COMMUNION
It was a feast
Our bodies
Your blanket
Our table
Our outfits
Placemats on either
Side
And for once
We
Supped from each
Other
For once we
Fell inside
Each other
And drank to
The victory
Of our
Oneness. My chin
Tucked like a
Napkin between your
Breasts, and all I
Can tell you again
Is that I love
Every bite of you
Love to chew
love to bite
nibble and lick
But first we give
Thanks for all this
-dvb 2003
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Grapple Them to Thy Soul with Hoops of Steel...
So much for masks. I've reposted both my first and last name on Dashboard (even though bloggins takin' a back seat to my other crazy fictional forays these days)....in the last seven years I've lived in ten (count 'em) different addresses. Moving around all the time has severed many frienships. My hope is that if you stumble upon my blogg CONTACT ME....esp if your name is Mark Feaster, Patrick "the great" Mullowney, Damien Segoiva, Misty Gerber, Brooke from Roanoke (sorry I fogot your new married name)-- "Jungian" Brook Jackson from chicago ( crazy loose-loined wild haired trollop that she is), Kris Weberg, Vanessa Hall ( stale apologies and an overdue european tryst are in jeopardy) the former Harmony Anne Dusek of Spokane, Megan Snow, Staci (yes anastaia it's been over a decade and i still haven't forgotten) Blake, Jim McGarth, Courtney from harrisburg (shit--what's your last name girl---that sunrise over Chespeake Bay on Bloomsday was simply unreal)...Matt Brown of Dallas, of course, it's been a long ass time, and yer' hospitality what--eight years ago--changed my life...Jana solomon..yeah, I should aplogize to you to for being such a dickwad, but I guess it all worked out in the end....Kyle Dooyle ( I know, marriage sucks brother, warned you) Karl Gibson, Alexis Jordan (which I guess it's Doctor Jordan--congrats on the white coat)--Sarah Wright, Andrew Engle.....anyone who was on PARADE's '93 YOUNG COLUMBUS trip to LONDON--the trip that more or less opened my eyes to the world of the arts and oriented me into a life braiding words into linear slants......
Dave Strickler--bro, how much crazy shit we did in High school together....
Hilary Lamontaigne, god girl, it's been a long ass time....
Also JoEllen, Brook (number three) Blowzis, Drunk Mike "soon I shall prove to thee world..." Cigar friendly dilettante of life Mike Davis (where are you!!!!!)
Just a few, if your name appears above this sentence feel free to contact me at any time. You've added much beauty and joy to my life. All I can do is to say thank you........
Dave Strickler--bro, how much crazy shit we did in High school together....
Hilary Lamontaigne, god girl, it's been a long ass time....
Also JoEllen, Brook (number three) Blowzis, Drunk Mike "soon I shall prove to thee world..." Cigar friendly dilettante of life Mike Davis (where are you!!!!!)
Just a few, if your name appears above this sentence feel free to contact me at any time. You've added much beauty and joy to my life. All I can do is to say thank you........
Sunday, March 06, 2005
...such a lonesome vocation
Writing is such a solitary profession. You spend hours a day going down on MS word, licking the square shapes of homerow with your imagination, chain smoking, trying to primp that slim sentence into linear perfection--here's one of my favorite stories about a young writer trying to make it---on his B-day no less:
It's the birthday of journalist and novelist Gabriel García Márquez, born in Aracataca, Colombia (1928). Until he was eight, Márquez was raised by his grandparents, and once said that all his writing had been inspired by the stories they told him. His grandfather was a Colonel and a liberal veteran of one of Columbia's worst civil wars. Gabriel's grandmother told him fantastic legends and tales of witches and ghosts. He became a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and later became a foreign correspondent, traveling all over Europe and the Americas. He had published fiction already, but had long wanted to write a novel based loosely on his hometown and his memories of his grandparents. His inspiration for the book came when he realized he had to write it in the same tone of voice his grandmother used when she told stories, describing both supernatural and political events as though there was no difference between them. The style later became known as "magical realism." Once he had the idea for the book he quit his job and wrote for eighteen months, without a break, smoking six packs of cigarettes every day. To support his wife and children, he sold his car and every household appliance, and borrowed money from all his friends. When he tried to sell pieces of his wife's jewelry, many of them wedding gifts, he found out that all the gems were made of glass. By the time the book was finished, he was $10,000 in debt, nearly poisoned by nicotine, and on the edge of a mental collapse. But the book, called One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), was a best seller, and he never had to worry about money again. The novel tells the story of the Buendía family in the fictional village of Macondo and begins, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." This was based on a true story that his grandfather told him. Márquez is also the author of Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), a story, based on his own parents, of two old lovers reuniting after 50 years.
It's the birthday of journalist and novelist Gabriel García Márquez, born in Aracataca, Colombia (1928). Until he was eight, Márquez was raised by his grandparents, and once said that all his writing had been inspired by the stories they told him. His grandfather was a Colonel and a liberal veteran of one of Columbia's worst civil wars. Gabriel's grandmother told him fantastic legends and tales of witches and ghosts. He became a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and later became a foreign correspondent, traveling all over Europe and the Americas. He had published fiction already, but had long wanted to write a novel based loosely on his hometown and his memories of his grandparents. His inspiration for the book came when he realized he had to write it in the same tone of voice his grandmother used when she told stories, describing both supernatural and political events as though there was no difference between them. The style later became known as "magical realism." Once he had the idea for the book he quit his job and wrote for eighteen months, without a break, smoking six packs of cigarettes every day. To support his wife and children, he sold his car and every household appliance, and borrowed money from all his friends. When he tried to sell pieces of his wife's jewelry, many of them wedding gifts, he found out that all the gems were made of glass. By the time the book was finished, he was $10,000 in debt, nearly poisoned by nicotine, and on the edge of a mental collapse. But the book, called One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), was a best seller, and he never had to worry about money again. The novel tells the story of the Buendía family in the fictional village of Macondo and begins, "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." This was based on a true story that his grandfather told him. Márquez is also the author of Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), a story, based on his own parents, of two old lovers reuniting after 50 years.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
So much sadness, so close to home....
What's up with all this? My best friend novelist was in tears this morning because he told me he feels that he's wasted too much time to ever finish his novel. The beautiful firey-haired wild-eyed creature who gave me her phone number then inexplicably removed me from FaceBook now won't even bat her eyes in my direction....ahhh...fucking sadness...good news is the fast has quelled my exorbitant caffeine intake...at least during daylight hours...also writing has been amazing. I've been supplicating about 8 hours a day turning the alphabetical squares of the keyboard into a confessional booth. I'll spend five hours on a single line of a poem, rip the entire poem apart like a linguistic pineta, slowly slap the sentences back together again. I love it.... Also published a few poems taht appeared here on Blogger (hence the name change to ASHER HALL).....................
Friday, February 25, 2005
Love is not Love which alters when its alteration finds....
Sylvia Plath (books by this author) met Hughes at a party in a bar, and the next morning she wrote about the encounter in her journal. She spent most of the evening talking to someone else, who she described as, "some ugly, gat-toothed squat grinning guy named Meeson trying to be devastatingly clever." She said the party was "very bohemian, with boys in turtleneck sweaters and girls being blue-eye-lidded or elegant in black." Plath had been drinking a little, and she wrote, "The jazz was beginning to get under my skin, and I started dancing with Luke and knew I was very bad, having crossed the river and banged into the trees..."
Plath said, "Then the worst thing happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me, came over and was looking hard in my eyes and it was Ted Hughes."
Plath quoted one of his poems to him, and he guided her to a side room of the bar. She wrote of that moment, "And then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hair band off, my lovely red hair band scarf which had weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face."
Plath composed a poem over the next few days after meeting Hughes. Called "Pursuit," it was a poem about a woman being hunted by a panther and was a response to a Hughes poem called "The Jaguar." Plath spent the night with Hughes and his friend in their London flat right before going on a spring vacation in Europe. When she returned, they spent even more time together, and after seeing so much of each other for a couple of months, they started thinking about marriage.
They got married on June 16th, four months after that first meeting, but it was a secret wedding because they didn't want to jeopardize Plath's fellowship or academic career. The ceremony was in the Church of Saint George the Martyr in London. Plath wore a pink suit, and Hughes gave her a pink rose to hold as she walked down the aisle.
Plath and Hughes spent the rest of that summer in Paris, Madrid, and the small town of Benindorm in Spain. They passed their days swimming, studying, and writing. Plath wrote the poems "Dream with Clam Diggers," Fiesta Melons," and "The Goring" as well as many others while on this honeymoon. Plath told a friend many years later that Hughes had gotten very angry with her during that trip and tried to choke her while they sat on a hill. She said she had resigned herself to die while it was happening, and she worried she had made the wrong decision in getting married so soon after meeting him.
Plath and Hughes decided to separate in 1962, right after they had moved back to England and had a second child. Plath discovered that Hughes was having an affair. She said in an interview that year, "I much prefer doctors, midwives, lawyers, anything but writers. I think writers and artists are the most narcissistic people [...] I'm fascinated by this mastery of the practical. As a poet, one lives a bit on air. I always like someone who can teach me something practical."
Plath committed suicide in 1963 by sticking her head in an oven. Hughes's mistress would also kill herself years later using the same method. Hughes was left in control of Plath's estate, and he edited her poems and controlled what of hers was published and what was not. He once was met on a trip to Australia by protestors holding signs that accused him of murdering Plath. Plath fans trying to chip away the word "Hughes" from her name on the tombstone have repeatedly vandalized her grave in Yorkshire, England.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Recipe for Dragon Stew (help!!!!!!!!)
