land of first drafts

I have a growing distaste for the "artistic" elite. My specific instances of late are writers, but I'm sure the incidences that I have encountered must have found their way into the other arts in one way or another. They are the Snobs. They tell you how the world is; no ifs ands or buts. They are the ones to tell you that the string of gibberish on the page in front if you is a masterpiece. You simply fail to get it because you are so ignorant of the fact that in 1912 James Joyce had a bath and made passing comment about how wrinkled his skin got in one of his epics. If you had only known that then surely the beat poetry in front of you would unveil its brilliance. They are the people who rant about how popular music is the bane of society, unintelligible dribble that will lead to the mass retardation of the coming generations. You should be listening to bands that no one has every heard of. Then, when the unknown band is popular because it was so unknown, you are to abandon it. If more than twelve people can get it, it isn't cutting edge enough. (Interesting social experiment: I made up a band (differing names for differing company) at an "art" party to try and out do the elites. Someone claimed to have heard them before.)

I had a professor belittle the William Carlos Williamson poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" today in class. In an online polemic, however, he viciously stands up for a book of Bob Dylan's poetry "Tarantula." He defends the work as an amazing discourse of the time it as written, using a style that is a " high-art symphony of allegoric metaphor, fertile with commentary on Civil Rights and twentieth-century politics through the ghosts of Kerouac and Shakespeare via Greek mythology."1 That the same man willing to craft such a sentence over someone else's work can imply that "The Red Wheelbarrow" isn't "real" poetry is astounding. He is, in that instance, the personification of the Snobs. It is as if art is measured by its complexity. If you can read and fathom a works depth without haveing to make far flung connections, that surely isn't worth your time.

Don't get me wrong, dear reader, I like complex materials. But I don't exisit on them and them alone. Vivaldi's Summer is one of my favorite pieces of music, but that doesn't mean that I won't sing along to Heartbreaker when it comes on the classic rock station or that I can't help but listen Soulja Boy every now and again. I read Dante's The Divine Comedy on my own time because I was never in a class that required it. And I enjoyed it. That doesn't mean I don't read the latest comercial fiction or devour a Terry Pratchett novel. The point I'm trying to make is that so many of the Snobs put on the air (and the tu-toned hair, skinny jeans, and ballet flats) of being a decade ahead while living decades in the past.
Anyone that claims to listen only to the trendy music, or only read Kerouac and his ilk, is either lying to you, or are impossibly one deminsional. One way or the other, they aren't the type of person who's opinion can be taken without a deal of salt.


"Majority always rules."

1. http://www.jackmagazine.com/issue7/essaysmspitzer.html

What to do in those few hours before waking. What to fill the half sleeping mind with. In those brief moments where the last fingers of sleep clutch the brain, the waking mind can control the fantasy of that ether world. That world where our fancy runs free and our heart makes wishes.

Brian Matthews had been wondering that for the better part of ten years now. He suffered from a delayed insomnia. Every night at ten or so he would drift peacefully to sleep, only to be awakened again after four hours to a mangled mess of waking dreams and half-conscious memories. Though the condition was now ruinous to his sleep every night, it had started out rather slowly. Only once or twice a month would he toss and turn in the hours before dawn, wrestling with sleep and wakefulness. Nothing worth note. When it started happening on a bi-weekly basis he took more serious concern. Doctor after doctor were puzzled. Psychiatrists and physicians gave him ineffectual pills while psychologists tried to emancipate hidden traumas that didn't exist. After a year of what he was beginning to think of as quack cures, Brian resigned himself to his predicament. Though he knew he had less energy than when he slept well, he was now used to it. And the semi-wakefulness gave him a chance for quite lucid dreaming and illuminated thought. He settled into his new routine remarkably well and without incident. The normal aspect of his life were unaffected. His job at a publishing company was unperturbed, he had the energy to play with his young daughter, and his wife (a heavy sleeper) stayed by his side in every sense of the word through his nights of peaceful frustration.
That was, however, until the early morning hours of August the Twenty-fourth. It was on that morning that Brian first heard the voice. It was small, but it was pleading. Just outside his ability to make out it out it lingered. He was just about to slip bake to sleep when it eased its way into his mind. His settling thoughts were jerked to attention as he fought to drown out the ring of silence to hear the voice again.

