propaganda

12/24/05

oh what a lie of grandeur, a fib of scandalous scale!
that heaven-sent from a place above according to lore
a shower of sparks
can descend and send you forth
on that gilded course with just one other –
how silly for those unknowing to believe!

that lightness you feel
within your heart
is nothing

single serving x

12/24/05

skeletons in the closet and worrisome bits
oh how I’m having a dastardly fit!
on the eve of a Christmas never so fine
like glass after glass of summer moon wine
drunk down to the bottom of the bottle

for snow no more is the order and the way

and today! I stay
inside

away

calling it a night

12/9/05

apparently, in my present state
the gift (subjective, mind) of wordsmithing
has sprouted feet and scampered away
without me knowing!
the spirits by which I’ve become so mellow
have shrouded my senses and
it’s fucking run astray again, like the yellow
warmth of the summer

and lacking the aptitude for effective
expression of my inner journeys
I’m stuck merely milling about inside
my head again, wondering if this happened,
or if that would have come to pass,
if she’d have me in a perfect way,
or if, in just one sway
I’d take it all away
and never see her again
if I’d begin afresh with a life anew
different me in a different place
with new adventures to season
the bland flavor of this lack of reason
my quiet evening tainted with noisy children playing
in the snow

that glamour was false (oh how we see it now)

12/9/05

cast your flower like a stone of lead
into the hole where I lie, let it athunder atop my casket
yet I’ll not hear; for a simple deaf patron I was
of the purveyor of desperation borne
in the sweet juice of sharp grass
hewn in the warmer latitudes – alas!
in their own persuasion
just as cold as the northern wastes they are
that deliver such a cold breeze as this
to whisk us away
after it’s all set aside
to play
in our shadows
as we sleep

tom!
weiner!

----------------------------------

i’m almost ahead of you

12/6/05
originally composed on 11/28/05

from this white empty form of a snow-shrouded peak
I’m left cold and windswept again
merely peering rather meekly through the
whipping winter fog
at the children down below,
thick layer of simple meat
coating everything
below me
beneath the sun
and as I gaze deified from my perch
I know I’m still one of them
as broken and sanctified as I feel
on this frozen peculiar nocturne

awareness

12/5/05
originally composed on 11/28/05

o! how the sensory pleasures
can appeal to such a starving boy as
I, assailed by brilliant flavors,
smells, and visual pleasantries like an
evening bath with Leary –
the invasion force mint of my gum is
slamming the beachfront as
beautiful teenage girls fire shots like snipers
from their breasts heavy and tight
in their sweaters
and Wolf Blitzer on the television above
wraps his arms beneath my coat around my waist
and whispers soft assurances
in my ear
that this world, soft and warm as I see it
is nothing but the latest prime-time
attraction to get our hearts pumping
before we‘re in our beds a-thumping
and we can go to sleep safe and sound, he says,
rested silent and ready for the ‘morrow.

simple

12/03/05

it’s quarter of ten tonight on this saturday night
in the common tradition a drinking night
the difference just a toss
a new variety of sauce
ready to be surveyed –
and I’m nearly asleep
for the expedition’s been played
by the sweetsong lullaby of single-cask rum
but perchance to say the dreaming’s begun
for I’m casting back a while
to the way you were
soft and close as I held you tight
stricken deaf and blind by the
audible might and heavensent light
swooping down around us

and oh
didn’t it feel, for a moment, just right?

the indiscriminant dry hand of time

11/30/05

there really is no reason for this, the steel switch that kills,
the evil thing that spills
black ink on the sun –
it doth make me still

though beside me that airy turbine still does turn and blows
in abandon my lesser dreams of the night
a bit further just in spite
down a darkened alley gray and tight in the
eyes of a child like me, wrapped in fright
amongst the cloth of what we sense tonight,
the feather touch of fingers on flaccid cotton skin
like the cold and dry breath of the way stations
I visit and pay homage to
at the end of these icy last days

unfinished (littering in the premature)

11/12/05

dull thud to the back of the head
is what it left me feeling
covered in the stale notes of rust and gasoline –
knees scraped on steel just healed from
a tumble to the ground
as all this came slowly
to a halt.

but I lacked the strength to grab the box and haul
myself back to the bed
even though it was a short way up and a long way out
to where the end lay
like an afterthought in the dying afternoon,
an old sister mottled and forgotten

the dreams of the exhausted

10/16/05

by the river-bank I’ll
have a drink or two as it all wraps up
one last shot
at the final last call
before I crawl back up the stairs
and rest my shoulders upon the
thin clear clouds so close to the lord
that burn with the fire of the sun
and chill with their ice
that sails the winds which lead me home
in snow and light
to the sound of a single cello
soft

blue

10/16/05

        it took me almost a month three weeks
        before I saw this peculiar blue light quite weak
        that hovers near my fingers as I type

(off to the left)

        and it reminded me of
        snowflakes aloft under streetlights
        and kitten-tracks
                marching
                        down
                                the sidewalk
        smoothed flat my four-year-old snow boots –
        how seductive the new dark evening smelled!
        and oh how the sound it made played in my ears
        like nothing

        like the faint glow of muted sky
        that I would have missed
        if things weren’t so dark ‘round here

these days

perhaps at the mercy of something else

10/15/05

a diagram in the schematic and the instructions
for its lubrication
are what she gave to me that night
when she bared her breasts
and showed me in the moonlight a world that sent
my mind to the gods so softly that hover over
this sick machine
that bleeps and squaks and squeals
like dry boxcar wheels
as the conductor slams the brakes when his body falls upon
the lever
a heart attack at forty-five, rose-red whiskey cheeks
and two little boys at home…

but much to my disappointment her
manual doesn’t apply anymore
at least not when her shirt’s back on
and she’s again run out the door

ode to lisa

10/15/05

silly girl, I know what you are
pulses of electricity and abstract niceties, the things
I’ll never have
because you’re nothing but everything that’s wanted
like the unwanted light in the corner, or a
cockroach in the cupboard
just slaveship vermin awaiting the next riot meal
so you can die dignified in the dark
for some lonely man’s
wet and salty fantasies

the poor, unknowing fish of the sea

10/15/05

it’s noteworthy and remarkable how a person
such as she could fill me with such a
creative blend of longing, fear, and hatred
but of my concerns the greatest is the wrath she
will exact on those unsuspecting of her
crisp acid smile and piercing atomic heart
for they’re the ones who know not the things I do
and have not the reservations I’ve constructed nor
the wildfire loathing that ensures my iron stance against her
when she tries again to capture my heart unsuspecting

that silly decision

10/15/05

a year later and the imminent chill of the dead days
is upon us again much like the call of our departed
whispers if only they could speak –
hollow
dry and
empty
like the loomingnegativespace around the corner
the one born from expiration as the leaves stop whispering
and fall to the earth
before the snow follows suit and does the same,
copycat blanket of icy white not wholesome like the gold
of these final autumn days
and o! how I wish I could grasp the hands of my clock
and softly push back the days to April
but time won’t allow such an adjustment
so I’m sentenced to this different beauty before me
should I choose to see it
or a bleak empty waste
if I give in again

lockdown

10/15/05

when the road is your home
there’s not much’ll hold you down,
side for the sleepless nights and endless liquor
drippin’ like backwater moonshine
keepin’ you up
goin’ round in your head
like a burnin’ rat goin’ round and about,
bout everything you’ve ever done wrong
or that you never done will
and as you wrestle with those sheets
you’re wishing you were back
to Travelin’ Jack
on the roads a-runnin’ just keeping it all away
so that momma’ll never see

ahhh... back in Utah once again. I really need to keep up with this blog; sadly it's been neglected too many times and I fear it may begin to get slightly angry at my constant oversight. Alas.