First step in killing the dragon--get organized! Find a set time for work (H.W.) Writing...keep your room clean, go through old clothes. Return mounds of library books. Throw away lighters. Serious consider the amount of caffeine you ingest on any given day as being lethal (esp. if you're a pygmy). Make your bed everymorning. Quit clicking on ex-girlfriends blogg every two seconds to see who she's currently banging. Realize that you live with a very nice old man who has helped you out. Realize that you don't want to live there forever. Send out manuscripts more faithfully. Send your mother a valentine card. Don't sleep with girls you hardly know just to feel better about yer'self. Apply for auto insurance. Try to do laundry more than twice a semester. Budget!!!!!! Think about giving up caffeine and alcohol for lent (last year I gave up chastity and sobriety)...Smile at everyone you meet. Hold doors open for females. Be polite. Quit talking about yourself so much--focus more on the other person. Don't be Bette Midler, where in an interview she once said "Enough about me--what do you think about me?"
Be careful how many times you use the F word in public. Wash your hands. Be open minded. Make everyone around you feel like they're golden, even those f'ing Indian students who always seem to break the computers at work. Live your dreams. Most importantly recognize that place where you have come from no longer exists. Quit reminiscing about the past. Realize that you're a different person now. That you're always growing, evolving and that this Lizard silhouette is sometimes just a part of us that is comfortable and doesn't want to grow....most importantly smile. I read somewhere once that you burn just as much calories smiling and laughing as you do while having sex.
Laugh. Pull petty pranks. Tell your girlfriend she's beautiful. Be devout in your routine. Push-ups and situps before bedtime. Run around with the little kids. Realize that NO matter how bad you think your life is, you live in a country that has it better off than 98% of the globe. You've had your sanitized water. You've wiped your ass with something soft before flushing. Quit bitching so much.
Learn to be. Act spontaneously. Know what you want. Put the ball in the hoop. Don't be afriad to lead the life you feel that you were meant to live.
Be careful how many times you use the F word in public. Wash your hands. Be open minded. Make everyone around you feel like they're golden, even those f'ing Indian students who always seem to break the computers at work. Live your dreams. Most importantly recognize that place where you have come from no longer exists. Quit reminiscing about the past. Realize that you're a different person now. That you're always growing, evolving and that this Lizard silhouette is sometimes just a part of us that is comfortable and doesn't want to grow....most importantly smile. I read somewhere once that you burn just as much calories smiling and laughing as you do while having sex.
Laugh. Pull petty pranks. Tell your girlfriend she's beautiful. Be devout in your routine. Push-ups and situps before bedtime. Run around with the little kids. Realize that NO matter how bad you think your life is, you live in a country that has it better off than 98% of the globe. You've had your sanitized water. You've wiped your ass with something soft before flushing. Quit bitching so much.
Learn to be. Act spontaneously. Know what you want. Put the ball in the hoop. Don't be afriad to lead the life you feel that you were meant to live.
Monday, January 31, 2005
This poem should hint (Wink-wink, nod, nod) at the passionate pow-wow stampeding in my chest, right now.....
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
-- William Butler Yeats
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
-- William Butler Yeats
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Nostalgia
Here's a love-letter I wrote to my ex-girlfriend Brook, four years ago, in the autumn of 2000. Brook was a sexy thirty-three year old Jungian going through a divorce. I was a 23 year old writer, who, like Peter Pan, kept rifling through females sock drawers looking for my shadow. I found this old e-mail today and, in an endeavor to come to grips with my past in the wake of a new four-year cycle, felt compelled to post it. Feel free to read as much or none.
Dearest (Shnuggly-Whuggly) Angel,
Hey girl, how's life with you? Hope I didn't smurf-n-smurf alike my cold with you this past weekend (you know, like, when we were e-e-e-e-e-e). I'm still weathered and nasally washed-up and went to the healthcenter today to get some more medicine. The nurse said that my sickness, in all possibility, was spawned by malnutrition, not imbibing enough fluids (she explicitly told me using her hands demonstrating that, in this quote medicinal 'context' alcohol was not synonymous with the noun 'fluidity' and such underground collegiate panacea's such as 'Hooch' and MGD should be as now declared void and intrusive to my infective immune system) and mostly just over-actuating my deft scholarly prowess by staying up late at night and writing such kick-ass "David, in addition to being the Universal emblem of theworld's-most-Sensuous-lover ( internationally noted asthe Doob-lay-vay, Ehm, Es, Elle-WMSL, en France) you-also-write -the-most-orgasmic-bedpole-tittering-paragraphs-that-it's NO-wonder your-nervous-system inwardly- capitulates- to- such- maladies-when-your-passion-fraught- paragraphs-evince-the erotic ardorusually- reserved- for- the- likes- of- Lesbians."Anyway, maybe I was just drugged up, but that was I thought she told me...
I ended up writing you two 'real' letters last night at work (the kind you have to lick first) and sent youa botched e-mail which became cyberoptically effaced when my computer spontaneously shut off(MERDE-TECHNOLOGY)....
How is my most benevolent BU? Life there (classes wise anyway) was twice as simple. It was like, @Bradley, the teachers would use Baby butt-wipes and here I'm lucky if I can find a sheath of cardboard. My one literature class keeps my elation sky-high. Sometimes I'm just off the wall in the classroom and the teachers and students smile which is cool, b/c at Bradley I had a proclivity to accost LIT/ CW classes like I was DF Wallace's IJ publicity photo and sometimes (esp. twoyears ago) I would act all Serious and evince this inadvertent My-vocab-makes-your-vocab-look like Cream-of-Wheat sans the raisins type of hip-fatigue semblance (yes-my college foibles)which some of the teachers and V. thought was a cool aura to give offonly intrinsically it was not me......(V is still very much like that-henceforth the bombed dyad)..Today Iactually punned the analogy "A verbal Versailles" to describe something, which I thought was cool for only getting 25 minutes of sleep in the last 36 hours..
(Sniff/Sniff)
The short stories I've been working on, not as assiduously as I would have like to but sedulous in sincerity nonetheless, entail a montage of interlinked motif's...very collegiate ambiance shit slathered in a stage-drop that is very oh-so reminiscent of that ADM-noisome watered town which held so many friable avenues of my dreams clasped in it's dog-bear paw. One SS deals with a "true" FRATBOY ritual where all the boys (new initiatives) clamor around an Avantis gondola and, all, at the same time, choke the chik-a-fillet and the last one whose shlong comes on the gondola is coerced by his so-called gelled-hair and dungareed 'brothers' to "Sink the SUB" if you know what I mean.....yeah, I know. "David, thank you very much for that discourse in puerility prior to lunch." Well Angel, anything for you.
I paid your parking ticket yesterday so next time your down here you won't inadvertently get towed. I miss ogling you and giving you back rubs in the thoroughly air-conditioned summer-shaded library. Miss waking up and walking Zoe and making alchemical coffee in Greata's funky-coffee beaker, miss tickling you on the couch and watching your eyes set into Jungian somnolency. Miss the showers and the unbidden view of Illinois from atop of the Handcock. Miss the spontaneous fling of clothes, the Zoe imprints on my sweater, the sound of Kate Bush on the stereo, the fizzily-corona-bubbles moving up-and-down like a lavalamp. Miss the dissipation of summer, the outing's,Gormans and Guiness, the ubiquity of mocha-huedworshipers of Islam and Indra, the Dunkin'-Donuts cooffee runs prior to class. Cream, no sugar. Miss the sight of your skin in perfect proximity to mine. Missthe sound and subtle hums your body gently emits when it is silent and asleep.
Hopefully we'll be able to purloin an autumnal weekend or two and hit Mattheison or Allerton orChi-town for a crazy (though financially complacent)jaunt. Went for a requisite long walk last night priorto work dandling both a Cuban cigar and mirrored beneath a sheet of respelndent stardust and my dreams. My wings fledge as my dreams leap out of the contour,off the frame, into the wildest thoughts of human genomes........reading poetry and thinking of Walt Whitman and Tennyson and (always room for)Shakespeare. Working on a postmodern treatise and writing and wondering how not to get too fucked by my art b/c I'm so indulgent-and-solipsistic that I stop talking to foreigners......
Brooksie-Angel, know that even though I am not with you I am with you. Hourly thoughts of you beseech me harboring poignant memories. Touch knows you before sight. Hang in there with D'ric. Soon, all shall be conciliated. Slow down. Life offers us enough curves as it is. Pull off the four-lane Kennedy and take that lone country road where only you and your thoughts and the sunset thrive in full bloom. I think and pray(I've started 'praying' since -utilizing Socratic Q &A of course- a non-corporeal-intuitive God must existsince the Divine-ineffable palm of Providence willassist me me with my CHEM lab) for you daily that you will find, above all, equanimity and love.
Time to egress this e-mail and hit the books and sleep.
I love you.
Chin'up kidd-o.
David
(ironically dated September 11th, 2000)
Dearest (Shnuggly-Whuggly) Angel,
Hey girl, how's life with you? Hope I didn't smurf-n-smurf alike my cold with you this past weekend (you know, like, when we were e-e-e-e-e-e). I'm still weathered and nasally washed-up and went to the healthcenter today to get some more medicine. The nurse said that my sickness, in all possibility, was spawned by malnutrition, not imbibing enough fluids (she explicitly told me using her hands demonstrating that, in this quote medicinal 'context' alcohol was not synonymous with the noun 'fluidity' and such underground collegiate panacea's such as 'Hooch' and MGD should be as now declared void and intrusive to my infective immune system) and mostly just over-actuating my deft scholarly prowess by staying up late at night and writing such kick-ass "David, in addition to being the Universal emblem of theworld's-most-Sensuous-lover ( internationally noted asthe Doob-lay-vay, Ehm, Es, Elle-WMSL, en France) you-also-write -the-most-orgasmic-bedpole-tittering-paragraphs-that-it's NO-wonder your-nervous-system inwardly- capitulates- to- such- maladies-when-your-passion-fraught- paragraphs-evince-the erotic ardorusually- reserved- for- the- likes- of- Lesbians."Anyway, maybe I was just drugged up, but that was I thought she told me...
I ended up writing you two 'real' letters last night at work (the kind you have to lick first) and sent youa botched e-mail which became cyberoptically effaced when my computer spontaneously shut off(MERDE-TECHNOLOGY)....
