poetry

english class was like jumper cables

2009-02-17T23:11:00.000-08:00

my mind moves reluctantly, like a boot
entrenched in mud.
sluggishly,
and slathered in ennui,
it stirs, blinks itself into focus, and almost
settles back down. but it doesn't,
and instead it creaks,
emits a sad rusty screech, and resumes operation
at its lowest functional capacity.
some of its edges, when touched,
crumble. some of its gears,
when summoned, remain locked.
pieces of it fall away in unbroken chunks,
but the heart of it is restored
and repairs are under way
and it exported this,
which may or may not be better
than nothing at all.

1 line break!! one!!!

2008-07-19T13:05:00.001-07:00

there were still clouds flinging crumpled drops of rain at the earth (failed blueprints sketched out in molecular structures, flooding an unimportant wastebasket) when virginally pink light began filtering through the trees out the window, coffee for the eyes. the light aged and faded, gathering heat as my bed gathered dust; i had left it unmade so it could pretend i hadn’t left it. sleeping is cheating. the house is heavy and slow like a steamroller, empty like the hollowness between walls. the light gets hotter, and evaporation kicks in like a safeguard. passing time in the hollow places is an art i have perfected; i treat the sequence of my motions as a flower arrangement and i keep my thoughts minimalist. the humidity star(ts up. not such failures, after all. the sun picked them up, smoothed them out, made the necessary changes. presented them to the clouds, who accepted them gratefully and swelled with pride. bound inevitably to
fuck it up again.) a pair of seagulls swam past my window; i don’t know what they were doing so far from the ocean but my eyes are too tired to figure it out.

stephen's

2008-07-19T13:04:00.001-07:00

this is

knees breaking
bones scraping
neck jerking
body trembling
eyes racing
speech slurring
spine cracking
paint dripping
words lying
sleep dying
life freezing
love living
lines drawing
flames whipping
tears falling
love dying
family drifting
noses flaring
cats fighting
canvas ripping
holes absorbing
cigarettes burning
lungs blackening
days waning
moons reflecting
suns exploding
dolls bleeding
leaves crackling
screens glowing
flowers growing
fall dawning
love growing
paintings warping
tissues crumpling
furniture inhabiting
smoke filling

our hearts up with glory
and the noise surrounding my eyes
cannot be seen or heard
but the smell is starting to kill me.

II.
these words

are pulsating upon my screen,
just like lust pulsates in whores,
and nothing sates this insatiable desire
to be and belong anywhere i am;

i am great friends with nowhere,
best friends with isolation,
and whatever i do
to myself
to allow metaphors
to control my body,
and to break bones
(and bridges) when neccessary.

you need to walk a mile in my shoes,
feel this internal war wage within the jumps of my synapses
spaces between cells (sells)
sells myself short.

III.
and then i said

fuck white noise.

lorca

2008-06-16T15:54:00.000-07:00

song of the seven-hearted boy

Seven hearts
are the hearts that I have.
But mine is not t here among them.

In the high mountains, mother,
where I sometimes ran into the wind,
seven girls with long hands
carried me around in their mirrors.

I have sung my way through this world
with my mouth with its seven petals.
My crimson-colored galleys
have cast off without rigging or oars.

I have lived my life in landscapes
that other men have owned.
And the secrets I wore at my throat,
unbeknownst to me, had come open.

In the high mountains, mothers,
where my heart rises over its echoes
in the memory book of a star,
I sometimes ran into the wind.

Seven hearts
are the hearts that I have.
But mine is not there among them.

neruda

2008-06-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

me again

I who wanted to talk
of a century inside the web
that is always my poem-in-progress,
have found only myself wherever I looked
and missed the real happening.
With wary good faith
I opened myself to the wind: the lockers,
clothes-closets, graveyards,
the calendar months of the year,
and in every opening crevice
my face looked back at me.

The more bored I became
with my unacceptable person,
the more I returned to the theme of my person;
worst of all,
I kept painting myself to myself
in the midst of a happening.
What an idiot (I said to myself
a thousand times over) to perfect all that craft
of description and describe only myself,
as though I had nothing to show but my head,
nothing better to tell than the mistakes of a lifetime.

Tell me, my good brothers,
I said at the Fishermen's Union,
do you love yourselves as I do?
The plain truth of it is:
we fishermen stick to our fishing,
while you fish for yourself (said
the fishermen): you fish over and over again
for yourself, then throw yourself back in the sea.

neruda

2008-06-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

conditions

With these moody negations
I said goodbye to the mirrors
and gave up my profession:
better a blind man in a corner
singing songs to the world
without setting eyes on a soul,
if part of me is so like the others!

