Welcome to the morning, for I know that you have not wakened yet. Who but I would get up before six when their first class is at 12:30? Go ahead, sleep until ten. I know you will.
One of the flaws of this American world today is that too many listen to music because it "sounds good," because it catches their ear for a week or two, sniffling through the radio. Their pleasure fades as quickly as the song blends into the station jingle. They have no respect for it, no great love for it, because it means nothing more than a brief jive with thudding bass.
I have been raging with "My Chemical Romance" of late. They are beyond intense, and I never thought I would like them. I don't know if I like their first album, which was independent, but "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge" refuses to let up. I think I shall end up buying it. However, I am waiting to see if its catalysm lasts. Coincidentally, "Three Cheers..." was produced by Howard Benson, who was also responsible for "Year of the Spider." Of course, he was also the hand behind Blindside's last album. Perhaps the band should be shot, not him. I'm not sure if the songs could have been salvaged.
My short film is moving. Locations are cropping up, people are rising to the occasion. I'll film it on Martin Luther King if I have to, although I'd rather not risk a REAL drive-by. If that's my only choice, though, I'll do it.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Music used to be good.
What is worth losing?
What happens to the memories we leave behind for a dream? Are they translucent corpses strung out behind in chains of werelight, tolling and haunting like blackened cathedral bells?
What is the cost of love?
It isn't free. That's a lie singing off the tongues of simpletons and the teeth of fools.
What are they afraid of?
Why do they hide amid stupors of vapors and liquors, arid monologues and flapping jaws, the bleary unfocused eye, the succor of desperate voices in a cray wash of cold brine: your stillborn savior who bleeds amber in the evenings that stay evening long into morning?
Why do I feel skinless and unreal?
Does music stop at our ears, or does it shudder through us into earth and reverberate, barely perceptible, in the far mountains and fields of distant nations?
Why are they frightened of their dreams, of the love that will get them there?
What happened to passion, and what is the punishment for having wasted it?
Do spiders build webs to catch their quarry, or are they striving to construct monuments, and insects just run into the damned things? If a cow trampled my Great Pyramid, I'd have hamburger that night.
Why do I hear the shouts of the dead and the whispers of the living?
Passion is not enough.
Wisdom is a long while in coming, and blood is its price.
From the carcass of love spring the roots of dreams undeferred. Dawn will come, unbidden and unlooked for.
Tomorrow is not a day on the calendar.
What is worth losing?
What happens to the memories we leave behind for a dream? Are they translucent corpses strung out behind in chains of werelight, tolling and haunting like blackened cathedral bells?
What is the cost of love?
It isn't free. That's a lie singing off the tongues of simpletons and the teeth of fools.
What are they afraid of?
Why do they hide amid stupors of vapors and liquors, arid monologues and flapping jaws, the bleary unfocused eye, the succor of desperate voices in a cray wash of cold brine: your stillborn savior who bleeds amber in the evenings that stay evening long into morning?
Why do I feel skinless and unreal?
Does music stop at our ears, or does it shudder through us into earth and reverberate, barely perceptible, in the far mountains and fields of distant nations?
Why are they frightened of their dreams, of the love that will get them there?
What happened to passion, and what is the punishment for having wasted it?
Do spiders build webs to catch their quarry, or are they striving to construct monuments, and insects just run into the damned things? If a cow trampled my Great Pyramid, I'd have hamburger that night.
Why do I hear the shouts of the dead and the whispers of the living?
Passion is not enough.
Wisdom is a long while in coming, and blood is its price.
From the carcass of love spring the roots of dreams undeferred. Dawn will come, unbidden and unlooked for.
Tomorrow is not a day on the calendar.
Saturday, September 25, 2004
If I step across the cigarette ash
sucking up against the doorjamb,
the wind pushes its hips against the gravel,
there is a wet iron moon above the vineyard,
there are spectral lights leaning backwards
with pale shoulders pressed into my lips.
If I step across the gouged oak
bathed in cigarette ash,
I find that night knows piano, that delicacy
tastes of aspen lace, the gray thighs of orchards
curled out under the steaming furor
of a wet iron moon
that has caged my eyes.
If I step, what can I gain
that I haven't got? beaded moisture
jeweled on the smudges of sleeping crows,
the consumption of rapture,
the shadows beneath your cheekbones
away from the lamps on Tenth and Bowle,
your voice scattered between moths and stars
and not the fractured columns of vagrant tumbling newspapers,
your glorious tragedy cast in pearl and not gold,
for man spoiled gold such a greedy long time ago.