How is my most benevolent BU? Life there (classes wise anyway) was twice as simple. It was like, @Bradley, the teachers would use Baby butt-wipes and here I'm lucky if I can find a sheath of cardboard. My one literature class keeps my elation sky-high. Sometimes I'm just off the wall in the classroom and the teachers and students smile which is cool, b/c at Bradley I had a proclivity to accost LIT/ CW classes like I was DF Wallace's IJ publicity photo and sometimes (esp. twoyears ago) I would act all Serious and evince this inadvertent My-vocab-makes-your-vocab-look like Cream-of-Wheat sans the raisins type of hip-fatigue semblance (yes-my college foibles)which some of the teachers and V. thought was a cool aura to give offonly intrinsically it was not me......(V is still very much like that-henceforth the bombed dyad)..Today Iactually punned the analogy "A verbal Versailles" to describe something, which I thought was cool for only getting 25 minutes of sleep in the last 36 hours..
(Sniff/Sniff)
The short stories I've been working on, not as assiduously as I would have like to but sedulous in sincerity nonetheless, entail a montage of interlinked motif's...very collegiate ambiance shit slathered in a stage-drop that is very oh-so reminiscent of that ADM-noisome watered town which held so many friable avenues of my dreams clasped in it's dog-bear paw. One SS deals with a "true" FRATBOY ritual where all the boys (new initiatives) clamor around an Avantis gondola and, all, at the same time, choke the chik-a-fillet and the last one whose shlong comes on the gondola is coerced by his so-called gelled-hair and dungareed 'brothers' to "Sink the SUB" if you know what I mean.....yeah, I know. "David, thank you very much for that discourse in puerility prior to lunch." Well Angel, anything for you.
I paid your parking ticket yesterday so next time your down here you won't inadvertently get towed. I miss ogling you and giving you back rubs in the thoroughly air-conditioned summer-shaded library. Miss waking up and walking Zoe and making alchemical coffee in Greata's funky-coffee beaker, miss tickling you on the couch and watching your eyes set into Jungian somnolency. Miss the showers and the unbidden view of Illinois from atop of the Handcock. Miss the spontaneous fling of clothes, the Zoe imprints on my sweater, the sound of Kate Bush on the stereo, the fizzily-corona-bubbles moving up-and-down like a lavalamp. Miss the dissipation of summer, the outing's,Gormans and Guiness, the ubiquity of mocha-huedworshipers of Islam and Indra, the Dunkin'-Donuts cooffee runs prior to class. Cream, no sugar. Miss the sight of your skin in perfect proximity to mine. Missthe sound and subtle hums your body gently emits when it is silent and asleep.
Hopefully we'll be able to purloin an autumnal weekend or two and hit Mattheison or Allerton orChi-town for a crazy (though financially complacent)jaunt. Went for a requisite long walk last night priorto work dandling both a Cuban cigar and mirrored beneath a sheet of respelndent stardust and my dreams. My wings fledge as my dreams leap out of the contour,off the frame, into the wildest thoughts of human genomes........reading poetry and thinking of Walt Whitman and Tennyson and (always room for)Shakespeare. Working on a postmodern treatise and writing and wondering how not to get too fucked by my art b/c I'm so indulgent-and-solipsistic that I stop talking to foreigners......
Brooksie-Angel, know that even though I am not with you I am with you. Hourly thoughts of you beseech me harboring poignant memories. Touch knows you before sight. Hang in there with D'ric. Soon, all shall be conciliated. Slow down. Life offers us enough curves as it is. Pull off the four-lane Kennedy and take that lone country road where only you and your thoughts and the sunset thrive in full bloom. I think and pray(I've started 'praying' since -utilizing Socratic Q &A of course- a non-corporeal-intuitive God must existsince the Divine-ineffable palm of Providence willassist me me with my CHEM lab) for you daily that you will find, above all, equanimity and love.
Time to egress this e-mail and hit the books and sleep.
I love you.
Chin'up kidd-o.
David
(ironically dated September 11th, 2000)
Monday, January 17, 2005
Entrance by alphabetical troops....
Last couple of days I haven't been able to sleep and have been stomping around my house in pajma bottoms; my body quietly tucked in the helm of my late-fathers flannel housecoat like a drape or a fallen husk-- writing nonstop. This happens maybe twice a year (mostly with "poems"), the words decide they're going to deprive me of even more sleep and I can feel the hard slants and sensual curves of language--the verbal gargle of my life, slowly sieve through my pores, demanding this insomniac to surrender and splatter whipsmart shapes and images against the new born snow of a fresh page.
All I can do is stare at the square bluish tint of the screen and rattle out images.
It's the best feeling on the planet.
Whatever your gift is....whatever your passion, never stop giving.
All I can do is stare at the square bluish tint of the screen and rattle out images.
It's the best feeling on the planet.
Whatever your gift is....whatever your passion, never stop giving.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Shadows and silkweeds and the possibility of a prayer
Leaving early (early) tomorrow morning for phase two of my vacation. Wakey-wakey arrives at 3:30am so I can bus it up to Chi-town. After that its about an hour rickety commute up to Wilmette where I can capitulate for a couple of hours into the clandestine womb of prayer. In all candor, I hate praying--hate praying!!!! Or rather, I hate praying for myself...hate asking my own myopic heavily Westernized ideology of a Diety for assistance. For wayward orientation. For direction. Even if I'm lodged on a kyak in a remote corner of the Pacific with nothing in paw but a limp compass and a box of stale cracker-jack to subside on, I'm more wont to rely on my own "interior" sense of navigation--where I think I should be going--rather than humbly asking for guidance.
I come from a family deeply rooted in spiritual soil. Growing up we were known as the freakish family who squinted our eyes, lowered our collective chins and "prayed" in public restaurants prior to taxed meals. My parents were never embarassed by this--thanking a supreme being for nourishment (in the similar fashion of our Neanderthal relatives offered gratitutde thanked the spirit of the hunted animal prior to consumption) but myself and my sister were horrified. In the mid-eighties, the age of Max Hedron and ALF, praying in public places was a far cry from posh.
When I was around the size of a firehydrant, my father would come into my room, tuck me in, bow on both knees and pray. He would pray for his childs safety. Pray that his child would be healthy. Pray that his child would know what was right--for his future partner and that the two of them would be blessed. Often, during the prayer, dad and I would volley the lyrics to "Now I lay thee down to sleep" Dad chanting the first line, his son, thirty years younger with a snotty lip, echoing the refrain.
Mother always prayed in the early hours accompanying the gravitational tilt of the planet into the solar tug of dawn. Some of my most cherished memories of my mother were waking up at 5am and watching mother huddled in her green housecoat sipping weak tea, a splayed, thoroughly annotated NIV splattered across her lap like a wounded dove.
Mom always had "prayer partners." Over the past holdiay I tumbled across a huge literary "tome" chronicling decades of my mother's spiritual epiphanies. In one box alone, I found about thirty spiral notebooks, each brimming with mother's swirly blue-inked cursive handwriting.
These notebooks contained my own matraich's "Blogs"--her spiritual yearnings, her humble requests for her progeny. Like her eldest, mom could write for hours; but unlike her firstborn, mother didn't rely on her own intelligent or acuemen; she mastered the capacity to whittle her own ego and ask for guidance in something whose worth transcends temporal material satisfaction. More than any other human I have ever met--my mother has put her stock into something higher.
Don't get me wrong. I have no aversion to prayer; towards the art of supplication and praying--
I've never held qualms abouy uttering "gratitude" prayers. Prayers of thanx and joy. I once heard a Philosophy prof. deliver an emotionally riveting semantic sermon on how the words "thoughtful" and "thankful" were derived from the same etymological prefix.
"At one time a 'thankful person' was synonmous with a 'thoughtful' or 'intelligent preson.'"
The prayers for the departed also hover on the tip of my palate like a canker sore. Uncle Mike (whose an ornery hybrid between Gandalf the Good and a spiritual Socrates) always insists to remember the souls who don't have support. Every time we drive past an open cemetary, I sense Mike uttering the words for those souls that have "abandoned the physical garment and have ascended to the spirtual world."
On my first sojourn to the House Of worship, the caretaker, Eve, ferried me around, addressed me as "honey," and I sat upstairs, head down and uttered prayers for my late-father and grandparents.
Six months later, at Greenlake, I encountered Eve again. She didn't remember me, but when I accosted her and thanked her for giving me that tour (mentioning to her that I happened to be in chicago for my grandmothers funeral at the time) Eve immediately reclined her lunch tray, clasped the lids of her eyes shut and submitted the prayer of the departed in the middle of the cafeteria. The fact that my identity was a blur to her was merely secondary.
******
After grousing to Nick the Writer and Shannon Moore about yearning to find a short story that grabs me by the labels--I found one. A story entitled "Bamboo" published in the chicago Tribune five years ago. I stumbled upon it via Microfish (ick).....it's a brilliant story. A yuppie going through a divorce falls in love with the chain-smoking female carpenter constructing his sun deck. It's been, by far, the best short story I've read in the last three months.
The part of the story that melted into me was one that carpenter, who it turns out was an ex-priest, told her amor that she left the seminary after reading a story about national Geographic about a succinct type of bird that migrates thousands of miles every year, to this one remote island, sheerly to mate.
The carpenter relays a story to this yuppie--how a science experience was conducted. Scientists incubated several of these birds in Scandanvia; hatched their eggs; kept the winged creatures indoors in a covered cage. When the brids swiftly arrived into sexual maturity, they were released into the atmosphere for the first time and they immediately new where to fly. They knew exactly which part of the planet to flock to in order to continue their species. They new where to go, even though they had never been there.
I've mulled over this analogy alot over the past couple of days. That spiritually imprinted in all of us is the ability to know exactly, our purpose---not only to know, but also, perhaps, to live out our destiny as well.
I come from a family deeply rooted in spiritual soil. Growing up we were known as the freakish family who squinted our eyes, lowered our collective chins and "prayed" in public restaurants prior to taxed meals. My parents were never embarassed by this--thanking a supreme being for nourishment (in the similar fashion of our Neanderthal relatives offered gratitutde thanked the spirit of the hunted animal prior to consumption) but myself and my sister were horrified. In the mid-eighties, the age of Max Hedron and ALF, praying in public places was a far cry from posh.
