Friday, July 27, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Toss
Another death, this time someone I can hardly say was my friend. Stanley was the stereotypical boy genius, graduating from high school when he was 15, though he had been eligible to do so a year or two earlier, held back because, well, imagine graduating high school at age 13. He was a mess then, immature for all his moon orbit I.Q., strung to the breaking point every second of the school day: he famously went bald on one side of his head one year from pulling, twisting the hair nervously. People were, of course, cruel to him. They would throw pennies and dimes at him during lunch. He would scurry after the change.
I say I was hardly his friend because he was incapable, then, of having friends, I think. But I spoke to him more than most. My friends and I had put together an academic bowl team, at a teacher's suggestion, that was mostly an opportunity for us to screw around and travel some. Stanley had been given to us, essentially, in the hopes it'd be a good outlet for him. And he was fearsome, no doubt, but stormy, petulant, unpredictable. Once he answered a question incorrectly and hid under the table the rest of the match.
Apparently he died in his sleep and if so I'm glad it was at least peaceful, painless.
I say I was hardly his friend because he was incapable, then, of having friends, I think. But I spoke to him more than most. My friends and I had put together an academic bowl team, at a teacher's suggestion, that was mostly an opportunity for us to screw around and travel some. Stanley had been given to us, essentially, in the hopes it'd be a good outlet for him. And he was fearsome, no doubt, but stormy, petulant, unpredictable. Once he answered a question incorrectly and hid under the table the rest of the match.
Apparently he died in his sleep and if so I'm glad it was at least peaceful, painless.
Monday, July 23, 2007
I didn't mean
Didn't know this issue was up at Poetry Southeast:
"Trivial Pursuit," by me, and "Venus de Milo's Fabricated History," by Melanie Jordan, my new colleague at UWG.
"Trivial Pursuit," by me, and "Venus de Milo's Fabricated History," by Melanie Jordan, my new colleague at UWG.
Numbered
July has been all rain. Rain every day. Very strange.
***
Moving prep has swallowed me up. Switched out apartments, thankfully. Purchased an electric door opener. Beginning to interview personal care attendant people. Which might go smoother this time out. All of it is so random.
***
Throw my ticket out the window.
***
Moving prep has swallowed me up. Switched out apartments, thankfully. Purchased an electric door opener. Beginning to interview personal care attendant people. Which might go smoother this time out. All of it is so random.
***
Throw my ticket out the window.
Friday, July 20, 2007
All is full of love
Crisis averted.
***
Three nights ago the cousin of one of my lifelong best friends died in a car wreck when his car hydroplaned. He was 40 years old, a state patrol officer, with a wife and three young daughters. I knew him only glancingly but he was someone I often saw, spoke to, kidded with. A good guy.
Once, after my friend's college graduation, we were sitting around listening to this television theme shows cd my friend had found somewhere. The CHiPs theme came on and we were cracking up at the disco wafting into the air. The cousin walked into the den right then, befuddled at first by what he was hearing. "Is that CHiPS? Cool!" He shook his head, laughed, and kept going.
***
Three nights ago the cousin of one of my lifelong best friends died in a car wreck when his car hydroplaned. He was 40 years old, a state patrol officer, with a wife and three young daughters. I knew him only glancingly but he was someone I often saw, spoke to, kidded with. A good guy.
Once, after my friend's college graduation, we were sitting around listening to this television theme shows cd my friend had found somewhere. The CHiPs theme came on and we were cracking up at the disco wafting into the air. The cousin walked into the den right then, befuddled at first by what he was hearing. "Is that CHiPS? Cool!" He shook his head, laughed, and kept going.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Come see me
A storm blows out your internet service for a day or so and you miss your appearance on Verse Daily. Crud. But thanks for the notes.
***
Moving is so strange, such a hassle, especially for me. I may be moving from one apartment to another, in the same complex, due to some accessibility issues. It's probably no big deal but the unsettledness leaves me feeling queasy, waiting for some huge disaster.
***
Weirdness.
***
Moving is so strange, such a hassle, especially for me. I may be moving from one apartment to another, in the same complex, due to some accessibility issues. It's probably no big deal but the unsettledness leaves me feeling queasy, waiting for some huge disaster.
