spit a petunia

fingerous winter ached me lust y
incubate your dress es like a red peach summer storm symphony y
raw elaborate and bare
not some sordid spring shadow manipulate ing a mad scream

some rose breast white pound of hot sweet urge is trip ing behind
like a pink middle purple worship mother of play
& I watch lazy wax wind languid & live

may forest juice cool blood with rain
or wet music swim above true r sweat of chocolate moon mist

after those on TV (whisper) about you
I shake
fiddle
moan
shot through with sleep

gardening for show
he would lick drool to be smooth

my tongue is there and want s for beauty
and like most enormous repulsive delirious puppy dream s
it never read the sing less void in the light
& s y s y stare who see s by love
lie s to death if need ful
& we think it like ly is

although the night was as dark as every night before or since (as dark as every day, for that matter, or any day), i could smell her, and the smell was enough. she sat across my desk from me, smoking a cigarette that smelled like a cigar, and wearing perfume that smelled like cologne. the blinds were closed. the blinds are always closed, because i'm blind, and i hate to be at a disadvantage. i stabbed a knife into the desk, for emphasis. "where has he gone?!" i demanded, and i sensed that she sensed the sensuality in my voice. i knew where he had gone. i had sent him for coffee. she had no idea what i was talking about. i like to keep them on their toes. i'm a private eye.
after a brief exchange in which it became clear to her that i had the high ground, she was ready to get down to brass tacks. "in my work as a waitress, i've seen a lot of things," she began. sensing her mockery of my disability, i tuned out for a little while. i have a drawer full of wind-up toys; extracting a classic (the flamingo with the black sunglasses), i took to winding, which she may have found distracting, or perhaps she was about to finish talking anyway. one can never tell. my increasingly fervent winding filled the gradual hush of her trailing off, or maybe finishing talking. "i'll take the case!" i demanded. reaching across the table to shake her hand, i cut myself badly on the knife.
at the bottom of a whiskey tumbler, i found my first clue. she was still there, for some reason, or else somebody in the bar smelled like her, or she was still on my mind. it was after hours. the bartender came for the tab, and i winked at her. she told me that i still had my glasses on. i demanded to know how she knew that the presence of my glasses was relevant, if they were, in fact, still on, which, upon investigation, i learned that they were. she said that she, too, was blind, and had long ago learned the crisp pop of a flirtatious wink. i believed her, at the time, and we immediately fell in love. the clue was that the last of the whiskey was not whiskey at all, but vermouth.
back at the office, they all waited, guns drawn. armed with a photograph of a gun, because i cannot draw, because i am blind, i advanced upon them. my secretary compared their drawings to my photograph, and finding them lacking, sent them packing. i sat down for a cool think. "none of them will dare show their faces around here again," i mused aloud, amused, and loud. the sultry whisper of my words across her curvy cadaver caught me off-guard, i must (and do) admit. trying on her dress, i noticed that bullet-holes had rendered it unfashionable.

CASE CLOSED.

Thanks, guys. I'm glad to know that you care. I'm feeling much better today, which doesn't make any sense, because i have so much more to worry about. Shakespeare, Postmodernism, plus I have a five page draft of my comics paper due ALREADY, which is awful, because it's happy bunny fertility day!

And speaking of happy bunny fertility day:
I was at home with my extended family this morning, which was awkward, as always, and to break the tension, i asked, "Where does the Easter Bunny, as a male mammal, get his eggs, anyway?" to which my Aunt Debbie responded, "Would you ask the Virgin Mary where she got the baby Jesus?!"

I almost said "well the Bunny's a liar too, i guess." But my mother was already looking pretty pissed.

i feel like one of the flowers fooled by fake spring now limp with frosted buds. i went to a counselor, but it really didn't help at all... but what're they gonna do in an hour, anyway? plus i was ten minutes late for my appointment. they play smooth jazz in the waiting room of that place... it worries me for anyone suicidal who is made to wait.

i haven't posted here in a while, but who am i talking to, anyway? who(if any)ever you are, thanks for your readership, and if you see me, please smile at me or something. here's one of my favorite albums for you, kind cyber-ear: Oar, by Skip Spence. One of the great acid casualties of the sixties, he recorded this beautiful, tender psych-folk album . he recorded it days after being released from a mental hospital, and weeks before going to another one.

why do i love acid casualties, and self-destructive people? why do i rend and tear at so many of my most valuable relationships (and they tear at me)? why am i moping to open, perhaps-unlistening cyberspace?

i'm gonna go read some damn comic books.