I have knowledge of nothing,
of spindle-veined plum trees moistly frail
beside fields gasping in the cool.
I have no way, only eyes
that see and then not always
so that my hands can grub in the clay
and carve vessels for moonlight,
to hold the moaning
of the wet iron moon.
sucking up against the doorjamb,
the wind pushes its hips against the gravel,
there is a wet iron moon above the vineyard,
there are spectral lights leaning backwards
with pale shoulders pressed into my lips.
If I step across the gouged oak
bathed in cigarette ash,
I find that night knows piano, that delicacy
tastes of aspen lace, the gray thighs of orchards
curled out under the steaming furor
of a wet iron moon
that has caged my eyes.
If I step, what can I gain
that I haven't got? beaded moisture
jeweled on the smudges of sleeping crows,
the consumption of rapture,
the shadows beneath your cheekbones
away from the lamps on Tenth and Bowle,
your voice scattered between moths and stars
and not the fractured columns of vagrant tumbling newspapers,
your glorious tragedy cast in pearl and not gold,
for man spoiled gold such a greedy long time ago.
I have knowledge of nothing,
of spindle-veined plum trees moistly frail
beside fields gasping in the cool.
I have no way, only eyes
that see and then not always
so that my hands can grub in the clay
and carve vessels for moonlight,
to hold the moaning
of the wet iron moon.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Crab grass hard on my feet,
want my goddamn bluegrass back,
want the ditch where it feels
like my grandfather is buried, face emerging
sallow and sweet, leathery and painted over
in the blurred inks of just-gone,
though I know
he’s sacked out beneath a granite tooth,
don’t know if that’s where I want to go.
The willows moan
in moody low melodies of defeat; I get tired tired, tired
with dirt in the hollows beneath my eyes,
my mouth open and my arms in the bluegrass knowing
there is much you love
more than honesty.
Evening has shipped in,
smooth shards of blue susurring
into the clefts between the cold-off foothills,
washing down the moonward side
of the blue bluegrass, goddamn bluegrass,
feel you smiling blithely, I say,
this what happen
when fools look deep at each other,
think they see mirrors.
Name me a mirror that din’t lie:
closest I get is the burnished cheeks
of flooded rice fields, and all they showed me
was skies dragged down by the sagging
chins of clouds.
that’s how I know
they din’t lie.
I get tired, tired.
Gimme my goddamn bluegrass.
want my goddamn bluegrass back,
want the ditch where it feels
like my grandfather is buried, face emerging
sallow and sweet, leathery and painted over
in the blurred inks of just-gone,
though I know
he’s sacked out beneath a granite tooth,
don’t know if that’s where I want to go.
The willows moan
in moody low melodies of defeat; I get tired tired, tired
with dirt in the hollows beneath my eyes,
my mouth open and my arms in the bluegrass knowing
there is much you love
more than honesty.
Evening has shipped in,
smooth shards of blue susurring
into the clefts between the cold-off foothills,
washing down the moonward side
of the blue bluegrass, goddamn bluegrass,
feel you smiling blithely, I say,
this what happen
when fools look deep at each other,
think they see mirrors.
Name me a mirror that din’t lie:
closest I get is the burnished cheeks
of flooded rice fields, and all they showed me
was skies dragged down by the sagging
chins of clouds.
that’s how I know
they din’t lie.
I get tired, tired.
Gimme my goddamn bluegrass.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
 | You Are Gilbert From "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" You are very giving and self-sacrificing. You're always there to lend a helping hand to family and friends. However, this generous nature often robs you of fulfilling your needs and desires, and may cause you to become resentful. Find a way to balance your kindness with your independence. |
Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!
Ironic. It's the only Johnny Depp film I own.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
I imagine that it's morning in Paris, and that the wet spokes of humid bicycles are shuddering damp cobbles like cinematic sprints of spasming light, a sunlit accordion staggering about with sand spread under his morning eyelids.
I love the keys. I saw lanky blue shadows smearing their sweaty dawn palms against my skin as I passed, passed, pressing mortal shades into me, into me.
Paris reclined, and she was naked and thorny against the hills, she was the crown of pale alabastered flesh, she was the cigarette smoke sliding against heaving ribs. Paris was born for morning, I said, because the fire of dawn was meant to salt the wounds of her reckless night.
