Eponymous

Sam Cooke's "That's Where It's At" is truly where it's at. Best slow dance ever. End.

Back in Action

I found this scribbled on a scrap of paper while I was cleaning my desk yesterday. I'm assuming it's the beginning of a poem, so that makes it qualify for my "Poem-a-Day" challenge. It has no title, and the penmanship is horrible.

Remember type
before fluidity,
Gestalt dot matrix particles
within
sounds
within
symbols.
Remember
before it left behind
serif
scars?


That's it. Sounds like an ode to my parents' old Apple II GS, complete with noisy dot matrix printer and those perforated reams of paper.

She & Him

Lars and the Real Girl

No Country For Old Men

Quit Doggin' Me!

I know, I know. Major slackery alert, right? But I will have 30 poems on here eventually. I promise.

I haven't been neglecting poetry completely. In fact, two nights ago I organized a guerilla group of poetry writers, and we spent the waning hours of the evening chalking some great poetry across the campus of Baldwin-Wallace College. Sides of sandstone buildings, sidewalks, fountains, picnic tables--none were safe from our dusty little fingers!

I've also been devoting a lot of my time to a documentary collage that I'm creating for my creative writing seminar capstone. More about that later...

Oh! And yesterday was Poem in Your Pocket Day. More about that at www.poets.org

Okay, here's the next poem. This is actually a "found poem" that I wrote for my seminar. The assignment was to collect words from billboards, road signs, print advertisements, product labels, and non-English textbooks. We were only allowed to use the words we found--nothing more than that. Here's what I came up with:

Night Paving

Bottled,
           positively     balanced on
shoulder (in
                     different cities
in one day),
a good alternative to caffeine.

The elderly
              de-
              clawed consecrator
handling tarot cards
                         begins recruitment.

Women buy
             guns &
                           tackle
well-balanced flight
attendants,
                           made of
                                   malty
                                             eukaryotes.

You can...
                      imply
full-bodied         truth
in          carbonated
                         express lanes.
North,


            south. 

At the Museum of Natural History

You kissed the little girl
who shares these thick
frames, now clouded
with your skin oil.

Particolored moths,
pinned,
looking the most alive (their
wings are still dusted).


A stuffed kodiak bear,
still hazardous.
Looming,
head-sized paws
stupidly reaching.

Something ceremonial:
a headdress for a wedding...

What implores you to stay here?
I have been here myself
all my life,
her
then me,
like wooden nesting eggs
behind glass.

Pitch

I was only
told
of the last shape he took.


Paws outstretched,

sunning lifeless
on one side in a
clearing
of trees.

Fur unmatted,
legs un-
broken.
Only a drop of blood
creeping from the side
of his cat
mouth.

Death
with a pellet gun,
aimed steady.

Startling,
the way a flashlight is
to a frog
in our creek bed.

Day Three

State Fair

A row
of bearded
pie-eating gallants,
the moon a packaged pad
of butter
in an old man's pocket
at a buffet line.

Baskets of deep-fried
ferris wheel riders
dripping oil onto
the head of
prize pig
with her symmetrical
nipples, roasting
on a spit.

Me the apple
in her mouth,
red and hot
with shame
for having entered that tent
and staring too long
at the man with the
reflective forehead.

Day Two

For Maic:

What if I am your sister,
the one bathing
in a pool of
ersatz moonlight?

Unashamed
of my nakedness,
you spring
upon me
in a bear suit
on your tiptoes,
challenging my height.
And you wrap me (like text
at the end of a
line)
in your Stooges t-shirt.

We watch the ball game
broadcast late,
West Coast,
our arms resting limp
on your sweaty
gaping
brilliant bear head.

National Poetry Month

The title of this entry tells it like it is, for sure. April is National Poetry Month. In the past, I've celebrated by gathering large groups of friends and chalking poetry over sidewalks, buildings, streets, and fountains. I plan to do this again (college being the perfect setting for this sort of play).