Another song done. Good thing this isn't my winter term project! This one is much more... song-y than my previous ventures. I suppose i have finally been seduced by those twin succubi, consonance and rhythm. Oh, well. There goes the neighborhood.

Dynamite Limbo

howdy everybody. I'm back in oberlin for winter term, and about to get to work on Underpowered, the superhero improv i'm making with amanda caggiano. tryouts are saturday, 5-7, at warner. tell all your friends: action! adventure! absurdity! (i think that might be our motto). and no need to prepare at all!

Two new pieces of music by me! I think that they are very pretty. They might be two halves of the same piece; i'm not sure. They're definitely better on headphones.

Chocolate Robot Doze
Swallowed Up By...

the end of another all-nighter... this one successful! amazing how much easier it is to work on a paper when your primary excuse for not doing schoolwork up and evaporates, dissipates to nothingness, leaves a pile of costumes. wrote on frost's "directive", tied it to everything important in the world (plato, aristotle, whitman, zen). have yet to wrap it all up in a neat little ball, but hey, it's long overdue anyway. what's a few hours?

trina wakes, and i consider sleep. class at 3... going home to parents at 6... should sleep. should should should. we should see. shall see.

Kerry Kallberg and I collaborated on a Sonata of sorts! It was composed entirely on a keyboard with which i have been... toying. To put it very gently. It is called "Sonata in Q# (gameboy dream)". You can download it by clicking on it!

NOTE: This music is very freaking weird. Not for the faint of heart!

NOTE II: The host website is very annoying. You must type the letters in the middle of the page into the text box in order to prove that you are not a download bot. Then you have to wait 15 seconds. Grumble grumble grumble.

"Friend" got verbed, but it hardly survived the transfer. I fantasized, as i facebook-friended a would-be acquaintance, what a wonder it would be if that "add ____________ as your friend" button worked as well as unfriending sometimes can, in the most unfortunately dramatic situations. A delightful hypothetical!... except that i have no idea how i could sustain that many friendships. But if the rules changed, maybe friendships wouldn't require any maintenance. Popularity could be maintained by periodically photographing obscure objects and naming the pictures after your friends. Networks would grow exponentially...

fuck your 15 minutes, andy. In the future, everyone will be famous forever.
(hey guys let's all team up and make sure facebook never takes over)

i don't know why i took this class
i never even read.
i only work enough to pass
and even that is ted-
ious as any other task
for any other course.
"and longer still?!" i always ask,
as if by mental force
i could provoke the clock to tick
the time of going home...
it doesn't work. to make it quick,
i think i'll write a poem.

- -

"to any number of beautiful girls
with whom i have never had a conversation"

i know you have a fatal flaw;
please wear it on your sleeve.
i'm sick of paying you my awe
and pining when you leave.
i know that hiding underneath
your so-alluring locks
(a dagger in a jeweled sheath)
are all your dirty socks.
i'm not accusing you of lies
or saying you are bad,
but i have fallen for your eyes
and it has made me sad.

I’ve learned that reality’s awkwardly bent,
and though it’s absurd, I know (now that I’ve spent
the requisite forehead-knit time in my doubt)
the way all the bending can straighten it out!

Philosophy

Philosophy courses (I’ve taken a few)
have touted perspective as central before,
so calling it “relative” seemed nothing new;
I easily see that my motion and your
immovable lethargy could be reversed,
and suddenly you’d be the one to be cursed
with slow-ticking clocks (but you’d nothing to fear,
in your eyes the clocks would be nothing the worse).
That nothing would change but perspective is queer;
the fact that reality seems to distort
is only a seeming, I’m glad to report –
But everything’s seeming, which hardly consoles.
(This all makes more sense if you smoke a few bowls).

Why?

The inquiry “Why” is a natural one
when ponderous pondering lapses the mind,
but science is wonderful skeptical fun,
because with regard to this, science is blind!
The natural questioning tactic to take
(the quest for causality) still has its use;
we merely concede that finality’s fake,
and given the evidence, try to deduce.
The “how” and the “where” and the “what” and the “when”
are valuable. “Simple,” “definitive,” “true,”
they are not; but observable! Each is a clue
to puzzle your way to an “if” and a “then,”
that others can pick at long after you’re dead.
There isn’t a “why,” so don’t trouble your head.

