the future is infinite; my future is finite

a drop of water
knocks off
a drop of water

MONEYLAUNDERER

The soft clink of metal parts well-oiled. It used to wake me up in the middle of the night, I would see him looking guilty in the grainy light, his hands sticky, the weapon dormant and controlled in his hands. Now it lulls me.

He is a messy eater and he gets into fights. He wears red shirts, black vests. They don't stain easily but viscosity still crusts and I have to scrub it off, scratch at them with my fingernails in the warm soapy water.

There is ash, too, he smells of ash, once he pretended he was going to put his cigarette out on my arm and I didn't talk to him for an hour. He was repentant. His mouth has a layer of smoke inside of it.

He is disorganized, he pays for Italian dinners with nauseous Benjamins because he can't find anything smaller and he can't bother to look. I pick his bills out of his pockets, pluck off the lint, he does not even check before he puts his clothes in the hamper.

He takes shots like it is suicide. A somber drunk. Carnivorous.

The Lion Tamer

Yeah, her fur like bloody saffron.
At least she ain't got a mane.
The girls are fiestier, though,
got more bite in em. More bitter.

Hello, how's it going? No, stay, she won't bite my hand.
I know how to deal with these. You get em
up against the walls, corner em,
make em feel scared.

Yeah, look, see-- that's how you do it.
Like you're Dole and they're goddam
pineapples in a can.

007's horoscopes

• With Mercury in retrograde, your life may begin to feel like a generic action movie, with no shot lasting longer than about five seconds.
• A nemesis might be a pretty damn good actor, but strangely absent from your main conflicts.
• An old friend will be absent from your surroundings this month, along with his super sweet gadgets.
• Look forward to a cool, visceral falling scene in your future, as well as some good chases and scenes full of things blowing up. You will also kill a lot of people cold-bloodedly, so get your guns ready.
• Expect really lame and cheesy place labels soon to tell you that you are in Italy, Bolivia, etc. On the other hand, you will get to go to Italy, Bolivia, and some other countries.
  
• If confused about twists and turns in your life, look into the past; Casino Royale will be a crucial chain of events to keep in mind. Even so, however, prepare for some confusion and misunderstandings.
  
• Unfortunately, an important relationship will not be consummated anytime soon, but don't lose hope. Next movie, maybe?
  

I want Bob Marley, need Bob Marley

November 5, 2008

I should be working on a novel right now, but I'm feeling, contradictorily, both woozy and euphoric.

The woozy part can be explained by my attempt to donate blood today. 80 grams below the required amount I got a hematoma and fainted. Fainting is a pretty disorienting experience. Yeah.

I'm also pretty bummed about the Prop 8 results. There is nothing worse than giving people rights and then taking them away. The "yes on 8" people put on a huge advertising campaign which, while composed of mostly lies, seems to have convinced slightly over half of California. We'll have to overturn that shit soon.

However, I couldn't be prouder of the United States today. We manned up and made the right choice, and honestly, I still can't quite believe I'm not dreaming because this seems too good to be true. I feel like I'm living in a fairy tale right now. But what we're really living in is history. November 4, 2008 is going to be a date people remember for a long time, and Barack Obama's upcoming presidency is going to change the fate of not just the nation, but probably the world, in a hugely positive way.

Thanks, everyone. Here's to the new first family.

(Novel excerpts might come up sometime. Maybe. Don't count on anything.)

Train

I dreamed train.

Every time my tongue hit the back of my teeth it was small wheels rolling and jangling against the railroad tracks. Bread and butter slid along my mouth like grease along the intimate inner workings of that mysterious machine. When I exhaled white puffs into the air I was making the clouds that train made out of coal. Every grimeless cell in me yearned toward train.

It was hard for me to fall asleep in those days, and my thoughts always would drift to train, the lulling motion of it, the constant motion of it, the idea of getting somewhere. Train meant Chicago, train meant New York, but train also meant crossing countryside. Train solved paradoxes: you could travel without moving. You could be sitting, or sleeping, or writing a letter, and all the time the motion would be going on around you, and you could not even feel it, but you would wake up one day in Ohio, the next day in Indiana, the next day in Illinois. You could do two things at once without even trying. When you were in train travel was like breath, equally unstoppable.

I went and had my baked potato and didn't say anything at all and went to bed and thought my veins into railroad tracks, the capsules of my blood into a billion red boxcars. My heart was the grandest and centrallest of train stations. The skin of the potato was ground up into hunks of coal that little men, sweating, saving up, shoveled into the fire.

Imaginings

Gloaming.
The skirr of the birds almost inaudible, if I wasn't listening so hard.
Light leached from the sky, into the sea, foaming and booming eternally against the less eternal rocks.
My bones are clamped, granite nubs my knees.
Gums sucked, head raw.
There is a wind smacking my leached cheeks, and my fingers burrow.
When I squint my right eye shut everything is a Monet blur.

I've been sick. But more poetry class stuff.