This year, I've also decided to write at least one poem every day, and to share my writing, completely unedited, in this blog. I want every poem (or start of a poem) to feel organic and unmussed, for better or worse.

Today's poem, my first of the month, seems greatly influenced by the departure of my lover this morning. I should also note that I've been reading a collection called "Isn't It Romantic: 100 Love Poems By Younger American Poets" edited by Brett Fletcher Lauer & Aimee Kelley." Sappiness often occurs by osmosis.



Wire

I confess
I am not so afraid
of birds.

But if you will continue
to squeeze my
elbow, to arrest
my pulse
in the presence of gulls,
I will never object
to your protection.

Pretentious Literary Form #294: The Lyric Essay

The concept of the "lyric essay" still eludes me, even after reading several essays that attempt or profess to define it. Perhaps it should be expected that writers writing about writing will do so in coy metaphor. Whatever.

In my senior creative writing seminar, we were assigned to write a two-page lyric essay using the conventions of one of these forms:

Flash Cards
Billboards
Catalog Descriptions
Rorshak Tests

I decided to explore the duality and the associative power of the flash card. A single word and its intended definition, teamed together with the intention of being forever committed to memory. The workings of memory and free association are at the heart of my latest effort.

I should also add that this morning I found my love's t-shirt next to my bed, which was enough of an event to make me cry over my oatmeal. I hardly ever eat oatmeal. I'm not generally a big fan of mush. Unfortunately I fear that my first conscious attempt at lyric essay might possess that quality:

Three Spices Commonly Used to Disguise Sentimentality

Tamarind:

The pod of a large, tropical tree, Tamarindus indica, of the legume family, containing seeds enclosed in a juicy acid pulp that is used in beverages and food.

Under creased blue tarps upheld by whitewashed two-by-fours we slip sideways through a sidewalk-wide market, past bulbous tubers and raw earthly monster fruits, and family-owned cardboard signs with tentative prices, your hand in mine as a necessity. This is not my city. To slip away would be the pinch in a muddled Hollywood comedy.

We will complete our mission at an Asian market that is held together by stapled parti-colored flyers and incidental grime. There is a bell, the woman at the counter does not understand us, and we cannot read the labels on the jars. While I pay for the pulp, my eyes gravitate toward the coy lips and navels of a hundred Bollywood women on bootleg clamshell cases, splayed beyond my reach. I want to ask if these films have subtitles. Can we sweat together in bed tonight to the garish trill of Mohammed Rafi and to the beaten sound of your mostly inadequate window air conditioning unit, and to the spices that squeeze persistently through our pores like delivery bicycles in curb lanes? But I assume that this sort of communication is futile. No bag, please. Alright, then. Plastic.

Fennel:

A plant, Foeniculum vulgare, of the parsley family, having feathery leaves and umbels of small, yellow flowers.

This one’s harder. My limbs have elongated, swollen and melting with the warmth of taste. The seed, the stalk, the heady climb up the stairs while the stomach still lingers at the dinner table. During the first set, my eyes are closed and his softer songs are punctuated with clattering silverware one wooden floor below. I forgive them, and weep in time with the percussive nature of the universe, each open-mouthed sob releasing the lingering vapors of thyme and some other spice that still eludes my palette.

On a different evening there are gossamer curtains falling around like fluttering scarves. The room is accentuated with copper and murmur. Everything is flickering. We have trouble with pronunciation for different reasons as the night surrenders to the subtly erotic grace of my elbow, bent with lusty intention towards the waning boddess of a stemless wine glass. Tonight I will give myself to you on a full stomach.

Lemongrass:

A tropical grass (Cymbopogon citratus) native to southern India and Sri Lanka, yielding an aromatic oil used as flavoring and in perfumery and medicine.