***
Weirdness.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Because it's true
Entry #9724 in Paul's Encounters with Oddballs and or the Strange:
I'm in the new dvd's nook of the K-Mart I hate for its weird un-time quality and rubbery, too cold, recycled for 20 years air. My back is to the service counter, to the main throughway. I'm checking out the new restored and remastered extended cut of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. In other words, pretty much the best movie ever.
Someone behind me speaks. He has a severe speech impediment, due to mental disability or brain injury, though I'm sure it was the former. Excuse me, sir, he says.
I assume he's talking to an employee. I keep looking at the dvd.
Excuse me, sir, he says again, more intently, a little annoyed. He can't be talking to me, I think. Why would anyone think I was an employee?
Then he whistles. Loud. Like he's calling a dog. I jerk back, looking at him.
Pardon me, sir, he says. Do you sell harmonicas?
I'm in the new dvd's nook of the K-Mart I hate for its weird un-time quality and rubbery, too cold, recycled for 20 years air. My back is to the service counter, to the main throughway. I'm checking out the new restored and remastered extended cut of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. In other words, pretty much the best movie ever.
Someone behind me speaks. He has a severe speech impediment, due to mental disability or brain injury, though I'm sure it was the former. Excuse me, sir, he says.
I assume he's talking to an employee. I keep looking at the dvd.
Excuse me, sir, he says again, more intently, a little annoyed. He can't be talking to me, I think. Why would anyone think I was an employee?
Then he whistles. Loud. Like he's calling a dog. I jerk back, looking at him.
Pardon me, sir, he says. Do you sell harmonicas?
That's the way my love is
I'm reminded again of just how cool Google Earth is: I'm flying over the path I'll take from home to work and back every day. All at fairly low altitude, high resolution, enough to see the sidewalks, where they begin and end, where crosswalks are, shortcuts I'll take. So wild. And when I say flying, I mean flying: there's an option that tilts the map horizontally, flying you point to point, turn by turn.
I think I'll take a quick trip to Hawaii.
I think I'll take a quick trip to Hawaii.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Trick
Remember when it seemed like I'd live in this matchbox? In the weeks since, nothing had changed much, despite the best efforts of the English department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. It was all dead end and brick wall.
Over the weekend, since last week, really, I had begun to think the only way this could resolve in any way that was livable was to start over, to begin with, but primarily to be willing to pay for self-determination.
Outside of finding a perfectly accessible apartment, I would have to make one as close as I could to ideal and then cope with what I couldn't resolve.
So I'll have to buy my own electric door opener, which will cost something like 1200 hundred dollars, have it installed.
But quality of life is worth something, so after some serious phoning, I'll be living here. It's a neat place, historic and all that.
Until then, I'll be selling my body on the corner. Very reasonable.
Over the weekend, since last week, really, I had begun to think the only way this could resolve in any way that was livable was to start over, to begin with, but primarily to be willing to pay for self-determination.
Outside of finding a perfectly accessible apartment, I would have to make one as close as I could to ideal and then cope with what I couldn't resolve.
So I'll have to buy my own electric door opener, which will cost something like 1200 hundred dollars, have it installed.
But quality of life is worth something, so after some serious phoning, I'll be living here. It's a neat place, historic and all that.
Until then, I'll be selling my body on the corner. Very reasonable.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
41
WAITING FOR THE MAIL
I say my name to the mailbox. Then yours. Hers.
Even her name and still nothing is there,
no stern accounting of debts, no date when
the penalties will come again, no credit
offered in seriousness understood by machines.
Mouth of air. Mine and the box,
strung with vines, a hidden thing, vines
going up from the ground on nothing,
you’d think. Red flag I never raise
when there is something required of me
and the check is scrawled late
or the letter signed, pen in mouth
and heart in throat a few times every year.
To be fair, not so often. Brokenness
never lasting all that long. Even in your name
and her name, in the absence
by which we’re taught best, no totem
is found. In the road, so soft
in the heat it’s pliable, the cars berth
wider than I could ever need,
rolling past in the other ditch almost.
Some stop, offer help, help
they’ve not even decided is needed,
shown by their rattled way
back into the car. Away with words and miles.