When I was around the size of a firehydrant, my father would come into my room, tuck me in, bow on both knees and pray. He would pray for his childs safety. Pray that his child would be healthy. Pray that his child would know what was right--for his future partner and that the two of them would be blessed. Often, during the prayer, dad and I would volley the lyrics to "Now I lay thee down to sleep" Dad chanting the first line, his son, thirty years younger with a snotty lip, echoing the refrain.
Mother always prayed in the early hours accompanying the gravitational tilt of the planet into the solar tug of dawn. Some of my most cherished memories of my mother were waking up at 5am and watching mother huddled in her green housecoat sipping weak tea, a splayed, thoroughly annotated NIV splattered across her lap like a wounded dove.
Mom always had "prayer partners." Over the past holdiay I tumbled across a huge literary "tome" chronicling decades of my mother's spiritual epiphanies. In one box alone, I found about thirty spiral notebooks, each brimming with mother's swirly blue-inked cursive handwriting.
These notebooks contained my own matraich's "Blogs"--her spiritual yearnings, her humble requests for her progeny. Like her eldest, mom could write for hours; but unlike her firstborn, mother didn't rely on her own intelligent or acuemen; she mastered the capacity to whittle her own ego and ask for guidance in something whose worth transcends temporal material satisfaction. More than any other human I have ever met--my mother has put her stock into something higher.
Don't get me wrong. I have no aversion to prayer; towards the art of supplication and praying--
I've never held qualms abouy uttering "gratitude" prayers. Prayers of thanx and joy. I once heard a Philosophy prof. deliver an emotionally riveting semantic sermon on how the words "thoughtful" and "thankful" were derived from the same etymological prefix.
"At one time a 'thankful person' was synonmous with a 'thoughtful' or 'intelligent preson.'"
The prayers for the departed also hover on the tip of my palate like a canker sore. Uncle Mike (whose an ornery hybrid between Gandalf the Good and a spiritual Socrates) always insists to remember the souls who don't have support. Every time we drive past an open cemetary, I sense Mike uttering the words for those souls that have "abandoned the physical garment and have ascended to the spirtual world."
On my first sojourn to the House Of worship, the caretaker, Eve, ferried me around, addressed me as "honey," and I sat upstairs, head down and uttered prayers for my late-father and grandparents.
Six months later, at Greenlake, I encountered Eve again. She didn't remember me, but when I accosted her and thanked her for giving me that tour (mentioning to her that I happened to be in chicago for my grandmothers funeral at the time) Eve immediately reclined her lunch tray, clasped the lids of her eyes shut and submitted the prayer of the departed in the middle of the cafeteria. The fact that my identity was a blur to her was merely secondary.
******
After grousing to Nick the Writer and Shannon Moore about yearning to find a short story that grabs me by the labels--I found one. A story entitled "Bamboo" published in the chicago Tribune five years ago. I stumbled upon it via Microfish (ick).....it's a brilliant story. A yuppie going through a divorce falls in love with the chain-smoking female carpenter constructing his sun deck. It's been, by far, the best short story I've read in the last three months.
The part of the story that melted into me was one that carpenter, who it turns out was an ex-priest, told her amor that she left the seminary after reading a story about national Geographic about a succinct type of bird that migrates thousands of miles every year, to this one remote island, sheerly to mate.
The carpenter relays a story to this yuppie--how a science experience was conducted. Scientists incubated several of these birds in Scandanvia; hatched their eggs; kept the winged creatures indoors in a covered cage. When the brids swiftly arrived into sexual maturity, they were released into the atmosphere for the first time and they immediately new where to fly. They knew exactly which part of the planet to flock to in order to continue their species. They new where to go, even though they had never been there.
I've mulled over this analogy alot over the past couple of days. That spiritually imprinted in all of us is the ability to know exactly, our purpose---not only to know, but also, perhaps, to live out our destiny as well.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Mara under the Mistletoe.....
Happy New Year to all ya'll blog oglers lurking around the bin of cyberspace!!! I can't even begin to fathom all the possibilities this New Year will avail and wish all who read this joy and happiness and of course, and endless stream of creative karma flooded with fields of laughter and smiles and friendships and lovers and all the things that add meaning to this skip-n-sojourn around the sun.
Highlights from the past holiday include being Net free for two weeks (it's amazing how peaceful life was prior to our warbled dot.com obsession), presnting "angels" to Mama Bear on Christmas day --she liked the golden cross I purchased for her better, but that's just her--travelling all around the state, spending New Years eve with a mixture of Iranian dissidents, anarchists, heavy drinkers, Med students, and my best friends Nick the writer, song writer Dave McDonald, published scholar DUST and of course, a friendly close-lippped "button" kiss from my beautiful friend Jennifer on the final gong indicating Midnight (was she Jennifer or was she Cinderella?) .....perfect.
I went Ice fishing with my Uncle and Brother-in-law the day after Christmas. The pond was frosted over with about eight inches of ice. In mid-winter, the brittle Illinois horizon is streaked with a hard nickel back gray refulgence. The tufted clouds seem splattered against the atmosphere in an overhead puddle of silver bulbs. With the snow patches and barren landscape, the sky and the land seem to weld into a subliminal oneness with the earth, with the body, with the soul that yearns--the heart that seeks; the flesh that aches to acheive this sort of oneness.
My Uncle, my late-father's younger brother, is a flannel shirted man of the hills. We drove out deep into the country, swerving down slings of gravel roads and rackety hills. Way out, past Glasford, we found the frozen mecca--the pond, a chalked fount awaiting the orchestrated casts of our wrists; the dips of our baited lines.
We drilled holes, smoked cigars, drank pissing hot coffee from a thermos, froze in between shots of family philosphy and idle jokes.
"That's what Jesus told St. Peter when he tried walking on the water. 'Just try it in December!'"
While sloshing to work in the frigid rain this morning, I came to the realization that the reason I love writing so much is that a writer--the true artists-- understands that he is always a dilettante; always a virgin. There's no black belts, no PHD's, no corporate rungs, no anniversaries. No matter how much a writer has published or written, he always arrives to the pristine winteresque blankness of a page--the virgin whiteness of an oblong sheath--the bridal pinings awaiting inky scratches--the overall newness of language. Same with a painter and his blank canvas; or as my brother in law noted, a doctor with his white coat- an estimatation that no matter how much we learn or acheive about the human body; about the world of art, about the pulsating spirit, we will always be sophomores--always be yearning, acheiving and growing in our finite knowledge of our ever vibrating globe.
True the race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor wealth cosigned to men of understanding, but chance and time do happen to us all. On the advent of this New Year, my friends, let us never forget how little we know, how profound and curious the world is and what a joy it is to be immersed in this bubble of life one magical eternal moment at a time.
Highlights from the past holiday include being Net free for two weeks (it's amazing how peaceful life was prior to our warbled dot.com obsession), presnting "angels" to Mama Bear on Christmas day --she liked the golden cross I purchased for her better, but that's just her--travelling all around the state, spending New Years eve with a mixture of Iranian dissidents, anarchists, heavy drinkers, Med students, and my best friends Nick the writer, song writer Dave McDonald, published scholar DUST and of course, a friendly close-lippped "button" kiss from my beautiful friend Jennifer on the final gong indicating Midnight (was she Jennifer or was she Cinderella?) .....perfect.
I went Ice fishing with my Uncle and Brother-in-law the day after Christmas. The pond was frosted over with about eight inches of ice. In mid-winter, the brittle Illinois horizon is streaked with a hard nickel back gray refulgence. The tufted clouds seem splattered against the atmosphere in an overhead puddle of silver bulbs. With the snow patches and barren landscape, the sky and the land seem to weld into a subliminal oneness with the earth, with the body, with the soul that yearns--the heart that seeks; the flesh that aches to acheive this sort of oneness.
My Uncle, my late-father's younger brother, is a flannel shirted man of the hills. We drove out deep into the country, swerving down slings of gravel roads and rackety hills. Way out, past Glasford, we found the frozen mecca--the pond, a chalked fount awaiting the orchestrated casts of our wrists; the dips of our baited lines.
We drilled holes, smoked cigars, drank pissing hot coffee from a thermos, froze in between shots of family philosphy and idle jokes.
"That's what Jesus told St. Peter when he tried walking on the water. 'Just try it in December!'"
While sloshing to work in the frigid rain this morning, I came to the realization that the reason I love writing so much is that a writer--the true artists-- understands that he is always a dilettante; always a virgin. There's no black belts, no PHD's, no corporate rungs, no anniversaries. No matter how much a writer has published or written, he always arrives to the pristine winteresque blankness of a page--the virgin whiteness of an oblong sheath--the bridal pinings awaiting inky scratches--the overall newness of language. Same with a painter and his blank canvas; or as my brother in law noted, a doctor with his white coat- an estimatation that no matter how much we learn or acheive about the human body; about the world of art, about the pulsating spirit, we will always be sophomores--always be yearning, acheiving and growing in our finite knowledge of our ever vibrating globe.
True the race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor wealth cosigned to men of understanding, but chance and time do happen to us all. On the advent of this New Year, my friends, let us never forget how little we know, how profound and curious the world is and what a joy it is to be immersed in this bubble of life one magical eternal moment at a time.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Let Me sleep it's Christmas Time--1997 (iii) finale
"Do you know anything about the Festival of lights?"
It's not the voice I was anticipating hearing, but its a voice. It's feminine warmth permeates into the plastic lobe of the phone. I can feel her entire body opening up; pouring like a carafe of vintage wine through the plastic receiver.