Little Cigars

Words cannot describe how much I need to smoke. It is the first time that the slimy fangs of addiction unfurling themselves. Granted, the living situation up here in OKC is trying. The stress of change abounds. It isn't so much the fact that being up here is bad, but the revolving door of guests has become trying. I am a morning person by nature. Most every one up here is a night person. Even now, at two twenty three in the A. M. there are four people up who will be awake till four . And they sleep for four or five hours at a time, making my normal sleep pattern impossible. Living in a loft for free has it's price.

Not that I complaining, as such, but I marvel at the need to inhale the sweet carcinogenic smoke out in the night time air. It reminds me of the simpler times when I didn't care about long term health. Back when I felt young. I'm only twenty two, but time has encroached on me. I find myself looking around, damned if I know how, I have responsibility. I work, I manage a 3.7 GPA, and I make time for friends and my own pursuits. Friends that like to go out and watch plays, or read books, or just sit around and talk and have a quiet drink. I don't know how I used to party all the time. I really have no taste for it anymore. I've become... Mature. Ish.

All this is trivial and pointless, but it has killed ten minutes or so. And maybe I can fight down the urge to stand outside and smoke. For now.

Fragmented

So, I had one of those late night, passion fueled ideas for a story, then the moment passed and the groove was gone. I did squeeze out a paragraph's worth of text from it, though, and I'm determined to keep it alive until such a time that I can give it adequate attention. Until then, I'll leave it here to moulder:

We all grow up in our own, personal Hells. Some have worse ones then others, but we all have them. Pain and fear dig themselves into the furrows of our minds in ways that happiness and banality just can’t. Look back and you’ll see that I’m right. You are running form the shadows of your past, just like I am. It is a legacy that any living person has. Those shadows from our past are what propel us towards the future.

The living past.

Sweet Antebellum. Putting aside all of the rampant racism and slavery, the time itself was a simple one. It embodied the American standard. You work to live. That sort of simplicity lives on in the deep south. Tucked away in the backwoods and the corners of time, people live simply. They fear a wrathful God, work all week, and rest on Sunday.
They live a simple and sparse life, but the deepness of the world never factors into it. There is no time to ponder death and mortality, it surrounds you. The time and energy saved by the automatic world of today gives birth to thinking. We live our lives in a safe cocoon that at the same time is overborne with the troubles of the world. Living with safety and with all the time in the world to imagine the dangerous things that lurk in the great Dark to take it away from us.
In the simple lands of Antebellum there is no wondering about what might happen. The dangers are all known and faced on a day to day basis. Upkeep of the family, the crops, and the livestock. The death of one means the death of all three. Not that the labour takes away from thinking. Quite the opposite, in fact. The wonder of the world can be found in both sides of the spectrum. In our world we see how very small we are and how little we understand. It strips us of our ego and how superior we think we are in the world. In Antebellum they know the world is large. They are aware of their ignorance. And just as long as the giant world keeps to itself, the industrious residents are happy to keep to themselves. They stick to mending fences, shoeing horses, and plowing fields. And while they work they let their thoughts drift softly at the greatness of things. There is no preoccupation with where life is going or what the future holds. In those little eddies in time the future holds exactly what the past holds. Life is going to stay exactly where it has always been. When today is like yeaterday and yesterday has a strinking resmblance to what tomorrow is starting to look like, thoughts can be soft.
It lets one look at a cloud for no other reason than that clouds are truely spectacular, when you get right down to it. Simply because they exist. It makes me smile to think that somewhere out there life refuses to be rushed. It's a dying way of life, but, for a time, it clings to that life with an aloof determination.

