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In King's Backyard

2008-09-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

1.
I walked once for my father,
again for my mother.

I needed to ask them a question
I did not yet know

and had already asked.
The one about surviving the silence

The one asked and answered
with countless redefinitions

of the self

2.
A Japonese woman shakes
three sneezed into her fist.

A full second, like a flood
waiting for her eyes to adjust.

A grin shows off her victory over panic.
'Ahhh' the room sighs, looking away 'We don't need to help after all'

3.
Those who watched live should know: the levies held.
What you saw splashing over was expected.

We can handle this, we've had to
for as long as anyone can remember. We can handle this

we've had to for as long as aynone can remember.

The Song

2008-07-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Everyday I broom balls of carpet
into a pile behind the tower-
speaker jiggling my earlobes.

The man who’s life I’m taking over
says this room has the most beautiful corner
he’s ever seen. In the future
this will eat me.

This cleaning. Until there is nothing
but disturbances to what is

mine. Like this old muttering man
who comes around while we’re all high,

claims to be a ninja through masked
gum covered nubs, pushes

over spent candles. Drags a needle
across our favorite vinyl.

We are afraid of him.

And so when the girl I’d just met said James
it was close enough.

I followed her over the alley
to her Beetle, which was older than both of us,
and we drove through the night, chewing our eyelids
open, to her parents’ cabin three states away.

Where the thoughts were born
that led me to this depraved state.

Up for days, unable to trust
the meal in front of me, my ears turn
this whole scene into a beat,
beg my eyes to lay a symphony
across the top of it, promising
a better understanding-
I give in. I allow myself
to project such a stillness
out from my person that it
shakes the air, affects
my every thought. Each invisible shudder
long, sticking to the next like DNA, strands
wrapping tendon tight, forming
me just below it all, dancing wildly with her parents’
refusal to make eye contact, clearly
jealous of my displays of funk movement.
And no one at the bar has a place
for me to sleep, and there are
no more good vibrations,
and I come apart.

Madi’s Birthday

2008-06-16T01:56:00.000-07:00

The last time I stayed in a cabin
there was no cabin.

There was though: a trailer
wrapped in fake Lincoln
Logs and set on cinder blocks, a hundred yards
of parking lot behind an amusement park.

And even though the 97 degrees had me
sleeping instead of standing in line. Sleeping
instead of hearing the tornado sirens
crying out slow across the flattened counties,
my family did hear them. They hurried back to take me
to the painted concrete walls of the wash house.

So we could follow the lightning and laugh
at the people streaming from the shuttle to their RV.

Screaming like it was ride.

And after we had smelled enough fresh water
from the thick-slatted whiteplastic chairs
that we carried way out past where the tide had come in
to the sand bar we climbed up to discuss the limits of photography,

and how the stars worked
that we spied through gaps
in sporadically blushing cloud cover,

after we were tired with collaging
our sandy footprints on the polished-sticker wooden floors,

me and my sister, Madison Rose, lay at a tiny window

in the trailer’s attic, just below the hammering metal
roof, and discussed the flirting techniques
of the 100 year old men she served food
at her first job, while we watched
the tallest rollercoaster in the world
get struck by lightning and go dark.

The wail of a fire engine just a tiny thing to the west.

Self Portrait

2008-06-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

1.
The people I have
met, we were all told.

Once you find what lets you forget,
the thing able to take you,
blooming to make all else gray,

do that thing
for the rest of your life.

You can be,
our parents repeated,
whatever you want to be.

2.
Spring, beaten
within an inch of its life,
is rescued.

The people
are out again.

Some dedicating their time,
their lives,
to the control
of a ball. To the study
of that most true
of symmetries,
born of man
and gravity:
as ravishing,
impartial.

Many more dedicate their time,
their lives,
to the act of watching
those remarkable few
(whose abilities must plateau
for loathing and mercy)
so they may imagine
what it must do to a man
to make such love,
to have such final say
in the way of things
man can never have say.

Still, the control
has become so great.

3.
Summertime.
My father blindfolds my mother,
tells her not yet… not yet…

finally the tired fabric falls,
three stories of red brick
climbing up from where it rests.