It's now official: my poetry "teacher" is a dumbass who I do not respect a single iota.
However, this doesn't mean I can't glean something from the course, right?
Here's a sonnet I wrote today in class which I kind of liked. The assignment was to write about a block you know really well or something. I totally blew it off and wrote about a scene I came across earlier today. Mostly I guess I like the way it fits the form; less sure about the content.

WEST CLIFF SONNET

A white-hot spot up on my beating right.
There is a tree which flattens to make shade,
and here two gossipping old ladies walk,
and hear a shy musician try his trade.
A flock rolls by. Twentysomething women,
all pushing plush and multicolored strollers.
The carted chat drifts by: Today she slept
so well. Today he ate. And how is yours?
They look at me alone and unstretchmarked
and I shift to the water, blue and brighter
than any baby's eyes, its glitter-ripple
always alive, always alive. I'm lighter,
but should my helium be weighted down?
Unburdened, I still dream of greater towns.

Poetry class

I've begun taking a poetry class once a week, which means (theoretically) a lot more output.
So here's a draft I wrote last Tuesday which I kind of liked. The prompt was to write a "poetry poem" starting with "A poem is...".


POETRY POEM

A poem is flowering across you, mossy:
Slap it off your face and smack it down
onto a page. Or don't; I'll peel
and steal it.

In the air it comes to life.
Crusty letters crumple out,
origami polaroids
and maybe it's not ours anymore
but your crease is there, mine here. We're
makers, or something, shaping the ashes that land
in our hands,
our palms charcoal.
Can we breathe now?

THE HANGED MAN

You'll be still in bed, teeth
bloody, lids taut
over the contours of your peeled-egg eyes and
you'll get that
falling feeling
you sometimes get
when you are still in bed and
your body forgets about itself.
Miles will rush vertically
past your ears.
Your fingernails will trowel.

You will tell yourself nothing
has happened, just your brain
losing its equilibrium for a second,
but you will feel displaced,
hanging floating somewhere in
between your bed and the floor,
and you will remember suddenly
sixth-grade insomnia,
imagining you could feel
the world turning beneath you,
great gears grinding.

Time zones away, people will be
swimming, going to movies, mugging each other.
And you will be here,
uneasy on your square feet
of earth, and what if gravity will forget
about itself and you and
the lava malt
beneath the surface of it all will
become one?

Banks

Shimmers spooled, a tumblefog March.
Koi cues in Jews' pockets, collars starched,
tulips a-bobbling:
which winner is mobbing
dawn-dozers hosed in dew, chlorophyll wobbling
to claim potent, pregnant
wealth lumping out of its bed,
run down by a too-oiled head,
eeling at middle age, not dead
yet, but its spawn will be fire-red ants?

Out of town again

I am going to be out of town for the next nineteen days at a writing program which will take me to exciting locations. This mirrors the month-long trip I took earlier this summer with my family. There are benefits to being financially dependent on your parents after all.

When I get back I hope to be a much better writer. I will maybe blog something that will showcase this.

In the meantime, this is the most recent thing I wrote.


Were I hollow

Were I hollow
inside of me there would be no sun,
just the dusk's leftover light,
lapping on a tranquil bay
lined with soft small grained sand
and not crags.

Inside of me there would be seasons
and they would change in weeks instead of months.

There would be three seasons:
the season of peace
the season of unrest
the season of plagues.

And in the season of plagues (mercifully short) the skies
inside of me would rain rich red
and the rains would nourish the croplands and the peoples.

And in the season of peace there would be eyes
of baby birds, bright, black, filmless,
and the birds would have soft beaks like soft shelled crabs
and the yolks of their eggs would be a pure luminous green
and flawlessly round.

And where in another universe
bone could be
would be solid marble columns
built under the name of some almighty figure
and where my ribs could be
would be a viney jungle
frosty instead of humid
with Christmas wildlife instead of shrieking
toucans and parrots and myna birds
and beyond the atmosphere tarp of my skin
there would be--

impenetrable worlds,
each its own vessel.

Mortality in four parts

One.
When my feet are drenched in sun,
or the luminous mermaid-light of
purringcontent machines, sometimes there is nothing
in my head but that which was placed there,
and the fireworks that go off every hour on the hour
mark no turning points, no mile stones,
but graves like magic, an arrangement of rocks
that your soul might never see. I
don't stop because they, dry and dusty,
weigh me down.

Two.
And when, in Capernaum, I feel your spirit
(claw of cancer singed with the wick of you,
tall strong and filled with light)
is it really you or is it my
memory of you, a subconscious
risen from a part of me
(handful of cells) that has become
an imitation?

Three.
Is a dead body like a chrysalis
wrapped in a white sheet, sleeping for eternities,
eyes shut, mouth shut, blood no longer running?
Entropy worked its way in and stopped your heart's
ticking, stopped your cells'
breathing. Intangible,
what was you is left,
seeped from the holes of the brick your body is become,
not a hollow shell, but solid unmovement.

