the earth is your summer house.

a poem

2009-02-17T19:24:00Z

Oh Why oh why, oh father mine,
do you speak so loud and deep?
We, the children, all are scared
and cannot fall asleep.
I speak to teach and show you all
how strong you all must be,
to stay alive amid the waves
upon the lonesome sea.

Oh Why, oh why, oh father mine
do you never pause to rest, and
just for once enjoy your time and
those you love the best?
I work and work and never rest
that you may grow and be
the ones who live to see the day
upon the lonesome sea.

Oh father mine, does nothing give?
will you not stop to see?
that nothing lasts before it's gone
for all eternity?
Eternity is well and good
in every tiny seed,
but i am here with nothing left
but hungry mouths to feed.

Father! Father! We are fed!
and clothed in dresses fine,
and wish to speak with you of things
we struggle to define.
Think not, Think not a moment more!
on things you can't define!
the wind will rip your dress to rags!
and, hunger, come in time!

But father! father! now's the time
to say what's never said..
to ask the questions never asked
before we all are dead!
Be quick, be quick! and if you must,
then ask without delay!
the morning sky is blazing red;
a storm is on the way!

What's it for, this sailing ship?
and whither do we go?
and when we get there will we find
the things we want to know?
The ship is for our passage.
Away is where we go.
There's nothing left but salt and sea,
if you really want to know.

There's nothing left but salt and sea?
then do you keep us fed
because you'd rather live a lie than
see your children dead?
There's nothing left but salt and sea,
and still i keep you fed
because it's all i know to do
until we all are dead.

Until we've lived a lie, or died?
is that the fate of man?
to wander, lost, upon the sea
and never seek the land?
I have no map, nor compass, child,
for none was left to me,
and so we bounce along, adrift,
upon the lonesome sea.

If, father, none was left to you,
then we expect the same,
and must devise another way
to play the lonely game.
If, father, none was left to you
then we must find our own,
before the endless salt and sea
will carry off our bones.

The storm arrived with fury
the whipping wind a'blow
and seemed to ask us, what's the point?
and whither do we go?
The lightning flashed in blazon bolts
and set the mast aglow,
and we replied, "to search and find
the things we want to know!"

The waves began to wrack the deck
and mock us like a show:
"The ship is for your passage, but
Away is where you'll go."
Oh father! father! tell us true!
before the kettles blow!
There's nothing left but salt and sea?
and nothing left to know?

"There's nothing left but salt and sea,"
he shouted through the wind,
"and nothing left to know unless
you find it in a ..."
His words were lost among the waves
perhaps they held the key.
but now we bounce along, adrift,
alone, upon the sea.

it's winter now

2008-12-12T20:43:50Z

Here i am checking in for the first time since June apparently (so nice that they keep up with the last time i was on here),
so, obviously there is a lot to cover. it's gonna come pouring when i open the valve so get ready. June 6 was my last one, so
in an effort to maintain some sequential aspect to the proceedings i will try my best to call forth the memories in order.

working since may, no breaks.
read nine stories. so much. so so much.
read to the lighthouse, finished it on saturday.
to require that book is to ruin it, but at least i was made aware of it.
continually juggling autobiography of a yogi,
(also read Zen and the Art, i forgot. great book.)
finished that sometime in october.
Before that, all i read was Rilke after Nine Stories.
then coffee shop mondays with poetry and sophicles.
the Orestia twice, that must have been august or september.
played some gigs at deadwood and JJ's with the Binkleys.
Winnie and i haven't spoken in a month. i think it's been good.
Wilch has been here playing tons of golf and we've been playing
quite a bit. Cedge got a new kit last week, beauty incarnate.
Both bands have recorded in the last week (it's been kinda warm)
oh, the halloween party was great! other than my costume,
i broke shan's pipe the next day, and bob's later.
i read new things every day. Che Guevara on Wiki.
Phish is coming back. might be cool. i'm listening to them again.
Trey is moving to San Fran with Lar and L.A. and maybe Nina.
Wilch moved back to the Hook for a while to be with Stew.
Mom is in the best city in the world.
i haven't been down there since last i wrote.
Savannah is well. we are goood friends.
I want to shoot a film on Transportation in Chattanooga
Blacksmith's is open! and Wonderful!
Everything is good.
i'm not in an electric band, though.
baxter is going to apply to lawschool and move away.
but, there's always the record label,
and the promotions company, and
i think i'm about to start Ulysses.
it could be pretty good. if it's anything like GR. (but what could ever be like GR?)
anyway, i need to visit zeen, go to mardi gras, go to NYC,
go to Maui, love myself, write write write write, and play play play.
then i can die die die.
anyway, Prufock was explicated yesterday, i might read it again.
Thanks for playing.
I really love you. and i mean you.