Rouge Notes

The music pours from my fingertips. They swoon and sway to the rhythm of my mind. The lights are bright and the room hot. Sweat from every pore. Left works the pounding beat, following the heart. Right works the sickly sweet melody, telling tales of the past. The vibrations paint the air thick with the vivid vision of nothing in particular, but everything of importance. Pulses race. Memories spark. Tears flow. Power. There is a collective sigh as the hands dance the keys on their own, making it up as they go. There is no more control, only music. I become one of the crowd. Lost in the orgy of nostalgia and healing hearts. We all see what the sounds mean to us. Our bodies become sympathetic the the waves of feeling making their way from the deepest center of the piano.

I regain consciousness and start to take it away. The crashing crescendo replaced with a gradual let down. The last trickle from a torrent. One last lingering note and it is all over. No applause, just the overwhelming pressure of times long gone. We leave each other and go on to our lives. But we all share the experience.

Old poem

The Itch

When cold, His is the Blanket offered.
When tired, His is the Bed supplied.
When deaf, His is the Voice all heard.
When pained, His is the Sympathy cried.

He lends you His Strength.
He lends you His Wisdom.
He lends you His Wealth.
He lends you His Kingdom.

He speaks the most sweet,
Writes the most kind,
Gives the most gifts,
And spends the most time.

Then when you feel the safest,
And no riches you can't fetch,
He'll call back His loans with interest,
And all you worth He'll catch,
So beware when you make wishes,
And steer clear, Dear Friend,
Of Old Scratch.

Dance Poem

Slàinte

Hand in hand and
Hearts in beat
They pound the music
With their feet.

The people crowd around
And cheer
To mark the passing
Of the Year

But Dancers know
What crowds know not,
They dance their dance
To bring the rot.

The tempo wrinkles
Clapping Hands
And turns lush grass
Into sands.

Smiling faces,
Now skeletal grin,
And organs start
To pool within.

Still they dance,
Out in the street,
Hand in hand,
Hearts in beat,

They do not dare
To stop their feet.

Same Old Song and Dance, Part II. (by popular demand)

So, at this point we have Paul in a transient existence and Steve recently set free from a small-minded college in Kansas. The two come together in Oklahoma City where Paul has been offered an amazingly large 20 screen theatre. For the first time in a year and a half Paul had a theatre that didn't require rescue or refitting. This meant that for the first time he would be in one place for an indeterminate duration. Steve's new independence also meant that his options were now open. This led to a happy arrangement where Paul would now have company and Steve would be surrounded by four year institutions.

I was very pleased by all this because the new arrangement would be good for the both of them. The thing about Steve and Arkansas, however, was that Steve had a lot of history with several girls in Arkansas. Girls with less than stable personalities. And it was in this heady mix of hormones and old flames that Steve had to sit in before Paul's move to OKC was final.
And Steve doesn't have the greatest self control.

That was the fact that I kept coming back to as I looked at the Facebook note. It was written by one of the first female interests in Steve's life, and it made it seem as though things were on the upward swing. And when Steve gets serious with old flames he falls into old patterns and behaviours. Behaviours like changing plans last minute and deciding that Arkansas and a retail gig was better than OKC and college.
This would have been devastating to Paul.
For months he had been trying to get somebody, anybody, to come and visit him in Texas. And people, for months and months, kept making plans to come and see him and then letting him down. I could almost taste the heartbreak that would have happened had Steve decided to stay in Arkansas with his old flame.

Happily, the years had wisened Steve and he was done with old relationships. Well, maybe. Here lately there is a mystery girl that has appeared on the scene, but plans are still on and OKC is still his final destination. And when we are face to face again I hope to get the full story, but untill then I am happy with the fact that he is moving on and Paul will get some much needed company.

-Dig the beat-

Election time to wave
The colors and to taste the
Freedom of those amber waves
That blanket the veins of the steadfast decay of
Mighty giants with the blackest of pitch just
Like the blue of Dolly's Smokey Mountains
While there is black to usher change and
A sister too
And masses praise the difference
That no change can bring.
A veneer of fresh to cover the
Melted pot decay.