The sky, blue and fresh
as her last name
blinds her for no more
than a moment

and he’s unlocking
the door.

4.
Despite what they may say,
I can’t be far
from what my parents prayed for
those early screaming nights

The mornings they spent
breaking ice
from the toilets
while the rats slept late,

tucked beneath
the blankets of my crib.

I have no memory of them
chewing the nipples
off my bottle.

No,
I am close.
I dedicate my time,
my life,
to the study of the feeling instead.

The Body Looks Farther Away Than Most Stones

2008-05-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

Based on the quickness with which
the subdivision appeared

since I last passed,
the bedroom looked especially lived in. I stood

wondering how many nights she’d spent there,
how many I would spend alone

justified by this one. I didn’t blink as she pushed
a fist full of pills into her belly,

but they must’ve had a different effect on her:
Working in frenzied bursts of unison

that would shame even the most agile
clouds of plankton, schools of mayflies try to escape

from the skin on my neck. Her chin planted
just below my collar,

she does a modern day
rain dance. Her pajama pants covered

in raised polka dots: I have no choice
but to skim over

Accelerated Breathing, The Sparknotes: Brail Edition.
Then the energy turns: Hands move like the moment

a drain overflows: You recognize panic
before the water dips to the low

spots on the painted concrete floor, while its still
just a bowl filling

and filling. She puffs
across the frenzied darkness ‘I’m too medicated.’

My pills tell me the same thing, the pills
that have me poured into the dents of her mattress,

that I crowded down from a similar bottle
giving lousy directions under a stranger’s name,

next to the slippery dream of every alcoholic:
that the effect can be intensified.

And so for a while then it was enough
just to be next to something so similar.

Even though
I couldn’t exactly make her

out,
through that clutter of dark.

A Link to a Song and the Story Behind It

2008-04-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Along with the excitement, fear, pressures and responsibilities of becoming president of the student body I was faced this weekend with the realization that I could not accomplish in time all the work that I had built up. I thought about choosing a class to fail, deciding to ditch all of its work and focus on the rest. But with next year marking the first cut loose from the mamma ship, I couldn’t stomach the feelings of anger towards myself as I sat in the class again, due to my semester long nap. So I decided to take it all on ’You knew you’d have to, made the choice.’

And so here I sit, just about beyond the last minute.

Trying to wring the sweat that is now consistently seeping from my body into the success of a semester. I hit four days without sleep before my body shut down. After hallucinating a mouse in my shower, barely avoiding several car crashes due to a lack of trust in my peripheral vision, and being forced to take a twenty minute break to sit in the silent dark listening to a symphony my mind created- new instruments and rhythms coming in like the build of an airliner set out from Singapore gradually making its way right above, and then beyond, taking its payload to somewhere I cannot try to imagine. At one point, when the vocals first came in, backed in full psychedelia, (“You didn‘t knowwwww we could- 00000make- 000000this kind of music”) I let myself into it, refusing to acknowledge its existence so to appreciate its beauty. When I closed my eyes it was as if a strobe light hung in front of them, so I kept them open, in the darkness seeing what I heard.

Then I broke. Somewhere in the middle of last night, sitting where I sit now and have throughout, I lost it all. I was twitching madly, arms legs and chest, my hands were shades of intensity. I couldn’t ignore my short breath or the pulse in my ankles any longer. I began to panic. Muscles taught, veins proud, I couldn’t get in one word of thought against it, so I sat.

I woke up 14 hours later. Starving. With a mindset I barely recognized I realized I had eaten only 3 times throughout and stuffed myself.

And so here I sit, just about beyond the last minute. I am doing my best to ignore the guilt so I can get through this thing, scrounge what I can of it all. Its something, looking in the eyes of what you have avoided for so long, realizing there is nothing that is going to fix it all. I feel like I have failed a good number of people, some family, many friends, many new.

Listening to the Beirut station on Pandora.com (an online radio that randomly picks songs they thing related to a band you name) at top decibels, just a few bits from falling apart, this song came on. I have never heard the song before or of its existence. I have never heard of the singer, who is from the UK.

I hesitate to resemble the people making requests on the local radio, the ’I was going through a bad time ect.’ but it is safe to say this song affected me just now. In ways that will take a bit longer, distort, and probably be lost among the other scraps in the forever growing pile that guides my actions.