Nevertheless I kept trying:
how to look back at oneself
to wherever it is one sat blinded
when one's total condition was dark?
There was nothing to show for my singing
in a blind rabble of singers:
but the harsher the street sounds became,
the sweeter I seemed to myself.

Condemned to self-love,
I lived the exterior life of a hypocrite
hiding the depths of the love
my defects had brought down on my head.
I keep on being happy,
disclosing to nobody
my ambiguous malady:
the grief I endure for self-love,
who was never so loved in return.

neruda

2008-06-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

summation

I am glad of the great obligations
I imposed on myself. In my life
many strange and material things have crowded together--
fragile wraiths that entangled me,
categorical mineral hands,
an irrational wind that dismayed me,
barbed kisses that scarred me, the hard reality
of my brothers,
my implacable vow to keep watchful,
my penchant for loneliness--to keep to myself
in the frailty of my personal whims.
That is why--water on stone--my whole life has
sung itself out between chance and austerity.

neruda

2008-06-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

pastoral

I go copying mountains and rivers and clouds:
I shake out my fountain pen, remark
on a bird flying upward
or a spider alive in his workshop of floss,
with no thought in my head; I am air,
I am limitless air where the wheat tosses,
and am moved by an impulse to fly, the uncertain
direction of leaves, the round
eye of the motionless fish in the cove,
statues that soar through the clouds,
the rain's multiplications.

I see only a summer's
transparency, I sing nothing but wind,
while history creaks on its carnival floats
hoarding medals and shrouds
and passes me by, and I stand by myself
in the spring, knowing nothing but rivers.

Shepherd-boy, shepherd-boy, don't you know
that they wait for you?

I know and I know it: but here by the water
in the crackle and flare of cicadas,
I must wait for myself, as they wait for me there:
I also would see myself coming
and know in the end how it feels to me
when I come to the place where I wait for my coming
and turn back to my sleep and die laughing.

neruda

2008-06-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

diver

The rubber man
rose from the sea.

Seated,
he seemed
like a globular
king
of the waters,
a bulbous
and secretive
cuttlefish,
the truncated
device
of invisible algae.

From their boats, in mid-ocean,
the fishermen
sink
in their rags,
blue
with the night
of the ocean:
around them arise
the great fish of phosphor,
a voltage
of fire,
they go under:
around them, the sea urchins
tumble, piling
the silt
with the splintering spite
of their hackles.

The underseas
man
thrashes the breadth of his legs;
languidly
reels
in the horror of fish gut:
gulls
slash
the limitless air
with their hurrying scissors;
the diver
toils
through the sand
like a drunkard,
swarthy
and comatose,
locked
into his clothing, cetacean,
half-earthen,
half-ocean,
going nowhere,
inept
in the rubbery bulk
of his feet.

He goes on to his birth-throes.
The ocean
gives way
like a womb
to this innocent:
he floats sullen
and strengthless
and barbarous,
like
the
newly born.
Time after time
he takes hold of the water, the sand,
and is
born again.
Submerging
each day
to the hold
of the pitiless
current,
Pacific and
Chilean
cold,
the diver
must practice
his
birth again,
make himself
monstrous
and tentative,
displace himself
fearfully,
grow wise
in his slothful
mobility, like
an underseas
moon.
Even
his thinking
must merge
with the water:
he harvests
inimical
fruits, stalactites,
treasures,
in the pit of a solitude
drenched
with the wash
of those graveyards--
as others
would turn up a cauliflower,
he comes up
to the light--
black air in a bubble--
to Mercedes,
Clara, Rosaura.
It is painful
to walk like a man again,
to think as a man thinks, to eat
again.
All
is beginning again
for
the bulking,
ambiguous man
staggering still
in the dark
of two different abysses.

This I know--
do I not?--
as I know my existence: all
things I have seen and considered.
The way of the diver
is hazardous? The vocation
is
infinite.

neruda

2008-06-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

walking around

It so happens I'm tired of just being a man.
I go to a movie, drop in at the tailor's--it so happens--
feeling wizened and numbed, like a big, wooly swan,
awash on an ocean of clinkers and causes.

A whiff from a barbershop does it: I yell bloody murder.
All I ask is a little vacation from things: from boulders and woolens,
from gardens, institutional projects, merchandise,
eyeglasses, elevators--I'd rather not look at them.

It so happens I'm fed--with my feet and my fingernails
and my hair and my shadow.
Being a man leaves me cold: that's how it is.

Still--it would be lovely
to wave a cut lily and panic a notary,
or finish a nun with a jab to the ear.
It would be nice
just to walk down the street with a green switchblade handy,
whooping it up till I die of the shivers.

I won't live like this--like a root in a shadow,
wide-open and wondering, teeth chattering sleepily,
going down to the dripping entrails of the universe
absorbing things, taking things in, eating three squares a day.