update yer status

2008-06-06T14:37:03Z

my status just is. it is my status.
it stands to be checked, and you
stand to be disappointed. or you
stand to be relieved completely.

i float along in the current.
at points the water is clear,
but overall mostly murky and
vague. with vast variations in
temperature. warm then frigid.
thick and viscous then quick
and runny and thinner than water.
that's when its easy to sink
and struggle. but when it's thick
i can float effortless and dream.

There are fish at my feet that
talk in and out of circles
to each other and discuss
the nature of my struggle
and my power.

ahead the rumbling rises
and a gradual rush becomes a roar
and the sound of a thousand pounds
of crashing water is deafening
then silent.

the talking fish in belly laughter
as the water pummels my silly
head is the sound of the meaning
of everything.

magic places

2008-04-22T00:38:12Z

Let me just say this. there are still, in this world today, some places ( i will define places in just a sec ) that have that rare quality,
not unlike many places from literature or art, that can only make you feel, by their inherent character that something in its essence is somehow very colored by a very real and very immense quality of magic. I don't mean cities or towns or planets or day dreams. By places, i mean what you see when you look around you. If you're inside, the place you're in is a room (and a relatively small place, as far as places go), if you're on the beach, looking at the horizon, you're in a very big place. And if you get there at just the right.. well, i was about to say time, but the time of day (intrinsically) doesn't matter. if you go in at three thirty-nine you may or may not be there at the right time, but that, and what i mean to say is, strictly up to you.
    I was in a magic place today. and the magic was electric. I guess i can go no further without making it clear that, ordinarily, places of this kind (you'll see in a second) are not ranked high in the pecking order of magic places, though i wouldn't hesitate to say that magic must make no sloppy work of her choice of residence, but rather she indubitably takes the matter quite seriously. A restaurant in one man's eyes, and a holy ground in another's. i originally walked in from ranging the town to seek out my brother, in hopes he'd be there, engaged in his ritual ceremony with the coffee/pen/paper trinity. certainly the only trinity he'll even begin to swear allegiance. He wasn't, but second cousin was, having coffee with his blonde-headed boy of 5. We chatted it up a minute and i proceeded to select a very own personal booth. yes, booths under the long front window of the restaurant that accommodate humans by the couple. maximum. that is, they only accommodate 2 persons. or individually. which was the case with me.
    Comfortably settled in my own personal booth, facing away from the front door (which in a perfectly rectangular restaurant such as this, comprised of seating a the bar and the aforementioned booths separated by (and to complete the total physical description of the place) an aisle) so as to keep my field of view clean of any and all the hungry newcomers who chose, based on a myriad of factors, but mostly only proximity, to patronize this particular establishment. Not that it would crowd up in the post-lunch hour or so that i chose to hang there. I should mention this: the hour and a half between 12:58 pm and 2:29 often proves itself time and again to be perhaps THE most positively advantageous time for finding the magic in a magic place that happens to be a restaurant. There are several reasons, but the first of which is that there are still people in the place, engaged in nice, generally effortless conversations (the kind where questions and answers are proposed, refined, and collected between intermittent fork-fulls and casual fizzy gulps, giving the overall atmosphere a soft and human ambience. And the second reason is that, and this depends very strictly on the establishment, the lunch rush has subsided just enough for the ladies that work there to ease up on the hurry and take the time to make it seem like they're getting paid to crack a constant stream of various jokes and then laugh uproariously. Not haha funny jokes, but simple self-deprecating humor and classic assumptions and prophecies about themselves or people they know or the whole town in general. "girl, you know i ain't been out in years." "yeah, but you sure seen more'n you would have if you did!" bwahaha! or.. "it's the city.. they gonna come in an decide what's best for you and me..." "Tell 'em come down here an decide if i should slap them silly!" BWAHAHA! uproariously.
    So i sat down, and, finally getting to something actually resembling a point to all this ramble, i reached for my undersized backpack (actually one of those water pouch backpacks that i relieved of it's bladder and made a bag for important small things) and having been to