Slow Clocks

My moving clock’s slower. Believe me, it’s true,
but only is slower according to you.
According to me (when I’m holding the clock),
its tick is as regular now as its tock
ever was when it still was adorning my wall;
the slower chronometer’s really your face
(your face is a clock if it ages at all;
and punny resultantly – face for a face!).
If rocketry’s aid brought us closer to c,
we’d certainly suffer some wear from the trip,
but come for the journey! I promise you’ll be
a younger man riding than watching the ship.
Thankfully, personal time is a lock:
to you, nothing alters your personal clock.

Short Rods

The power of plentiful speed to distort
(distorting with reference crossing the frames)
will render discreetly a moving rod short.
I’ve always suspected Divinity games
with us as we puzzle at riddles like these.
(How fortunate that we’ve the clues and the tools!
And what an odd game, that the simplest rules
remain as evasive a quarry as light).
A powerful man who is wide as an ox
(by running or sledding or rocketry) might
contract his dimensions to fit in a box
(sufficiently wide: horizontally he’s
still easy the equal of two men abreast;
it’s only the motion-dimension compressed.)

And Other Weird Stuff
(and back to philosophy)

The stunning display that allows this to be
Is synchronization contorting to fit –
Or is it contorting? No one of the three
Could be without others conforming to it.
Of moving timekeepers, if sharing a pace,
(or moving events – the effect is the same!)
the last shall be first. What an orderly race:
the rear, now the hindermost only in name,
embarking ahead, set ahead, or in sync,
depending exclusively on point of view.
It posits a powerful message, I think,
and renders philosophy potently true:
The deviant world in every eye
is truth in profusion, and never a lie.

The Spirit, by Will Eisner, is the best comic ever written. In the fourties, when mainstream comics were written by hacks who had no desire to make art of their creations, Eisner was writing, drawing, inking, lettering, and publishing a years-long line of 7-page opuses, which were, at the height of their popularity, circulated nationally as a newspaper supplement, reaching 5 million readers per issue. The Eisner Award is the most prestigious award in comics & sequential art (a term eisner invented, along with "graphic novel"). I say all this to explain my immense joy at discovering a website where, for free, you can read several spirit stories in original hand-drawn scans (which are incedentally for sale, for more than i could possibly afford, provoking me to dream of that wonderland of late adulthood when, i like to imagine, i will have money for this sort of thing).

The Fallen Sparrow (1948)
Junior Presidential Election (1948)

"One of the chief causes that can be assigned for the curiously commonplace character of most of the literature of our age is undoubtedly the decay of Lying as an ort, a science, and a social pleasure. The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction."
-Oscar Wilde

I've had this swing in both directions now, but inspired by my idol, Wilde: Out with life as the basis for art! Up with baseless artifice!! VIVA LIES!

And i'm sorry for being emo. I promise, soon you won't even know that you're reading my diary. ;)

bitterness; commented back to itself so i (and you) don't have to look at it.

bitterness; commented back to itself so i (and you) don't have to look at it.

guys, awesomeness alert: jimmy illustrated (link) that poem. So spiffy. also, the rest of his blog is amazing and delightful, and i reccomend that you check out his amazing creatures.

Conundrum & Suggestion

you have my heart (i think you know)
and i don't want it back.
i've run into a problem, though:
i'm left somewhat alack.

i tried to find a backup heart;
i looked in all the stores.
there weren't any anywhere!
may i please borrow yours?

I am so terribly afraid of the new stalkerbook. Sooooo afraid. At least i still have LJ. LJ, stay emo, not creepy! And now, a poem:

Upon a dandelion day,
Divide the drying summer out:
It flakes away in pocket size
If you know how to make the cuts.

With luck, it leaves something to say;
At best, something to think about.
The effort not to eulogize
Is noble, and avoids the ruts.

"I hope they never make pot legal. I'd be out so much business!"
-J., a drug dealer

Earlier, J. and his partner professed to me the harmless nature of cocaine, which they claimed is perfectly safe and "not really addictive if you only use it once or twice a week." The reason that pot is a gateway drug is that children are lied to about it, and people like J. score a strong victory in a kid's trust when they're right; pot is as much fun and as harmless as promised.

