Far across the bay I can see lights
I wonder if they can see mine
High in the heavens a moon
It wonders if it’s wandered too far
My solitude is the salty air
My lungs fill my heart with reverberations
Of things I once did
Birthed of rippling waves
Fed a diet of syncopated music
And set to toe-tap from one end of the country to the other
Noises have brought me here
Where I can sit in silence
Moon above, paying me no heed
Here, ideas form slowly
A twinkling star vanishes
And the rooster waits to crow
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Far Across The Bay I Can See Lights
Monday, June 29, 2009
Tinted Window and A/C
Sitting in his comfortable leather seat, cruising along a highway that leads to somewhere he doesn’t know. Tinted windows of course. No he can’t be bothered to look out into your world while feeling the very same heat you are in, sweating your sweat—no it just isn’t possible. His soundtrack at the moment is something dramatic and indie so he can sort of feel for a condition other than his. He imagines it to be just like in the movies. Where some spoiled rich boy gets out of his air-conditioned life and finds a reprieve from his ignorance. Maybe tomorrow.
Kell-jack And C-mitch: A Romance
Kell-jack shouts, “The universe is crazy big and things are gonna explode!”
I say, “Easy,” and C-mitch goes, “Fuck yeah it is. Fuck yeah they are.” He’s nodding to unheard drums while she flails on her bed.
“Here,” I say, “Drink some water.”
“It’s gonna explode.”
“You’re dehydrated.”
“It’s cuz I’m exploding.”
I look out the window, where the trees are just starting to grow back their leaves.
C-mitch trances over to the wardrobe and opens the door. A million things fall on him, feather boas and skirts and shit. He barely notices.
“Death from within!” says Kell-jack.
Two-line Poems
The arts of Confucius are my lullabies
Singing soft fortunes into my ears
Father, our timing has run to the train yard
It searches for the tracks amidst the rain
The stars are made of teardrops
Some from happiness, some from sadness
Scurvy sea dog
Post for a leg
Nighttime winds through the forest
It comes closer to he and she
Portable words crackle in stereo hiss
Sent through the air to deliver a kiss
Soda pop, the savior of Latin America, injects itself
Into the glass bottles that float down the rivers
Stripes sometimes curve
For better or worse
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Invasive
My glistening needles are not for decoration. They pierce insidiously without warning, and once inside, my barbs will hook onto your flesh like it was the cheek of an ignorant, juicy fish. If you are the least bit maladapted to my environment, I will cut you down. Negotiation is futile, as is laughter. I was not planted here for your pleasure, or theirs. Your territory is a thing of the past. You’d do best in a nice terracotta pot, or perhaps a large planter in the lobby of a fancy hotel and spa. But not here. Consider your soil mine.
Fortune
Leroy planted a packet of seeds in a neat row. Five months of careful watering later, he harvested a crop of fortune cookies from the yellowed vines. Inside each cookie was a slip of paper with a phone number. At first he was filled with awe, but soon it seemed perfectly natural that phone numbers might grow from a row of seeds. In September, when the last fortune cookie had been picked, he began to call the numbers. But to his horror, each voice that answered said the exact same thing: “Fortune cookies? You’re crazy, and fortunately, I’m not.” Click.
Text Messages Lead To Very Disjointed Conversations
- How’s your day going?
- Eating sushi. It is filled with eel. How was dancing last night?
- Ohh eel sounds slippery. Just like your mom last night.
- I had dinner with my mom last night jerk. Swallowing wasabi by itself is not that cool.
- You’re not cool. Last night was aight, busted a bunch of moves, you know.
- My self-esteem is in the gutter, thanks. Ever seen asparagus tempura? So good!
- Sounds hateful. Just doing what I can for your self-esteem aka massive ego. Remember Laura?
- Yeah, why? And you need to try this asparagus. And my ego barely exists now. And...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Getting Sick
If the world lives inside my mind, how can I walk through it every day?
I dreamt that all of my five senses deteriorated and died, and yet nothing changed. I could still see the grass without seeing the wind pushing it, so I thought that meant the physical universe was a hoax created by my disembodied mind.