two coffeehouses over the course of the morning reading the furiously overwrought and overwritten Harold Bloom introduction to one of the many of the Selected Works of Coleridge, upon settling into the my post-lunch hour, personal, private booth, i easily weighed my options and decided to scrap the Coleridge (Nay, the Bloom on Coleridge) for the moment and begin reading my fifth of the Nine Stories by Jerome David Salinger, Down at the Dinghy. Which is probably how most of the magic got into the place, but i'd be lying if i said it wasn't already a damn good setting for getting on the list of magic places. ripe, we'll say. it was damn ripe.
Well i open to the story. A woman walks away from the lake-front window in the kitchen for about the 20th time and tightens her lips in worry.
In worry whether or not the boy (who can apparently move throughout the house in utter silence) will tell someone something he overheard.
The other maid in the house tells her again, as she waits for her tea to cool down to drinkable temperature, that, were she in her shoes, she wouldn't worry about it and goes on for the next several minutes worried about making the bus on time. Another woman enters the lake house kitchen. She's in jeans, cut-off at the knee, and a black turtle-neck (it's october) and looking in the icebox for a pickle she'll need to change the mind of her 4 year-old son who, sitting in a dinghy boat that's tethered and floating at a perfect right angle to the dock, is smack in the throes of running away for the third time in his life. With no pickle to be found, the woman, though not beautiful but final and i think, stunning, tells the maids, in language most matter-of-fact, that the boy has run away twice before, the first time into central park (about two blocks) and the second, into the front hallway of the apartment building, only failing to make a final exit because he wanted to tell his father goodby. HeyawuzzashoutNawshoutaholla!
    Here, my reading concentration was beautifully broken by an amalgamation of sentences from first only one voice, then two, punctuated by my name and conveying to some degree a general misunderstanding concerning the ordering of a "Supreme and fries."
"Lewis, you didn't order no Supreme and fries??" "NAw. he didn't order no supreme and fries!" "Aww, i thotchu ordered a supreme an.."
i told the laughing ladies that though i didn't order a Supreme and fries (nor, though i didn't confess, did i even know what one was), but that
i would gladly eat one. "AW, yeah, here, here you a supreme and fries!" The plate got passed over the bar to another server and across the aisle to my booth, and then i could see what it was. and it was nothing you'd see anywhere else but in this particular magic place.
i should insert here a little story here that, even though will temporarily break the train of thought here, will i think help some of our less imaginative readers get the idea of what kind of magic place this was. I have already mentioned that i opted to read the Salinger over the Coleridge, thus reconnected with the author who i've had a few days break from, but still constitutes the person who i "...am reading now."
my brother (the same i was hoping to find here in ritual earlier), an avid reader of Salinger and in my opinion, a qualified authority on ways to go about reading his stories, (e.g. with plenty of time to think after you finish, or and in this case) suggested i read and then have a hamburger t'think it over with. Well, the magic peeked out. scratch that. it streaked across the bar to my booth in the form of a submarine sandwich with the little plastic pirate swords loaded with lettuce, tomato, 2 pickle rounds (i should mention these were stabbed to the top of the oblong sesame seed bun) and the juicy brown goodness of a disguised, but most definitely Supreme, hamburger. And i didn't even order it.
    While i slowly ate, i read on. The woman, Boo Boo Tannenbaum, nee Glass, walked down the yard and settled into a knee-popping squat on the dock about an oars length from the boat. "Ahoy" admiral pirate captain. The boy was in no mood. His mother told him about her vice-admiral status, even blew him the secret bugle call, even offered to teach him all the secret bugle calls, in exchange for his reason for running away. He wouldn't go for it. He took the oar and, lifting a pair of goggles up off the dock, flung them into the lake where they immediately sank. the woman: "those were Uncle Wendle's goggles. he would be delighted. before that they belonged to Uncle Seymour." That's all of the story i'll tell you. I sat in my booth. looking through the long blinds that stretched across the whole front window out onto sunny north market st. and the drug store and the post office. talk about archetypal. but it wasn't thoughts in my body. it was the feeling of the ending, and the people in the place, and the magic time of day that was neither too early to conjure up something really powerful or too late with the time already passed for the day's perfect trajectory. The cool air on my face and body was almost imperceptibly coming up from between my seat and the wall. i didn't see any ventilator. the whole thing was heavy, perfect magic.