I'm working now, so i can't write much, but I felt it prudent to post a tiny poetic spurt that I wrote in an email to my friend Val while I was killing some time in the Bismarck Municipal Airport waiting to leave for Denver, and then SLC, yesterday afternoon. I hope things are going festively amazing in your neck of the woods, reader, and that the skies are as sunny where you are as they are here.

---------------------------------

the airport drill

9/27/05

so i'll write you a poem!
but my head is a little clogged
like a tugboat in a fog
or a business-traveling mother worked dead like a dog
yet suprisingly i can rhyme
(perhaps for a time)
since my head shallow and slumped as can be
might really be a little stronger than me
and a bit more awake to boot
for moments like these alas are made
for the trees - o to be
just outside for a bit, in a place of peace
(peas)
and mashed-potato sunset sleep!
not this airport that smells of nothing
the way hospitals do
like they're hiding the pain
away from our noses
but not far enough from our fearful inquisitions,
us back to children patients of the dentist –
and the chiseled smiles and drilled-out eyes
enameled before me in the stonefacade faces gathered 'round me
whir
like
drills
tiny and
loud
and steal away the sleep i need.

god made a mistake

9/14/05

unfortunately, god was fallible.
the christian god most people know
found herself in a spot so tight
and unsure of a kingly course of action she
resorted to intuition and instinct, so fallible
as she should have known, for
she designed the Human.

alas, she created something
so vile and evil that it would Undo her
like the satan prophesized, no more than
fiction, but reality at her hands -
hatred, jealousy, ineptidude, and insecurity
all rolled into a jelly-roll pastry of peril
that served to destroy its very maker!
a paralyzing treat delivered to such a
willing and unsuspecting cafe patron her holiness...

alas, god took a bite
and died.
she fell over, dead, with a mute thump,
and no-one heard her soft cry.
no-one saw the et-tu look in her eyes
or felt her icy sadness as it drifted from her dying lips.
they looked the other way.

as we all would,
as you would,
because when we're drunk it's easier, softer, more comfortable

it offers the least resistance

and that's what you love, isn't it
when you're hunting your god?

sentenced to this

9/12/05

blindly away again she turned and smoothly ignored
the singing of the birds and the way my eyes foresaw
my further fall down this path, the rocky course
away from her
but, oh!
thank the heavens it's a familiar road
for i've been this way it seems
and suprise me not it would
if i were to walk its cobbled surface again
in a slow stride of sad, sullen steps
into the beaming face
of a great western something
or a smaller winter nothing
either way a wash it is, it turns up the same
the lightning-bolt of hatred telling the world i won't take her back
now, never, i'm finally done
until tomorrow

the girl, such a waste she was!

9/8/2005

poetic bliss, a touch of this
will collapse into rhymes
for a dime
mere pennies for my time
as your wish my kiss turns to vinegar from wine
like the stench of this evening so fine
starched crisp like sheets
of bastard-spawn swampsong
breathed throatily out by a crocodile throng
the sound and rush and smell
so strong
you can hardly bear it
like a fire on the mountain

and as stubborn as your desire may it crumble
like rocks loosened from the burnt roots of
the old growth forest
and may that wicked want so bent from sadness
crack upon the earth below, dusty like
your words and dull

who would have guessed

8/19/05

will this morning light bring
the memory of her back
the way she came to me in the
blue wet night
dancing with the raindrops?

her hair fell down like lively ropes
and she had me
tied up and strung up
under the night
in her tangle of snakes
and those two eyes
(slitted-like)
beneath it lit up the night with
an evil fire!

from her mouth issued
a tongue neatly forked
tasting the air and my lust
and as she bent down
to take
my life
with a parting of her lips
I knew
this was the way
I wanted it to be

I'm going to bed. i have no clue what the fuck i just wrote.

sleep well and dream of lots of hot sex.

jumbledaya

8/16/05

as I sit here tonight before a time of slumber
doubtfully serene yet calling
things become blended in my head
like eggs and flour and sugar and stuff
a hotcake in my skull, part of a complete
headbreakfast
of salesmen cozily wrapped in sausages and
boxcars in barbeques –
hamburgers, mere hamburgers
the voice of death on the battlefield
the cries of the fallen like the mice
under
my
bed
who leave
grain
and turds
piled high
like kingly rats
who slide along
inside their rat-busses
made of ice
commuting to the office
in the dead
of summer

(don’t you love
the way
the cold feels?)

the rats do

o, to instead become fond of the english cuisine

8/16/05

so much of the time
the things I spy around me
end up having this crispy
Cajun-like
flaky charred coating covering
their cool calm insides
hiding away their delicate clockwork tickings
like a rustedshut musicbox

what you see
is not what you see
but only that
which you see

because
for me

only Cajun-style trust
will do
on my plate –

for a flavor burned through and through
I can only send back
to the kitchen
in a fury of disgust

My tongue is back in order! This pleases me a lot. Ladies, i know it's tough, but please try to restrain yourselves.

Tonight's been a good night. Beer at Zan's, and Frangelico cokes at my house. And plenty of socializing with Zan and Kris and their family. And, to top all that off, I'm back to writing! Granted, it's a bit choppy, but sometimes these things happen. I'm not the most pleased with my latest ramblings, but they seem complete in their own right, so i guess i'll leave them as-is and keep writing and posting.

I hope you've had a wonderful Friday night, reader, and dream sweetly tonight.

-----------------------------

perhaps I was wrong all along

8/6/05

we were
in
the flashes and the heat that night
just me
and the fluorescent gay man
from new york
sitting in front of me
first class MSP to SLC -
the air turbulent we sailed over
was the desire in his smile
and the bolts of lightning that shot down
to the earth below us
were like that longing in his eyes
as he glanced into mine
wondering
wishing
and hoping
in the way that
a pink-clad strapping lad
would do
when looking upon
such a fine man
as myself

alas, my cold that night
was the chill of the wind at such a height – freezing and
deathly bleak
against the heat and fury of the light
and I felt bad for the chill was not mine
but of the sleep I was missing
and the extremity of the moment;

thunderstorms from cruising altitude
over Wyoming, for someone like I
are rare events
and I meant no harm to the man
who simply wanted to have a little
fun
be himself
and fuck my brains out

he was a genuinely pure soul
and could have been a wonderful friend to me
(certain sexual discrepancies aside)
but sleep
and that pulsing throbbing flashing from the south
were sadly more important
than a rare man’s heart

backtrack

8/4/05

if only the world would stop
and forget how to tie its shoes
and have to start over again
like a sick and nervous little
five year old girl
on the first day
of kindergarten

then,
perhaps,
we could have our clean slate

then,
perhaps,
we could all
have peace and smile

and be free of the chalk of our
ancestors, the scribblings that
lock us in like black prison bars –
white lines strong as steel
yet weak like a child’s
shoelaces
tied round and tight by her parents

Yeah, i got rear-ended today, so that was fucking awesome! And had some unexpected oral surgery, too, so let's hear it for not being able to eat without getting a mouthful of blood with your vegan cheese!

mmmmmmmm!

Sorry if I sound a wee disgruntled, but it's been one of those days. Anyone want to get wasted?

