Off day.

Much too late for me to be making this decision, but what have you. We'll see if I hit 8 to make up for it on the morrow. Otherwise I might try later in the week. Sometimes ideas come in abundance throughout the day and sometimes they come in abundance in front of the computer and sometimes they don't come because you were too busy playing Pokemon and sleeping and trying to read the Nicomachaen Ethics.

4:15AM 2/15/10

That unlucky number...

"i honestly do not know who this poem is directed at but i still somehow wrote it with conviction" is the name of a poem by Tao Lin and I would postulate that that wasn't completely true about the work that he turned out. Rather the name of the poem was a warning saying that the poem was (a) not about him and (b) not about anyone he wished to name. Maybe I'm completely misreading it, but I like the idea. If you write, a lot of your beliefs and a lot of things that've happened to you, that you want to happen to you, and people that you know, and stuff that's happened to them, and what you think of them, well it all sort of makes its way into the work. I mean, I'm not the only one that this happens to, I can tell that, but there may be people who don't write a single concept that they found based in some sort of reality. So I'm not trying to make universals here, I'm just trying to say that if you are reading a poem I've written then it is mildly plausible that I might be able to tell you who it is about, what the point to it is, but still, like I'd suspect Tao Lin would think, I don't really want to do that in idaknow (Timothy Bryce quote from American Psycho for that word) three out of four instances maybe. And now for the feature presentation...


"Abraham Lincoln Brigade"
All you neo-intellectuals
who are planning on getting
your degrees
in the twentyteens
I would caution you to remember
that Aristotle thought
that objects really should be active
to be doing anything productive.

So just because
you think it's so fun
to stay up until three am
slightly drunk
and holding your philosophic debates,
you might just
want to reserve judgment
on the masses

since I seriously doubt
I'd have seen you in
Spain in the late 30s.

Vonnegut said that being able to die for what you believe in
must be very, very nice
and I'm not there, but I don't really believe in anything these days,

maybe your mind
is that set in its ways
but really I never see any justification for throwing the first stones.


(50)
Such a round number
like a snowball
that is rolling down a hill
getting ever larger
and ever more marvelous.

I think there's a certain someone
that I am sometimes
who would say
that if you find me
untalented
then I will at least
be sure to force you
to admit
that I am prolific.

"Uncertain Longings"
I saw a pair of leaves
on the sidewalk
that looked like sunglasses
lying on the concrete
in the dark of early night.

And I thought
how wonderful it would be
to pick them up
and put them on
and turn to someone with me

and make them laugh
at me like I'd told
a dirty joke
that wasn't
all that funny.


"Dirty Laundry"
So if falling in love
is like going to the laundromat
then
I guess
breaking up
must be similar to that feeling
that you get
as you leave with your basket
full of nice clean clothes
but are afraid of the fact
that you probably left a sock
behind on the dirty floor.

All these things
that they've learned about themselves
are suddenly uncertain
and he doesn't know
if he really knows the person
that he is
or just the man
she wanted him to be.

The inner vocabulary
of our language
that we've drawn up
together
in the early mornings
lying in bed
before we had to go to work,

in five years
will we still speak like this?
Or perhaps more importantly,
should I even give a damn,
now that we'd both much rather never see each other again?

twelfth

"The whole element that maybe I was going for in this one short story that I wrote about this guy who was named after an alias of my father."
This whole process
is changing for me
like it did that one summer
in the UP
when I realized it was what I wanted to do.

And I think
maybe
it's becoming something I have to do.
Does that make sense?
Is that a realistic concept?
Huh?

I really don't know if I'm just being
too melodramatic
so I'm willing to hear other theories about
these thoughts in my head
but
I don't expect them,
so pardon me for judging myself at the moment.

You know,
someone has to do it.


"Calvinism"
As far as I know of it
it's an easy way out
right?

It's like determinism?
Or at least kind of?
You know
they both put forth this idea that
what you are doing right now
doesn't matter.
Or did I misread it,
as I've been known to do?

Well,
anyway,
I'm not so sure
I like this nihilism
that came to me
one day
as if I were Dewey
opening the bathroom door
on a pot party,
but still
I guess it's the best you can really do these days

when you can expect
sixty more years ahead of you
on this earth
and you are only just recently not-a-child,
and you aren't sure you enjoy it yet

like the taste of anchovies,
the first time you ever had them on a pizza.


"I hate what I do just a little bit"
too drunk at your open house
he starts hitting on your mother
and she asks him why he writes books
and turns her nose up at him
but you still think he's sort of profound
when he's fresh out of rehab
and hasn't found his next fix yet
and he sure is kind of cute
in his abstract depression
and inability to not cry
at least 47 times a day
so one day you ask him the same question
at this dinner that he's going to pay for
and then go home alone and sleep for twelve hours

he pushes up his glasses on his nose
and looks for a moment
like he's going to spit into a potted plant
near your table
but doesn't
and says

"well
you know
it beats slamming my head into a wall several times a day.
which is,
i think,
the alternative."