Look into your cup next time you get your coffee out of one of those pump-at-the-top thermos dispensers.
look for the bubbles and the colors, but it's got to be the right time of day. if your looking for a real harbinger of magic.

Endings of Stories

2008-04-08T22:12:45Z

    Quickly and Slowly. Makes you wish you'd read it just before you hit the lights. I think i really am pretty hung up on where i finish a story. the very physical place that i read the last words of the written piece seems like some kind of obligatory offering to the author. like the least you could do is find a secluded grove of ancient redwoods surrounding a plot of thick healthy grass beside a stream or a pond gurgling its crystal clear wetness. if not that, then at least a peaceful coffee shop, where there aren't so many cute girls or hipsters on macbooks that you don't feel a little like looking around to see what the fuss is about. i started the story in a row of trees on the razors edge of spring. That's march 20th. it's now April 8th.
    It's like the satisfaction i get from the book is informed by where i finish it. Quixote on the Charlottesville mall. Karamozov on the terrace. Karenina at the mudpie, Kerouac on the yellow couch, Pynchon on the porch. Raise High at mocha joe's. Put it down in the Captain's log. maybe one day i'll be able, in the clutches of awkward conversation, to pull out the fact that physical space informs the minds impressions of things. it really does, though. if i thought reading the last words of any book worth reading were just as valuable in a crowded bar or a restaurant in mid-lunch rush as they seem in a peaceful park at twilight then i'd be fine. but they aren't. i demand that my well-invested time be rounded out at the end with beauty to see when i look up from the last word on the last page. Is bedtime a guarantee of that? perhaps.
Like Seymour's vague awareness of his clothes except for the fact that he's no longer stark naked, i like to keep my reading cushioned with pleasantness and beauty and not clutter. that's the idea. clutterless. ideally. i knew there was something. that works.
    Now. a brief reaction for the page. I see every bit of Seymour in both of my brothers. Also, i can safely say that on at least one occasion, if not four or five, within a year, i get the distinct feeling of being, in spite of my apparently god-given seniority to my brothers, somehow the younger instead. At times. but not sporadically. these bouts of youngerness can last. they can last as long as i see my brothers. then i'm doomed to be the little brother until a haitus of a couple days without seeing them. I say doomed, but let me be clear, it's not DOOMED, it's just that i'm in a situation i can't control. that doesn't mean doomed. and then, after a couple days of re-calibration or something akin to it, the relationship may or may not have readjusted. not that it has to. In fact, there are many ways that never go back, and both my brothers can hold the seniority indefinitely. and they do.
    I'm diverging. perhaps thats the point. i think buddy has to give voice to his closeness. its very important to him. and to me. my closeness. it's funny, he starts it all off like he's gonna watch himself lay it all out, meticulously describing, cataloging, relating to the reader just what he wants the reader to look for and hear and how he's gonna do it. Just all laid out to be clear about it. He needs to get it out flat. And he starts out academic as all hell. Kierkegaard and Kafka. the writer/subject relationship analysis. the whole deal. the writer/reader relation, the reader/subject relation, i mean ALL of it. And then, little by little, it gets sticky. LIKE the GLUEY stuff. That's what he's going for. Not the meat and the bones and the morals and facts, but the glue. and he doesn't realize it till about halfway through. but that's what he gets. the glue. I think that's what he finally concedes to at the end. with the whole quickly AND slowly. They coexist. Like Aiming and Not Aiming the marble. But he was trying to show you the whole time, meanwhile manage to keep a decent tab on the whole thing, so as not to confuse or abuse the reader's expectations and investment. i could probably have finished Seymour in the bathroom on a boat. talk about shaking, swaying, knees hitting the door and both walls trying to get situated.. well maybe not, but close. Why am i talking about Buddy and his closeness. That whole bit was bullshit. get me outta here. it's my first read through it for gods sake. what do i know? What do i need?
    Why did buddy call himself distinctly not Zen-like? i think the story was as much like a koan as you can get. i think i need to shut up an meditate. but i feel i should leave one last thought. just to give myself a little item for remembering how i felt when i finished my first reading of it. because i think Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour deserves an admiration. Why is it deserving? why do i feel the need to permit it to deserve? can i just admire it? i think i can. and read it again and again. i'm not totally ignorant. i have BROTHERS.

