invaded by the harsh things you said to me in the heat of anger. I don’t carry them around with me because I hate you or because I’m bitter or because I’m angry. None of those things are true, I think you hurled the moon. I carry them around with me because I believe that they’re real… that you were and are...
1 tag
The baby was quiet in her crib. It was a rarity that she actually slept at night. As he watched her sleep, her young father studied her miracle. He watched her breathe, watched her tiny fingers and eyes twitch, the result of tonight’s dream. Every part of her was amazing to him and she was somehow the entire truth of the world, the beauty of life itself, rendered small and fragile. If...
1 tag
The letter was four words long Four sweet words that spoke Across boundaries and distance And asked for a good-night kiss A soft whispering of affection To soothe the ache of the day Four sweet words that made my heart flutter Made me with sigh with longing Desire to do more Gladness to softly say “sleep well”
1 tag
I'm in the mood to write poetry lately
Poetry is fun to write because I love playing with words, like toys. This sometimes looks a lot like just screwing around but, similar to jazz improvisation, it’s very rewarding to play around with shapes and colors and to allow this to lead to new discoveries.
But it’s not all about masturbatory self-gratification. Poetry can have a real effect in readers and I say that as a...
1 tag
Night falls in the city I am a beggar in your kingdom You, the Night Queen You wear nothing but smoke and dream-mist Hot heartbeats and soft curves You melt against me and become Liquid angel-sin I want nothing but to lose myself to your touch To vanish into your moon-fire For minutes and hours to dissolve between your legs To drown myself in an ocean of passion And your sweat and joy-tears And to...
1 tag
It was a frigid day in December. Noon was burnt charcoal and snow hung rather than fell. The air was dry and sick, like the sky itself was dying. There was no wind or moisture, as if life was sucked out of the atmosphere, leaving only gaping, empty hollow. Brady had a meeting scheduled for one o’clock, a meeting with Gordon. Having been at the company only five years, Brady had suffered...
1 tag
I hope you see the way I drink in your laughter. The quiet shields of stony silence that society has asked you to place up, to hide behind, fall away and you are revealed before me. Without your mask, you are more beautiful than you can imagine. You are vital and boundless when you laugh. Your very spirit is bare before me and I want to bask in the warmth and brightness of this truer you, this...
1 tag
Please create. For yourself and for me and for a world that is richer and enhanced for having you, a world that needs you and asks that you find the truth in yourself and show others the same truth in themselves. Look longer, at what you perceive to be the dull, grayed concrete prison of your existence; look until you understand what it truly is, a breeding ground for ideas, vital and warm. ...
1 tag
Autumn sky grows cold Without the snow you wouldn’t Realize spring’s true warmth
1 tag
Please don’t forget about me as you drift away. You will vanish into the crowded, ebullient streets as the sun shines on you and your beautiful heart will be open and renewed with purpose and meaning. You will be busy learning and loving and drinking from the wellspring of life but I will still be here, solitary and dedicated and solemn. I was born to live in the nebulous gray spaces and...
1 tag
tanka
Softness of the bed I turn off screeching alarm I will not get up I sink underneath blankets After four hours of bad sleep
1 tag
terza rima
Your heartbeat echoes through the evening calm I am compelled to listen and nod to sleep To a soothing rhythm, the midnight’s balm I am soon lulled into a dream so deep Of muted hues and whispers and gray tones I am empty and cold and begin to weep You have withered away to skin and bones And the world grows dark and frigid and dead I fall to my knees desperate and alone I wake to your...
1 tag
I wait through countless hours Forging a routine from the fibers Of hard oak, dried and callous And precious metals that somehow corroded I wait and I remember forward I give myself to formless phantoms Future ghosts and daydreams and whims And foolish childish things like love They open the passenger side door And I have never been so excited to go I am mad and confused and glorious with lust I...
1 tag
Did I vote? Are you kidding? I voted my BALLS...
Holy fuck… I LOVE DEMOCRACY. I mean, I’m not entirely sure how much YOU like democracy. Maybe you like it a lot. But I’m reasonably sure I love it a lot more than you do.
I showed up to my polling place in a Ford F-150 with Lee Greenwood and Toby Keith music blaring from my speakers. I’m clad head to toe in nothing but red, white and blue and my ceremonial Uncle Sam...
1 tag
When the boys turned fifteen, they went off to hunt with their dads. They picked up their bolt-action twenty-two’s and went off to find small game or, in the colder weeks of fall, a lever-action thirty-thirty and tried to bag their first deer. Sometimes successful but most of the time not, they’d always be glad just to go. They’d been raised around it, the taste of venison,...