The flea market closed before we could make love between the leather bound encyclopedias and the unwittingly racist Americana antiquities, the way we’d buzzed about on especially complacent Saturday mornings. That one time, I let the taste of summer dissolve beneath my tongue, and plunged euphorically past you into stacks of must and warp and hairline cracks from amnesic use. Leaving without purchasing a single relic will be the easiest decision we will make.

Soon after it closes, the Chinese restaurant across the street follows. We have yet to find a new place. Mornings, bristles scrape across reluctant papillae, and we are made conscious of it all again. The taste, when mixed with toothpaste, is understandably unpleasant.

Evolution

There's rough gray carpet around the edges of the glass, surrounding the sharks in a sort of domesticated tranquility. The little children gather around it, their warm hands pressed against the wide pane that towers seven feet, maybe more, over their cowlicked heads, their dusty craned necks, their faces shrouded in sickly green aquarium glow.

The inside of the tank is curved and cylindrical like a soup can, its cement walls coated in mossy film. From the main viewing side, Lana can see across to two hidden portholes, and if she stares long enough, she sees a kid's face appear in the lower of the two as a blacktip sweeps sharply by, cutting another neurotic circular path.

Lana watches, a canvas tote bag weighted down with juice boxes and triangle-cut turkey sandwiches hanging limply over her left shoulder. She is standing contrapposto, posing in a way, as another living exhibition in the zoo's aquarium gallery. Her frizzled dirty-blonde hair is tamed, with much effort, by a red bandana. In an oversized t-shirt and a hand-written name tag, she watches mothers pass by with their own, actual children. She wonders whether they wonder how old she is. If they know that she is pushing thirty. If they could trust a day care that would employ a fragile woman like her. At 12:30, once the kids have tired of the sharks, Lana will seat them at the splintered wooden picnic tables in front of the polar bears, and distribute the lunches. Then she will retreat behind the ladies restroom and smoke a cigarette while she watches a daddy long legs crawl up a drain pipe.

For now, the kids aren't tugging at the legs of her jeans. They are engrossed, captivated by prehistoric silky bodies that seem weightless and hazardous in the water. Lana is repulsed by their black eyes, their gaping mouths. She is bothered that she cannot see her reflection in the side of the tank. The dim lighting in this space makes her feel as though she is drowning, but there are mothers and fathers milling about her, holding the arms of their children, negotiating problems with camera flash against the glass, breathing underwater.

As she moves toward the back of the exhibit to recline on a carpeted bench, one of her charges, Madeline the doctor's daughter, lets out a scream. Its shrillness is absorbed by the fibers in the walls, but it is felt and echoed just the same, from the cavernous mouths of the other children with their unfinished stalagmite rows of teeth. And then Lana sees the source of fear. The smooth-sided body of a blacktip shark rolls to one side, suddenly lifeless and no longer sustaining its own motion. Slowly, it cuts back and forth like a sheet of paper blown from the edge of a desk, and plummets past the viewing window, sinking to the bottom of the tank, leaving no wake.

Madeline runs, flailing to Lana, her stubby pink arms outstretched, plump fingers splayed. Lana watches her gaping mouth, her chubby cheeks, the way she chokes on her own spit when she sobs, and knows that one day Madeline will be ugly. And so she hugs her, the way she's been told to, and is suddenly joined by a mass of other bandwagon seekers of affection, who dutifully rub Madeline on the back of her corduroy jumper, and pat her hair until it is a knotted mess.

Outside at the picnic table, Lana watches the children eat their sandwiches and trade juice boxes, which come in two flavors--grape and apple. One of the boys has a ring of artificial red food coloring around his lips, and he's watching her with heavy, watery eyes. Lana reaches into her back for a pack of cigarettes and swings her tired legs over the bench of the table, heading for a spider-infested patch of dead grass behind the ladies restroom. She'll stay here for a minute or two. Long enough for a smoke. And when she returns everybody will have forgotten about death.

It's Official.