"talented people"
Musicians are just beautiful things
in how they can play on my emotions so easily
and no matter how good I may be with words
--sometimes I feel like I'm not good at all--
I'm never going to be able to have the same effect on people
that a good album does.

I don't like rereading novels
that often
but I can listen to the same
LP five times in a row sometimes
and I think that says something for
the meaninglessness that I feel
some days
for what I do
or what I could do, will do.

I've been writing for so long now
but I'm just letting myself dig into that bag
with the label of catharsis on it
and
I'm not sure I like what I'm pulling out
and throwing into the pond for the birds to eat.

There are a million things
that I want to say
to a million people
but that are going to go unspoken,

aren't there?

Sawn it yet, Harry? I need that wood soon.

Not really feeling particularly good about my line breaks lately. They're getting too Bukowski, short little snippets, a simple sentence spread across pages, so I'm writing sonnets today. At least that's the plan. Mainly sticking to 14 lines with 10ish syllables a line. I might do some rhyming, you never know. This way, however, those breaks are regulated, and hopefully free verse will feel meaningful again in a few days, if you know what I mean.

"'If you aren't willing to take my doctrine straight,' said the man, 'then I'll give it to you in the form of a sonnet.' And he handed me this paper with all this written on it and under that in cursive script, 'Please pass this on to everyone you know.' So I did. Sort of."
Unitarians would disagree with
this but I think it's interesting how
when we examine certain kinds of myth
as a whole we slowly find patterns now
of such things as the number three as in
Plato's republic, Christianity--
now when I go sifting throughout this bin
I find comparisons fittingly:
God of reason tops trinity divine
like the guardians sourced to Socrates,
and Jesus is known for temperance fine
just as the masses must follow for these
perfect societies to function well,
last spirited and holy ghost, how swell!


"butterflies"
I feel them around me floating
in the air like angels of a lesser
kind and I am inspired to pick up
my pen and attempt to capture one at
least and show you its lifeblood in ink spill-
ing as it will off the page and into
our world but in my writing I sully
it somewhat not unlike a Marxist whose
mud pies are unecessary labor
which are thus worthless and I am even
worse considering the fact that what I
have done is a defiling of a true
beauty in the natural sense of the
word--that is to say in sublimation.


"Gravity"
Have you ever considered what holds the
moon in the sky or what pulls on the sea?
Like when it comes down to it have you
really ever given that a thought? New
ideas are hard to come by even
today, so please consider way back when
in the times of geocentric views
of the universe that inspired blues.

Issac Newton realized something one
day and you never really think it's done
for terribly important reasons but
without this science would stay in a hut
afraid to show its face in front of
Aristotle's thought known for its shove.


"Girls on film"
She's leaning on him which might just mean that
he could have his way with her right this sec
but the funny thing is he wants to chat
even if he knows she's delightful to neck
and it's sort of scary to think that they
met on reality television
because sometimes he knows not what to say
and his knowledge of her is a smidgeon
vague like a birthmark because he met her
when she was totally acting like she
wasn't acting which caused it all to blur
what's real and what's difficult to promptly
understand is that she could really like him
or she could quickly change when the lights dim.


They ended up kind of shite, I know. I still sort of like them though.

Damn it.

I hate when this feels like an assignment to be carried out. But still, have to get the writing in.

"Presence"
There is nothing natural
about a mentos
lying on a brick path
or a pair
of brass knuckles.

But there is
so much beauty
to be had there.

From space
it is visible
what we have made
and
for all my pessimism

my "woe is me"
and anti-humanity behavior
I am glad

that our labor when trained in the right places
is one of the strongest forces you can find.
But anyway,
all politics aside,
perhaps the best example of my enjoyment of human creativity

is that
of a simple
fashion show.


"Imperial Rules"
Before his mother married him,
the boy's stepfather
used to stay up in the nights
getting drunk out of his mind
and would ramble
at him.

He'd say
all kinds
of weird shit.

And this kid
was in the tenth grade
and had barely seen
any of the world
so he would listen,
sitting on the couch,
pretending to read a book.

And the man,
Sean,
he'd say things like
"It's funny,
you know,
how lol and 1o1
look so very alike.

"Does anyone else notice
things like that?
Maybe
the only reason
that it ever occured to me
was because
those were the only classes
that I'd go to stoned
and still get Bs in.
So you know,
I associate them
with laughter."

Or
sometimes
he'd rant about his father

or his brother--
some scary New York
Neiman Marcus
suit of a man.