But when I woke up I grew ill and I couldn’t think straight for head pains. Fits of coughing wracked me; with each painful burst my imagination floated further away. I tried to crawl after it, but my throat needed water first.
Guest Author: Dave Herron
27.
Ding.
Home is a mouse with a long tail. “You’ve Got Mail” is the enticing nectar of the gods.
Oh hey, Sean. How’s your Mom?
My diploma relaxes nearby.
Sunlight sprints between steel towers and runs through glass panes and gasps around corners and collapses,
finally,
at my ankles.
But an errant ray crashes into a brown bag. The lettuce sings with earthy charm amidst a chorus of wheat bread and baby carrots. Life occurs.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
A Happy One
He was bored and had no one to walk the sidewalks with. At the ice cream stand, he ordered a fudgesicle just for something to do. He turned around and bumped into someone his same height. He shouted.
“Leroy!”
The man said something into his cell phone and turned around.
“Yes?” His eyes opened. “Bobby?”
“What the hell!”
He dropped the cell phone. “Bobby!” They hugged, dancing in a joyful little circle. “Is this for real?”
“I’ve got ice cream!”
They both laughed. Grinning ear to ear, the two brothers walked off down the street, leaving the cell phone abandoned.
A Sad One
He sat in his study day after day and never moved from his armchair. He swatted at flies that were only in his imagination and continually reached for a cup of tea that was no longer waiting for him. But he was OK, he would have noticed these things if his attention had not been fully occupied by tomes that his eyes scanned without ever wavering. For nine years he had been searching for some cure to a recurrent case of pneumonia. He no longer knew anyone with pneumonia, but he mumbled his wife’s name and chose not to notice.
A List Of Creatures I Saw While Walking Today
Bullheads that lay on the rocks in the shallowest water.
A dead bird with a long, seaweed-encrusted beak.
A salamander that floated like it was dead.
Many baby barn swallows, three or four to a nest, whose beaks were larger than their heads.
Ducks paddling on a lake.
Dragonflies mating.
Several rats running across the barn floor.
Horses, pigs, chickens, and turkeys, each in its own cage.
Cows that stood up to look at me when I approached.
Two crows sitting in the top of a tree.
Striped fish swimming in slow, loose schools.
Long-legged birds hopping across the beach.
Just a couple strands of hair
It’s like a couple strands of hair are plucked from your head. The anticipation of an unpleasant event is nerve wracking. At the actual moment of detachment, it is the most tender, and for a while you are left with a throbbing feeling of loss and pain. But then inevitably you will forget about it--perhaps unless you feel the urge to twirl that one piece in your fingers, but it’s no longer there. Or if the breeze blows a certain way and they don’t whisp past your face as they once did. But for the most part it’s unnoticeable.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Guest Author: Liz Parissenti
"Sunsets In Hawaii"
Froth skirts along the edges of the deepening sky,
stirring magenta wisps that stretch, longing,
toward the rich blue abyss,
shirking the sun’s waning rays.
Droplets leap from the cascading clouds,
flecked with sparks of sunlight that tear through the seething storm,
easing as they near the patient grasses
and gently penetrating the soft earth.
Waves mingle with the rocky shore,
surges of salt and brine that sweetly caress glowing shells,
drifting into eager crevices,
slipping between sleepy sands.
Sunset gloriously envelops the sighing horizon,
searing it deep fuchsia for an indescribable instant
and the sun sinks to contented sleep.
Portrait
The doctor held the litmus strip up as if it were the daintiest teacup in England. His hair was swept to the sides in wings and his spectacles rested in a well-worn crease in the middle of his nose. His vest was stretched up over his pleated pants and his feet were the only part of him still slender and youthly. His other hand was now in his pocket, pushing his white lab jacket around to his posterior. That’s all, there was no bustling doctor’s office around him, no harried nurses or pale patients. Just he and the grey backdrop.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Author
The author stood fearlessly on the mountaintop, and even the wind and snow sticking in his beard could not deter his steely gaze. In the rest of the story leading up to this climax, he had been trapped in every imaginable trap and hindered by every imaginable hindrance. But in his eyes, on that lonely mountaintop, you could read the determination that got him there.
Yes, of course I am the author to which I refer. But is that scene real? The reader cannot know for certain. Wait though, neither can the author.