Ricky Nelson is the hottest teen idol of all time.

Daunting Task Force

My good friend Kevin recently published a list of his top five albums. I've always wanted to do this, but most "Top 5" lists in my life are too tentative to document. My attentions are fickle.

I've learned that growing up can change the way you feel about an album, the same way falling in love can change the way you feel about a song. It's the same with all art, I think.

But these are the albums that have always been there, or that have come into my life so boldly and explosively that I can only assume that their effects will be lasting. There are five of them. I think I might be ready.

1. Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

There were seventeen tracks on Wilco's previous effort, Summerteeth, but this time, one of the most inventive and versatile American rock bands did it right, releasing a cohesive and groundbreaking 11 track album that would forever change the way they made music. The critical and commercial success of "Yankee" allowed Wilco to grow as a band, and listening to this album made me forget that any other band in the world existed.

The album feels dreamlike. It lets me into a new place, where negative space becomes important, where descending chimes and sleepy fragile vocals play with underwater guitars, and where everything echoes.

I listened to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot two summers after it was released. I'm actually ashamed of this fact to this day. Though I was familiar with Wilco, I had never listened to much of their music, except for a few tracks off of Summerteeth. Now I can't make it through a week without immersing myself completely in the final dissonant measures of "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," or the playfully nostalgic pounded piano chords at the beginning of "Heavy Metal Drummer." Every time I hear "Reservations" I fall hopelessly in love.

2. The Police: Outlandos d'Amour

Even finding out the sad news that my cat had died while I was listening to "Born in the 50s" did not ruin this album for me. It says something that I only own it on vinyl; there's no skipping tracks with this one.

This is the time in the Police's career that I admire most. Nobody knew what they were supposed to sound like, and I think they didn't either. And on this album, it sounds like they didn't care. Part reggae, part punk, all pop genius, "Outlandos" has been one of my favorites since I was thirteen.

It's driving, it's fierce. Sting's vocals wail and gargle and scream. Everything is tight when it needs to be, and cacaphonous when appropriate. It's probably measured and calculated like most things that Sting does, but it doesn't feel that way. It makes me go nuts.

3. Ellis Paul: Live

I've always hated live albums because they never sound like they should, and because there's always an annoying person in the crowd who makes jarring sounds at inappropriate times. But this is a folk concert. And it's one of the most intimate folk concerts I've never been to. When Ellis breaks a string he reads an original poem whilst changing it. His guests include Patty Griffin and Chris Trapper. He jams on "Autobiography of a Pistol" and "Martyr's Lounge," and whispers and coos on "Last Call" and "Conversation With A Ghost."

Ellis is a storyteller, and each one of these songs moves gracefully and keenly, like fiction you want to believe. His soaring vocals are unmatched on any of his other studio efforts. It's two discs of modest, heartfelt pleasure. Every time I hear it I pick a new favorite song. Ellis Paul is simply one of the best living songwriters, and this is him, essentially. It's all you need.

4. Weezer: Pinkerton

Screw The Blue Album! Regardless of how much Rivers Cuomo seems to hate Pinkerton, I think it's one of the strongest rock albums I've ever heard. This was a time when the guys of Weezer weren't afraid to be playful. Their self-deprecating, angsty lyrics are the soundtrack of adolescence. But they aren't pandering to anybody. They're just playing fun, kicky, rocky, pop songs.

I miss the days when the boys would make strange noises in their songs, and sing along with guitar solos. Weezer was too big to play in the garage at this time, but this album feels like it belongs there. I love it. It makes me feel like I fit in somewhere. It always has.

5. Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans

Sufjan Stevens saved me in a way. His music and Over the Rhine's music finally gave me positive feelings towards Christian artists. This wasn't annoying praise music. This was lyrically dense, intelligent, complex stuff, that just happened to have Christian themes.