Luddism and the Reasons for Art pt. 1

2008-04-07T16:52:18Z

Luddism (a.k.a. Being a Luddite)you may know, if like me you've recently come to learn, is essentially an ideology, or if not an ideology, a view-point at least, that rejects the technological advances and mechanical innovations that, since 1739 or thereabouts, have put many a workingman out of work, pock-marked our natural landscape with innumerable factory waste-lands, and hammered the bell curve of poverty into an iron opera singer's mustache (perhaps the kind that opts for curling several times over at the extreme ends).

Historically, the Luddites (as they were called by friends and enemies) toppled weavers looms that took the place and value of working hands, but in some mutant incarnations, exist in today's technology LADEN society. Needless to say the shit has SNOWBALLED. And not only are we, as a society, deep in the throes of a technological interaction and informational construct that's expanding uncontrollably, but, i greatly fear, the blizzard is getting worse and the sun is going down.

The rate that systems today are integrating (computers in everything from washing machines to dog toys) is at the very least rapid, and i think the hunger for further integration is only growing. I can't help but think this when just last saturday, having (i apparently stumbled upon the annual Chattanooga native American pow wow) seen a woman in traditional tribal decor, covered top to bottom in majestic eagle feathers and ancestral beadwork, sporting a glowing "blue-tooth" ear piece. hmm. Behind the thundering rumble of drums and the ancient chants (born-anew in the local pavilion) were the great-great grandsons of Sitting Bull and Geronimo sending secret text messages from the corn dog stands. talk about killing the spirit. the spirit just got disEMBOWLED. and to the trader, the trade off seems good.

Why is the hunger voracious? Keeping up must play a large part. The Joneses never were Luddites. The media certainly doesn't help that. AT ALL. in fact, One is almost always rewarded for his/her hunger. The understanding goes something like, "Buy this or this and this, and you will gain superiority (read the appearance of superiority) in style, knowledge, and social savvy. I suppose social knowledge is an enviable commodity in the 21st century. more precious than gold, really.

So back to the Blizzard- it's getting too thick. We can't make sense out of the old words and numbers, because now, they don't apply.
Computers in dishwashers and missiles that speak each other's language (or at least WILL be able to in a few short years) threaten to
completely changed the vocabulary of life. We must now learn to read a new an more abstract dialect for the sake of advancement, meanwhile ignoring completely the silent language of our predecessors and our parents.

I am NOT ATTACHED to the Old ways. I could give a shit. what i AM attached to is the LOGIC for changing. What will all this technological advancement from satellites to plastic razors bring for the better? how will it UNITE the people of this polluted rock for the better?? How will it overcome the greed and killing?? Or even just SUGGEST a softer, gentler, more acceptable future?

This "green" revolution is looking fine. It almost represents the opposite of the flat-screen/schick quattro/blu-ray/H3 language. Sorry to attack those particular (i'm not really) but they're the first ones that came to mind, so.. they can deal with it, i guess. This "green" revolution
is looking good. Though i'm not too sure that it won't get corrupt. it just might all come down to Corruption. is that why the Godfather fims are so epic? The annihilation of puppets on strings? will there always be puppets and puppet masters??

to be continued. later on.

Also, before i go, the Reasons for Art fall under one or two categories. you can be thinking about these while you eat your lunchables...

1) they are selfish and exist for self-gratification, ego-glorification, and/or escapism.
2) they are not selfish and exist for other reasons, perhaps no better, but surely no worse.

think on it. *

*if you should find that thinking on this fails to suit your preference, please, by all means then, refrain.
and be all the happier.

cajsh @ 2008-04-03T16:26:00

2008-04-03T21:02:03Z

why write, why think, why solve problems if you can easily employ
the most advanced tactics of forgetting them?