Sometimes I wait a long while
beside the mail not there
and imagine even more of it,
its spill, its rustle like water rolling
from one’s hands. When
something comes with its dead
postage, embossed by cancellation,
I lean my face to its mouth
almost to kiss it, almost to thank its purpose,
and with my lips carry it
down and in. The same pens
which spill my name
slit each envelope open I’ve pulped soft
with my tongue.
Blue threads through
whatever words accordion forth.
Sometimes a letter. Places I’ve been
and remember. Places I’m unlikely ever to see.
Strange children. Minor injuries.
The freight of the body
in motion. Once all petals. Once only seeds.
I say my name to the mailbox. Then yours. Hers.
Even her name and still nothing is there,
no stern accounting of debts, no date when
the penalties will come again, no credit
offered in seriousness understood by machines.
Mouth of air. Mine and the box,
strung with vines, a hidden thing, vines
going up from the ground on nothing,
you’d think. Red flag I never raise
when there is something required of me
and the check is scrawled late
or the letter signed, pen in mouth
and heart in throat a few times every year.
To be fair, not so often. Brokenness
never lasting all that long. Even in your name
and her name, in the absence
by which we’re taught best, no totem
is found. In the road, so soft
in the heat it’s pliable, the cars berth
wider than I could ever need,
rolling past in the other ditch almost.
Some stop, offer help, help
they’ve not even decided is needed,
shown by their rattled way
back into the car. Away with words and miles.
Sometimes I wait a long while
beside the mail not there
and imagine even more of it,
its spill, its rustle like water rolling
from one’s hands. When
something comes with its dead
postage, embossed by cancellation,
I lean my face to its mouth
almost to kiss it, almost to thank its purpose,
and with my lips carry it
down and in. The same pens
which spill my name
slit each envelope open I’ve pulped soft
with my tongue.
Blue threads through
whatever words accordion forth.
Sometimes a letter. Places I’ve been
and remember. Places I’m unlikely ever to see.
Strange children. Minor injuries.
The freight of the body
in motion. Once all petals. Once only seeds.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Why
I've been packing up a bit, clearing my desk. I came across my copy of Ripley's Game, starring John Malkovich, and popped it in. Almost instantly I remembered why I love it so much: no one projects such wry, snobbish menace. He plays it here so dryly it's hysterical. Before stepping into a train bathroom to garrote someone, he removes his watch, handing it to the man he's with, "If it breaks, I will kill everyone on this train." This particular scene plays out almost like slapstick: people keep coming in and they have to be killed, stacked like cords of wood in the tiny space. Here's a great scene in the airport afterwards.
Interestingly about the movie is that it sat on New Line's shelves a year or more until they dumped it out to dvd.
Interestingly about the movie is that it sat on New Line's shelves a year or more until they dumped it out to dvd.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Who among them
ADMITTEDLY BRIEF EXCURSIONS IN SLOW DANCING
First there were the Trundle sisters
with their improbable last name, trailer park
aesthetic, hair stiff with sprayed destruction,
pouncing in the gym darkness loud with saccharine power
ballads. That I was making an exit
hardly mattered. Clubfooted pity pressed me
and not the farm-fed sag of their breasts
or the basins of their pelvises
while others rocked in rehearsals of the flesh.
And then there were the twins,
the Mountjoy girls, dark and lovely:
one had decided how
to bring her body to mine, to lean close,
mindful of no awkwardness.
The kiss to my neck which terrified me.
And nothing more for years,
though once in a theater parking lot
a girl helped me to stand
who could never decide to love me or leave.
Against her I foolishly sang
the obvious from My Fair Lady,
which we were leaving,
washed in two hours of Technicolor,
happy for the lobby’s pride in Ernest Borgnine
once being there. As were we
before it burned in the shadow of the town’s clocktower.
Years she’d bloodied herself
with ballet’s brutal en pointe,
a pain in her past that even now I romanticize.
And in mine the romance
of plain sight, how I danced
once during a concert with a woman I loved,
whose muslin shirt I kept,
who would change into it,
who would for me shed it when asked,
even in the light. Our bodies
in that bottled-up din were indistinct.
Invisible, almost, as we had tried
to be. In her married arms
we swayed, our balance hard to keep.