Because most times, the author is afraid.
Eyes Of Deer
The eyes of deer are so wide and cloudless that even the starlight on a new moon night makes them shine like beacons. I crawled on my hands and knees across a patch of forest for nine straight nights searching for a buck. By the ninth night I knew the pathways molded through the underbrush and could hear, far out where homes and suburbs spread, the deep moaning cries of abandoned and rusting automobiles. The buck never appeared, but once, just once, I heard an owl high in a tree above me answer those automobiles with its starlit, resonating call.
Just one of those mornings
She stood at the counter, arranging a bundle of green grapes. They looked juicy and fresh, water beading on their smooth skin. Are you going to the store today, she asked in a voice that could have been used to plot murder. Perhaps, I replied, nonchalant with the newspaper in front of me. The plastic wrap stuck with a satisfying zzzztch and as if to punctuate it’s silence, she flicked her eyes up in one crisp movement. Will you get some fresh strawberries, please? She added. Only if you promise to cut them slowly. She smiled a horrible placid smile.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Cloud pet
If I had a cloud pet, I would name it Petra. She would float by my side, sleep in the fridge, and tumble around in the blue day sky. I might take her on walks, but if she encountered a big dog she might get scared and sprinkle a little bit of rain. I’ll calm her down with a little toy airplane treat. She will gobble it up and feel satisfied. Sometimes she’ll get angry, and perhaps she’ll rumble with thunder and strike the the closest thing with lightning. But it won’t hurt. She’s just a baby cloud after all.
Rocks?
Years from now, I think to myself, what new discoveries shall there be? What new-fangled phenomenon will youngsters be quoting out of soda pop caps without question? Well, I believe that they will discover that rocks—those giant immovable things that seem to just be, are alive. The only reason why we won’t have discovered it earlier was because rocks breathe once every century, and move a meter every 2-3 centuries. They will discover that rocks can laugh, often when tickled by hikers’ feet. They will find that rocks are just another species of living organism like quails or people.
I will drift
I will drift.
For who can say when the eyes in the sky will twinkle my way,
Sprinkle themselves upon the very ground I walk upon
To bring some sort of grain in the wrinkles of my time.
It shall be swift.
If only the warm breeze graces us with her presence
And consents to lift us into the night sky.
But she will not come no matter how many cries I call.
I would like to think, perhaps, that if she’d feel my fall,
She might bend back, and sweep me in her shawl
So for now I’ll drift.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
War Parade
We marched up and down the streets of Kiev, muskets rested on our shoulders and conjuring doves out of the windows of Soviet-era apartment complexes. The people in the street were too timid to look up at us as we passed, heads held high and jubilant smiles etched on our faces. We marched clear to the square of government buildings, where real soldiers smoked at the entranceways, AK-47s resting on their knees. They hated us. Doves fluttered all around us, and when we came to the shabby outskirts of that city, we cried anew, “To Warsaw!” “To Prague!” “To Washington!”
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Thoughts Before Sleep
It’s strange to try to forget someone that you want to remember. My palms turn inwards and outwards in memory and anticipation. It’s one way and then the other, my mind and then my heart, until they get mixed into a snarl that can’t be untangled. The acts of forgetting and remembering are concerts inside of me, clashing their melodies into vortexes that I’m scared to stick my toes into. What will happen? I lay on a perfectly made hotel bed, quite a simple body. Tomorrow is confusion, and I wonder why I wonder about it so. Time to sleep.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Heritage
Great grandfather: I was born in a wheat field and as soon as I could, I flew across the country with everyone else. The Western sunset was majestic.
Grandfather: Strange creatures are crossing the land, and everywhere they drop treats behind them.
Father: I burst out of my shell when the report of a rifle cracked nearby. Barely learned how to fly before I was adopted by my aunt in the city.
Pigeon: Today I found half a thing of French fries under a bench. Holy damn, I could barely get out of the way of the pedestrians after that!
Desert Time
A dollar may be used for research, for resource, for recourse. All disagree on potential uses being unethical/ unimportant/ wrong. But it is impossible to argue either case to a jury of Joshua trees. When the dollar is spent, when its effects are forgotten, when we are gone, they will still stand. In silence.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Reasons
Shells find reasons to twist.