To listen go here, its the the second song from the top, the one titled Mr. Blue.

Back to work.

Pretending Press 2

2008-04-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Decided to take a break
from doing journals
to add some pictures
that are getting old.

Similar story as the Obama pics,
Me, Chad, last minute calls,
press badges, and cameras.

This time at Purdue.

A few of my shots
of a concert starring
The Legendary Roots Crew:

Lungs Fell In

2008-04-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

(something like a Mitch Robinson erasure poem)

Mussolini’s bald head
the only cloud hanging over the field
hosting the young fascists’ wedding,
pretty young girl,
overweight boy.
His brother, Viktor, in a metal chair.

The bridesmaids’ short dresses cut just above the knee.

An older girl’s varicose choking her
left calf, a curved swastika bumping
every sweat bead that travels
the map to her feet.
Like fish in a net,
the skin pops between them.

The sun burns Mussolini’s scalp.

The Americans march forward,
wedding speeds up. The veins beat.
With the woman swollen like a red balloon,
ribbon crawling up to tickle her,
the wedding about-faces
and marches down the haphazard isle.
Party in tow.

Viktor marches.

The veins, they throb until the skin pops,
producing a pistol
that shoots Viktor in the head.
A bloody mess the celebrators march
into the dried grass.

Something of a Holiday

2008-04-22T20:52:00.000-07:00

Having never been informed of my birth
it isn’t the fault of any one

maker of cheap whiskey
that I am usually not fit

to obey the speed limit.
For the same reason

credit can not be given to anyone
who may have created the sun

for my schedule coordinating with the mice
streaking out of the burners.

Some thanks for both, however, I do not hesitate
to pile on those around me,

the friend stumbling awake at 3pm, hair
some sort of totem pole.

Do you have somewhere to be? I ask him
You know It’s something of a holiday.

But his eyes aren’t focused.

Grumbling something to the crease of his elbow
he bumps through to the porch and beyond.

No, this has never been my peoples’ time to shine.

The Recurrence of a None the Less Trampled Groove

2008-04-22T00:10:00.000-07:00

For C. B.

1.

I enjoy watching you run down hills
as I read your ‘Philosophy on Life’

but keep wishing I could hand you a sled.
Or if that is too thick a plastic

to carry, too much between you
and the real ground, then maybe

just sneak a Slip N' Slide into your shoulder bag.
Not to help avoid the bumps or mud puddles,

but give you the option to take them
all at once, perhaps when the hill

proves to be more than you
bargained for. Or maybe just so that no matter

how bad the bruising, you are left with enough momentum
to start up the next rise. That hopeful moment

of 'this won't be so bad'
that helps to squelch the thoughts of a warm bathtub

and bucket of booze. It is the residue of feeling
forgotten, my things or I,

that keeps me moving.

2.

There is a place
where all the good of cigarettes

and coffee and booze
has been forgotten

and people stay awake for days
without the help of television.

The last time I was there
an arm chair rested its front over a fire

and a man used a fountain pen
to pick chips of painkillers from his teeth.

You may go there

I mean-
you are welcome.

To go where all the ex-mothers gather
and the new grandmothers come

to rub their nipples.
And rip their jeans.

None of them aware
if any of it began of their own accord.

3.

As I was being born
two men sat quietly on a bench.

One looking as if he knew,
in much greater detail than the other,

the effect electricity has had upon the idea of a home.
When a passerby waved at them on account of the weather,

the man who knew looked away,
the man who didn’t took a pull

from his cigarette, and the passerby smiled at the area between them,
that stammer between light and dark- filling with rain,

This has happened since,
of course.

It had happened before.

But that moment is somehow my own.
Like the nights I spend awake.

Pretending Press

2008-04-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

Last Wed. (Obama day) I received an email at 1pm saying that a couple tickets to see Barack Obama would be given out to members of a club I am very casually a member of. Requests were to be sent explaining why the tickets should be ours- we would be called if we won. They had to be in by 4, so I wrote a quick plead that was eventually turned down (Probably because aside from sign up for the email list I have done nothing with or for the club). I sent it at 3pm and chewed my nails...