Same old song and dance

"...and leaves delight in transience."
-Basil Bunting

I sit here looking at the computer screen in disbelief. It's not a particularly engaging image, but it is spurred from an important event. An event, sad to admit, I just learned of through the omnipresence of Facebook. It came innocuously packaged in a note titled with some romantical drivel, but I had just enough knowledge to get a feel for the foreboding that was to come.
Now, this story does not involve me, well, not directly, but it does effect two of my closest friends, call them Steve and Paul for the sake of anonymity. Paul, a good two years younger than myself, fell into success running movie theaters. He makes a good deal of money, and not just by college drop-out standards, but it requires him to relocate across state borders to mystic lands like Mississippi and Texas. Those places are weird, man. Seriously. We once went to one of his old places of residence on a whim during one of his numerous trips back home. Driving around the entertaining city of Little Rock, Arkansas with a guy who can't get into any of the bars, despite his impressive facial hair, makes one long for something, anything, to do.
"Hey, we could drive to Memphis!"
Ha, ha, what a delightfully oddball notion. I had work the next day at noon and he had to drive back to Texas. More driving and being bored it was.
"Its only like, three hours. And I bet I could make it faster."
Hmmm........ Memphis could be fun. It was only around eight thirty-ish. Get there around eleven, head home around one, sleep and get to work. That could work.
As we crossed the Mississippi we again realized that the age factor would probably bar (is that a pun?) us from all the really fun activities. Luckily, there is always a Plan B.
"Tupelo is only another hour or so. I can call some of the people that I used to manage down there and you can finally get to see my old theater." When you become a manager somewhere it is forever 'yours.' I know this first hand. I may despise my job, but I still feel the store is mine. As in, "Those two just walked out of my store with those DVDs," or"Those corporate idiots are killing my store."
Cut a few hours ahead and I'm sitting at an IHOP table at two a.m. and sharing an appetizer sampler with two other people I had meet just an hour earlier. And no one so much as batted an eyelash. See? I told you they were weird. Or maybe thats just theater workers in general...
Anyway, they were an ecclectic crew of people that my friend couldn't get to know very well simply because they worked under him. This little epiphany occured to me as I was soaking in the magnificence of the rising sun while taking a leak in the middle of a cornfield somewhere in North-eastern Arkansas. It was at that moment I truly understood what kind of solitary life Paul had carved out for himself. Enter my other good friend Steve.
Steve, like myself, is a late college starter with a tendency to try and understand the complex and screwed up world around us by writing about it. He's pretty good, too. Even had a potential interview with a member of the editorial staff of the L.A. Times. This opportunity was through the college in Kansas that he had been attending for the past two years. A community college in Kansas. There are, from what I hear, two main types of guys at community colleges in Kansas. Cowboys and Mexicans. And all the girls there are interested in two things. Cowboys and Mexicans. Steve is neither a cowboy, nor has he any Hispanic descent. This makes for a slightly lonely time for Steve as well. This fact may have directly contributed to his leaving/being kicked out of that community college and not ever getting that interview. After being misguided on how many credit hours and in what subjects he should take to graduate in the standard two years, Steve found himself looking at another year with an alcohol and drug abusing roommate. Not that Steve was a saint, mind you, but he had mellowed appreciatively over the last few years. I think that so many people we knew were getting married and popping out kids made him restock his life. It sure made me. So, he quietly decided to take what credits he could and leave Kansas and transfer them to a four year, exactly what he had been planning, just with a full Associates degree instead of a long string of credits. However unfortunate the circumstances, and no matter how tired you are at the thought of living for another year with someone, every goodbye deserves companionship and drinking. And so it commenced. On his last official night in the dorms Steve got remarkably drunk. And as a result made several trips to the group restroom shared by all the dwellers of the dorms second floor. Being a college campus there was the requisite graffiti covering the walls. Like I said, Steve is a writer. Such abuse of the written word couldn't be tolerated. Something had to be done.
Enter a drunk poet with a marker.
Steve spent the better part of the night scribbling furiously onto the bathroom walls and creating fairly decent poetry. Even, and he was particularly proud of this one, writing a poem backwards near the mirrors so that looking at you reflection you'd see it the correct way.
"I was amazed! You wouldn't think that a drunk Steve could have pulled that off without fucking it up."
A few days later and Steve gets a phone call to come to Dean Something-or-other's office. Figuring its last minute leaving college stuff he isn't too worried. Turns out, however, that the faculty is enraged at his poetic scribblings and wants to know who did it. And, being the only student leaving (and since someone was a squealer) Steve was at the top of the suspect list. Really, he was the list. And they were furious. There was talk of everyone's grades being held until the culprit came forward, a forensic specialist being called in, and legal action being taken. I shit you not. I mean, how dare someone write poetry in the bathroom? The bathroom of all places! That place is reserved for bodily functions and anti-semitic scratchings only. And maybe some gay bashing. But poetry, especially in washable red ink, was unwelcome.
"Can you believe it!? I was the nicest vandal ever! The ink washes right off! They told me that they are going to have to hire a painter to come in and paint over it, and that I had to foot the bill. I told them that I would come in and clean it off, and, get this, she told me that that would work, except that after I came forward I was banned from the dorms! And she was the one who banned me. I think they just want me to pay for the whole bathroom being painted so they don't have to."
There was subsequent talk of a late night incursion to said dorms for a little late night guerrilla cleaning. I can't say if that ever happened, but I don't think that any money ever changed hands between Steve and that little community college.