And this one time,
he said something
that the boy would recall
as far into the future
as his own wedding date--
actually told his wife about it,
that night in bed--
this guy said,

"Hey
I get it.
We aren't friends.
You know,
I think this is supposed to be
the hardest relationship
people ever have.
And you're never going to
really like me as a person or anything,
it's not Freudian distate
it's just we have no need for each other.

"And I understand,
but you know,
you just have to
deal with it,
because I'm sleeping with your mother
and I think I make her happy.
So

"rock'n'roll."


"pi"
numerology
has its appeal
even when you are taking
classes in statistics
and writing ugly poetry
to spite plato's
mathematical beauty

It's not hard
these days
when watching
a computer
spit out a never ending stream
of digits
from that neverending decimal

for the young man
who feels too much like an old man
to stroke his beard
and feel like Pythagoras.


"Reunion"
Sam talks to Brad
who's coming into town
for their 10 year
high school reunion
and she talks him into
staying in her house
while he's home

which is odd
because
they never really got along
back in the old days
or at least that's what
he remembers--
a girl who absolutely hated him

and beat him up
pulled his hair,
embarrassed him--
they went to school together
for something like
13 years
and he could not think of one good thing that she had ever said about him.

Sociologists look for patterns
and they try to distinguish things like gender
but science should be a self-destroying mechanism
because just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction
so does every theory have a counterexample.
Here's one--
the tomboy that never really let herself know that she liked you.

Grr...

Lot of anger in this stuff. Skip over it if you wish. Think I'm making important points though. Currently considering going for 8 poems today to make up for my off day. Maybe.


"Thoughts on your video game"
Toussaint is not the black Napoleon
nor Fanon the black Rousseau
but rather
they are
men of importance in their own right
who reached accomplishments
that speak for themselves.

And Ashley,
if you were a real person
and a contemporary,
would you often
at dinner parties
speak about all the nice minorities
who at least act white?

Because I'd like to know what that entails
other than
colonization
extermination
close-mindedness
or
hate.

Pardon me
for not smiling back
at the past
and my heritage.


"Industrialization"
The fancy-schmancy professor
who I found out three months later
was sleeping with my girlfriend
asked the class
what were the benefits of industrialization.

It was an essay question,
but I didn't much care for the man
so I turned in a sheet of paper
torn from my notebook
with the bullet points

colonialism
racism
sexism
war

and smart-assed poets who really don't have any idea what they think is good anymore
like moi.


"If I could be who you wanted all the time."
I
There is no more sought after metaphor
in this life I'm living
than that of the mirror--
some reflective surface
to tell me who I am.

We assume that certain things
are natural and not
learned like culture
to such an extent that
these days
I'm sure plenty of children
never ask the question
"Who am I?"
until college.

And internally I have no answers,
so it's the next conversation,
the next lust or uncertainty,
the next exam grade
telling me how I'm doing
explaining who
this person I know
must be.

II
Over all,
however,
unfortunately,
I have summed
only a tiny bit of knowledge
--a laughable amount, really--
a few "truths."

Which makes each new
exploration of someone else's psyche
a guessing game
of who does this person
want in its life.

I can't even tell you
if I like this six months'
growth of beard
and my increased disregard
for life itself
and I don't know if
this is me or if
I'm a puppet controlled by someone following a script.

III
Every talk we have
will be tempered by assumptions and judgment

But wouldn't it be great
if I could ask you
face to face
what you wanted

and mold myself
in regard to that mirror
as
The Man With No Name
or Tyler Durden,
your biology professor

or the high school boyfriend who you'd still be with if he hadn't gotten drunk at that one party, driven home, and crashed into his own garage door, and then his mother's Cadillac, suprisingly unhurt other than the fact that he's all but lost his face.


"TAPS"
It's raining out
so this one kid in my class
has to put socks on after arrival
because through his mocassins,
otherwise,
he'd be stuck with a lot of drenched wool.

In other news
I'm actually liking
these stylized rain boots
that have found their niche:
with their cute
rubber imitations of fabric--
an example of the importance
of appearance in our world.

And are these things
any less important
than the erasure mark
on the blackboard
that resembles her head
or the face on Mars?


"Dominance"
Your senior ex-boyfriend
that I beat the shit out of
in the bathroom
continuously screaming
"you fucking old man,"
that wasn't about you,
so please
stop presenting yourself to me now
as some sort of prize,
because,
goddamnit,
I don't want you.


"Our relationship as an abstract or surrealist or impressionist painting or something like that and please let me apologize for never being very knowledgeable when it comes to art"
I have the deadest eyes
in all of the SEC
and even though my SATs were shit
I've been heavily recruited.