The email as sent...

I write on behalf of two IUSB students: Myself, Dane Blue, and Chad Forbregd (the ‘friend’).

Last night I stayed up with a friend watching Barack Obama speeches on youtube. My friend was raised republican and in many ways still holds conservative ideals. However, he finds himself moved by Barack in a way he has never been before. New energies and genuine feelings are being inspired inside him, thoughts given room to grow instead of being taken for granted. It is this hope that Obama is spreading across America: the idea that things don’t have to be as they have been.

This is the decision that our generation of Americans has to make. Will we allow the recently perpetuating actions of those in charge continue? Will we allow the current mindset to become what America is, or collectively decide it has been a mistake? As more people are born into the modern empirical mindset of America the choice is fast evaporating. If we too grow old leaving the work to be done and the examples to be made by later generations than we are no different than what we now despise; if that is the case than we have shown the world America’s true colors already.

I spend most of my time outside of school traveling. I’ve spent time in Alaska and Scotland, tons of time in DC, as well as backpacked the US, Canada, and Europe. This summer I am planning on spending two and a half weeks in each Karachi, Pakistan and Bangalore, India. I travel broke and have been robbed, forcing me to wash dishes for food and sleep in some terrible places, to survive through the generosity alone of people I have never met.

There are things I have learned in this process, both in how America thinks of itself and in how our actions are perceived throughout the world. Currently, it is understood that many millions of Americans do not endorse the actions our country now takes on our behalf. Soon however the faults will fall in no other hands then our own.

I have also learned of a great goodness that hides in the people of America. Whether on the West Coast or the Deep South there is a kindness inside Americans that is unique from anything I have ever experienced. Obama finds and lets loose this gentle beast, makes an example out of not being afraid to show strength in intellect as opposed to might.

The opportunity to see him speak is an opportunity to see a man who has put more thought into the lives of people than any other I will likely get the opportunity to see. The idea of government, the invisible frame that holds it together, is that by all chipping in together we are better off as a whole. WE, the people. Any other means by which our recourses are being scattered shows the depth of the lies we are being fed. Obama refuses to let this continue as it has.

I am taking a trip in May with the Civil Rights Heritage Center, a club in which I am active. The trip spotlights one of the main focuses in my life: civil action to make progress. The trip hits many of the major cities across the south where actions took place in the Civil Rights Movement that took place following World War II. I have recently read John Lewis’ book Walking With the Wind as well as The Autobiography of Malcolm X. There are terrible injustices being acted upon certain demographics in this country and I believe Obama is a very serious step in the right direction of opening people eyes to the damages they are causing.

Seeing Obama tonight would be an effort to re-energize my beliefs in the possibilities of what accomplishments are realistic in this place and time. To see Barack Obama, for me, is to pull a deep breath, to use the air I take in to further the goal of progression in the mind set of Americans. I use this energy now to give free hugs on MLK day every year. I have grown weary however, lazy, as this long winter has made my skin raw. I have never had the chance to see Obama but have been wishing for the opportunity since I first saw him on television. If you decide to give me a ticket (hopefully one for Chad as well, he is beyond enthusiastic about the possibility, leaving his usual refrain behind) it will not be used to fill a seat with another listener. It will be used to further the idea of hope inside both Chad and me, to further the spread of an energy much needed in this region.

Either way you are doing an amazing thing. Whoever receives the tickets will benefit more than just themselves as such positive thoughts can’t help but become contagious.

We await your call, 574.849.7306. We have class off and on until 7, feel free to text.

Thanks and be safe,

Dane Blue

... Fearing I wouldn't win I played it safe and called Eric G. (Editor of The IUSB Preface) and demanded press badges for myself and Chadwick. He said the story was being covered but after a special form of persuasion agreed. We met before class at 5:30pm but the safe holding the passes was locked, the assistant editor with the key MIA. I got her number and she agreed to come to campus and get the passes, left them in a random cabinet until we were out of class and could pick them up.

We drove Chadwick's pink flamed van to Washington High School, him playing role of photographer with camera bag over the shoulder, me with notepad and pen out for everyone to see. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing but planned on lying out of all holes if necessary, we had to see Barack. At the corner in front of the school some guy with a clip board noticed the press badges and told us the press entrance was 'by the CNN van.'