Something i just sent into a user forum on the Bismarck Tribune website, where everyone is getting all horny and shit over the fact that a bunch of "big-box" retailers are coming to Bismarck - such things as Best Buy, Kohl's, Lowe's, the Home Depot, etc:

"More than big-box retailers, Bismarck would benefit far more from an enhanced downtown district. The area sadly lacks in culture - one reason I decided to move away to Salt Lake City - and a downtown district that had more local and unique dining options, artisan galleries, and perhaps even a live music venue would be something highly attractive. I worry that with an influx of big-box retailers comes the sickening urban sprawl I see time and time again in growing cities (SLC, sadly, no exception), and I would hate to see Bismarck caught up in the homogenization of culture that occurs with such a boom as we might experience. We can strengthen our own unique city, or let it fall into obscurity amongst every other city that's full of Ruby Tuesday restaurants and GAP clothing stores. Which would you rather choose?"

hundred thousand miles

7/21/05

distance died
the day i learned i had feet
and could hobble across the land
at a toddler's wobble
in persuit of new adventures to the west -
a little intrepid explorer heeding the words of Greeley,
off to meet the setting sun

it still dies, twenty-one years later
every time I ride the wind in mechanical miracles
above snowdrift mountains of cloud
as I guide my car through
gobs of traffic slow as clots of glue
and as i send my pain through
the abstract passages I
cast as waves and electrons to heaven

but, oh, distance comes back, lurching like the undead
every time i peek inside
you
and feel the fear
you wrap around your shoulders
like a soft blue velvet shawl
on fire
or a molten rayon costume, that happy hollow facade
which seals away
that beautiful self
i rarely get to see

state street

7/20/05

what a
fragrant wet night
it was! thick with the scent of the
storms on the horizon and the hidden vapor
of the river slow and lazy in the twilight,
the streets alive, sweeping and slithering
across a
pulsing
verdant
great plains village,
rattlesnakes gorged and glistening
in a city overgrown, screaming its ten o'clock July orgasm
to the sky, that bruised and jilted
sacred starkeeper
in bloated heavy love with a full smiling moon

and oh, i'd have fucked existence
if i could, right there,
in the moist air and
darkening night,
in the middle of the street,
but, as it be, i'm just
a bit too small
for something
that
massive
and potent,
if you get
what i mean

Well holy fucking shit... it's been forever since i've posted! That seems to happen a lot with me, and try as a might to keep a regular journal, those efforts seem to fall apart like so much rotten thread in an ancient forgotten shawl.

I've been thinking about stuff lately, however, as Goats generally do, and it felt appropriate this morning to take a small break and share a few thoughts. Ever since last night, I've been focusing a lot on the concept of missed oppportunities. Perhaps as I get older I begin to realise more consciously that our time in this existence is indeed limited, and how shameful and almost sacreligious it seems to not follow what seems in the flow - to not make the most out of the wide array of opportunities that life presents you every day. I'm just as guilty as the next person in a lot of ways - part of me really feels drawn to Guatemala, for example, and i feel like if i really honored the flow and did what i could, i'd sell it all and move down there and dedicate my life to helping those less fortunate succeed in a world that doesn't apparently give a flying fuck about them. Alas, i continue to sit here in Utah, coding and jamming to Dave Matthews Band live in Central Park, thinking about those things i've missed out on, and the things that other people i know have missed out on, too. The things they could have had, but chose not to.

What gets me is that in a lot of those instances, the things that people can have are fucking amazing, and in all reality, awfully easy to obtain. But people get so scared by the prospect of it actually happening, i think - of this thing actually becoming true in their lives - that they get stuck like a deer in the headlights of possibility and turn the other way and go back to the life they find easy, familiar, and less unsettling, because it's ultimately the path of least resistance and is known already. They fall back into that life because it takes less effort than trying for something better, and it's less risky than going out on a limb and facing the unknown. Because, perhaps, they feel there would be less dissapointment, pain, and anguish if they went out on a limb and it snapped... and they fell on their face. But what is worse, living a life that fills your head with "what-if"s on your deathbed, or risking your comfort to live the happiest you ever could? You can wander lazily through your half-life, a shallow, meek trek through this adventure at our doorstep, or you can become consciously aware of what makes you the happiest, you can identify what will fulfill you the most, you can live for your happiness, your heart, and push with all you have for that thing that will blow your mind, fry your circuits, and shake up your current life, leaving you dazed and smiling, drunk and high on the life you have.

If you can go for it, why not? If there's nothing stopping you, what are you waiting for?

Have a pleasant Monday, reader, filled with smiles and chocolate and sunshine and stuff.

What the fuck, Joe? Why did you have to go do this?

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/05/idaho.children/

We would have all helped you, if you'd only have asked.

good god.. it's the 27th already. where the fuck has the time gone? not only has it been like a week or more since i've posted last, but good tapdancing christ, i've been out here for more than three months. wow..

people aren't shitting when they say time speeds up once you get out of school. before i know it, i'll be 80, old and shit and rocking out to Sigur Ros and Slayer. I'll be the coolest old dude ever.

anyways, i'm tired, and feeling blah, so i'm gonna shower up and hit the sack. after i post this latest poem. another one that blew in from somewhere close to nowhere. Sometimes those can be the coolest, but this one leaves a little to be desired, I think. However, it whispered that it's done, so here she be. Sleep well, reader, and dream of fun things like waterslides and marshmallows. (preferably the vegan variety, cause cow bones and pig skin just don't belong in a s'more, man - they belong on pigs and inside cows! gelatin... bah.)

-----------------------------------

the aluminum icarus cast down

6/27/05

as the aircraft falls from
the heavens above
and fire shoots
out of my hands
you’ll ask yourself
what does this
mean,
and why
does
it
matter?
and my fading eyes that fall
through
the
clouds
will answer back in an
empty voice, the nonresponsive
(de)affirmation, whatever you choose –
what you see
is the last of me
all you’ll ever see
riding the night
on silver scraps
of screaming failed flames

simply shallow (the deception of beauty)

6/15/05

so you think I could run?
you really believe I could
carouse away
and concoct the colors up to thirty one
in a solid smear the strength of the sun?

believe me
I could
but instead, if you’d have me
I believe I’d stay
for we’d together twist a string of the softest yarn
cord of the most sensual blue
from these fields of
soft white chances around us
we’ll twist
and tighten
and
fuck
I’m starving for those things

but they ain’t here

or there

or at the end of this run

but in the stare of the moonlight and the
hum of the sun;
they’re frozen
in the grace of your hand and the
the starburst of your pride;
they’re in the taste of your tales and
the sound of our
dreams
that echo about in
the silent chasm between us
as we stroll down the median
of a seven o’clock street
bearing the weight of the day
in our thoughts, sullen, sugar-glazed
and dipped
like
stale donuts
in cheap
murdered
coffee

Monday afternoon finds me sitting here chewing some Orbit gum and debugging my app in nothing but a pair of fuzzy gray shorts; these behemoth things called Pipes that came from Wal-Mart. Yes, i admit, i'll shop there once in a while, but it's only in a pinch, i swear! I needed shorts over a year ago to help facilitate effective spinning with Laura, and lo and behold ended up with these things, since it was the only store open at 10:30pm that sold anything remotely spinnable.

or so i thought.

Fleece shorts do not make effective spin-wear. let's just say one gets a wee uncomfortably hot.

But life isn't so bad, right now - i get to work in my homie shorts and blog and generally chill, which kicks ass. (evidently it actually does, since for some reason my right ass cheek has been hurting like a mofo all day long... but that's a whole 'nother story, reader.)

Alas, right now, i'm pathetically fucking bored. I'm cooped up here in my "office" for another two hours or so, and i'm getting down-right stir crazy. This absolutely stunning afternoon keeps whispering in my ear that I should come out and ride one of my bikes, but this gosh-derned program of mine just won't write itself these days. But the sky is so blue, the wind so calm, and the air just so fragrant that i can't help but imagine what it would be like to hit the singletrack with a vengance in about fifteen minutes. I guess i'll just have to hit that shit this afternoon when I decide to call it quits.