I can access almost anything i want from my computer.
No one understands this. Least of all the kids that were born
in front of a computer. Being born into the world of technology is
like being born into the universe where no one remembers actual planets
or rivers or mountains because, now, almost all one's time is spent zipping through
space. Empty, free form, limitless, black, unassuming, colder than all hell SPACE.

Or perhaps the architecture of the spaceship will be informed by shapes and
topographies locked in distant memories in the subconscious. Isn't that after all
how architecture works? mythologies with beginnings and ends and mysteries
and tangents and challenges and rewards and misunderstandings and principles.
Like the front door and the front hall and the living room and the bedroom and the bathroom
and the garage and the playroom and the halls and channels and rooms and sections
and different tales and tragedies and fates awaiting in every separate one.

I am very happy to be in the state of mind i am in. I wish i could share it with more people.
i suppose i should keep writing just to finally secure my own voice and increase my
skill level with regard to typing. okay, no more bull. no more long sentences, unless they are
absolutely called-for. okay. Seymour. very intelligent writes haiku. double haiku. 34 syllables.

one two three four five
one two three four five six seven
one two three four five

one two three four five
one two three four five six seven
one two three four five

is that really smart? are the restrictions inherent in the form not ignored?
perhaps the double haiku retains some of the topical virtues of the single, but
can one honestly change the form to twice the apportioned length? of course one CAN.
but should one, in the poetic medium, alter the entire form? granted, he's not makin a
sonnet from a haiku, or a villanelle, or a lyric free verse, but he IS greatly departing from
the traditional methods of variation on a theme. the methods tried and true, and in a sense
departing from the poetic dialectic, or is he creating his own? and if he is departing from
Homer and Shaekspeare and Jonson and Spenser and Eliot and Wordsworth and Blake
and Marlowe and Mallory and Shelley and Browning and Keats and Tennyson and Byron
and Crashaw and Herrick and Rumi and Basho and Dryden and Pope and all the poets that
varied their verse in nuanced and partikular ways, but always maintained a recognizable
distance from the original form, laid out for their deviation.. what i am saying is..
Is Seymour's way of variation in the tradition of poetry? does it need to be to be great?
This will automatically be recognized, no doubt, by any and all critics or his work.
And without the blessing of the godforsaken critics, can one acquire greatness?
AHHH greatness is worthless. worthless worthless worthless. i can go wordless and be less worthless.
i still need a silent day or two. savannah shouldn't bear the brunt of it. she doesn't deserve my silent
treatment. i deserve my silent treatment..

BACk to Seymour. His variation is perhaps the most obvious. when have you ever been
able to make out the variation on form of any poem without reading it? well, with Seymour's it is possible.

Does the double haiku have double the power? double the value? double the intensity?
Is Seymour incapable of putting his poem into one? and he NEEDS two? or is two the perfect number
and thus reflects the Tao? NO. the tao is one. but the yin and the yang are two. perhaps the two
are dynamic in existence. the first is a perspective and the reader's assumption and the second
destroys it or turns it inside out, or even just fucks with it. like a bathos. or a praeterito.

The first poem is about an adulterous wife who returns home from a tryst with her lover
and enters her bedroom to find a balloon on her bed. a big, green, inflated balloon.
left anonymously. That's as far as i can remember.

So 1) It's autobiographical and seymour's wife is cheating and he wants to leave her a balloon
in hopes she can regain joy where she once found it. little things. like the soft curve of a rubber balloon
inflated. Or maybe he just wanted to give her something he is finds beautiful.
Beauty is a strange thing. Two people can see beauty in totally different places.
or 2) Seymour sees something like a fragile balloon, that will one day deflate or pop.
death. either of the two. it seems seymour pops. maybe muriel deflates.
maybe the balloon is love. and like the love between seymour and muriel,
the affair will soon lose its vitality and either deflate or pop.
Balloons gets stretched. They can't last forever. Did Seymour think his marriage
would last forever? Did he compromise and go for what was beautiful to him at the time?
and thought that marriage was the answer to holding on to it? certainly not.
Seymour sees wayyy beyond. He must. I trust Buddy.