That was it. They asked for photo ID to match the passes and had us sign a list. After the only kind of pat down the secret service is allowed to give the guys that show up together with a ponytail and afro we were in. We wandered for a while. The editor that got us the passes let me play with The Preface's camera (which I kept all night) and we eventually settled down in CBS Nightly News' and Fox News' press spots.

The speech given by Barack can't be put into words, and barely fit into feelings. I shook the whole time. A very few of the pictures I got:

Sliding Peanuts Across the Wood Floor

2008-04-09T00:15:00.000-07:00

Lately I've fallen for the idea of using line breaks to
maintain a serperate narrative within a poem as a whole.

My first try... With and without punctuation
to show breaks standing on their own...

In Transit

The last time I was here I knew everything.
The last time I was here I shattered

the shape of truth. It was an accident.
I put it back together best I could

but it was a porous, unnatural thing. Just now
I had been there. Way back,

where it’s bright black. I thought it
magnificent. Like children

think of jumping over the floating rope for the first time:
Finally. No worries, I’m back where I belong.

Where people shout out
before the gun can become

a furnace. Where people show off:
this is our first try.

I didn’t walk away from there.
I didn’t walk anywhere. The streets

scrolled by, a lithograph by bigger men
and I abandoned everyone then. Held

no one in me closer than I would
a pissing infant. The peel of the city,

a hard thing to pull back, even
right there, already inside.

I didn’t walk away from there.
I didn’t walk anywhere. The streets

run along my hair and into my scalp. I wander
them only when there is too much time to race.

...Without puctuation...

In Transit

The last time I was here I knew everything
The last time I was here I shattered

the shape of truth it was an accident
I put it back together best I could

but it was a porous unnatural thing just now
I had been there way back

where it’s bright black I thought it
magnificent like children

think of jumping over the floating rope for the first time:
Finally no worries I’m back where I belong

Where people shout out
before the gun can become

a furnace where people show off
this is our first try

I didn’t walk away from there.
I didn’t walk anywhere. The streets

scrolled by, a lithograph by bigger men
and I abandoned everyone then. Held

no one in me closer than I would
a pissing infant. The peel of the city,

a hard thing to pull back, even
right there, already inside.

I didn’t walk away from there.
I didn’t walk anywhere. The streets

run along my hair and into my scalp. I wander
them only when there is too much time to race.

...gave up half way, went with a second
section that works OK with either version of the first...

To the Squirrel Fattening Evenly

2008-04-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

Second try with dual narratives...

Wanted to give stanzas their own
meaning, topic. Thought of line breaks
as the longest pause...

Room Heated by Bulb Alone

I can’t help
but wonder
the truth is this

normal people don’t question
these things I can see
why is there no one to ask

of their son0 the one they now miss follow
the words 0they have been twisted beyond comprehension
the branches of the dogwood failing to spread them

selves 0they have lost their usefulness to the routine
twirlings of the ex-passionate
acrobats alone in the laundry room 0I fear

new experiences 0the only sure thing to praise God
make us rich a man once whispered in my ear opening a smoothed box It’ll be both of us
our mold 0a man made thing

of beauty 0I held it only once didn’t have the guts to go
all in the minds of shallow breeding salmon
make me jealous 0how easy it must be

to live knowing you will die
where you mate for a chance at false hope
I make a wish that I will be able

to sleep I will have to go on
like this forever 0how it will seem so brief
when I look back out at it

...with punctuation...

Room Heated by Bulb Alone

I can’t help
but wonder
the truth. Is this

normal? People don’t question
these things. I can see
why. Is there no one to ask

of their son, the one they now miss, ’follow
the words’? They have been twisted beyond comprehension
the branches of the dogwood, failing to spread them-

selves. They have lost their usefulness to the routine
twirlings of the ex-passionate
acrobats. Alone in the laundry room, I fear

new experiences. ‘The only sure thing to, praise-God
make us rich.’ a man once whispered in my ear, opening a smoothed box, “It’ll be
000both of us,
our mold.’ A man made thing

of beauty. I held it only once, didn’t have the guts to go
all in. The minds of shallow breeding salmon
make me jealous. How easy it must be

to live knowing you will die
where you mate. For a chance at false hope
I make a wish that I will be able

to sleep. I will have to go on
like this forever. How it will seem so brief
when I look back out at it.