Four.
Matter for the worms and bugs, a reward
for digging through layers of wood and cloth,
rot.

West Cliff

[this one is for the voice]

Blue eyes, smile like mine and
I'm having a hard time
with words that rhyme
but I bet you'd never guess so many are my type
Long hair, guitar, a bike
I don't gotta be a dyke yet
there are still so many
fish in the Pacific,
swallows in the field they
all fly up when I walk by in my heels from
Manhattan, the black is scraped off from the city streets
I feel fine in Times Square the motherfuckin' place to be
knowin' millions would kill to feel this summertime heat
you don't like the rain well 5 bucks got it beat
say hello to the masses find someone to greet,
hey hey look at me looking fine at 5 feet.
So don't get superior with your 2 inch head start,
at least I show my heart without playing a part,
at least I can pretend I don't still have dreams
obscene with their optimistic sunny hopes & scenes
fucking up but with luck like in a romantic comedy,
when in reality I pray for his eyes to register me.
'Cause when he plays I die and am reborn a different me,
minus some self-confidence plus a desperate ability
to stand at the stop signs and pretend the cars are stopped for me,
to smile with my teeth closed and to pretend it shows sincerity.
But fabrications of strangers and friends-turned-strangers aren't reality,
inadequacies,
a million stories I won't know.
And when I want to point and look who do I have but you to show?

I'm the biggest boss that you seen thus far

mouth filled with smoke of fires i did not start,
eyes clogged with imaginary rages of foam, my fingers
swell with rings, my subjects bow
in cobweb net. clamor for my love
+ i'll anoint you with expectoration. sacrifice
black widow + the summer is assured.
king of sequoia, king of lonesome dust,
i sing for rain's return, my reign to end.

NEPTUNE

Beat me: my blood is yours
Slap me: my eyes belong to you
Swallow me whole & I will try
not to die so I can sing your praises
when you in your gracefulness let me out,
my mouth wet with you, my hands dripping you,
all of my cells alive with the stinging
kisses that are you--

They don't understand why I stay with a man
who cups crimson pain in the palm of his hand,
they don't know, they don't know what it is
to grab your gaze. An instant
is worth my life. Your power
could harness tides.

My inner universes hang separate from the outer airs

Nausea and I been grappling for a few months now.
Mid January she snuck thru my window and
laced her way in between my greased ears;
I woke up not quite retching, not quite gagging, but almost.
I haven't vomited once but she is snaked around the flask bean that is my stomach.

I learned to live with her quickly.
Don't get up too fast.
Don't twirl in your chair.
Eat anyway.
When you are bored in class think about how sick you feel, puff out your cheeks and sigh, imagine projectile vomiting across the classroom, imagine feeling bile rising in your throat running to the bathroom and barely making it in time, not caring who hears you.
I've always had a strong stomach. I can beat her any day.
But she is always lining my mind like furry black velvet.
When something is startling or terrible and my mouth is empty she fills the spots between my cheeks.

I swallow chins like that green eyed gray eyed Henry in that nightmare lynchian film.
I pick the skin off of my thumbs.
My legs are thinner than they've been in years.

It's strange remembering what life was like without her.

I can't remember if there was more color in the world.
Maybe it just seemed brighter because
it was winter then and meant to be gray; now it is May and might as well be March.
My spring, where did you go? Did Nausea steal you away?
Tell me it ain't so. Tell me you are not roiling in my stomach
right now. I know you are not
because if you were I would feel splinters
of sunlight and birdsong and the fragrances of flowers would
come out my nose.

(Yesterday I saw two plump red breasted robin, fearless.
Yesterday I saw several of those awful black rooster with spiked mohawks on their heads, bird I had never seen before this so called spring, are the starlings listening to the Sex Pistols or are these demon offspring something entirely new?
Yesterday there was a very small cat without a collar looking at me also without fear and then there was a very large cat with the same markings crouching guarding its land polishing a great rusty rifle in its paws.)

This is late spring as late spring would be in a sadder universe than this.

Them parasites would die in my conchae.

Play what is not there

Air isn't always a silent thing. Sometimes it calls attention to its existence. Sometimes I am holding my breath hard and the air is tangible, tangible because it is not there; I feel it pressing against my skin like a million invisible tapeworms or, practically the same thing, a million invisible universes.

Frogs can breathe through their skin; people can suffocate if they hide it all. What do I need lungs for? My mitochondria can power themselves. If my skin was better I could power my heart with oxygen I would suck through my pores.

If I tried harder I would be a transparent wafer and the light would shine through me.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs. -Aldous Huxley

I'll spill in trade for a pinprick of trust.
I'll lift my arms if you'll pretend
you see my ribs, the cage exposed.

We could build a campus on our coke wounds
and charge forty thousand dollars a year, the
buildings ivory. Yeah,

but your teeth are whiter than mine, you butterfly
emerged from the cocoon of canker metal
I never entered, and never shrugged off.

The new moon on my nails. You have enough
stars for the both of us, if you're
willing to share.