His pitch fell on deaf ears, as I long ago made up my mind about coke, but I shudder to think how many people they've sold with that same speech. It was certainly well-rehearsed. If pot was legalized, people looking for a harmless high would never come in contact with people like J., and the palpable harm of harder drugs like cocaine would require no falsehood to speak against it. Pot is a gateway drug because it is a gateway to drug dealers, and a gateway for dealers into people's trust.

Originally, i was treating this blog as a way to put my silly poems on the internet. I didn't want to post anything that i didn't think of as "writing." That went out the window almost immediately, in substantial part because i don't take my "writing" very "seriously." Increasingly, recently, other people read the nonsense i post (or at least, i increasingly know about it; i think it's a relatively recent occurrance). I, increasingly, recently, read other people's journals, due to that dad-blasted friends page, and the fact that i miss you (you personally). Due to these two dovetailing causes, i have at this point ceded entirely to writing a "journal," which i initially wanted very much not to do, because it makes overwhelming sense to do so, communicatively speaking. It has also been vividly illustrated to me what a delightful piece of art a journal can be, whether entirely prose or otherwise (i'm looking at you, heathen-girl and exploded-boy), so i don't feel that my original ambition (essentially, to create something moderately artful and reasonably pretty) is countered by this shift of perspective.

So, what did i do today?? I made this momentous, life-changing decision of course!! And then i slaved for 194 hours on this tiresome declaration of it!!!! god my life is amazing

The kindly feinberg allowed me to use his auto to drive back to the old hudsonstead, and from there to the hospice, but i was an hour late; my grandmother had already died. My father, her son, was there when she turned from his mother into a body; we are all glad that she was not alone. She had been non-communicative for a long period, but whether it was a week or more i could not tell you; i was in no respect intimately involved. The last time i saw her, she was capable of conversation, which to anyone who had been at her bedside lately would indicate how long it has been.

I have never seen a dead body before. On friday, i gave one a hug, and kissed her on her cold, hollowed temple. I do not know if i kissed my grandmother goodbye, but i deeply wanted to, so i tried.

She was a kind and loving woman, but i never knew her well. Until my grandfather died, not long ago, he did most of the talking for both of them, and most of the living. It's no wonder to me that she had a few years' more energy stored up than he did... i hope that she enjoyed them, though i know that "she missed him" does not in any respect hold a candle to covering it.

When i arrived at the hospice room, several of her children and several of their children were gathered already, but curiously, there were no tears... and a lot of silence. Things had been difficult, of late, for her whole family, taking care of her, but we all knew that they were much worse for her, because we understood what was happening, and she was appealing to dead brothers, and worrying about invading armies that died long ago, or never were...

i could feel the collective relief at her final achievement of peace...
we all loved her. Love her.

So, here i am: oberlin. How nifty. I feel as though i know the town better, being here and feeling like i belong in the place, beyond going to the school. I really adore this town.
They put out tremendous bins of chalk one day, and invited the entire community to decorate downtown sidewalks... wandering between the artists, i wondered at how "artist" each thought him(her)self (and laughed at "god bless the USA" next to another's gargantuan anthropomorphic fish, and other equally absurd juxtapositions). Every age and level of chalk-ambition was well-represented, and a delightful collective-community-consciousness object emerged: oberlin's bright smeary self portrait on its own face! I chronicle it today because this afternoon it rained, and now it is gone (or at least has lost its lustre, and probably its discernability).
I started my tutoring job this afternoon. There are enough tutors that we work one-on-one with the students, which is groovy. The subject: MATH (bum-bum-bummmmmmm!!). The students need to pass various proficiency tests (only one per, varying by grade). My student is a really nice fellow named Gio. He and i really hit it off; he likes manga, draws his own comics, quotes adult swim, the whole nine yards. He doesn't like numbers. Neither do i. Lots in common! Based on our work today (basic rules of angles + triangles), he seems to be a quick learner, and he seemed very motivated by the fact that i promised him pirated cartoons if he rocks the exam at the end of the course :).
Other than that, i've been hanging out with the headless bodies (there are cool t-shirts now!!), getting jami in trouble for smoking pot at work (but it's ok now; her boss didn't care), watching classic movies (damn chinatown and the sting are STILL GOOD NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I SEE THEM), and reading Will Eisner, the most amazing cartoonist who ever lived including stan lee or jack kirby (and if you know me well you know that this is a revelation of astounding import).
This is weird; this entry is like i'm writing in a... *brrrrrr*... journal. I think it's that i'm getting a little bit community-starved. Not that the people here aren't great -- it's just that there are like 20 of them. To anybody reading this but not currently in oberlin, there are two reasons you should be here: I'm missing you, and you're missing out ^_^. So come visit, bitches.