Part of me also really wants to get outdoors just so i can lay out for awhile. I'm still pathetically white (aside from the fierce farmer tan that i'm rocking, which is sooo hot - that's how i get the chicks) ... so a more even goat-tan is in order. But the bike so overrules that shit today; it's been since december since i've rode the war-horse anywhere. Road biking is fun, certainly, but it's nothing like mountain biking. And fuck, i'm in fucking Utah, reader - to not mountain bike or ski this state is sacrilege.

I feel like i'm done writing for now, i guess. Just more or less out of stuff to say. I could write plenty about the last trip to bismarck, i'm sure, but i'm on the fast track to getting over most of it, as i pretty much always do (i can't stay miffed to save my life), so ranting about shit in the past is probably, for the most point, pointless.

until next time, though, come, reader, let us frolic amongst the trees and bleat our little hearts out. stay happy and if you're feeling crappy, don't, cause that's not much fun.

this is not good.
i'm sitting
drunk
in my ex-girlfriend's bedroom
and her roommate

(who is watching
her mother's dog)

(and is, in all honesty,
amazing)

walked past me.

the dog,
even,
walked past me.

she smelled my hand
and in a fury of
distrust
and
disgust
turned her head
and walked
the other way

just as
they
always do.

and
always will;
for i'm
just the stinking drunk
stuck in a place
i can't even
bear to see
that i can't even
bear to notice
that i can't
grasp -

god, i'm frail
thin
wasted
emaciated
and i'll i'm searchin' for
is a bit of
food
something to
put a bit 'o meat
on my vegan bones
and tell me

(ever so
softly)

that i'm actually

the
shit

and that i matter
in this smatter
of crap
on the walls

god.... i'm drunk again, on tequila and wined and beer and fuck

i need to get laid so bad!

(anyone know of anyone in salt lake that's fond of the Barnyard Charm??)

aah.... nothing like free wireless internet at the bismarck municipal airport. Now, if only Denver would just follow suit; then i'd be one fucking happy travelin' Goat.

Alas, it'll be good to be home, in some respects. While i'll undoubtedly miss the crew up yonder here in the great white north, it's been an interesting trip, to say the least. I could elaborate plenty, i'm sure, and i can almost guarantee that i will at some point. Right now, though, the name of the game is to simply get mah ass back home, ensure nothing has become graciously fucked in my two-week abscense from the apartment, and do a shitload of launrdy, cause dude, i'm so out of clean clothes. Any longer and i'll be running around Utah stark naked, otherwise, and that's just a scary, scary thought.

I'd hate to upset the Mormons. They haven't found me yet... and a naked Goat prancing amongst their domain would assuredly attract far more attention than I could stomach.

If I can hold them at bay until next year when the lease expires, my little stint in Utah will have gone pretty smoothly, I think. Of course... i still have like ten or eleven months until that happens... alas.

But my plane boards soon... so more to come later. Have a peaceful day, and keep smilin', homeslice.

I'm off to see 3 powerman 5000 shows in a row! Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. See you Sunday!!!!!

(give me a call, reader, should you wish I'll have my phones and i'll have so many stories to share!)

until the end of the weekend, have the best of days, and keep smiling brightly.

---------------------------------------

what in the blue…

5/18/05

shit.

it seems that
tonight
under the duress of
a pot-of-coffee caffeine
executioner of
rationality
I’ve wandered astray
into what appears to be
a garden
(of all things)
half Bosch and half
Bruegel,
just a bunch of
peasants
fucking
and, oh, lord,
can I leave?

can’t I
just get out of
here
meet my friends
and have
a drink
like the old times?

eighty-five

5/17/05

she called me scarface
because my forehead had this awful magnetic
attraction to sharp metal objects
like mobile home skirting
and the bumpers of pickup trucks
and oh god she couldn’t be more right
for the July sun and cool of
our summer pools
are what’s in those lines
on my face
and inside these eyes
that can never let go
of the scents of deck-stain
and fresh cut grass
and the bullhorn blare, gilded glare
of endless Tom Petty flowing ‘round us
as we started the day and
lived it long
as it was
in those times; endless and smiling and always bright
for the clouds
simply didn’t cover us

we were lords of our realm
Colonial Estates
trailer park on the southeast
corner of town

and it’s that home
which I take with me
on the road
to my own

frozensolid gluestuck

5/11/05

what I feel like now is like
soil under the sunset
on the plain
in the
dead of winter, dim and empty as
night falls on me, flat land where
the wind stole the snow
and
only left the
grass
sticking up in
crazy bedhead
        tufts
that taunt and tease
and make you wish
like a child on christmas
that there was snow, just a little bit of fluff
just a
tiny
bit
that’s all I need

to obscure this desolation

radiating from
my icecube
toes
below

to the farthest horizon

found on an indie/anarchist's blog:

"i'd punch myself in the face just to make something fucking happen. ive got to stay loaded on something to numb the realization that im sitting here wasting time, softening myself, becoming more insecure and reverting back into the old me, whom i despise."

said punk just took the words right outta my mouth.

(god, i can't wait till pay day tomorrow... being cooped up here without any way of going places blows severe ass)

a wee too weak

5/7/05

I just went outside
to get my mail; funny
how I never did that today, but actually
went outside in the morning

alas, the couple passed
and I fell drunk in her perfume
fleeting and so meaningless, for I shall
never pass her again,
never sip a drop of that intoxicating
exotic
scent
that made me want to bed her

but I looked up, on the way back
(it can’t be more than
a mere thirty second walk)
and on the way spied two stars, so bright
amongst the low clouds
bloated with rain
and wondered what they meant

yet as I turned to climb
back up the stairs, the three flights that
lift me gracefully to my door on the
wind of angels
I spied a third, a dim, weak little star
near those two, but on the edge
like a shy friend who feels a bit lonely
and wholly out of place
puppy amongst the sharks

and if I could I’d reach above
grasp that lonely dog, pull her down
and simply look in her eyes
tell her
"you’re strong
so fucking strong
and the life you have is in your paws
hard as it is to notice
but it’s there –
grasp it in your claws
and don’t let go"

but I’m drunk, and there’s beer to be had
and she’s
far too high
for me

so I came back inside
instead

modest

4/12/05

I am the modest

silly little druid in a silly little land
sadly robbed of my forest! But
more often
I meander like
a duck
in the desert
frantically at first
sand burning my little webbed feet
as I waddle across the dunes
but eventually I give up
give in
accept that I’m not really built
for desert life
but keep waddling on in a mechanical way
for some distance later
I’m sure I’ll find an oasis
where I can swim for a time
and cool feet ‘jus fine –
I could clean the dust
from my feathers, too
perhaps

but as I waddle
being modest
I lay low to the ground
so I cast a small shadow in my travels
and slide across places
with the smoothest of ease,
my humble disposition the oil to grease the wheels
of my silly social shortcomings
and inept inequities
and as low to the ground I am
it makes it hard
to spy those rare pools
off in the distance

but at the same time –
I’m drenched in the scent of the
planet vibrant above me, the beautiful brothers and
strong sisters around me, and
duck as I be, modest as I
dream, or perhaps only perceive
through my tiny laughing mallardeyes
I smell the orchestra this afternoon
and taste its vibrant golden tones; it sounds
like cayenne and looks like the deepest, richest
corner-bar jazz
everyone and
everything
woven and
spun tight
in this perfect depiction of the higher
plane
man woman child and dog
grandmother son bird and wind
green and gold and blue and white
goosebumps and godly pride
blending together and
draping over me like a
silken cloak of smiles

yet I remain modest!
a modest merchant above
this marketplace of emotions electric –
a child spying magic amongst the clouds
and screaming dreams at
anyone who would hear,
any soul or hopeless fool
who would take the time
to hear a rhyme
and listen to my wild raspy quackings
as I shake the desert
from my feathers wise and cracking

uncommon product

5/7/05

steal thy friendly urchin
and straight from the bottle
i shall drink
with a zealot's zest! a love
for the strange, and the bizzare
like a lust for sunlight
or hermaphrodites
or simple things like
snakes in the grass

touch me, and deliver me to
a place of bliss; tempt me with
your tiny tongue, rusty with
the love of blood
and suck me off like a
salt-covered pirate on the docks of home

and listen to the breath i
exhale
like a gale from the middle sea; it's laced
with the scent of wine, the
australian that i'm letting slide down
through me now
and as you drink in that whisper
that scuttles from my lips
cover my eyes
and love me some more

sitting on Utah

4/12/05

so why not sit down in the grass?
I know that some of
my very best
writing
has been done inside, always
in the glare of a phosphorus window
or amber light, Sylvania’s best –
but why not let the real sun
touch my arms and light
my fires? Why not let this
spring breeze
        last of the day
mess up my hair with its playful fingers?