I've had all I'll take from catastrophe.
I won't have it this way, muddling through like a root or a grave,
all alone underground, in a morgue of cadavers,
cold as a stiff, dying of misery.

That's why Monday flares up like an oil-slick,
when it sees me up close, with the face of a jailbird,
or squeaks like a broken-down wheel as it goes,
stepping hot-blooded into the night.

Something shoves me toward certain damp houses, in certain dark corners,
into hospitals, with bones flying out of the windows;
into shoe stores smelling of vinegar,
streets frightful as fissures laid open.

There, trussed to the doors of the houses I loathe
are the sulphurous birds, in a horror of tripes,
dental plates lost in a coffeepot,
mirrors
that must surely have wept with the nightmare and shame of it all;
and everywhere, poisons, umbrellas, and belly buttons.

I stroll and keep cool, in my eyes and my shoes
and my rage and oblivion.
I go on, crossing offices, retail orthopedics,
courtyards with laundry hung out on a wire:
the blouses and towels and the drawers newly washed,
slowly dribbling a slovenly tear.

neruda

2008-06-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

Savor

From counterfeit stargazers, somewhat maudlin proprieties,
from the flotsam of usage borne in on us always, close at hand,
inconclusive, I have cherished an impulse, a taste of my loneliness.

From table-talk flimsy as scrapwood,
with a chair's self-effacement and a language that labors
to wait on a substitute will, like a lackey,
milky in stamina, with last week's consistency,
stagnating in air, like smog on a city.

Who can boast a more tangible patience?
I am swathed in discretion, packed in like a hide
with a color that gathers itself to itself like a serpent.
All my creatures are born in a massive recoil;
one helping of alcohol--alas!--and I wave off the day
that I chose for myself, like all of the days of my world.

I live in the fullness of matter; my color is general;
mute as a matriarch, my forbearance is fixed
like a church and its shadow, or the quiet of bones.
I brim with the deep disposition of waters
primed and expectant, asleep in a lachrymose vigil.

The inner guitar that I am, keeps the catch of a ballad,
spare and sonorous, abiding, immobile,
like a punctual nutriment, like smoke in the air:
force in repose, the volatile power of oil:
an incorruptible bird keeps watch on my head:
an unvarying angel inhabits my sword.

neruda

2008-06-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

dream horse

Needlessly, watching my looking-glass image,
with its passion for papers and cinemas, days of the week,
I pluck from my heart my hell's captain
and order the clauses, equivocally sad.

I drift between this point and that, absorbing illusions.
converse in the nests of the tailors;
sometimes the voices are glacial and deadly--
they sing, and the sorcery goes.

There's a country spread out in the sky,
a credulous carpet of rainbows
and crepuscular plants:
I move towards it just a bit haggardly,
trampling a gravedigger's rubble still moist from the spade
to dream in a bedlam of vegetables.

I walk between origins, beneficent documents,
chopfallen, dressed like a natural: I want
the loose honey of deference,
the sweets of the catechist under whose leaves
drained violets drowse and grow old;
and those bustling abettors, the brooms, in whose image,
assuredly, sorrow and certainty join.
I plunder the whistle of roses, the carking anxiety:
I smash the attractive extremes--worst of all,
I await a symmetrical time beyond measure:
the taste of my spirit disheartens me.

What a morning is here! What a milk-heavy glow
in the air, integral, all of a piece,
intending some good! I have heard its red horses,
naked to bridle and iron, shimmering, whinnying there.

Mounted, I soar over churches,
gallop the garrisons empty of soldiers
while a dissolute army pursues me.
Its eyes of eucalyptus raze the darkness
and the bell of its galloping body strikes home.

I need but a spark of that perduring brightness,
my jubilant kindred to claim my inheritance.

dog

2008-05-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

http://i30.tinypic.com/2hrmvc9.png

2008-05-11T12:01:00.001-07:00

http://i31.tinypic.com/vfbe34.png

there ain't no god here, as far as i can see; your god of hope and light never did nothin' straight by me.

2008-05-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

keep building your ladder out of here. i'll bring you more lumber. mine crumbled into the muck after i nailed the seventh rung. there's no air between us and the sky; you should practice holding your breath before you start building up much higher. i used to practice in the mud. there are rainbows down here, too; if the sun ever comes out, watch the oil collecting its light and splintering it into greasy colors. don't try to pick them up. i tried once, and the oil clung to my hand like the tears of abandoned children. and it wouldn't wash off in the rain. it won't ever stop raining.