Poly in the Park

2008-03-05T16:20:01Z

That was a little aggressive, the previous post, but in my defense i was feelin' a little disoriented
and needed a bit of a sorting out. Now, for your kind pardon and personal enjoyment i will
depart completely from that vein and make an entry to do just the opposite. Thank you for reading.

    Once upon a time there was a little girl named Poly.
She was named after her mother's lifelong love for polygons,
and her father's love of corporate monopoly. Raised in a nice
house near a grassy green park, Poly used to play in the park
every morning. At lunch time she would go inside to find
her mother had made her cheese and cucumber sandwiches,
and after lunch she would go out and play some more.
One day she met a boy in the park and had a very strange and
awkward conversation. As it was her first conversation with a
strange person, she had little to go on, so she waited until he spoke.
    "Howdy," sez the boy. A strange silence. She knew not whether to respond
or to play it cool, like the movie stars. So she played it cool. "Hey," sez the boy,
"How come you won't deign to answer my salutation, you thankless whore?"
She could hardy blame him for his question nor word choice, so she decided
to answer.
    "That's a hell of a thing to say to somebody who just got out of jail."
    "How was i supposed to know you just got out of jail?"
    "I gave you every indication," Poly proceeded.
    "Hardly, my dear. Only the holes in your stockings were speaking."
    "The holes in my stockings were there LONG before i went to jail."
    "One would not suspect it," sed the boy.
    "You must be Germaine," Poly rashly surmized, eliciting a nod.
    "And you must be Poly, daughter of the Duke."
    "Indeed."
    "Indeed."
    Their eyes shared a moments glance and each played at coy
disinterest, feigning the fact that both were extremely interested
in the other's apparent desire to identify the other by name.
    "How did you know my name was Poly?"
    "I am a stranger. i know things..."
    "You are hardly a stranger. why, you just told me your name."
    "i did not tell you my name. you asked and i nodded."
    A little confused, but prepared to determine the nature of
their relations (sexual, no, or international), but coming to no
sure conclusion, and feeling increasingly uneasy about this
trickster of goliath to whom a word was nothing more than
a cluster of aural fragments generated for the purpose of
total bewilderment, Poly decided to take the initiative and
invite her new pseudofriendslashenemyslashunknownand
hardlyacquaintedacquaintance to play a little game.
    "I will say one word and you will rhyme with it." Poly explained.
"Understood?"
    "Quite. proceed." the bastard spoke.
    "Condescension."
    "Fail to mention."
    "You are a silly boy. you must rhyme one word only." Poly explained.
    "Hypertension, then." he spake.
    "Purgatory." Poly challenged.
    "Allegory." the boy rebuked.
    "Nom De Plumme."
    "That's three words, you louse." the boy exclaimed.
"You are right. i am sorry." Poly conceded. "Penis."
    At this moment the boys face began to turn a sanguine crimson,
and one by one, the tears came streaming down his face.
    "What are you wimpering about?" Poly inquired.


                                      The End

Writing to a friend for all t' see

2008-02-21T18:01:36Z

And what then happens when you "comment" on a friends page
instead of just sending them a message. well, a few fuckin things.

1) you say more than you mean

2) you say less than you mean

3) you say things differently than you mean

if you think i'm wrong, you should be very proud.

you are cool to them and me.

if you think i'm right, you should be very proud.

you are cool to me.

It has been observed in animal species,
nearly across the board,
the need for asserting dominance over
others of the same species.
Physically, mentally, spiritually, stylistically,
verbally, socially, economically, politically,
and statistically.

when you speak to anyone but yourself there are implications.

Who is saying it/ hearing it
What is said/ is heard
Where it's said/ heard (contextually)
How it's said/ heard
and most importantly WHY.

The WHO question doesn't matter except to determine
the respective participants expectations.

1) What is the expected reaction given by the listener?
and the expected reaction received by the speaker?

The WHAT question is horribly complicated and we can only try
our very best to blabber our way into clarity. hopefully.

The WHERE question is important especially in conversations
with residual implications left over from prior intense conversations
or relations. like talking with ex girlfriends after a long time,
or to your parents after decades of personal interaction.

The HOW question is the clearest of all, and is the conduit of clarity.
If you can express the HOW, the rest of the jumble will fall into place usually.