To be continued.....

Collage

Under a Red velvet sky,
In the back of the room,
They come to me in Torrents and floods.
Drinking from the nectarous Nepenthe
For far too long has clouded not
My judgment wholly.
Words from kindest friends, words
Of pain and suspicions and
True notions free from
Me
The fantastic fantasy
Of dreamt-up lies.
Under the light of a plaster
Moon you shine in
Technicolor brightness and sincerity
Of your true self.
Far more mortal I find
You than my fancies had me believe,
And prone still to the things
That separate ethereal
Quite magnitudes.
Free from burdens past I forge on this day to
The prosaic future of
Happiness.

blah

To live and to love is to hurt. We live in a world built on change. And living in this world that plunges ever forward into the future you have to realize that the world you live in at this moment is not the world you will wake up in tomorrow. It's not the same river.

We all know this deep down. It's what makes us what we are. The seconds ticking away are palpable. For some of us that is just too much. They grab and pull at every moment like they can make it last a little longer with concerted effort. You see them get hysterical because the drive through line is too long, their pen has run out of ink, or because it decided to rain today. They try to the best of their ability to make all moments the same. In this they can make their world seem more safe.

Act 1, Scene 1

A darkened stage. On the edge sits a man (Jack) in a generic black suit drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. From SR enters another man (John) also clad in a generic black suit and carrying a beer.

John: And so here sits the wasted brilliance of American youth, shaving the dog-minutes off of his life one mellow drag at a time.

Jack:(turning to face John) Johnathan! (gets up and hugs the other) I had no idea that you had made it down. I didn't see you during the service.

John: Well, there were quit a few people there. (they sit) Plus I was more than a little late. Seemed unpolite to push my way up the front of the crowd.

Jack: I don't think he missed you.(holds out cig. pack)

John: Thanks. (takes and lights) I didn't see Mary in there anywhere.

Jack: (Deadpan)No. No you didn't. (beat) It's hard to believe he's gone. I mean, I knew and all... it... it just seemed so fake.

John: What'd you think? Some T.V. style doctor was going to pop in one day and say, "It really is a miraculous recovery. Never seen anything like it." That stuff doesn't happen in the real world.

Jack: Yeah, well...

John: It's over now, kid.(arm around Jack. Jack seems uncomfortable) Its over and we can put the whole of it behind us.

Jack: (beat) Except for the book.

John: (removes arm, beat) Except for the book.