        It’s like a child, the wind –
and the playground ain’t far off

so come, wind, let’s ride the earth
like drunken gypsies, father and son
leering around like a pair of
basketballs trotting the globe
in search of nothing
nothing at all
save the fairies in the grass

bedroom howling

4/29/05

the dog downstairs, at least that’s where
i think it lives
must not be appreciating my
music this morning;

it’s a pretty picture-frame outside with
a light breeze and hot light shining through new
spring leaves, a few accidentally-bruised clouds
dancing off to the east
but the dog I suppose can’t see out the window
or something
because the music is driving him
insane

for an hour it has been howling and shrieking
at nothing but the hand percussion flying out
from my speakers;
percussion that blends well with the waltzing clouds
and playful blue sky of my morning

so I’m sure the dog must be locked
in the bedroom
below mine

where it’s
gray
and
oh so forlorn

Go listen to some Guster, children! It's hottt...

Have the best of days, reader.

---------

GUSTER - Love For Me

I know there is a place
A place where I belong
Not mistreated or undone
And if I find that place
I'll keep my mouth shut
Cause I won't be there alone
And if you're standing there with me
I'll swear it's a lie and I'll still believe it
Cause I came
And I spoke
And you ran
Didn't even wait to hear the words
Or see the look in my eyes
Cause I bled
And you watched
And I cried myself to sleep
Came to wipe my tears away but you
You couldn't look in my eyes again
Because of the love for me
I understand the time
It passes so slowly
And I can hear its laughter
But there will come a time
When you will ask me
And I will join you then
And if you're standing there with me
I'll swear it's a lie and I'll still believe it
Because of the love for me

daguerreotypes

4/26/05

your eyes are guatemala and your hair the sky i saw
above the canopy in the morning, the breeze your whispers
and
the light dust kicked up by the fruit man's
truck
with its seductive smell suprisingly close to your unwashed hair -

i was drunk down there, stumbling down the street on a magic
carpet like i am tonight, lost in blue and white retina memories that
burn like magnesium flames
and could i close my eyes and shut out the seduction i would
but like pain the beauty pins my feet to the ground and
glues my eyes wide,
overexposing my sore and tired point-and-shoot oculars
to some of the toughest things
one could ever wish
to forever capture -
breezes and scents and the morning colors of the sunrise
and the way it lit her skin as she wept

oh

4/6/05

it’s faint, like the
brush of a kitten on your ankles as you
wake up and place your
feet unassuredly down on
the cold berber below; this
whisper that you curl ‘round my ear
tastes like soft-serve on the warmest of
August evenings, a little bit of chocolate
drizzled on a calming heap of vanilla elegance

elegant … yet … dark

with a hint of an African sunset
behind the closed doors of a plainclothes
Presbyterian retreat
so let’s stroll for a time, before we run out of time
before the sun remembers its time
and dies

and oh,
keep on whispering those things you do

the old-time jazz

4/6/05

kodachrome snapshots:
       orange black lusty blood rouge
       the black of a jilted sky starless
       gray of a illuminated pen harmless
       and silver-sterling smiles
       on the floor
drip into me like cavewater
and spin me around like a
baby
trapped in a seizure
mother screaming in background, panic-driven frenzy
and all they want to do is build a new story
but how in the hell
can you

bend

the river current soft in the night?
She’ll take you to the delta if you let her

lots of coffee... lots of driving... big vegan cookie, lots of conversation... lots of smiles. lots of confusion. and lots of ... love.

this, my dear reader, was my evening in SLC.

oh, i guess i had some fierce spaghetti at my place, too; simple stuff but made with Amy's organic Wild Mushroom pasta sauce, which is one of the most amazing things i have ever tasted, save for Emeril's vodka sauce. Pity the latter isn't vegan, for it contains heavy cream. Unholy travesty!

It's now my mission to make a badass vegan vodka sauce for my pasta.

But in shorter terms of time it's of high importance to get me some rest ... seeings as it's a mere five hours until i need to work. Bah. Alas, i finished a poem as well, so here goes. Sleep well, reader, and don't land in any weird sexual dreams tonight, unless you're of the kinky persuasion, or you're just feeling randy. rawr.

---------------------------------------

forever stuck in hell, motel six

4/6/05

when my small friends
of the avian persuasion
make their little excursions across this
slate afternoon
the world seems to
blur a bit
and smooth out like a sheet of construction paper
rough and haphazard, colored by
chunky splattered wax painting the page
in faint crayon black, an irregular textone blast
of
roadhouse coffee-colored islands
floating in a silver icelocked marshland –
like a menace I try to
spread the black and push it back
but the crayon keeps disappearing, sauntering ever closer
to my stubby little toddler’s fingers
as I grind it across the paper
the frustration so hot it won’t even burn –

always these white isles in dusky seas
that elude the farthest reach!

to forget, oh, the essence of the calming ocean
but the birds …

this morning i feel... dim. Sort of here, but sort of not, and certainly, most certainly, confused beyond any and all description. But that's okay. Life without it would be, well, too easy, perhaps.

I just don't want a re-run of Black Summer. And, oh, she looks to be an interesting one, if it's this fucked and it's only April.

Alas, i just wrote a poem, so here goes! Not one of my best, but just a little rambling lament that seemed appropriate for this hung-over, windy Sunday morning. Be safe and stay smiling, reader, and enjoy this last day of your weekend.

---------------------------------------------

as it stands

4/3/05

we’re all living with those borrowed minds
in the shadow of stolen lives
with a courage endless the winding road round the world
red thread against the blue heart –
if only we’d throw open our colored shuttereyes
and spy its light!
feel it land on our skins and wash us
like the springtime sun
realizing that if the well were poisoned
its water tainted and tinted
from crystalline clarity to a
dyed hue of confusion
that what draws from the earth
is
always
water
and that
like the courageous highway
never ends

a piece i just wrote last night...

(and, yay! i finally have the internet again!)