The WHY is purely social. the reasons are simple.
1) i should
2) i want to
3) i will
4) i won't

They are never imperitive, and that's why we read.
you never answer because you
1) Have to
or you 2) Can't

Why does the Rhino speak quietly?

Why Oh Why Oh Why?

Because He hopes you won't hear him

and you'll let him go back to eating and fucking

just like he likes

Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye

Why does the Mayor make Speeches?

Why Oh Why Oh Why?

Because the people are perpetually

on the verge of panic and general mayhem

Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye

Why do i write in a journal that everyone can see?

Because i think i'm real hot shit.
or i experience some degree of insecurity on some level.

Goodbye Goodbye GOODBYE!

The Supernatural Aid

2008-01-09T18:02:41Z

Poncho dressed in camoflauge
swung by the office
and pulled me out of torture

One of his eyes was bluish
Blind except for one
he said he was from the bushes over there

We had a conversation for a minute
while he was looking for friend
an provided for the folks
who lived under the bridge.

Antonio from Mexico
He said, is like a son
tells him bring that over here
he takes it over there

Got a Horse in the stockyard
said his teeth on the bottom
but i sent it down to georgia
oh, thomasville? nope, flintstone.

Don't be a crook like me he said
Don't be a thief like me
Talkin bout Lewis and Clark
h'said i'm full of History

I said they explored the west a while
out past the mississippi
Pancho said yeah
the Louisiana Purchase.

Antonio pulled the trailer around
Pancho turned, but not before
giving me exactly what i would need.

He said
"Columbus didn't discover America,"
"you know who discovered America??"
"I discovered America."

i hope he comes back everyday.

The object of life is work

2007-12-13T15:31:44Z

I think i'll conduct an empirical test, an try an determine the nature of the interactions
between life, work, pleasure, and death. sounds like a nice project.

Life is the canvas or the cave wall.

Work is Black paint.

Play is White paint.

Death is the gentle washing by the rain.

That was easy.

i think i'll be a scientist.

is there really ever anyone else?
can you count on anybody but yourself?
i'm inclined to think no. but i s'pose it's me who needs
some security that things'll work out the way i think they oughtta.

i have the best friends in the world.

i know people that can make you feel
like a little kid on a saturday morning
just by talking to them about music
or mind-bending.

There are folks in my city that
sing like the winter wind in the branches
of trees in the graveyard alongside the river.
they fiddle and yelp and invoke
the muse of workingmen and the
muse of the seasons. Terpsichore!
it must be her whose tempered tones
arrive, as though through wind and rain,
and finding space from out a strained refrain,
they meet my ear and teach me things
for which man could never find the words.

by the way

i really like your brand-new leopard-skin pill-box hat.

i go ramblin around

2007-12-06T22:03:32Z

and i HATE the word "blog." it sounds like it's coming from
a guy who thinks he's better than someone who doesn't use
words like "blog." smarmy and snobbish.

Like a musician saying the word "vamp," like "you ain't got
what it takes, and you ain't gonna get it, so just play these
coupla notes and try not to lose it." which is exactly what miles
would say to me, but i'd probably laugh and then leave pissed off.

journals are great and anything LIVE is better than polished.
plus writing is like taking a mental deep breath/cosmic shit
and lets me get my ducks ina circle. There's a book called
"The Artists Way" that preaches one should write at least
three handwritten pages a day for ultimate mental health
(or somethin) and even though i writing (hardly three pages),
it was felt much better to write three pages, even if i had nothing to say.
Writing, for example,completely devoid of purpose or emotion,
"i have nothing to say so fuck the fuck off" for 20 or so lines, made
you remember a potentially infinite numberof lost thoughts that have
long needed scribbling. and if that, wasn't the case, then chances
are you got pissed and cursed and spit for 20 lines until your hand
cramped, and then enjoyed some perverse satisfaction at knowing
you did what you set out to do. get out three pages.

I just took a personality DNA test. HA! it was very interesting to
see how they thought personality was measured. it worked okay, i think.
told me i was a "Benevolent Creator." HA! made me feel kinda good.
maybe a little too good. i ain't creating much of anything.
i see people that are though, and i want to meet them.