Lights fade to black

Morning Commute

Life is full of fun little twist and turns. The fact that I am currently sitting next to one of the few people in the world that I can't stand is one of them. And I thought getting the early train was a good thing. My reasons for loathing this person like I do are my own. I could go into a deep and profound expulsion of explanation, but it is far easier to say that it involves a girl. Straight and to the point. So far he hasn't noticed me. Perhaps he will continue reading his paper and I will stay here in my book. That is extremely hopeful, however, given the distance into the city. But maybe, just maybe, this situation is like the enlightening lecture I was given about snakes and other undesirable creatures when I first moved out into the rural area I now inhabit. Maybe he is just as uneasy about talking to me as I am about talking to him.
I've sat here, three feet from a whole world of awkwardness that I wouldn't wish, funny I should mention it, on my worst enemy, since I boarded. That may be a bit harsh. It isn't that I have anything against the man in general, just what he represents. He is my replacement. Everything that I should have been but wasn't. He walked in and accomplished in a few short months what I couldn't get done in three years. But I said I wasn't going to go into that.
Damn. Fifteen minutes into an hour long ride and it feels like I should have already been there and back half a dozen times. I think Einstein was on to something with relativity. God, I think he just glanced over. Maybe talking with him won't be that bad. Hell, we may even have some things in common. Other than a very similar taste in women. But then he might mention her. That is a discussion that I have had with enough people to last a lifetime. What would be worse is if he presumed to tell me how she was doing. It is a simple and kind gesture, and God help him, he is a simple and kind man, but I have spent this past year trying to get beyond that old life. To hear the words, "She is doing well," and get a synopsis of her goings on might make me do irrational things. Just thinking about it has me envisioning my hands around his throat. I can feel the delicate pressure I would use, just enough to close that ever-important airway. It would be artful, even, not the mad-dog killer style. Killing another human being should be something sacred. Being the sane individual that I am, however, such things only exist as fantastic flashes of mental imagery. Or maybe denying the primal urges of my animalistic side make me less sane. A debate for another time perhaps.
Another half hour and I can forget all about this unpleasantness and get on with my new life. The woman's baby across from my nemesis and me appears to have colic, and it doesn't seem to be very pleased with the fact. It is letting everyone else on the train know as well. The mother seems to be very sleep deprived. No rings on her fingers. Five to one says this single mom is off to an early appointment to beg a doctor for some sort of relief, medicine for the kid or a little something for herself. There are a few business men and women off to the daily duties of this world. A few day trippers are there as well, off to some sort of important business in the big city. How long have they been on this train, sitting in those same seats, all looking very uncomfortable at the prospect of facing the hustle and bustle of their final destination. Where did they all come from? Just how far into the fields does this express go? Maybe one day I'll ride it to the end of the rails, just to see. I wonder at the amazing circumstances that bring us all together in this one trip. I'm sure the business people are here on most of the days that I am, I just never see them due to the late train that I usually catch. Just as sure as I am about that, I'm certain many of these people make this trip less than once a month, if that much. How amazing it would be to get into the microcosm of their daily lives.
Just before I begin taking a survey of all the people in my general area, I realize that I haven't the foggiest idea about why the man to my left is here. By all accounts there is absolutely no reason for him to be this far out. Last I heard he and my old flame lived in a cozy little apartment right downtown. My mind starts racing. I know who he is, I knew him before all the unfortunate business went down, and the person who takes your place is not a face you forget easily. I caution a glance in at him at what seems like a safe moment. And he is who I was sure he was. So now the questions start. Some sort of tragedy? Family in the country? Some sort of vacation? And all of the possible explanations for leaving one's normal surroundings bring up the one important question: Why is he alone?
For the first time in the fifty minutes I have been sitting next to this man I look at him, actually look. And what I see is akin to what I saw in the mirror a year ago. Frankly, he looks like shit. He is unshaven, his clothes unpressed, his hair uncombed, and fitting every stereotype of a man going through hard times, he has missed a button hole. All in all this poetic vision of a man in shambles might be comical, had I not met the subject before. Like I said, he was a sweet guy, one who I'm sure hasn't done anything to deserve whatever is tormenting him.
Whatever surrounds the two of us, it can't be held over the fact that he looks like he is absolutely alone in the world. And he is one of the few people on the earth who shouldn't be in that situation.
Five minutes to anonymity, and I turn and face him. I guess we all have to break the old routines sometime

My name is Johnathan Blackburn, I'm twenty-three years old, and I just had an epiphany....