"Yeah, in fact I was wondering...."Romantic bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Not the voice you've been waiting for kid, but a voice none the less. A voice tucked inside the plastic womb of Ma bell. The voice caged behind succulent lips and a killer body. And that ass. You told all your male co-workers that you would hit that. You tell your gay boss when you are reeling down the metal grille that you're going to hit that, even though he responded with a shoulder shudder and a verbal 'ick. You tell you best friend Hale that you are going to hit that. It feels like everyone is expecting you to hit that and now, She is even expecting you to hit that. She made the first initiative. She cornered all of your emotional pawns on the dating chess board and now expects to be mated.
She called you up. She wants you. She's been waiting for you.
You already have her phone number posted in the back room memorized. Twice, during a shift, you burrowed your face deep into her fur coat, inhaling, wondering what her warmth feels like from a closer angle.
But you are waiting for another girl. Megan. You called her the day after Thanksgiving and she was her typical, aloof self. Quiet. Confused. She didn't laugh at anything you said. She suggests that your view of reality and adulthood are askewed everytime you talk about your books you are writing. She said she would call you back Sunday night. It is Sunday now. You've called Megan twice already and left friendly messages. You tell her you love her. You tell her you'll wait for her. You tell her that whatever she's going through right now is fine. You practically make-out with the dubbed voice that informs cyber-optic solicitors that she can't take your call right now. You call back long distance just to listen to that voice. YOU LOVE THAT VOICE!
You try to write poems about her. You wait. And finally, the phone rings!!!! It is a female voice and it asks for you! You smile. You're charming. You're confident. She came back to you. You're life once agian has merit. You're no longer a failure. But wait.... It's the lithe voice of your co-worker Jana. The girl with the nice ass. "Is this the nice ass club? Hale said, nudging his thick slab of elbow into your gut the first night she clocked into the book store where you are a supervisor. You trained Jana that night. She smiled at you. She seemed charmed, delighted. Her cheek bones drove you nucking futs, the two of you continued to flirt. You feel comfortable around her, the two of you LAUGH incessantly together. The world's a big joke. Even things that are meted by a certain measure of sincerity--important worldly topics-- seemed to sit on the global whoopie cushion--like someone farting in a United Nations Press conference.
"Festival of Lights. Yeah. I'll take you. This Friday I'll pick you up. How 'bout dinner before hand. You ever been to Rizzi's? I love Rizzi's! That settles it. This Friday. I'll pick you up."
Months later you find out that Megan, the girl you were waiting for, was actually sitting next to her anwer machine when you called that Sunday night in November. When asked why she didn't pick up she would shrug and say simply "I couldn't."
*****
You pick Jana up in the same clunker you ferried to Matthiessen three weeks earlier. She is dressed to kill. You could light a cigarette off the low-cut leather skirt she is wearing; that's how hot she looks.
You hand her a rose. It is the fifth of December. For the next nine months the fifth will be christened as your anniversary. You'll take her out to dinner on the fifth--hell--you'll take her out to dinner every Friday!!!!
She's a picky eater. She doesn't eat "crusts." She also doesn't smoke "What a coincidence?" You say, making an inward vow. "I just quit!"
You take her around town. The two of you look at the Christmas lights together. At first you feel like a clumsy high-school freshman usurped from a John Hughes film taking a stab at the senior homecoming queen. You drive fast. Your left hand on the wheel; your right hand in her lap; ensconced in her palm--a clam shell composed of fingers and flesh.
You take her up on the bluff to a place where you can see the entire city. The city is a blur of holiday lights. You hold her. The two of you have yet to kiss. Have yet to fully embrace. You quote her poems; your favorite poem, a mantra from Whitman-- you quote, holding her hand, looking through the glass windshield of your clunker, dazed by the green and red lights -- interstellar holiday constellations.
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.
It is the poem you live for and she seems stunned. It was the poem you read in front of your entire illiterate high school. The poem you first came across three years ago when you decided you wanted to be a poe-hit.
You take her to your bedroom. Your parents are downstairs. Your mother is friendly. Your Dad smiles at you and wobbles his chin in an assenting manner as the two fo you pracne through the televised heat of the living room. Your room is full of books--so many books--and a thick oak desk you use as an emotinal puddle--splashing around the chorus of words and sound.
There is art in your room. Renoir. Boticelli. Most girls you reel up here think that you are gay. You hold Jana. The two of you kiss.
"Let's go back to my place." she suggests, with a smile. "I'd feel more comfortable there."
*******
Entering her dorm you feel the wild orchard of her breath--the rosemary sage of her tongue. She is an RA--she has her own room. Everything is neat. Once the door clicks lock there is a rattle. A bevy of college sophmores huddled together in pajama bottoms, giggling. They all want to meet you. She has told everyone about you!
You feel important. The door clicks shut and the two of you glide to her mattress; your lids peeled down; your bodies connected. You are saying things. Making promises no twenty year old should make. You hold each other and before you know it a pastel winter dawn streams into her side window and the two of you are dressed only in your undergarments, huddled on top of a futon, listening to enya--your bodies contorted into a sleepy pretzel of limbs and appendages.
"What's that?" You say, pointing to a plant as you rise up to adjust the blind.
"That's Karen." Jana says, slipping into the shirt you were wearing without asking.
"Karen?"
"The plants name is Karen." Jana says. "Don't ask me why I name things. A friend gave me the plant and I just thought it looked like a Karen."
"I think you look like a morning angel." You say, before cursing at the osciallting hands on your watch, reailzing that you have to open the book shop in forty-five minutes.
You get dressed. She peels off your shirt and hands it back to you with a smile. She's more comfortable with her body than you are.
Although the blinds are clipped, the morning sunning still slants through the window, hitting Jana, forming a corona of light, a nimbus, around her head.
"I'll call you later. Thanks for last night." You say.
"Think will have more 'last nights.' Jana inquires.
"I think last night was just the preamble." You say, kissing her lips, her cheek bones, her forehead, her smile.
********
"So you didn't hit that?" Hale inquires, tugging on his pipe during a smoke break, later in the week.
"She desn't want to have sex until after she comes back. I mean, she says she wants to, she says she's in love with me. She wants it to be special. Not rushed."
"What," Hale's pipe falls out of his mouth.
"She wants to do it once she comes back from South Padre. She says she knows it's right for her."
"Shit," Hale shakes his head in disgrace as if his office pool lottery pick is now void. "you been talking to her."
"For hours every night." You say.
"What about Megan?" Hale inquires.
"She never called me back. She doesn't care. Fuck her."
"Jana is hot. She has a nice..."
"I know. I know."
Hale starts to make unctuous male sexual mating sounds. He re-lights his pipe. Normally you would fire up a cigarette, but since Jana is so adamant about not-smoking you decided to quit.
"I'm spending the night at her dorm this Friday." You said. "It's our Christmas together. She leaves next Tuesday and she'll be gone for a month."
"That's a long ass time bro,"
"Shit."
"Do you love her?" Hale inquires, you smile.
"I think I might."
Hale begins to laugh, breaks into his locker room rant. "Well you know Dave, if she really is your soul-mate there's only one way to find out."
*********
It is the Friday before she adjourns to south Padre and we are having our Christmas together. I break into Jana's dorm and surprise her. Heaps of packages are placed under diminutive Christmas tree. Jana is talking long distance on the phone to her mom. She wants to tell her mom about me in person. I do everything in my power to distract her; to make her laugh; giggle while she is talking to Mamma Bear.
" Be Good," Jana says, with a smile, twisting my hand.
"Ahhhh."
"Nothing Mom," she says, her cheekbones protruding slightly as she says goodbye before tying her arms around my neck.
"Merry Christmas, darling!" She says, before escorting me over to the Christmas tree. We exchange gifts. We tell each other which gifts to unwrap first. We hold gratitude make-out sessions between bartered packages. Finally, she reaches over to her bed, hoisting up a small package from behing her pillow.
"I'm not creative like you try to be in your writing, but I did make you something." Jana says, placing a thinly wrapped package in my palms. "Merry Christmas."
I open it up. It is a wooden frame with two sides. On one side is a picture of Renoir's Les dejeuner des canotiers a picture she had noticed in my bedroom--on the other side was a cursive rendering of the poem--Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric--the poem I quoted to her on our first date, only a week and several decades ago.
"I thought you could keep this on your writing desk and think of me." She said, her face full of smiles.
We kissed and held each other and again, awoke several hours later, the hard winter orange signifiying morn creeping it's feathery tail into her bedroom window.
"It's gonna be sad though." Jana acknowledges, batting her eyes. "It's gonna be sad when we say goodbye on Tuesday."
It doesn't have to be sad, " I said. "I mean, we could be like. HI-FIVE."
Giggles and work. There's always work in the morning. I dress, kiss her forehead, clambor in my clunker and head back into work.
******************
On the Tuesday we said goodbye Jana's friend Jill lets you into her dorm room.
"I have a great idea." Jill says. "Why don't you surprise Jana."
"What?"
"Get into wardrobe and jump out when she comes in."
Jana's bedroom was full of suitcases and duffel bags.
"Oh, and one other thing." Jill notes, in a manner reminiscent of a camp counseler, "Strip."
"What," I say.
"Come on, it'll be sexy. Just take off your clothes. Give Jana something to remember you by."
Jill pushes me into the closet and I begin to slough my outfit. Shirts and shoes doffed, no problem. My jeans are wreathed around my ankles when I hear Jana's voice. I trip. The closet door springs opens. There are ten other females in the room. I am in my underwear. The girls begin to laugh in a confetti of sprinkled giggles.
"Is that your boyfriend or are you just happy to see me baby." One of them says.
"So that's where you've been hiding him" Another says.
"Funny," I say zipping up my pants, snapping my belt into place. Jana smiles.
Gradually the girls filter out of the room. Jana and I exchanged sealed envelopes. earlier in the week we agreed to compose each other eternal missives declaring are love for each other--we decided we read them at four-o'clock the next day. The exact time her plane leaves the runway.
"I have a question for you," Jana asks. "Could you take care of Karen the fern when I 'm gone. I mean. just water her every couple of days....and I don't mean pee on her when you're drunk. I know how rowdy you and Hale get around the holidays."
"Wha...I can't pee on her."