---------------------------------------

inland shoreline blues

3/30/05

around in loops and squiggles I wiggle and twirl
with my nerves aflame, on the tips of icesickles –
I still smell you on my skin!
and like snowflakes that plunge below
streetlamps amber in the depth of winter’s last
springtime grasp you’re distant,
calming, soothing and nearly here
like a phantom fuck,
that ethereal you riding me like
a perfumed wind, smell I can’t quite shake
the one I wouldn’t should I could
but I cannot
so I’ll just plead ignorance and keep cruising
down this deadpan desert road, single dirty hand
on a single dusty wheel
where the sun slides into the earth as
smooth legs into a dusky pool
and electric sunset canvases bleed into black
when the stars get restless,
wrapping my hallucinatory journey
in cooling air perfectly poisoned
by a
moment
just beyond the vanishing point of
this circular foxhunt
endless

alaska

3/17/05

I can’t help but wonder
if under brightmoon starcover
I’d stolen myself away last night
if I’d rolled north to the mountains
on a ribbon of black
and told everyone I faded off, faking my death

amongst the caribou and auroras –
living like a god of the world

perhaps the pines would have pointed me to nirvana
and the slow rivers borne me to bliss
all the while with the wind the one who’d hold me
whenever I’d get lost for a moment

guess I’ll stay

3/17/05

I’m back in that bar again
the smoky one, corner-pub down in the
dimlit downtown
where olympian swimmers are the losers and
the runners, well, they’re
the day’s grand heroes, men of myth
whose rough cotton skins burst at the seams from
endless courage
as they spin their tales and
raise their sails
for a destination anywhere but here
to a place anytime
from now
but the funny thing is
drink after drink, time after time
I look up and notice I’m
the only patron here
a sad old man whose heroes
ran away in the night
and left me swimming towards

something

tsunami of Nevada sun and Mexican wind
coats me like batter and i'm lost beneath the pain
of carefree summertime whimsy
and
day-glo
           horizonsmiles
in the west
if they'd told me it would be this way
i would have just sipped a little more

but here i find myself sitting and lamenting about things i'd rather not divugle unless i speak in the muted tones of a geriatric fool, wheelchair bound on the fast track to a life void of smiles, peanuts, and dewey grass on the bottom of barefoot mornings. i'm so afraid, deathly fucking afraid, of something i know i have to someday do, but i'm stuck again... like a rabbit under the steel wheels of a coal-fired iron horse of long, long ago, that never seems to quite go away, but just lingers a few feet behind you, shining its weak lanternlight on the back of your mind like some idiot weilding a candle ready to expire, wax melting and running down his hands like white blood, the stuff of ambition and confidence.

why can't i do this?

the bottle isn't the answer
but oh how i wish it was
sometimes
like now
as this hurricane screams
its heavy fright-train avalanche mockings

no idea where this one came from ... at all. just one'a them thar poetic blasts from the great beyond, ah reckon.

i hope all is completely pleasant in your world, reader, and have the sweetest of nights.

---------------------------------

done, just like the other one

3/10/05

her dreams collapsed in on themselves
like a pumpkin on the porch
solidified and liquefied
in Halloween’s freeze
but oh how those dreams used to cling tight
her little fingers clutching handfuls of quilt
in the dark –

now
they glide away like cars on ice
careening lazily crazily towards lord knows what
and all she knows
is that
he’s the only one
who’d care
the only one who’d ever notice
her sunken autumn smile and
yellowsquash eyes

i'm soooo tired, reader! I've been stuck bobbing up and down in a sea of drama today, clinging to nothing but the seat of a shitty airplane that crashed and threw me here; the stewardess told me it would function as a floatation device, but she's starting to lose her credibility.

perhaps some beauty rest is in order for the Goat tonight.

Alas, i wrote, finally! This last trip to SLC has really fired up the poetry engines, so hopefully those don't run out, and i can crank out some more work. This one i'm posting tonight originally formed about a week and a half ago, drawing off the guatemala experience (mostly the nighttime mediatation in Tikal), but now merged with some of the inspiration i received and felt in Utah this past weekend. For what it's worth, here it is. (I've written better, and this is a bit of a departure from my most recent works, but shit, i'll post it anyways, since it feels like it's finished.)

Sleep well, reader, and dream of sweet stuff.

-------------------------------------------

maslow

3/8/05

fade into the twilight

forget not these lonely cries and scattered
dead-resonant driftwood thoughts
that slither about
in a bit of grass before me –
         serpentine sharp slivers of
         yesterday’s smiles and the blackened laughs of ages
         seduced by whimsy in the occasional
but before you sublimate into the peppered night
remember how I’d climb
to the top of it all and sing a
silent tune
around
the
stones
twirling on a whim
while trees and leaves blacken your silence
and explode from the pressure of frozen elation
I found in the ascent to those
forbidden
expiring
distances
between you and I, the ones that
still make me sigh slow spring tears
in the night like midnight mist

so one last time
before you go
rise to the moon and dance with me! come see
this world in that muted chime
as the lord of all and saint of none
pivoting across the branched leaves
of trees twittered and scaled
skidding
like a weary warrior child
bellowing as her father fell, bastard sun
roasting skins of the thousands who wept
for us

and at last
after all this fade

i want to drink more... kris and i broke up.

exorcise.

be the one who always dreams; who never stops to see the greens but lives to fly during the great divides. but why stop there? greatness comes not from rebound headshots but from redesigned apescapes; drunken topographies overlayed with sexual overtones never ignored but always pushed aside, like kittens in the mud. it's a nasty place to be, but we love it... so we cherish our times together, like a warden and his prisoner on the way to the chair.

we revel in these fancies like children basking in moonlight, drunk on popscicles and marshmallows. we'd choose to ignore them, but to ignore them would be bliss, and we hate that - we despise the thought of living in a state of endless contentment, so we press on, spraying molten plastic everywhere we look, casting our fury over anyone that dare tell us it's okay - that what we're in for, what we're in, is, in reality, what we've always hoped and dreamed for. That this grand mess we've fallen into is indeed the cat's flaxen hat; it's a fucking gas! And i'm the grease monkey, making it all happen.

You and I don't want that. Like magnets, we'll try until we rupture our minds to negate what we know holds true... even if it means falling down an dark and endless cravasse into the mirror we see before our very eyes.

I hope you've had a fucking awesome Saturday night, reader, and sleep beautifully tonight.

but... in some bizarre twist of the flow, i still feel like writing, and not meandering back downstairs to veg in front of the TV or to go take a shower or something similar. Part of me would like to get out and shoot some photos, but i'm still recuperating a bit from my last round of creeping death, so my body isn't really as excited about those plans as I'd wish it was. Alas.

problem is, i have no clue what to write about.

generally, i can hop on the computer and write away till my little heart's content, should i choose to begin writing in the first place. but lately, especially after sometime in december i think, i can't seem to blast my thoughts out quite the way i used to. hell, even formulating those thoughts has been a struggle that comes and goes with an apparant lack of reason.

don't get me wrong - Goats love to travel. sometimes, though, all that roaming can burn a person out, and that's what i really feel like; just burned out.

maybe i'll go take a shower after all.

blogger fucking sucks!

i just lost another post!

damn you... damn you to hell!

i guess it's not even worth rewriting. just a recap of today, anyways (made soup, lifted, talked with meri and brad and zanny which rocked, watched a bit of Two Towers, and packed some of my stuff in the basement for the move. and hopefully i'll be going out to drink tonight.)

blogger... psh. i don't know about you sometimes. you're like... a zucchini to me.

if you could push my buttons, which one would you push?