The club is packed.
Wall to wall bodies crash and sway together in time with the sickening beat that blazes from every corner of the room. He can feel the heat from the half naked dancers around him building and building. The smells of fifty different designer perfumes clash together to form an amalgamation of spice and sweet that uniquely identifies this particular region of the good old U S of A. A girl, drunk to the point it's a miracle she can stand, rubs against him as he fights his way through the crowd. The feel of her soft, sweaty flesh mixed with the stiffness of her sequined blouse leave haunting traces on his skin.

One of those, "What the hell am I doing?" sort of moments that come along and make you truly look at where you are....

Out on the street the cool night air is an amazing respite from the pulsating air and overpowering pheromones inside. Against the pounding club wall he leans and lights up. He watches the other people walking around in the neon and arc sodium wash of the street. More sequin shirts walk by in a gaggle, laughing and smoking, looking red and blue and deathly yellow as they pass by different clubs and bars. The police and bouncers all have a collective boredness about them. One of the cops yawns and pulls out his cell to check the time.

He follows his smoke up into the night sky and looks on past the city lights for a moment.

And as dumb as it seems, that turning point was when I looked at the stars and saw Orion's Belt...

Suddenly he tosses his half finished cigarette out into the street. The feel of smoke snaking its way down his throat was starting to make him ill. The wristband on his wrist felt itchy and uncomfortable. He takes it off and lets it flutter down into the gutter.

But, that was the only constellation that I knew. For the life of me I couldn't pick out even the big dipper.That sort of stuff used to be common knowledge, right?

The night starts to chill him, so he buries his hands in his pockets and makes his way to his car. Down the alleyway he crunches through a multitude of broken bottles. There is a beggar sifting through the trash behind some industrial building. In the stairs of the parking deck there is a drunk taking a piss.

It just sort of reminded me that people used to tell stories. They used to look up at the sky and wonder. They used to know each other.
In that moment I would have given anything in the world just to know the stars. To know the stories. To know that feeling...

He gets to his car, that safe, familiar bit of home. The radio comes on to his presets. He feels the cold grip of his steering wheel. Soon, he's on the road and headed home.

I just want to know what it is to truly know and need someone else.

Wed. 30 AJPIII Poem:

They savour the ulcerous fruit
Preferring this reproducible rapture
In the stead of true-life feelings

They sit collectively stationary
Raging in their hallucinative nature
Under their psychobiological bliss

They cohabit a malodorous perdition
Hiding languidly from the future
Within their great nectar of Nepenthe

But, while they yet grieve in
Their cacophonous solitude, a creature
Reaches the arterial manna of life.

How long have I sat here listening to the lullabies of dead men. They linger in my brain as my pipe wreathes my head in sweet blue smoke. Their rhythms get into my blood and fuse to my bones, making my mind bend to the possible meaning in a single word. What makes them write of wheel barrows and ravens, of pulleys and regal ice cream, and of phantom funerals and the kinetic potential of withered dreams. What is the transcendence of grass.
I struggle to wipe the words off the soles of my shoes and to stop my heart from beating to that American romance in the lyrical beat.
Even now I sit here sighing, moaning loud and softly crying,
Crying to the night-time o'er his dear and lost Lenore
And for all like him before.
I puff again to wash out the taste he leaves with the thick heady pipe tobacco smoke , and slowly I linger on the thought s of men past, and men yet to come, and I am overcome by the smallness of it all. Even the words of a Spanish man over his lost dog last longer in this world than the wit of the wise. A wildman's knowledge of a woman and a God-king's incomplete journey hold in the minds of men a shining place above deeds and actions.