The horns on bighorn sheep find reasons to curl.
Why then can’t I have a reason?
I twist too, I curl until the top of my head scrapes the ground.
I’m an upside-down U, a rainbow, a pouty mouth.
But every moment since my youth, I stretched my vertebrae straight for the stars.
Where is my reason?
My head is not brushed by supernovae, it is dragging where worms can wriggle into my nostrils.
Dirt smells like dirt.
Does space have a smell?
My reason wants to know, but for some reason I twist, instead.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Stranded In The Desert
Once I got stranded in the desert. It was unbelievably hot and sand kept getting under my toenails, so I went to the Information Center.
- Hello.
- How may I help you today?
- Can you tell me where the nearest oasis is?
- No, sorry.
- What?
- I’m sorry, I can no longer tell you how to get to the oases.
- Why not? Isn’t that your job?
- Too many strandees were abusing the services offered, so the management of the oases has requested we stop referring strandees there until...
That’s when I fainted from dehydration.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
This Room
This is the last 100 words I will write in this room. Now the walls are bare, the furniture austere and strangely wooden. How did so many stories and poems emerge in this space? Where, in the straight white and beige lines between floor and ceiling, were jellyfish and copy machines waiting to poke their heads out and invite me over to watch their story unfold? I am leaving this room and will probably never return. The air seems flat now; could it be that all those things came from my head? My imagination waves goodbye and leaves for Washington.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Ode To My Bare Feet
The ground has textures that my feet excitedly recall
Free from the constrains of socks and shoes
And the contours of bones realign over grass and pavement
Just to walk is a joyful movement
Who would have thought?
The sandstone and trees nod in agreement
Because they feel the wind sweeping back and forth
Tiny pebbles make an imprint into my skin
An impression that reverberates through my tissues
It rings like a prehistoric bell
Until the next step brings a different shape
Now even my head is connected to the earth I walk across
My sole is at peace
Signs I Wish I Would See While Driving
“Pilgrim Crossing”
“Garage Sale! Two-car garage with remote control door, $1200 o.b.o.”
“LOOK”
“Watch out for huge boulders that may fall on the road at any moment. Hopefully you are lucky”
“Free firewood. U-Kut, U do all the work. Conveniently located in the virgin forests of Siberia.”
“River crossing ahead. Prepare vehicle for fording or caulking.”
“Disco zone ahead”
“Free car wash! Every time it rains”
“Beware of evil chortler”
“Traffic advisory: animal crossing from 7 am to 4 pm 5/15/09 as Noah’s Ark unloads”
“Heavy snowfall. Convertibles only beyond this point”
“Prepare for battle”
“Enlightenment. Next 4 miles”
I Will Write Tomorrow Night
Tonight I tried to write something, but I couldn’t. It was a poem or a story, a longing piece of my heart that cried out for words that rang true. It sounds trivial to me too; my girl has left and I will not see her again for a long time. What I tried to write was a piece of the revolving moon and the setting sun, time’s turning that set us walking in opposite directions. I did not expect the need to write about this, and I will write tomorrow night when my thoughts have come back to me.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Natural Selection
Fellow countrymen and women, I stand before you today a proud American. As your president, it is my honor to announce the defeat of one of humankind’s oldest enemies. Yesterday it was ascertained that the scourge of natural selection has been wiped from the face of our glorious nation. That’s right, natural selection is a thing of the past. The weak will survive with the strong. The blind and the infirmed are safe. Natural order is overcome through legions of hospitals and mental clinics and through our complete mastery over nature. For in this country, hope springs eternal. Live, citizens!
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Sometimes I don’t understand you, but I need you (For Liz)
You’re so convoluted sometimes and I just can’t figure you out. You twist and turn and then all of a sudden you descend back into simplicity. But then there’s the silent treatment. I can no longer rejoice in the richness that used to course through you. Instead, dessication. More and more so until around the bend, you seem to snap out of it. Grow! Ascend! And expel the stuff of tears out of you with force. But, you are now deserting me once again. Into another convolution of mazes and densities. But, I must admit, you are necessary and sufficient.