Would you turn me on? would you look at me the way you used to, setting me on edge, awakening satan within?

or would you turn me off? cast rhetoric my way and drench my body in crystals of the purest snow?

or would you push that little blue button way down there? i'd buzz and squeak and squak like the box you only wished i was! but that wouldn't be enough.

you'd have to find the green button...

but of even that i know not where 'tis.

it's another friday night in bismarck, looped-out from my sickness and coming down from a mean happy-hour buzz... and all this seems so fucking inconsequential. when you're thirty-five thousand feet in the air or lost in the tears of a steel guitar you look down on the world and realise sometimes that this is all just a fucking confused and jumbled mess of trivialities that everyone is having heart attacks over; and that none of it really matters. the kicker is that all of us know what matters, and i'd share it with you if you didn't consciously know this, reader, but i'm simply too tired, too zonked, too looped to do so ... and it would ruin the suprise.

i guess what i'm a-sayin' is that people just need to slow the fuck down and chill out and realise that life never fucking ends and that maybe doing nothing is doing something and doing something might mean you're doing nothing. let it all go and go to sleep... it's okay.

and i'd go to sleep, but my head won't let me - it races around like a cat whose ass is shooting forth the flames of hell itself. My ears are plugged and i can't think but oh my head sure likes to chatter, like a television in a crack-binge deathgrip. The fucker won't shut up for the life of me, and i might as well be a man sentenced to a life in the desert with nothing to keep me company save for the noise of the wind blowing 'cross the sand, and nothing to keep me warm at night save for the stars.

the small things in life, though, do offer some comfort. hot showers aim to please and often succeed. So do warm blankets and tiny shining offerings of fine sounds, such as Calexico, Loreena McKennitt, or Slayer. They'll show you a bit of the light that can be so hard to find sometimes, but when you hit stop, oh, the light fades... and you're left in the cold dark again. With a brain that's engaged for the long haul, the trek over the mountains that you can only wish never existed.

All the dude ever wanted was his immune system back.

I just wanted to make it visible to the world that I am getting so awfully sick of being sick! It seems like after the last big round of antibiotics, in the spring of last year (for something like 3 months), i've had absolutely no immune system to speak of. Coming back from Guatemala was evil; i brought back at least bronchitis, but perhaps a mild case of strep as well. This time... who knows. I think it's just your garden-variety ass-kicker of a cold, that i must have picked up during my trip to Palm Springs, California last week, but who knows. All i know is that i slept like utter shit last night (only about four hours, due to extreme coughing... sometimes to the point where i almost puked from the sheer intensity of the attacks), and that i feel like a 18-wheeler ran over me. This morning i was so weak i could barely towel myself off after showering, and i still feel just exhausted. In an effort to regain some strength i went to bed at 8 this evening, but didn't really fall asleep until just before ten or so - when my boss called me from Idaho to help him fix some of software he's demoing tomorrow. Then, i talked to Brianne, Becky, and Zanny, which was badass - but now i'm all energized and can't seem to fall asleep.

When one can't sleep, one shall blog.

Perhaps i'll meander off to bed in a little bit, though, and give it a second shot. I hope you're feeling wonderful, reader, and that life is nothing short of the cat's pyjamas. Sleep and dream well tonight.

i have no clue what this is about. Sometimes the gosh-derned things just done write themselves.

Hope you're having a pleasant Friday evening, reader, doing what you're doing, from raising hell on the town or pulling a Goat and just sitting around the house (not by choice, mind, but ... everyone else is off doing other shit apparently. alas.)

Sleep well tonight, and dream sweetly, punk.

-------------------------------------------

empire blastfuck #8

2/18/05

downcast solid eve with
a pinch of blue; steel guitar and
a blending of shadows
folding with the frontier driftwood
seaspray waltzes
beneath
tired grayfog western edges
beside
startossed blackened beaches –
fuzzy forced horizons
that aren’t the solid sisters
but the flaccid brothers
to each place and face
that swims out
amongst the sweet scents
to descend on my skin –

mosquitoes in the desert
parched and cocked with greed

(she’s been gone
          for years)

ready to drink, rejected
by my dry and resonant condition –
a booming drumstump
filled with fairy tones and airy drones
(her smile
          the sound
of snow)
and that fallow light
projecting from my eyes

tired... whispy-wandery world wassailing; travel-tittilation and nipple-vacationing... swirly-time in the desert! deprevation of sleep crawls over the Goat mind like ants at this hour, cutting wee bits of my mind and stealing them back to the cave... the hill ... to grow fungus to feed the millions.

but i'm no beast of burden, even though i'm shaggy and infested with the pestilence of a fourth-world country. poverty be damned; i am a missile ready to strike, and i hold your sullen words at bay! fear my nose, for it is grand. well, not so grand as a tasty man, who loves his monkey, but ... grand in sort of an extravagant manner... mere icing on the pop-tart.

and what, you say, is the pop-tart filled with on this night that reeks of desert hornblowing ass-ramblers? Cinderblocks and citrus popscicles! Trailercourts and sheet-metal holding pens for late-model Datsuns! And cacti; lots and lots of foolish little cacti, plotting a dream they'll never see, cause they can't fucking run.... cause they're CACTI - and cacti just don't have feet these days do they? no!

because of the pilgrims. see... they didn't really know what the fuck layed out west, of course, being fucking sailors and shit, but once they saw the evil, insidious cacti of the coast they were just fucked...

alas, i digress from my original intent tonight; gel of the hair. i retrieved said business from a certain store whose logo is a red bullseye sort of device, a company hideous in its drive and driven mad by its lust for one thing: ass. THey're based in the fine resort community of Minneapolis, MN, home to raw food enthusiasts and various other fare like catastrophic infusions of wild green mushrooms and cheesed-out bung-fucker-moments.

See, quaintoisity and beepin' buzzers freak me out at night, especially when they're not in minneapolis, land of the dead and specter of my netherosity... they're like boldface flashes of false-fronted homes splattered in a riotous orgasm of color on the walls... quite like nothing i've ever even imagined. or seen... much to my dismay.

so, i say fuck it all. let's just play with our collective selves tomorrow (it is sunday, i reckon, a fine day to wither away into nothing, a pile of sorrow, lamenting the lord and his failings in a false religion, so let's just get drunk tonight, pass out under the stars, and wish for seitan and Valerie, tofu and Charles, tempeh and Randy Lee, while we throw pennies at the moon! they'll never fall on us.)

tonight, peel. sleep and feel. drink a bit and become a tit and roll around some more! Russia won't care and China wants it; let it come! And tomorrow, wake up, roll off the bed and squarely place your feet on the floor... and remember nothing but your smile as you slipped into a cozy land of dreams you always knew was there... but was just out of reach.

Until now.

well i'll be a monkey's uncle. i just contacted brianne and she was asleep; she'd evidently crashed out last night and then took some naps later in the day, including the one i awoke her from. she's unsure if she wants to head out to open-mic night, but said she would call me later to inform me one way or another.

Either way, it's totally fine by me. I'm somewhat chilled out this evening, and even though i'd just love to go read some poetry, I would have no major qualms with simply kicking back tonight and writing or curling up on the loveseat downstairs with a hot, sexy book.

If I can harness the writing urge, however, i'd like most to be able to capitalize on it and get some stuff done. I've hardly been able to write a thing since i returned from Guatemala, and i'm finally just becoming able to do so. A lot of that may have been due to the bronchitis i came back with, which subsequently made me feel like utter shit and drove me to sleep for hours (that's all i seem to have accomplished last week). However, amongst the sleep, i've had to deal with reacclimating myself to the American lifestyle and world-view. This, more than anything, may have been preventing me from writing; my poor little Goat-mind was just in too great a state of shock to do anything but shut down and pass out, right along with my sickened body.

Thankfully that sickness and overall "what the fuck" feeling have both subsided, if not gone away entirely. The former i'm quite glad for; this latest round of creeping death was nothing short of fucking bunkass. The latter, however, is still bunkass; the fact that i've found it so easy to drop back into American society is disgusting. The experiences, stories, and sheer memories of Guatemala and my work with the Project down there are fading far too fast, and i fear that ultimately it's a defense mechanism i'm subconsciously employing to help me cope with being back here. The first two days were really odd, and i didn't care for America so much, so i think that might be my way of dealing with the inevitabilty that i live here; to simply push all those things I lived through (and for) in Guatemala back behind the daily trivialities of life.