First Stab at an Erasure

2008-04-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

Original Poem:

A Waltz Dream
John Ashbery

She wasn't having one of her strange headaches tonight.
Whose fault is it? For a long time I thought it was mine,
blamed myself for every minor variation in the major upheaval.
Then...

It may have been the grass praying
for renewal, even thought it meant their death,
the individual blades, and, as though psychic,
a white light hobered just above the lake's layer
like a photograph of ectoplasm.

Those are all fakes, aren't they?
In sow-moving traffic a man acts like he's going to be hit
by the stream of cars coming at him from both directions.
Like a cookie cutter, a steamroller lops the view off.

There a nine sisters, nine deafening knocks on the door,
nine busboys to be bussed-er, tipped. And in the thievery
of my own dreams I can see the square like a crystal,
the only imaginary thing we were meant to have,
now soiled, turned under
like a frayed shirt collar
a mother stitches for her son who's away at school,
mindful he may not care, may wear
another's scarlet and sulfur raiment
just so he take part in the academy fun.

And later, after the twister, slowly
we mixed drinks of the sort
that may be slopped only on script girls, like lemonade.
Who knows what the world's got up its sleeve
next brunch, as long as you will be a part of me and
all what I am doing?

My Erasure:
(each section a run
through the original)

A Waltz Dream
(an Ashbery Erasure Poem)

1.
Fault is a long thought in me

Eve nor heaven pray for their death,
The thought hovers above them.

Aren’t they low-
The nesting busboys,

Thievery
The imaginary thing we meant to have

Soil red under a red shirt

A mother tits
for her son’s mind

Man may wear another’s scar and fur
so take part in the fun.

A date after the mixed drinks
The sort that slop script girls like lemonade

How the world got up next
you will beat me

2.
Having one of her strange faults
for a time I thought I was mine

It may have been renewal,
even though it meant the individuals,
though psychic,
are all fakes

There are nine dreams I can see

Like a mother
or her son’s mindful other's scarlet and sulfur mixed drinks

Who’s up next
You will be part of me and all I am doing

Center of Attention

2008-03-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

I can hear the man outside my door crunching peanuts.
To make small talk the TV says He got life, I wonder

if the phrase is older than prisons. I’m not
a genius on the matter but I think I may be going

insane… Then again solitary confinement
will gift even the most dull with a startling

Imagination… Near the north pole
the sun doesn’t come up for months

and the light reflects up from the snow
and there are no shadows.

The man leaves.
I knew he would.

The Fortieth Anniversary of the Summer of Love

2008-03-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

The train station, she smirked a tear when
I opened the door. The wine and wax
were dried up and a puppy ate cheese cake from a curved mirror.
I stared at my feet, ignoring all the tongues she had tied
into the knots of her floor boards. She said
Some beasts can't roam together

In a park in Seattle I was jumped by 30 crackheads as old as my dad.
All lost eyes and bulging jaw muscles reminding me
of zombies five minutes later a cop made me spread my fingers
on the sidewalk. I was asking him for directions.
She said Its not the differences
its the similarities

This is the summer you might have seen me
running back from the first class showers
on any train west of North Carolina.
Arguing with the hats.
Listen I did this as much for
you as I did for me

In LA they found a bomb outside the hostel and made us sit
on a curb between little houses 15 blocks away while a robot
scooped it into a tank. Traffic was detoured from Venice
Blvd. We couldn’t be trusted, out in the morning heat
shirtless. Unharmed. Is there anything worth going back to?
I'd ask open windows, Or should I just keep moving?

If you were between Niagra Falls New Orleans and Vancouver
chances are you bought me a drink to keep
telling you stories, or let me wash dishes
for a meal. Either way you looked at me like you
were saving my life, so
I followed suit.

starting off

2008-03-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

decided to give the blog world a shot... suppose ill post a few poems and see how this goes.. maybe get on and rant in the middle of the night..