Princess and the Pauper
The sonorous note floats a côte to what he wrote but who can say anyway what it might have been today. She sees the words but all is blurred, so torn in thirds and tossed to th’birds. Surely, it was purely written poorly. But the goal of his soul was to avoid the whole and take the rolling toll to create control. And create he must, as he had previously discussed, that the implied trust of the rotten crust is indeed mistrust. And so unjust, she thought with disgust, away with the base, ‘twas never her taste.
What a waste.
Children's Story, and Planet Earth, and Indictment On Human Greed (Illustrations Forthcoming)
Otis the otter swam the seas. He found many things to please.
One day he came upon a gull. Being one to see the glass half full,
He said, “How are you today? Come, want to play?” “Okay.
But only if we play my game.” The gull swam, Otis did the same.
‘Follow the leader,’ Otis thought. ‘I like this game a whole lot.’
He was led into a narrow fjord, where high above an eagle soared.
Talons sharp when it swooped down and snatched Otis without a sound.
The eagle then paid the gull in oysters for his role.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Circle Of Stones
On the mountain, high above the rooftops of the trees and beyond even the Buddhas meditating, lies a circle of stones. They are the size of cantaloupes and weathered by the rain and growth of lichens. It is hidden in the open, a small grassed area on the spine of a ridge where condors nest. Below are trails, crisscrossing the terrain with wondering travelers on their backs. The mountain’s roots extend from the circle of stones down past the crust of the lowlands and into the hot belly of the earth. Sun, rain, wind, lightning revolve in the atmosphere above.
Postcards
I found her sitting in a straight wooden chair, her wispy gray hair illuminated by sunlight from a grimy window. She was an unknown recluse in her third-floor apartment.
“Come in,” she said with a worn voice, still gazing within her eyes at the wall behind me.
The linoleum floor was covered with old postcards, each with the same scratchy writing but from all over the world.
“He wrote again today,” she said. “From Paris. Isn’t it a beautiful picture? He’s coming home soon, I think he’s almost ready.”
There must have been a thousand yellowing postcards in her apartment.
In My Mind
I will hijack your imagination! Ha ha ha it is mine now and it will do my bidding. Your imagination is mine and whatever I say goes, the sailboats popping up in your mind were birthed in my loins and any thought you have was mine first. Ah ha ha! You cannot escape my clutches! When I think, planets jump into their orbits and wandering ants suddenly have purpose. You have purpose, my dear reader. Stop wandering in the desert with your oasis delusions, my thoughts will be yours and anywhere you find yourself it will be in my mind.
Pity
Oh, desk.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Song for a broken wife
She doesn’t whistle
because she loves me
so.
But
perhaps the desire is clear,
yet she cannot bear to see me leave.
I put it out of my mind,
mostly
because I can’t stand to think of it.
What about the establishment.
Does it mean nothing? It means nothing.
Na na na na na
And yet,
we push and pull and even though
two is better than one,
we stay.
She stays.
Despite the purple days.
And nights.
I can’t breathe
sometimes.
And I am what I am
I can’t hide, can she?
I’m sorry.
Na na na na na
Inevitable
There are things that will never have any bearing on anything remotely significant, but seem to contain their own movement. Like a single chip of ice, melting slowly but surely on a metal counter top, inching closer and closer to the edge. Reflecting the metal, the white room, the yellow light, it contains a world in itself. Inevitably it will melt before it can accomplish its lofty goal. And like the progression of things like this on earth, the water will pool, resolving in a quiet drip drop onto the floor, where the process can start again—this time in fluidity.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Perhaps.
How I wish these pixels would twinkle.
Europe, Your Sonorous Whistle
Europe, your sonorous whistle
Winds across the Atlantic to entice
The twigs and millipedes trundling around me.
Your twinkling mind
Exists in mine.
What dusty volumes have birthed your trench eyes?
And what slivered tongues adorn your coat
With whale’s teeth and comfortable tradition?
I have notions in between my mind
As if a journey to your hidden oracles
Would be a rain on my neck.
They must exist
Somewhere.
Soon, with trepid heart and falcon curiosity,
My ponderous footsteps will embrace your lines,
Searching for the weathered corners
Where knowledge unwinds.