Through thoughts and words they have found immortality.

untitled...

The bellows of my lungs release more
Smoke
Into the chilling night.

Nepenthe grips my mind and tender
Heart
With logic-cold talons.

My guilt-ridden tongue struggles hard to
Speak
Against the mass of minds,

and Deep within the pent up locked down
Soul
Hunger cries for freedom,

While I feel behind a barrage of
Words
Battering my turned back

With a deafening deluge of defunct
Pleas
And pestilent promise.

Beat down and betrayed by the shining
Light
On high-

Today's thoughts...

So, love. What is it exactly? I don't think anyone actually knows. And I'm just intelligent and cynical enough to think about the possibility that its all just a throwback to our evolutionary ancestors picking the best candidate for the carrying on of their genetic material. I'm also just romantic enough to not be satisfied by that sort of thinking.

The hell of it is that like to know the way things work. I like a working definition of the things going on in my world, and when I don't have one I'm usually at a loss as to how to go about things.

Its just not so in this case. I know I love her in the same way I know I'm consciously breathing. It just sort of is, I don't have to think about it.

I know I love her because I love her.

I think about her when she is absent, I hold her and don't want to let go, I wake up at five thirty to drive for an hour to see her for twenty minutes, I smile when I think of her, I adore her quirks, she inspires me to write trite little poems like this:

In the cold and rainy winter,
On a stoop in mid-December,
I give to you this dying ember
In the hopes I will remember
That those things that did me hinder
Were farther out than they were in here,
And far more within the heart their sender
Than they were within my heart so tender,
And that those feelings that you engender
Are far more real and far more grander
Than were those in my past could master.
And so you make my heart beat faster,
And I pray that we shall last, Dear.

.... and make me extremely proud they were written.

I think and feel all the million other cliche things that men have thought and felt about women since the beginning of time.

I don't have a clue what love is, but I'm glad I've found it.

Thoughts on writing. Kind of rant-ish, so beware...

A friend and I were discussing a most distressing (to us anyway) trend in the popular writing of today. Most all of the writing that people enjoy to do and gush over when they read is completely lacking in structure. It is a stream of consciousness-style outpouring of ideas. They jot down their scrambled thoughts and slap a title on them and think they are the next Kerouac (what a grand delusion that is. Kerouac was great because he was one of the originals. Once your writing style of choice has a "neo-" in front of it you aren't likely to be remembered for writing that way...)
It makes for an interesting read , to be sure, but it lacks that final punch that deliberate writing has. Reading "Spontaneous Prose" can paint an eclectic picture in your mind, but only at parts. Words and phrases grip you and can take you to unimaginable heights, but nothing like the power of structured prose and poetry.
Not to say that there isn't plenty of prose that follows a structure that doesn't have any emotional appeal at all. The goal would be to mingle the two styles together, to harness the raw emotion of spontaneous prose and deliver it just where it is needed.
Consider for a moment Gwendolyn Brooks's powerhouse "We Real Cool." In eight lines she sums up her feelings about the youth of her time, while at the same time creating a rhythm and a structure that highlights her point. It packs an emotional punch and still has an extraordinary economy. She maintains a masterful control over her words and makes every one count. There isn't a single wasted syllable or a solitary wasted beat. There is the truest essence of writing.

It is truly a shame that so much of today's writing is a giant circle jerk of academics with the readers being the ones to eat the cookie at the end.

Random story thoughts...

I can't get to sleep on these salty-stiff seamen starched satin sheets that they lay out for you in this den of banality. I feel like a trick for a lazy whore laying in this lie of room. All the amenities of a fictitious home from a world that never existed. The colors especially selected to lull one into a false sense complacency and ill comfort. All of it a delicate dance to keep you from wondering exactly how many strangers had exhaled and excreted and possibly expired in this most intimate of shared spaces.
I wonder at the cleanliness of the whole thing. Its someone's job to clean it all, but how many times have half-assed my way through work?
There is probably more UV reactive material in this twenty by twenty swatch of paradise then there is in a pot head's basement.