"No," Jana says. I hoist her luggage and help her to her vehicle.
"I love you," Jana says. I volley the thread of syllables back into her forehead, knowing nothing about love. Knowing nothing about giving myself, feeling only that is the correct thing to say.
We begin to kiss. Jana swats tears from her sockets. The car horn is blaring. Jana has to go.
"Goodbye," We both say, Jana in tears.
"Wait," Jana says. "Hi-FIVE!"
We hi-five each other. Jana smiles. The car dissipates. I am standing alone, in my camel coat, holding Karen the Fern in my arms like a toddler.
Our lives would change and thank god for it. In a little over two years Jana would be engaged to a horse-trainer named Chad. When she came into the library to show me her engagement ring I gave her a hug. When we said our life long goodbye and wished each other luck, the only thing I could think of to tell her was "Hi-five." She remained quiet then, and walked out of my life forever.
I saw a picture of her with her husband in the campus Alumni magazine. Ironically it was the same alumni magazine that had the obituary of my father's death.
But that Christmas--Christmas 1997, I slept with the possibility of rebirth sprouting inside my chest. I slept so well. And that chalky December afternoon, cantering across Bradley quad with Karen the Fern in tow, I felt complete.
There was a car horn. It was Hale in his Dodge Ram. I entered the passenger seat and handed him the fern.
"So," Hale said. "Did you hit that?" Hale inquires, giving me a masculine nudge. My lips remained reticent.
"Brother." I told him. "I'm gonna be hitting that shit all my life."
*
It's not the voice I was anticipating hearing, but its a voice. It's feminine warmth permeates into the plastic lobe of the phone. I can feel her entire body opening up; pouring like a carafe of vintage wine through the plastic receiver.
"Yeah, in fact I was wondering...."Romantic bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Not the voice you've been waiting for kid, but a voice none the less. A voice tucked inside the plastic womb of Ma bell. The voice caged behind succulent lips and a killer body. And that ass. You told all your male co-workers that you would hit that. You tell your gay boss when you are reeling down the metal grille that you're going to hit that, even though he responded with a shoulder shudder and a verbal 'ick. You tell you best friend Hale that you are going to hit that. It feels like everyone is expecting you to hit that and now, She is even expecting you to hit that. She made the first initiative. She cornered all of your emotional pawns on the dating chess board and now expects to be mated.
She called you up. She wants you. She's been waiting for you.
You already have her phone number posted in the back room memorized. Twice, during a shift, you burrowed your face deep into her fur coat, inhaling, wondering what her warmth feels like from a closer angle.
But you are waiting for another girl. Megan. You called her the day after Thanksgiving and she was her typical, aloof self. Quiet. Confused. She didn't laugh at anything you said. She suggests that your view of reality and adulthood are askewed everytime you talk about your books you are writing. She said she would call you back Sunday night. It is Sunday now. You've called Megan twice already and left friendly messages. You tell her you love her. You tell her you'll wait for her. You tell her that whatever she's going through right now is fine. You practically make-out with the dubbed voice that informs cyber-optic solicitors that she can't take your call right now. You call back long distance just to listen to that voice. YOU LOVE THAT VOICE!
You try to write poems about her. You wait. And finally, the phone rings!!!! It is a female voice and it asks for you! You smile. You're charming. You're confident. She came back to you. You're life once agian has merit. You're no longer a failure. But wait.... It's the lithe voice of your co-worker Jana. The girl with the nice ass. "Is this the nice ass club? Hale said, nudging his thick slab of elbow into your gut the first night she clocked into the book store where you are a supervisor. You trained Jana that night. She smiled at you. She seemed charmed, delighted. Her cheek bones drove you nucking futs, the two of you continued to flirt. You feel comfortable around her, the two of you LAUGH incessantly together. The world's a big joke. Even things that are meted by a certain measure of sincerity--important worldly topics-- seemed to sit on the global whoopie cushion--like someone farting in a United Nations Press conference.
"Festival of Lights. Yeah. I'll take you. This Friday I'll pick you up. How 'bout dinner before hand. You ever been to Rizzi's? I love Rizzi's! That settles it. This Friday. I'll pick you up."
Months later you find out that Megan, the girl you were waiting for, was actually sitting next to her anwer machine when you called that Sunday night in November. When asked why she didn't pick up she would shrug and say simply "I couldn't."
*****
You pick Jana up in the same clunker you ferried to Matthiessen three weeks earlier. She is dressed to kill. You could light a cigarette off the low-cut leather skirt she is wearing; that's how hot she looks.
You hand her a rose. It is the fifth of December. For the next nine months the fifth will be christened as your anniversary. You'll take her out to dinner on the fifth--hell--you'll take her out to dinner every Friday!!!!
She's a picky eater. She doesn't eat "crusts." She also doesn't smoke "What a coincidence?" You say, making an inward vow. "I just quit!"
You take her around town. The two of you look at the Christmas lights together. At first you feel like a clumsy high-school freshman usurped from a John Hughes film taking a stab at the senior homecoming queen. You drive fast. Your left hand on the wheel; your right hand in her lap; ensconced in her palm--a clam shell composed of fingers and flesh.
You take her up on the bluff to a place where you can see the entire city. The city is a blur of holiday lights. You hold her. The two of you have yet to kiss. Have yet to fully embrace. You quote her poems; your favorite poem, a mantra from Whitman-- you quote, holding her hand, looking through the glass windshield of your clunker, dazed by the green and red lights -- interstellar holiday constellations.
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.
It is the poem you live for and she seems stunned. It was the poem you read in front of your entire illiterate high school. The poem you first came across three years ago when you decided you wanted to be a poe-hit.
You take her to your bedroom. Your parents are downstairs. Your mother is friendly. Your Dad smiles at you and wobbles his chin in an assenting manner as the two fo you pracne through the televised heat of the living room. Your room is full of books--so many books--and a thick oak desk you use as an emotinal puddle--splashing around the chorus of words and sound.
There is art in your room. Renoir. Boticelli. Most girls you reel up here think that you are gay. You hold Jana. The two of you kiss.
"Let's go back to my place." she suggests, with a smile. "I'd feel more comfortable there."
*******
Entering her dorm you feel the wild orchard of her breath--the rosemary sage of her tongue. She is an RA--she has her own room. Everything is neat. Once the door clicks lock there is a rattle. A bevy of college sophmores huddled together in pajama bottoms, giggling. They all want to meet you. She has told everyone about you!
You feel important. The door clicks shut and the two of you glide to her mattress; your lids peeled down; your bodies connected. You are saying things. Making promises no twenty year old should make. You hold each other and before you know it a pastel winter dawn streams into her side window and the two of you are dressed only in your undergarments, huddled on top of a futon, listening to enya--your bodies contorted into a sleepy pretzel of limbs and appendages.
"What's that?" You say, pointing to a plant as you rise up to adjust the blind.
"That's Karen." Jana says, slipping into the shirt you were wearing without asking.
"Karen?"
"The plants name is Karen." Jana says. "Don't ask me why I name things. A friend gave me the plant and I just thought it looked like a Karen."
"I think you look like a morning angel." You say, before cursing at the osciallting hands on your watch, reailzing that you have to open the book shop in forty-five minutes.
You get dressed. She peels off your shirt and hands it back to you with a smile. She's more comfortable with her body than you are.
Although the blinds are clipped, the morning sunning still slants through the window, hitting Jana, forming a corona of light, a nimbus, around her head.
"I'll call you later. Thanks for last night." You say.
"Think will have more 'last nights.' Jana inquires.
"I think last night was just the preamble." You say, kissing her lips, her cheek bones, her forehead, her smile.
********
"So you didn't hit that?" Hale inquires, tugging on his pipe during a smoke break, later in the week.
"She desn't want to have sex until after she comes back. I mean, she says she wants to, she says she's in love with me. She wants it to be special. Not rushed."
"What," Hale's pipe falls out of his mouth.
"She wants to do it once she comes back from South Padre. She says she knows it's right for her."
"Shit," Hale shakes his head in disgrace as if his office pool lottery pick is now void. "you been talking to her."
"For hours every night." You say.
"What about Megan?" Hale inquires.
"She never called me back. She doesn't care. Fuck her."
"Jana is hot. She has a nice..."
"I know. I know."
Hale starts to make unctuous male sexual mating sounds. He re-lights his pipe. Normally you would fire up a cigarette, but since Jana is so adamant about not-smoking you decided to quit.
"I'm spending the night at her dorm this Friday." You said. "It's our Christmas together. She leaves next Tuesday and she'll be gone for a month."
"That's a long ass time bro,"
"Shit."
"Do you love her?" Hale inquires, you smile.
"I think I might."
Hale begins to laugh, breaks into his locker room rant. "Well you know Dave, if she really is your soul-mate there's only one way to find out."
*********
It is the Friday before she adjourns to south Padre and we are having our Christmas together. I break into Jana's dorm and surprise her. Heaps of packages are placed under diminutive Christmas tree. Jana is talking long distance on the phone to her mom. She wants to tell her mom about me in person. I do everything in my power to distract her; to make her laugh; giggle while she is talking to Mamma Bear.
" Be Good," Jana says, with a smile, twisting my hand.
"Ahhhh."
"Nothing Mom," she says, her cheekbones protruding slightly as she says goodbye before tying her arms around my neck.
"Merry Christmas, darling!" She says, before escorting me over to the Christmas tree. We exchange gifts. We tell each other which gifts to unwrap first. We hold gratitude make-out sessions between bartered packages. Finally, she reaches over to her bed, hoisting up a small package from behing her pillow.
"I'm not creative like you try to be in your writing, but I did make you something." Jana says, placing a thinly wrapped package in my palms. "Merry Christmas."
I open it up. It is a wooden frame with two sides. On one side is a picture of Renoir's Les dejeuner des canotiers a picture she had noticed in my bedroom--on the other side was a cursive rendering of the poem--Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric--the poem I quoted to her on our first date, only a week and several decades ago.
"I thought you could keep this on your writing desk and think of me." She said, her face full of smiles.