I'm sought after
for all sorts of pranks
and lessons learned
because I can slump against a wall

in such a way
that
if I'm wearing loose enough clothing
even a forensics expert
would believe me a corpse.

So
I wear my sunglasses
day and night
unless I'm on a job

or in bed
with you
because you are the first person
to see my gift as just that

a funny little particularity
passed down by god
and not
just a means to an end.


"Skience"
Good news
everyone
just about twenty minutes ago now
humanity created a computer
that could read people's
mental make-up
by being fed
at least eighty percent
of the stuff
that these people wrote for public consumption.

And yeah,
I get it,
you just want to say
"yessiree Bob,
that's well and good,
but I don't really care."

So preemptively
I'm going to tell you
the importance of all this.

Consider the following
was Shakespeare a real person who wrote all those plays and things?
and how did he actually feel about his wife?

the machine can tell you that

or this one
how did Lincoln feel about slavery?
were his reasons for the Proclamation
purely materialist?

Maybe you can dig through his papers
and find the answer to that one
but in just a few seconds
the machine can tell you that.

And was Hitler or Stalin
a product of his environment?
If either of those two
were born today
in rural
like
I don't know
Kansas?
would they grow up
just like you or I
or would they turn into
Randall Flagg?
The machine can surely tell you all that.

And for three
small payments
of $999.99
you can buy this thing.

A fucking bargain,
man.


"Mythology"
Is it so wrong of me
to predict
that as regional culture
slowly dies
in a small
globalized community,
the world could be better
run under one governmental body?

If you want the truth
I guess I'd have to tell you
I'm not proud to be an American
because American
stands for both a lack of moderation
and a neo-cult worship
of assimilation
and even if I do love this country
I see myself as some sort of

post-nationalist.

That's just too much
for you,
isn't it?

I'm a blasphemer,
right?
Like Galileo
or Oscar Wilde?

But in reality
this sort of talk
disturbs my
moderate humility
and I am content
with a subtle
iconoclasm
that pales upon the appearance
of its lack of results

like a groundhog running from its shadow.

Thoughts on THE ODD COUPLE...

or really around THE ODD COUPLE. At least one of the poems I plan to write today will be influenced by listening to Gnarls Barkley 2 all the way through something like maybe three times in the past few days. Also, been writing the same poem over and over again, something taking off from Gaiman's "The Day the Saucers Came," and I've written again here, and elsewhere in the 100. Maybe you can tell. I'm not sure. And with these words of caution I'll just add that I think I'm going to start outlining a novel here, in bits and pieces. Some titles will probably be easy enough (think today's'll be "Chapter One"), but you might recognize characters or something. Both Bukowski and Carver seem to have been medium-blending between prose and poetry and I think it'd be good to get ideas out in some sort of lyrical form before constructing a book.


"Please forgive me, but I'm not going to say I'm sorry"
So is it so very wrong of me
to remind you
that only tsunamis can change
the earth's orbit?

Or that nothing we do
is worth it,
because we never really
learn anything?

Even Plato knew
that you couldn't
gain knowledge
in the same way that you can't stare at the sun.

And you can hate me if you want
but I'm just playing Lennon
and trying to get you
to drop the cross

that I made for you
in that first year
after we'd gotten out of college
when I got your best friend pregnant

or at least I guess
we both think it was me
and when you said
that you wanted to stay together,

but I had to show remorse--
I don't think you should hold onto
the noose that I tied when I said,
"Girl, you know you are meaningless,

don't you?"
I won't apologize
but for explanation I'll add
that goddamnit we all are.


"Nothing Can Hurt Me"
I
I'm not going to lie
and say that you can
impact me in any way.

Because
if you simply
inflict mortal wounds

I dislike myself
enough
to probably enjoy them

and if you were
to sever
my brain

I'd thank you
since
I've been thinking too much these days.

Even if you were
to open up my head
and play with my neural mycelia

controlling that fungus
by way of irrigation
and a sun roof

and were able to take complete control of me
I'd be fine with it,
because I've been wanting someone else to take over for a little while.

II
I don't see a problem
with sporting
my nihilism
like a letterman's jacket

and you can call me
what you want
because really
I'm not taking any effort whatsoever to listen.


"My Epitaph"
Please
people
don't believe
a single word
I ever said,
for it was all lies
and worthless crap
that wasn't meant
to be studied.


"Chapter One"
In That House
was the band of the decade
and Sam didn't sign them
which meant that her dream job
was gone.

And she's watching
old romantic comedies
and thinking about all the men
she's been with
or not but wanted to.

Her high school reunion
is in three weeks
and she's getting drunk
every other night.
Oh,

what on earth
is she to do?
you might say
and she'd spit on you
because she doesn't take that pity shit.