But it shouldn't be that way! Life is not about day-to-day shit like ever-changing stock prices, celebrity courtroom battles, or the rat-race hunt for the best prices on frivolous consumer goods like Palm Pilots. Life is about the richness of human experience and the wholesome feeling of happiness one can bring others through simple acts of compassion. Life is about seizing the chances you are given to make a difference, and creating those chances for yourself and others. Life is about seeing everything and ignoring nothing. Life is not about settling for what you feel is the best you can get, or the best you can do. Instead, life is about constantly pushing the envelope and evolving to a place you never knew existed, and then doing it all over again. Wrap all of it up, shove it in a nice organic, vegan tortilla, and you've got one hell of a way to live.

Like i've said before, life is your burrito - stop messing around and eat the fucker!

Enjoy your night, reader, and if you've some salsa picante, break that shit out, too.

more Guatemala-inspired work!

Alas, it's almost time to get ready for open-mic night. I'm planning on giving Brianne a buzz and seeing if she's still game for going, and if so, i'll likely go pick her up and head over to Cafe Aroma for some Thursday-night artist-community hellraising! Hopefully it's actually going on and it's not just a rumour. Until I get off my ass and come back to post another entry, though, have the most fantastic of evenings, and when you find yourself heading to bed, dream sweetly.

------------------------------------------

stuck

2/10/05

movement seems dire
in the forward regard
as an empty day stuffed
with washed-out scarecrows
colors on by
cause god, I need to let slip
the memory of that place
where I slid across the streets
in a feathery embrace, upon
clouds of smoke in an endless hope
for things I cannot mention
but I can’t forget, so here I’ll sit

I’d mention those things
that I remember
a little here and a little there
but they’re all tiny slivers
just beneath the surface –
plucking one is to loathe them all
and it’s
beauty
in the sunlight that I’d remember
I’d take the pain and cast it away
only knowing the flowers
and the way they glued
themselves to the street
as
they
fell
plummeting into fresh cement
like the dying of fancies or wished-on stars
each of them
streaming and streaking and exploding towards
this masked and hidden way

but if I’d open the door
and let it come back
I’ll know the sorrow
was just a shadow weak and hoarse
barely heard and rarely spied
so instead I could take a stance
and paint the past
in washed-out blues, aged yellows,
and rusted rouges
each lime-based and recklessly applied
with the precision of watchmakers
to shadow-walls and saddened-halls –
like so much Spanish and birdsong,
just a few flowers
trapped and floating
on an ancient cobblestone road

It seems like my poetry has taken a graceful nosedive into a pile of shit these past few weeks; back in october and november i was cranking out what i thought was some pretty stellar stuff. For some reason, though, it's just not coming to me as well. Sometimes these things happen, though, and one can't explain them nor force the opposite - good writing - to happen. It more or less just blasts out of nowhere for me. However, to be true, I was writing more often than as well, whereas lately i've been pulled away in other directions, namely work and the trips to SLC and Guatemala. Perhaps i've just been out of practice. Alas, either way, this latest piece is an attempt to jump-start another run of writing, and with much luck i'll be able to start cranking pieces out on a more regular basis.

For now, though, a nice, long, steamy shower sounds awfully pleasant, so I think i'll take advantage of my water heater (a great thing to own, i've come to realise since Guatemala) and go shower like it's going out of style. Have a pleasant night, reader, and dream sweetly.

-----------------------------------------

easier done than said

2/1/05

there’s this blank material lust
filling me tonight
and, oh, it sounds like a ghost town
a hollow whistlenote of the simple folk
that speaks of their wholesome moments –
fried-chicken talk shows
and heartwarming malt-liquor rodeos –
white trash comfort foods
to take our minds
off the good
things in life
like ejaculating words hither and yon
in a lyrical blast
deprived
of
sleep
winding around the sky like a silken thread
and moon like the
smallest
of
smiles
lone keeper of the watch

realization is pain, the chainsaw carve
and evangelizing is worse
so let’s fuck it all and fire up the Weber
raise our cans and toast to the darkness
that comfortable shroud before our eyes
anchor to the past
‘cause in those dusky trailer courts
we spread the lies
white and hot as smoke
fresh from the grill

but I struggle to light the coals –
the closer the match gets, every time
I remember!
and it slows, fingers roasting
by a tiny fire
creeping ever higher up
the little wooden stick

in this empty village of hopes shattered
on the edge of ignorance I’m caught
with not a hint of bliss nor smoke to cloud
just the light I can’t forget

well shit. i'd planned on heading to the open mic night tonight at Cafe Aroma, but i found out after reading a few of my works beforehand, to warm up and try to figure out how best to deliver them, that i couldn't speak for shit tonight. My head is still a bit stuffed up, so my enunciation just kept going to shit. sometimes i suck at enunciating anyways, and tend to run my words together, so tonight was just an extension of that, and if i'm going to read, i'd like to give it my all. So i decided to just camp out at home instead and take a night off, and perhaps hit next week's open mic night before i take off for Guatemala on the 16th.

Instead of reading, then, i wrote! Here's my latest experiment in channeling the creative flow. I hope you're having a stellar night, reader, and that you're happy and feeling just fine. Dream sweetly tonight.

----------------------------------------

the desert cave Antarctic

1/6/05

come desert land
fly toward me on wings
of blue corn sunsets, roll to me
over sand highways the color of coal
and flood over me
like a flow of white smiles
and the scent of unwashed hair
on a southerly gale

as your eastern torch rises I’ll scream out
in a muffled cry the names of the ones
let go
the little girls and great kings forsaken
and after my voice shatters, goes hoarse from a list
long and endless
I’ll grasp my hat and
wander off alone
as I do in times like these, this night, bitter and dark
down that coal-dust road
but don’t worry, it’s just sand
and dead tears beneath these old heels,
grains of nothing peppering a land
sucked dry of the verdant god I seek

and over this land that floats to me, the one I walk over
like a vagabond zombie
I feel you, taste you on the wind and hear you
in the clouds
and in the sky I see molten hate ejected from your
volcano eyes, engorged orbs that spill turpentine
and light the grass aflame
blessing this land in a death that screams
and curses your name
beneath the stars

but it’s a weak, comatose loathing
at its center, and stands little chance
against the antiseptic unforgiving sandpaper surface
of this desert reality drifting my way –
these little red stones littering my path
hold resilient to your white fury

here, I walk protected in the holiest of
shrines, impenetrable and
beyond you, at the cusp of myself –
just a windblown Johnny Appleseed
on a scenic byway,
the great divide

night and night

1/3/05

all I ask for on a night like this
where the air feels like polyester
and my ears are dipped in pudding
is that you sit with me awhile
and enjoy the artificial light, my one
spot of tender almond luminescence
fixed high on the ceiling, below
a more natural black above

somehow that black fits better
in this easy pajama time
but out there it’s icy, a surgical cold
that slices through eyelids with scapular precision
and flash-freezes nostrils during the lightest breath
but they tell me it’s really a comedy
that the stars peek down at,
laughing warmly at our
silly
human
shortcomings
and giggling at our frantic struggle
for a bit of summertime warmth
and springtime rain –
aren’t we a bit silly ourselves
just hanging around, sticking it out
like stubborn homesteaders
in a land of gray grit and shattered civilization?

but whether the suns and moons above
laugh, cry, or just fall silent
it’s tonight’s skin-on-steel contrast that
nips at our heels as we wander off to bed,
making sure to whisper one last time
reassuringly
that we’ll be gently rocked to sleep
under toasty graham cracker bedsheets
foggy bedroom windows
and that black star-sewer of hell above