We kissed and held each other and again, awoke several hours later, the hard winter orange signifiying morn creeping it's feathery tail into her bedroom window.
"It's gonna be sad though." Jana acknowledges, batting her eyes. "It's gonna be sad when we say goodbye on Tuesday."
It doesn't have to be sad, " I said. "I mean, we could be like. HI-FIVE."
Giggles and work. There's always work in the morning. I dress, kiss her forehead, clambor in my clunker and head back into work.
******************
On the Tuesday we said goodbye Jana's friend Jill lets you into her dorm room.
"I have a great idea." Jill says. "Why don't you surprise Jana."
"What?"
"Get into wardrobe and jump out when she comes in."
Jana's bedroom was full of suitcases and duffel bags.
"Oh, and one other thing." Jill notes, in a manner reminiscent of a camp counseler, "Strip."
"What," I say.
"Come on, it'll be sexy. Just take off your clothes. Give Jana something to remember you by."
Jill pushes me into the closet and I begin to slough my outfit. Shirts and shoes doffed, no problem. My jeans are wreathed around my ankles when I hear Jana's voice. I trip. The closet door springs opens. There are ten other females in the room. I am in my underwear. The girls begin to laugh in a confetti of sprinkled giggles.
"Is that your boyfriend or are you just happy to see me baby." One of them says.
"So that's where you've been hiding him" Another says.
"Funny," I say zipping up my pants, snapping my belt into place. Jana smiles.
Gradually the girls filter out of the room. Jana and I exchanged sealed envelopes. earlier in the week we agreed to compose each other eternal missives declaring are love for each other--we decided we read them at four-o'clock the next day. The exact time her plane leaves the runway.
"I have a question for you," Jana asks. "Could you take care of Karen the fern when I 'm gone. I mean. just water her every couple of days....and I don't mean pee on her when you're drunk. I know how rowdy you and Hale get around the holidays."
"Wha...I can't pee on her."
"No," Jana says. I hoist her luggage and help her to her vehicle.
"I love you," Jana says. I volley the thread of syllables back into her forehead, knowing nothing about love. Knowing nothing about giving myself, feeling only that is the correct thing to say.
We begin to kiss. Jana swats tears from her sockets. The car horn is blaring. Jana has to go.
"Goodbye," We both say, Jana in tears.
"Wait," Jana says. "Hi-FIVE!"
We hi-five each other. Jana smiles. The car dissipates. I am standing alone, in my camel coat, holding Karen the Fern in my arms like a toddler.
Our lives would change and thank god for it. In a little over two years Jana would be engaged to a horse-trainer named Chad. When she came into the library to show me her engagement ring I gave her a hug. When we said our life long goodbye and wished each other luck, the only thing I could think of to tell her was "Hi-five." She remained quiet then, and walked out of my life forever.
I saw a picture of her with her husband in the campus Alumni magazine. Ironically it was the same alumni magazine that had the obituary of my father's death.
But that Christmas--Christmas 1997, I slept with the possibility of rebirth sprouting inside my chest. I slept so well. And that chalky December afternoon, cantering across Bradley quad with Karen the Fern in tow, I felt complete.
There was a car horn. It was Hale in his Dodge Ram. I entered the passenger seat and handed him the fern.
"So," Hale said. "Did you hit that?" Hale inquires, giving me a masculine nudge. My lips remained reticent.
"Brother." I told him. "I'm gonna be hitting that shit all my life."
*
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Sometimes the Light at the end of the tunnel...
...is just the train at the other end...
Tonight is the last night of round the clock errupt through the calendar workaholic fest. Did the inopportune thing and slept for ten hours today so now I'm having a hard time concentrating.
Two finals tomorrow than two weeks off of work. My body is overly taxed, thoroughly caffeinated, dehydrated, exhausted, fatigued..blahblahblah ...
Break means three-or-four trips to see family and friends in Chicago. It also means plenty of writing (my favorite vice) and a chance to read non-stop OUTSIDE OF CLASS for a month!!!!!
But now I have to finish composing my theory final. THEORY SUCKS!!!! I've had a hard time in this class. Nine times out of ten people who are into LIT theory are writers who never got laid in grad school and who salivate for the literary spotlight. Give me a short-story and a secret world over semantics anyday!!!!!
Tonight is the last night of round the clock errupt through the calendar workaholic fest. Did the inopportune thing and slept for ten hours today so now I'm having a hard time concentrating.
Two finals tomorrow than two weeks off of work. My body is overly taxed, thoroughly caffeinated, dehydrated, exhausted, fatigued..blahblahblah ...
Break means three-or-four trips to see family and friends in Chicago. It also means plenty of writing (my favorite vice) and a chance to read non-stop OUTSIDE OF CLASS for a month!!!!!
But now I have to finish composing my theory final. THEORY SUCKS!!!! I've had a hard time in this class. Nine times out of ten people who are into LIT theory are writers who never got laid in grad school and who salivate for the literary spotlight. Give me a short-story and a secret world over semantics anyday!!!!!
Friday, December 10, 2004
Showering in a Glass Submarine
Feels like I'm on a nuclear submarine. 9 hours left until second final. I've been lodged in the library for almost thirty hours straight. Myself and my fellow 95% of the human population are begining to contemplate what ever happened to the concept of weekend? Interesting conversation with Mama Bear tonight that deserves to be blogged. But for now, it's back to the books........................................................................
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Magic in the air and the Fine Art of Anonymity....
Nothing beats dancing with a beautiful girl whose name you have a hard time remembering because it's crowded on the dancefloor. Nothing beats walking her home and shrouding her shoulders with your jacket to ward off the brittle November air. Nothing beats twirling her around in the late evening autumnal haze. Nothing beats holding her under the limbs of a park evergreen at two thirty in the morning, your bodies tumbled in mulch and dew. Nothing beats waking up with a splash of sunlight in her bedroom and kissing her forehead as you frisk the floor for your respective garments. Nothing beats tucking her in and letting the dog out as you (once again) head to work, because that's how you spend both your days and your nights and your weekends, you work, you sacrifice your health truckling to the whims of rich kids from chicago who've never had to work for much of anything.
Nothing beats the insinuating nod your co-worker gives you when he comments that "You have leaves stuck in your sweater" and you respond with a glazed look of triumph tucked into your smile. Nothing beats booting up your blogg and seeing the reflection of her Good China forehead in the blankness of your pending entry; thinking about how her eyes became wild pebbles rippling across the shore of her lips after you kissed.
Nothing beats reflecting over the sweetness of her breath. Nothing beats mentally raking over the few details you can remember about her five hours later. How her name is Nicole. How she is a philosophy major. How she plays guitar and is five ft. one and with feathery limbs. How she is only twenty. How she said she'd been with three other people before last night.How she had a parent who died from cancer who was two years younger than your dad who also died of cancer.
How her fingertips groped the tip of the sheet as she cloaked her entire body in a mound of warmth. How her body formed parenthesis and ellipses and various lowercase alphabetical shapes as she drifted into the nocturnal key signature of sleep.
Nothing beats wondering if you'll ever see her again. Which, in all honesty, you probably won't.
Nothing stings when she suggests "Do you think we should date?" And all you can do is hold her.
Nothing beats realizing on your way to work that sometime last night your wallet slipped out the side pocket of your jacket and you are short around $150 and have no identification. No school ID. No drivers license. No ATM. Nothing.
Nothing beats realizing this and not caring. Hoping that some bum found the money. Realizing that you, in a way, feel emanicipated from the tiny laminated rectangular gloss that so readily informs the world your eye color, of your height Of which organs you'd like to have donated. Of when your driving priveledges expire.
Nothing beats realizing who you are, on your own, with nothing but the memory of a smile. A plucked visual petal kissed from the nostalgia of someone else's lips.
Nothing beats the insinuating nod your co-worker gives you when he comments that "You have leaves stuck in your sweater" and you respond with a glazed look of triumph tucked into your smile. Nothing beats booting up your blogg and seeing the reflection of her Good China forehead in the blankness of your pending entry; thinking about how her eyes became wild pebbles rippling across the shore of her lips after you kissed.
Nothing beats reflecting over the sweetness of her breath. Nothing beats mentally raking over the few details you can remember about her five hours later. How her name is Nicole. How she is a philosophy major. How she plays guitar and is five ft. one and with feathery limbs. How she is only twenty. How she said she'd been with three other people before last night.How she had a parent who died from cancer who was two years younger than your dad who also died of cancer.
How her fingertips groped the tip of the sheet as she cloaked her entire body in a mound of warmth. How her body formed parenthesis and ellipses and various lowercase alphabetical shapes as she drifted into the nocturnal key signature of sleep.
Nothing beats wondering if you'll ever see her again. Which, in all honesty, you probably won't.
Nothing stings when she suggests "Do you think we should date?" And all you can do is hold her.
Nothing beats realizing on your way to work that sometime last night your wallet slipped out the side pocket of your jacket and you are short around $150 and have no identification. No school ID. No drivers license. No ATM. Nothing.
Nothing beats realizing this and not caring. Hoping that some bum found the money. Realizing that you, in a way, feel emanicipated from the tiny laminated rectangular gloss that so readily informs the world your eye color, of your height Of which organs you'd like to have donated. Of when your driving priveledges expire.
Nothing beats realizing who you are, on your own, with nothing but the memory of a smile. A plucked visual petal kissed from the nostalgia of someone else's lips.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
GLASS CONTINENT
Just found a stack of old 3 1/2 inch floppies with old poems I thought I'd never see again. This is a poem for Ashley, a brilliant creative writing student from Bismark North Dakota. Ashley hated my line breaks and would often write "BB" (which means Bad Break) in the margins of all the poems I would workshop. This poem is about breaking things and is for her (it's written in her impeccable style)....
Love song for Ashley Krenelka
“The preordained frangibility of the hymen,”
James Joyce, Ulysses
According to Ashley Krenelka
A creative writing student
From Bismark, North Dakota
I can’t break a line of poetry
To wipe my ass with.