Now i'm gonna go watch the maltese falcon!

I've finally decided what i'm going to do this summer. I'm going to stay in Oberlin! Jami told me about a tutoring position, for which i'm going to apply, and i'm also going to try to get a job at the alumni mag.

Then, in late summer, i will drive. Far. First, to Annapolis, to see all my much-missed Johnnies. Then, probably to NYC, to see Gordon, Mike McGee, Dan Valdespino, and Matt Megyes! Oh this is all so exciting. I need to figure out more places to go, i think... make like a week or two of it.

I've started my summer project (one of many). This is scene 1 of a post-super-heroic narrative poem that I'm writing. It does not have a title, as yet, and there are a few lines that i would rather have be picture-words than words... i think you'll know which when you come to them. Your feedback is, as always, appreciated.


A disregarded bar beneath a bridge
(o muse i ask a dozen heros' strength)
begins our tale, though it had neither length
nor breadth beyond the absolute of need.

Upon a stool, within a wretched cape
emblazoned with golden symbol spent
of all its meaning, sat a humble man
who once was proud. He never would repent

the days when once he took the eyes upon
himself of those who never stare or gaze
but at the ground, where they once more had gone
upon the passing of a couple days.

His cape! It once had corners true and square;
No longer. It was tattered everywhere.

Though certainly he paid no mind
to any guests, they minded him,
and whispering among themselves,
they dared each other, "You would win!

He never got his powers back!
Why else would he be sitting there?
I never saw him fly again,
or save a woman, child, or

do anything but sit and drink!"
Though none believed it, all agreed,
and dwindled deeper in their cups
and dared themselves to try their luck.

When he was blurry and
drunkenly belching he
staggered among them mis-
took them for fiends or for
devils from time when such
things were so neat --

Tidily once did the
villainy fit to the
hero exactly as
hero would have; when a
costume had meant what a
costume should mean

meant nuts to them.
They shot the shit,
and call'd 'im "friend,"
and wouldn't hit,

but would provoke,
as if to prove
to anyone
his cowardice

and he
was weak
and used
his strength

OOH!
OW!
NO!
AAH!

POW!
BAM!
WACK!
CRASH!

The implied "is like" of metaphor amplified to flat roar
floor-shakingly blasted so that you
can't hear a damned thing else over all this noise
was i when once i understood the world.

No longer. Now I'm building boxes, frames;
What little cover i can
Out from which to look
(again).

What seemed so true to me this afternoon,
That everything's so blastedly the same,
Rings true still --
And i hope that if i listen it will never go away.

the word "inadequate" is inadequate to express how inadequate words are to express the experience of the Acid Mothers Temple and Melting Paraiso Underground Freak Out at the grog shop tonight. they delivered unto me things that i did not know that i needed; things that, even if i had known to seek them, i would not have known how to ask for them, or who to ask.

You wanna move into a room above a hardware store, play dirty water from a swordfishtrombone?

The future tenants of apartment 8, above the hardware store, are looking for a fourth. And we have great taste in music.

I am obligated to post: The first 10 people to comment on this post get to request a sketch of a subject/character from the 'fandom' set below. In return, they have to post this same deal in their own journal (with their own fandom set).
[in previous cases, this has been specific characters of whom people are fans. i am not that good at drawing; have substituted things of which i am a fan in some cases]

{A scary dragon, a ninja, sadie the cat (my cat), the pretty flower that is in front of our house, a pixie, toad [from mario], that little fellow on the cloud that throws things [also from mario], electricity, trees with deep roots, crazy creatures from my imagination}

In anonymity, I hid a truth.
"The telling's what's important!" (so I thought)
And now this, my confession: so uncouth,
And so unseemly, but it's what I've got.

I know you know; you know I know you know,
But please, let's dance for just a movement more --
My awkward steps my awkward training show;
At best, my dancing leaves me on the floor.

Anonymous and truthing up the dawn,
I never could resist a public wall.
I splatter heart across it and move on,
And hope that someone reads it there at all.

To you that think I wrote you this, I shrug,
"Think nothing of it!"; offer you a hug.