Go on, Paris said, her lips against my earlobe, and I swam through her tiled doorways, where women with long skirts swept the heedless stairways and closed their eyes slowly when the city's morning struck them blind. Iron trellises peered like ashes from the balconies, and I knew that they cupped the remains of yesterday's midnight under their fingernails.
In the ash, I saw Paris glory in the morning.
I love the keys. I saw lanky blue shadows smearing their sweaty dawn palms against my skin as I passed, passed, pressing mortal shades into me, into me.
Paris reclined, and she was naked and thorny against the hills, she was the crown of pale alabastered flesh, she was the cigarette smoke sliding against heaving ribs. Paris was born for morning, I said, because the fire of dawn was meant to salt the wounds of her reckless night.
Go on, Paris said, her lips against my earlobe, and I swam through her tiled doorways, where women with long skirts swept the heedless stairways and closed their eyes slowly when the city's morning struck them blind. Iron trellises peered like ashes from the balconies, and I knew that they cupped the remains of yesterday's midnight under their fingernails.
In the ash, I saw Paris glory in the morning.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
To what did I return?
I came home today at ten o'clock in the evening. It was my mother's birthday. I had rehearsal.
They didn't do a Goddamn thing. My father was listening to his fucking Spanish tutorial. They didn't open any Goddamn presents. There was a cake sitting on the table.
What is too much to ask?
She went to bed. Before she disappeared, my father had the grand consideration to ask her if she would like to check her e-mail. Thank God, the saints, and sweet Hell for his decency, for his impeccable thoughtfulness.
Fuck you, father of mine. Keep walking.
Poetry is a rigid corpse, and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why seven billion words languish in cold unremembrance: they lost life. Somewhere in the iron tread of decades, they stopped writing of life and began to spit out numb phrases. Go ahead. Search for it. Find it. Every one of these modern "insights" is as stagnant and lacking in force as a regiment of toothless old men, their IVs sucking at them like transparent octopi. "Poetry" is perpetuated by a shattered minority of mute hermits whose passion is reclining on their lawns, harping on the sprinklers, and capturing such impressive phenomena with cages of indefinite, soulless praise.
Fuck you, poets of today. Keep walking.
The end
is not here, and you will not die. Here is fire, here is rage, here is the eternal -- stabbing out from your bony, fragile chest. Who can stop you, I ask. Who the Hell can stop you? When you ripped your bloody way from your mother's warm cage, God laid his angry hand on your skull and shouted for the suns and the worlds to pour forth onto your day, because he had forged you in undying flame. When you clattered upon the table in a puddle of your mother's substance, you screamed; you screamed "Goddamn!"
And God howled back, "Yes, Goddamn! For I have thrust you forth into a world where nothing will match you, where failure is beyond you, where you will be crushed and lifted, where you will be summoned and destroyed. And when you live on, you will win. And when you die, you will win."
I came home today at ten o'clock in the evening. It was my mother's birthday. I had rehearsal.
They didn't do a Goddamn thing. My father was listening to his fucking Spanish tutorial. They didn't open any Goddamn presents. There was a cake sitting on the table.
What is too much to ask?
She went to bed. Before she disappeared, my father had the grand consideration to ask her if she would like to check her e-mail. Thank God, the saints, and sweet Hell for his decency, for his impeccable thoughtfulness.
Fuck you, father of mine. Keep walking.
Poetry is a rigid corpse, and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why seven billion words languish in cold unremembrance: they lost life. Somewhere in the iron tread of decades, they stopped writing of life and began to spit out numb phrases. Go ahead. Search for it. Find it. Every one of these modern "insights" is as stagnant and lacking in force as a regiment of toothless old men, their IVs sucking at them like transparent octopi. "Poetry" is perpetuated by a shattered minority of mute hermits whose passion is reclining on their lawns, harping on the sprinklers, and capturing such impressive phenomena with cages of indefinite, soulless praise.
Fuck you, poets of today. Keep walking.
The end
is not here, and you will not die. Here is fire, here is rage, here is the eternal -- stabbing out from your bony, fragile chest. Who can stop you, I ask. Who the Hell can stop you? When you ripped your bloody way from your mother's warm cage, God laid his angry hand on your skull and shouted for the suns and the worlds to pour forth onto your day, because he had forged you in undying flame. When you clattered upon the table in a puddle of your mother's substance, you screamed; you screamed "Goddamn!"
And God howled back, "Yes, Goddamn! For I have thrust you forth into a world where nothing will match you, where failure is beyond you, where you will be crushed and lifted, where you will be summoned and destroyed. And when you live on, you will win. And when you die, you will win."