It’s not that I haven’t had trouble
Breaking things before.
Every toy I had growing up
Broke rather easily.
My mom accused
Me of rough-housing
When I broke my sister’s
Cello, hurtling my other
Sister into it after watching
Pro-wrestling.
I blew out the brakes
On my Christmas ten-speed
Going down a hill
In Bradley park
Trying to halt
Before hammering into the front
Bumper of the park Marshal’s Jeep
Opportunely stationed
At the bottom of the hill.
I had no trouble breaking
Meredith Willow's hymen
Breaking into her body
Slicing--
Our foreheads
slapped with sweat
Facing the other
As bodily fluid
Mixed with tears
Mixed with blood
I had no trouble breaking up
With several girlfriend’s
Had no trouble breaking
My words then
Had no trouble telling them
Things that I knew would hurt them.
Separating the noun from the verb.
The action from the event
On more than one occasion
I have had trouble breaking
away from the bar stool.
Thinking that eventually
My body would drift away
Out into a pond of sobriety
Where eventually everything
Would somehow make sense.
The windshield my body snapped
Spittle glass drippings
Chandelier teardrops coating my
Body on the front of my hood
The din of traffic horns
Fluttering voices of paserby’s
Telling me that I am lucky
And of course, I heckled,
Because I felt at the time
That I could break anything.
Or the window I shattered--
My fist the size of a human heart
pummeling through the transparent
Gloss of my own reflection
Again I laughed
Watching as my face
Tumbled into triangular shards
A vacuous rectangular frame
leering back at me,
A socket culled from some other world.
But I still can’t break a line of Poetry.
When Ashley critiques my Xeroxed poems
There’s capital hot-pink BB’s
At the end of every sentence
Indicating bad line-breaks.
Apparently her eyelash
is only capable of soaking
Limited amounts of language
In a single blink.
Maybe the reason Ashley breaks lines
With such grace and facility
(She writes her poems
like she wear her jeans—tight!)
is because, being female
she possesses the innate power to crunch
a man’s chest though words.
She knows what it’s like to feast
From a sac of male arteries
She knows what fine delicacies a male
Aorta presents for the female palette.
How the heart tastes like squid pate
As it moistens on the feminine tongue
Before being digested.
She knows all this
and hums it to herself—scribbling
“BB” at the end of my every sentence,
Knowing that men
break in half horizontally,
A lightening slash fissure
zipped across his chest
Pawning off a superhero’s
recalcitrance.
Claiming they can leap light years
Using the moon as a belt buckle
They can save the world
While no one would notice
That they are broken
from the inside,
like my poems,
Never break
Even when I am already
Broken in half again and again
and again.
-David Von Behren
-from GLASS CONTINENT
2004, MLFPUBPRESS
Love song for Ashley Krenelka
“The preordained frangibility of the hymen,”
James Joyce, Ulysses
According to Ashley Krenelka
A creative writing student
From Bismark, North Dakota
I can’t break a line of poetry
To wipe my ass with.
It’s not that I haven’t had trouble
Breaking things before.
Every toy I had growing up
Broke rather easily.
My mom accused
Me of rough-housing
When I broke my sister’s
Cello, hurtling my other
Sister into it after watching
Pro-wrestling.
I blew out the brakes
On my Christmas ten-speed
Going down a hill
In Bradley park
Trying to halt
Before hammering into the front
Bumper of the park Marshal’s Jeep
Opportunely stationed
At the bottom of the hill.
I had no trouble breaking
Meredith Willow's hymen
Breaking into her body
Slicing--
Our foreheads
slapped with sweat
Facing the other
As bodily fluid
Mixed with tears
Mixed with blood
I had no trouble breaking up
With several girlfriend’s
Had no trouble breaking
My words then
Had no trouble telling them
Things that I knew would hurt them.
Separating the noun from the verb.
The action from the event
On more than one occasion
I have had trouble breaking
away from the bar stool.
Thinking that eventually
My body would drift away
Out into a pond of sobriety
Where eventually everything
Would somehow make sense.
The windshield my body snapped
Spittle glass drippings
Chandelier teardrops coating my
Body on the front of my hood
The din of traffic horns
Fluttering voices of paserby’s
Telling me that I am lucky
And of course, I heckled,
Because I felt at the time
That I could break anything.
Or the window I shattered--
My fist the size of a human heart
pummeling through the transparent
Gloss of my own reflection
Again I laughed
Watching as my face
Tumbled into triangular shards
A vacuous rectangular frame
leering back at me,
A socket culled from some other world.
But I still can’t break a line of Poetry.
When Ashley critiques my Xeroxed poems
There’s capital hot-pink BB’s
At the end of every sentence
Indicating bad line-breaks.
Apparently her eyelash
is only capable of soaking
Limited amounts of language
In a single blink.
Maybe the reason Ashley breaks lines
With such grace and facility
(She writes her poems
like she wear her jeans—tight!)
is because, being female
she possesses the innate power to crunch
a man’s chest though words.
She knows what it’s like to feast
From a sac of male arteries
She knows what fine delicacies a male
Aorta presents for the female palette.
How the heart tastes like squid pate
As it moistens on the feminine tongue
Before being digested.
She knows all this
and hums it to herself—scribbling
“BB” at the end of my every sentence,
Knowing that men
break in half horizontally,
A lightening slash fissure
zipped across his chest
Pawning off a superhero’s
recalcitrance.
Claiming they can leap light years
Using the moon as a belt buckle
They can save the world
While no one would notice
That they are broken
from the inside,
like my poems,
Never break
Even when I am already
Broken in half again and again
and again.
-David Von Behren
-from GLASS CONTINENT
2004, MLFPUBPRESS
Sunday, November 07, 2004
THE SIZE FACTOR
That's right ladies, my novel's TOO big. 750 single space pages plus illustrations means that I'm having a bitch of a time finding a single FLASH drive to save it on. That and I NEED a clean draft of this by midnight DEC 15th which means that I need to cut at least 200 pages and then double space the damn thing......AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Saturday, November 06, 2004
If I Could Cry, I Would Almost Break Down in Tears...
Hello heart attack!!!! I come into work this morning and while I'm casually filling out time cards I see a scribbled post-it on the corner of my desk.
DAVE--
Dave EGGERS
McSweeny's
followed by his phone number....
McSweeney's is one of the hippest literary journals in the Nation founded by Best Selling author Dave Eggers. I sent out a bunch of "stuff" to McSweeney's late last summer and still have yet to hear back from them.
Until this morning. I was out late last night, carousing with mutual muses Kim, Bob, Amanda and "Farm girl" Katie (who told me the difference between straw and hay "There's a reason us nice farm girls roll around in the hay and not the straw.") I somersauletd out of bed, clocked in early on a weekend, opened the library, listened to customers grouse about the temperature, listened to foreign students butcher the lexicon of my youth before dodging back into my office and there it was, posted in the corner, winking at me in scribbly ink.
Then it hit me.
" I'm....published in a major journal!!!!!!! What am I going to tell my mom? I've finally been acknowledged as a writer!!!"
I went outside for a smoke. I called my co-worker SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED GRETCHEN who took the message last night. She yelled at me for waking her up and then said yes, some guy called long distance for you. He said it was really important.
"Gretchen, do you know what this means? That's the name of the guy I sent off my manuscripts to last august!"
Sexually Frustrated Gretchen : Yawn.
"This means I'm finally a writer Gretchen!!!!"
Sexually Frustrated Gretchen: Click.
My entire body rattled like a maladjusted seismic monitor as my fingers pecked out the numerical shapes. What would he say?
"Dave man your writing's the shit brother. We love it!!!! Come out here and write a monthly column for us!!"
As I called the number and listened to the static drone of cellular warble I was left with a voice mail address of none other than Nick the Writer, my beautiful writer friend who's living in New York.
"Just called to see what you were up to brother. And, oh yeah, gotchya!!!!"
Damn it Nick!!!
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=25
DAVE--
Dave EGGERS
McSweeny's
followed by his phone number....
McSweeney's is one of the hippest literary journals in the Nation founded by Best Selling author Dave Eggers. I sent out a bunch of "stuff" to McSweeney's late last summer and still have yet to hear back from them.
Until this morning. I was out late last night, carousing with mutual muses Kim, Bob, Amanda and "Farm girl" Katie (who told me the difference between straw and hay "There's a reason us nice farm girls roll around in the hay and not the straw.") I somersauletd out of bed, clocked in early on a weekend, opened the library, listened to customers grouse about the temperature, listened to foreign students butcher the lexicon of my youth before dodging back into my office and there it was, posted in the corner, winking at me in scribbly ink.
Then it hit me.
" I'm....published in a major journal!!!!!!! What am I going to tell my mom? I've finally been acknowledged as a writer!!!"
I went outside for a smoke. I called my co-worker SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED GRETCHEN who took the message last night. She yelled at me for waking her up and then said yes, some guy called long distance for you. He said it was really important.
"Gretchen, do you know what this means? That's the name of the guy I sent off my manuscripts to last august!"
Sexually Frustrated Gretchen : Yawn.
"This means I'm finally a writer Gretchen!!!!"
Sexually Frustrated Gretchen: Click.
My entire body rattled like a maladjusted seismic monitor as my fingers pecked out the numerical shapes. What would he say?
"Dave man your writing's the shit brother. We love it!!!! Come out here and write a monthly column for us!!"
As I called the number and listened to the static drone of cellular warble I was left with a voice mail address of none other than Nick the Writer, my beautiful writer friend who's living in New York.
"Just called to see what you were up to brother. And, oh yeah, gotchya!!!!"
Damn it Nick!!!
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=25
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Fumes...
Been running on E on all week, stumbling around the library and work resembling Hans Solo from the begining of Return of the Jedi. Avg less than four (shit david) hours of sleep a night. Oh well...Finished a project for school, sent out a killer short story for mock-publication, caught a beautiful photograph of Lady benz orbiting fellow solar orbs tucked in cyber space this morning....
It's Halloween!!!!!
It's Halloween!!!!!
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