I feel your existence, and your undying reverberations.
Mouths
But they’re really badass cute. Nothing can smile like a mouth. Nothing can act coy like a mouth. Nothing can bite its lip seductively quite like a mouth can.
Only mouths have lips.
And only lips use lip balm.
And lip balm is really cool. Lip balm makes lips soft and bouncy enough that tiny pixies could play and jiggle on them, skipping like pebbles across a slippery pond.
Zen mouths eat pebbles
But the pebbles are droplets
Of creatures that play
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Cougar, Washington
Throw the peanut shells on the floor
They will be swept away someday
The salt stinging the roof of your mouth
Like the ashy gravel on the sides of the road
Where are the homes?
Who stumbles drunkenly into the convenience store
At seven o’clock to call the cashier a babe?
Cars with trailers blink past on the ever-present road
Cougar is an uncomfortable postcard to them
Blowing by on the volcanic winds of memory
The waitress comes by normal
In a little while brings you a bacon burger
The tables fill but you do not see the evergreen people
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Outside
Plipple plopple.
Far from torrential, they hang in the air waiting for their turn to descend and dripple dropple. How supple a raindrop must feel as it glides through the wind with gelatinous skin, flying fast towards the ground and rippling with calm assertion.
Rain is softer than tears.
Chris and Liz Play Convergence
Confucius toothbrush
toothpick mint
breath hors d’oeuvres
escargot crab cakes
shell crustacean
exoskeleton shrimp
crack crunch
cereal squish
soggy soggy
neon spots
disco twister
break dancing touching
crew dance
Jabberwockies Love Boat
quest fantastic
holy grail Lord of the Rings
knight epic
Camelot King Arthur
Round Table Lancelot
Guinevere jousting
renaissance fair A Knight’s Tale
horse Heath Ledger
superhero Brokeback Mountain
Harvey Milk Dark Knight
Harvey Dent Harvey Dent
Nepal flower
meadow Dalai Lama
enlightenment Tibet
Buddhism Buddhism
pitcher pea pod
dew lunch
picnic sunshine
ants love
queen Pixar
animation incredible
superhero Hayao Miyazake
alias Disney
Walt TV
movie channel
Condiments
What did the baby tomato say to the daddy tomato when they crossed the road? Catch up! Get it? Like ketchup. I’m going to tell you right now that I only like tomatoes in the form of ketchup. You know how some burger joints have “special sauce I don’t think it’s a real condiment. What is a real condiment, though? Does it have to be liquidey? Dippable? Renowned? What about salt and pepper? Parmesan, or a crunchy pickle? I believe strongly that condiments are anything that adds a twist, another dimension to it. Ketchup is the mother of all condiments.
A Home for Mould
I found some black mould growing on the cap of my water bottle. I was about to be thoroughly disgusted when the little black dots began to move. I dropped the cap on the table, freaking out. They proceeded off the the cap onto the white tablecloth. And there they started to dance. They moved in circles, zig-zags, and jumped up and down. I grabbed the cap from the desk and clamped it on my bottle. All of a sudden, the molds scattered frantically. I let them back in, and this is how I ended up buying a second bottle.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Interweb
Adverstise Here! Click Here! See hear! Think fear!
Frederick
The loss of personal possessions can be worse than death. Frederick was a writer. He migrated from coffee shop to coffee shop, and his laptop bore scars and stains on all faces. Finally one day, he dropped it on a table and it quit, destroying all of his poetry and stories. If he was a character in one of his stories, he would have done something drastic. Instead he tearfully ordered a black coffee and when he tried to grab it, his hand passed right through the cup. For personal possessions, on occasion, are more substantial than the person himself.
Cooties
Four boys play in a tree in a park. A pathway splits around the tree; from their perch they see every cyclist and stroller-pusher who passes.
They call “Yoohoo!” whenever girls their age go by since they have not yet learned catcalls. They don’t expect a response, really.
“Yoohoo!”
Again, “YOOHOO!”
Three girls turn and giggle. “Hello!” they call. “Come down!”
The boys are confused. Then they laugh and make the youngest of their group climb down. The three left think they have played a trick and come out on top.
The girls giggle and walk off with the youngest.