One of the most intimate, sensitive, and heartbreaking albums I've ever heard in my life, Seven Swans makes me feel like a human being every time I listen to it. The melodies, the banjo, the haunting starkness, in contrast with Stevens' other efforts, are what makes "Swans" so special. The first time I heard it, I was driving home from the library, and it began to rain. "To Be Alone With You" came on just as I pulled into the driveway, and I remember sitting in the car and listening to it all the way through. That's what Sufjan makes you do, especially here. You have to stop and listen to all of it.

Things left in the pocket of a winter coat

I can shapeshift in the fall. I can slip into things and realize that they feel familiar. I can be more restless, but I can also be more patient.

I was quiet in my mom's car, getting my sense of hearing confused with my sense of feeling, exhausting my memory. The last time I heard this album all the way through without stopping, I had a broken heart. I basked in melancholy on my roommate's futon, under piles of blankets in the middle of the day with the blinds closed tight, trying to create the illusion of night for dramatic effect. The feeling of hurting someone else made my skin feel pinched. I was punishing myself. The time before that, I was reclined in the driver's seat of my Toyota Echo on the night of my high school graduation party. Guests had gone, I was alone with the windows up. This album was a graduation present. It was hard to sleep.

Traditionally, this is the time of the year when I want to say the most, but when I feel the least eloquent. Nothing that I write will match the importance of what is happening around me, or inside me.

I'm unpacking sweaters that I didn't know I had. I'm recalling moments that I'd similarly forgotten.

This is the ticket from the theater in the park. The wrought iron table teeters, my right wrist slips across the page of a notebook, the spine creaks when I press too hard. This is the end of the summer and I'm writing this. And I can smell popcorn that doesn't smell like popcorn, but more like a high school football game, or the floor of a movie theater on Lee that we've just trodded into, wrapped in wool scarves and watching our shoulders moisten as the flakes melt under soft yellow lobby light. Now we are at the corner, and we've said goodbye too early and isn't it strange now that we must continue this way. This is you and me drinking coffee from clear cups, being diplomatic about the last bite of cheesecake, which has fallen over onto its side in surrender, and I'm realizing that you are leaving. Now I understand why you came, and why you stood for so long under the hot lights of the stage. Not because of the cold, but because you weren't sure. And at the time, neither was I. I kept a few things. When I get my phonograph fixed, I'll think of you again, when I play them.

This is me promising that my attentions will not die with a season anymore. I will play the same two-disc set all year long--perhaps more rigorously at times. And I will keep one of my sweaters folded on the top shelf of my closet.

Brushing Past You

I just imagined, briefly, whilst brushing my teeth and simultaneously pacing circles around my apartment, that there is someone else in the world who similarly wanders during personal dental care processes. Perhaps one day I'll run into this person on a sidewalk. Shaken, we'll stare nervously at each other, toothbrushes hanging limply from mirrored cheeks. We'll want to smile then, and we will, but only for a moment, before our lips self-consciously suck themselves inward to avoid dripping fluoride-rich foam across the concrete. And then, just as suddenly, we will retreat on shuffling slippered feet, to spit.

Creative Juice, Foiled, Sings Swan-Shaped Song

I just had this wonderful and weird idea for a story, involving a boy throwing his little brother's possessions into a well. I began writing about fifteen minutes ago, and it was all going, well, well. And then my parents' computer decided to freak out just as unexpectedly as my story idea came to me.

I may never get that page back, but I assure you, it was a good one while it lasted.