First there were the Trundle sisters
with their improbable last name, trailer park
aesthetic, hair stiff with sprayed destruction,
pouncing in the gym darkness loud with saccharine power
ballads. That I was making an exit
hardly mattered. Clubfooted pity pressed me
and not the farm-fed sag of their breasts
or the basins of their pelvises
while others rocked in rehearsals of the flesh.
And then there were the twins,
the Mountjoy girls, dark and lovely:
one had decided how
to bring her body to mine, to lean close,
mindful of no awkwardness.
The kiss to my neck which terrified me.
And nothing more for years,
though once in a theater parking lot
a girl helped me to stand
who could never decide to love me or leave.
Against her I foolishly sang
the obvious from My Fair Lady,
which we were leaving,
washed in two hours of Technicolor,
happy for the lobby’s pride in Ernest Borgnine
once being there. As were we
before it burned in the shadow of the town’s clocktower.
Years she’d bloodied herself
with ballet’s brutal en pointe,
a pain in her past that even now I romanticize.
And in mine the romance
of plain sight, how I danced
once during a concert with a woman I loved,
whose muslin shirt I kept,
who would change into it,
who would for me shed it when asked,
even in the light. Our bodies
in that bottled-up din were indistinct.
Invisible, almost, as we had tried
to be. In her married arms
we swayed, our balance hard to keep.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Roll out
In celebration of our nation's birth, I'm going to treat you to my take on Transformers.
I'll get one point out of the way: it's not exactly horrible. Which for it is a huge victory and left me feeling like the movie wasn't half bad.
Except it's a Transformers movie. I can't describe to you the weirdness, the existential weirdness, of watching a Transformers movie. I sat there, thinking, I'm watching a Transformers movie. Really? Seriously. Get outta here.
It looks and sounds great. The effects set new bars for achieving photo-realism.
But, conceptually, I don't think it can be extricated from absurdity. Wait, the evil giant robots work on a kind of Godzilla level of destruction. But the good giant robots just can't exist in modern film, they can't rise above unbearable hokum: I think Optimus Prime told me to drink milk and listen to my parents at one point.
A scene of all the Autobots, the good guys, driving around in a part of California that apparently isn't California but a car commercial had me howling. I'm sorry, but a bunch of oddly mismatched vehicles (Camaro, semi-truck, ambulance, etc.) cruising around isn't awe inspiring. It just can't be. It looks like a traffic report.
There's just too much stupid here to discuss, even though it's entertaining enough, in its sledgehammer way. Go see Ratatouille.
I'll get one point out of the way: it's not exactly horrible. Which for it is a huge victory and left me feeling like the movie wasn't half bad.
Except it's a Transformers movie. I can't describe to you the weirdness, the existential weirdness, of watching a Transformers movie. I sat there, thinking, I'm watching a Transformers movie. Really? Seriously. Get outta here.
It looks and sounds great. The effects set new bars for achieving photo-realism.
But, conceptually, I don't think it can be extricated from absurdity. Wait, the evil giant robots work on a kind of Godzilla level of destruction. But the good giant robots just can't exist in modern film, they can't rise above unbearable hokum: I think Optimus Prime told me to drink milk and listen to my parents at one point.
A scene of all the Autobots, the good guys, driving around in a part of California that apparently isn't California but a car commercial had me howling. I'm sorry, but a bunch of oddly mismatched vehicles (Camaro, semi-truck, ambulance, etc.) cruising around isn't awe inspiring. It just can't be. It looks like a traffic report.
There's just too much stupid here to discuss, even though it's entertaining enough, in its sledgehammer way. Go see Ratatouille.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
The sun will respect
Transformers today. How surreal is it there's a Transformers movie?
***
A second AWP panel I was asked to be on was accepted: the 20th anniversary reading for Hayden's Ferry Review. Which is cool enough to begin with but a little more meaningful to me, personally, as they were the first journal to pity/publish me.
***
Two stages of July 4th here: Sunday with the family. Grilling. Hypnotized by a marathon of When Stunts Go Wrong. Which is basically hours of idiots on motorcycles giving natural selection the finger. And great TV.