Better Mileage

Imagined Dialogue Between Me and My Toyota Echo, as I Trade Him in for My New Toyota Prius:

Me
Echo

I'm sorry, you know. You know I am sorry. I've told you this.
I know.
I'm older now. You're older now.
These things happen.
But lately, I've felt different with you.
Different how.
Smaller different. Like I...
Like you deserve better.
No.
You do, though. I get it. I look at him, and I see why.
He responds to my touch.
Keyless entry. Yeah, I know. Could we just not, please?
Aww, come on. You know I loved rolling up your windows. It kept my arms fit.
Remember that time we were going 85 with the windows down? The way it felt.
Yeah. Insane.
You didn't like it?
The truth is, I never felt really safe with you.
You're telling me this now? I could have tried harder!
It's just not in your nature. It's okay.
So all those miles I gave to you. That just means nothing now.
Of course it still means something. You've seen Ferris Bueller. You know that odometer doesn't run backwards.
Again with the references. Always the references. You name me Akira. From Kurosawa to Hughes. We've certainly come full circle, haven't we?
Ha.
What?
Circles. I'm gonna miss your turning radius.
I'm not the only one who's turned.
Don't. I'm saying goodbye, Akira.
For him, though? Come on. 30 miles to the gallon wasn't enough for you? I know you're a poor college student but...yeah! How the hell can you even afford a guy like that?
You and I both knew from the beginning that this wasn't going to last. I've been planning this for a long time. Saving up. I was a rebound, remember?
Yeah. Me and your mom first.
It's weird when you say it like that. This whole dialogue is.
Remember that time in the park? With--
Quiet.
Or the time you hid in my trunk and tried to---
Stop, please. Just stop.
I feel so close to you now. Here. Where we met.
It has to end. It has to.
Don't cry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. It's just...
60,000 miles.
You've taken all your stuff, right?
From the trunk.
And the backseat?
Yeah.
He has a pretty big trunk.
With a privacy screen.
Good. I can't bear to watch.
You know I really did. I really do.
I love you too.
I'm leaving now.
I know. But could you...
Yes?
Could you leave the Spandau Ballet sticker?
Does it mean that much to you?
It's the last ironic reference we'll ever share, isn't it?
I can't do this.
Are those the keys? To him?
Yeah. I have to...
Just go. Jesus. 55 miles to the gallon. And a back-up camera.
I'll have to watch you as I leave.
In the mirrors.
And the camera.
And the camera.
I'll miss you, Akira.
He's grey. Perfect.
I'm waving goodbye, Akira.
60,000 miles. God, I feel so old.
Me too.

Shorn Is A Good Haircut!

There really isn't anything like a good haircut. I swung through the door of the salon, the soles of my Converse slapping the swollen pavement, and for once I didn't feel the day's humidity festering between my thick, unruly locks. I wasn't moved to pull my hair back into a bandana. I arched my back and felt a breeze--an actual breeze, across my neck. And why wouldn't I feel the breeze on my neck? There was no hair there anymore to block it.

A lot of people are asking me what moved me to have my curly, shaggy coif whacked. It's a long history. For the past two years, I've been seeing two stylists, and every time I sat in the chair before this time, I'd say, "I want it short." And one of my two stylists would say, "short?! Really?! How exciting!" And then I'd put a stop to the madness and say, "not like that. I mean, just a little above the shoulder."

Then I'd leave, and by some frustrating tinge of buyer's remorse, I'd regret not having something different done. At least make it worth the wad of money I pay. Do something different. I've called myself a wuss in this blog before. But not anymore.

Maybe it was watching "Roman Holiday" last summer with my Culture Night girls. I'd seen the movie before, but seeing it this time, being a woman now, watching her face sink and then brighten almost instantly.

The way such a simple change can make you walk differently--can make you into a different person. It's what she needed to be, and it's what I needed to be. That's what I thought as I watched it, curled up in my basement with a group of the most smartest, beautiful, talented girls I know.

One year later, and I've got my change. I can't tell which version of me looks more like me now, and I love that. This new haircut makes me want to hug everyone! Miss Hepburn got to thank the Academy after "Roman Holiday," and now I get to thank her. And my stylist, Dana, for the best good-hair day of my life.















Oh yeah, and I should thank my supportive fella (seen above) for encouraging me to take a risk (whilst also warning me that shaving my head could have some undesirable consequences.)