One especially bright "expert" was dared to jump several wind machines, blades exposed, with one hand tied behind his back. Of course he landed straight in one of them, his motorcycle shredded. He walked away. Especially great was this guy who had to be the worst stunt guy ever: his gimmick was jumping his car, landing upside down, usually on top of other junked cars which absorbed the impact. In theory. But in practice he was singularly unable to pull it off, invariably landing to the side, or nose first.
And the mindset is beautiful, I admit, because each time these types come back from nearly killing themselves they increase the stunt's difficulty: I keep failing, spectacularly, at this. Let's make it three times as hard.
It's poetry. Or maybe it's Stunt Rock.
***
A second AWP panel I was asked to be on was accepted: the 20th anniversary reading for Hayden's Ferry Review. Which is cool enough to begin with but a little more meaningful to me, personally, as they were the first journal to pity/publish me.
***
Two stages of July 4th here: Sunday with the family. Grilling. Hypnotized by a marathon of When Stunts Go Wrong. Which is basically hours of idiots on motorcycles giving natural selection the finger. And great TV.
One especially bright "expert" was dared to jump several wind machines, blades exposed, with one hand tied behind his back. Of course he landed straight in one of them, his motorcycle shredded. He walked away. Especially great was this guy who had to be the worst stunt guy ever: his gimmick was jumping his car, landing upside down, usually on top of other junked cars which absorbed the impact. In theory. But in practice he was singularly unable to pull it off, invariably landing to the side, or nose first.
And the mindset is beautiful, I admit, because each time these types come back from nearly killing themselves they increase the stunt's difficulty: I keep failing, spectacularly, at this. Let's make it three times as hard.
It's poetry. Or maybe it's Stunt Rock.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Nashville
ELEGIAC FORECAST
May God bless and keep the last man
struggling with galoshes, which means
French shoes in Old French and who knew
the French had ever been fond
of their feet sheathed in onomatopoeic
footwear or that their tongues
had in the dead past divagated and dithered
whole ages and dialects and Europes
away. The thought is enough
to wave away the generic sorrow of rain
and set fire to the umbrellas
of passing strangers and be soaked past bone’s last cell.
A good thought, made of sadness
easily found in the body, residue
of one disaster or another—
sex collapsed like an old shed
and weariness plead
and tomorrow night maybe
and pulmonary half-apologies caught in the mouth
of sleep. Her gone in time
or you gone, your eyes gone,
your feet on an endless carpet of old razors.
Something lost somewhere
inside you, untraceable, sinking,
and even at her heart’s request
you’d never pluck a single shining coin
from behind her ear, the warm shell of all her sound,
in which you heard the ocean
rolling away in bracing violence.
In which more of you began to sink and be lost.
In which and in which
and this was enough
to put your lips to the door and not know why.
Not really. Not while rain
held its court in the world
and even in the noon darkness
the day gleamed with water on its face.
To think of her was easy.
Her swimmer’s legs entering her jeans like water,
her arms learning help
you needed and help you could give
and all you couldn’t,
her hands combing her bed from your hair.
May God bless and keep the last man
struggling with galoshes, which means
French shoes in Old French and who knew
the French had ever been fond
of their feet sheathed in onomatopoeic
footwear or that their tongues
had in the dead past divagated and dithered
whole ages and dialects and Europes
away. The thought is enough
to wave away the generic sorrow of rain
and set fire to the umbrellas
of passing strangers and be soaked past bone’s last cell.
A good thought, made of sadness
easily found in the body, residue
of one disaster or another—
sex collapsed like an old shed
and weariness plead
and tomorrow night maybe
and pulmonary half-apologies caught in the mouth
of sleep. Her gone in time
or you gone, your eyes gone,
your feet on an endless carpet of old razors.
Something lost somewhere
inside you, untraceable, sinking,
and even at her heart’s request
you’d never pluck a single shining coin
from behind her ear, the warm shell of all her sound,
in which you heard the ocean
rolling away in bracing violence.
In which more of you began to sink and be lost.
In which and in which
and this was enough
to put your lips to the door and not know why.
Not really. Not while rain
held its court in the world
and even in the noon darkness
the day gleamed with water on its face.
To think of her was easy.
Her swimmer’s legs entering her jeans like water,
her arms learning help
you needed and help you could give
and all you couldn’t,
her hands combing her bed from your hair.
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