2008-05-07T22:55:00.001-07:00

http://www.nataliedee.com/030908/come-on-give-him-a-push.jpg

2008-05-04T01:53:00.000-07:00

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:p

2008-04-24T11:36:00.001-07:00

Islands hasn’t hit the infamous “sophomore slump” with Arm’s Way, their follow-up to 2006’s brilliant Return to the Sea. But with twelve songs clocking in at well over an hour in length, it’s a long listen. Only two songs are less than four minutes in length, and the rest are generally significantly longer.
The first track is “The Arm,” and it doesn’t fail as an introduction to the album. Islands has augmented its sound with string instruments that add an epic quality to the music, but it hasn’t abandoned its tropical vibe. On such tracks as “J’aime Vous Voire Quitter,” steel drums and other staples of the Caribbean make a significant appearance.
The album is significantly darker than the odyssey through a beach-filled afterlife that was Return to the Sea. Still, Islands’ lyrics haven’t lost their whimsical air, and Nick Thorburn’s voice hasn’t lost its airy versatility. Overall, it’s a good album with few mistakes. Probably four stars.

icarus and the undertaker

2008-04-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

I. i'll throw my fists into the sky and bruise the clouds, split their ranks with thunder and catch the water they abandon to gravity. i'll break the sky with plotless ambition. i'm going to drive for hundreds of miles through the rain because i have to make some kind of progress. i'll tear apart the crease between mountain and sky with my bare hands and the birds can't stop me. i'll learn to fly to the edge of gravity so my fall will have real impact. i've actually been falling for some time now, but never from anyplace with a view.

II. i'll toss my face into the dirt and bruise my pride. i tried to dig to the center of the world but it didn't exist for me. i'll lie in my hole forever and the worms can't stop me. it's filling with rain and that's alright because i can't sink any deeper than where i am.

2008-03-10T23:07:00.001-07:00

http://i28.tinypic.com/33uakww.jpg

2008-03-04T21:01:00.000-08:00

march 5! for me
Your financial situation will evolve in a very favorable manner. You won't remain insensitive to the charm of the person recently met and will begin to form sweet dreams about him/her. Don't show yourself too categorical toward your close ones in order to avoid clashes. You must spare your nervous system and keep a close watch on your diet. You'll be a glutton for work and you'll be congratulated on it. But you'll forget that family life needs gentleness and harmony; make efforts to show yourself under a more tender and merrier light.

weekly for me
Your enterprising mind will reach a top level, and your initiatives will be crowned with success. The only danger that's lying in wait for you will be exhilaration which could make you to misjudge people and situations. Beware of cardio-vascular incidents! Spare your heart; don't run to catch a train or a bus; go up or down stairs slowly. The comportment of the person who loves you will appear to you very disconcerting, capricious, incoherent; you'll sometimes ask yourself if you're actually loved by the other one.

your march 5th
Clear recovery of energy; all those natives who've had diffuse troubles will finally be able to be cured. No regret for your new conquest who has fled you so rapidly: another very charming person will already be on your way! Despite your habitual prudence, you'll hardly be able to resist your present desires for spendings. In your work, privilege quality rather than output for the time being; slow down your tempo a little and strengthen your achievements, otherwise you may go past the door in your hurry to find it.

your weekly
You can expect to achieve pending plans right now, for a small material chance and very good intuition granted by the stars will allow you to bring them to a successful conclusion in record time. Love affairs will be promising for single people. Fortuitous circumstances will cause you to meet people having many points in common with you, and this will help you get over certain fastidious stages. This will also be an opportunity to discover different milieus which will render you more open and more tolerant.

2008-02-24T15:03:00.000-08:00

stars were huddled in the corner of the attic window
like dead sacs of spider eggs. i guarded them
while my teeth chattered until my jaw splintered
into tiny beads. with them i made a necklace
out of string i spud from clouds.
the sky was eroding them and they were nearly too high
to pull down. some of them caught and tore
on the latticework of trees; they held there
like spiderwebs. along the coast
i was followed by a lion; the ocean spat in my face
and my arms were grabbed by the waves.
i fell in. i was carried past the horizon
to a cliff face; it was too smooth
for me to gain any footholds.
the lion followed into the sea and hunted buffalo underwater.
i joined it and hung my necklace in its mane.
a day later we broke through the glass surface of the water,
thoroughly drowned.

she's just a flask trapped inside a fall

2008-02-12T16:13:00.001-08:00

from a rooftop, a pair of seagulls split into flight;
one of them swallowed the sun and fell to its death.
i picked up its pieces and rearranged them,
completing the picture.

the sky was a sheet of tin foil
wrapped around god's leftovers;
the second bird tore it open
and the stars fell out like maggots.

i tossed the corpse into the air,
and it buried its claws in the wind.
after reuniting against of surge of descending maggots,
their wings crumpled to the ground like leaves but they kept flying.

i brushed the maggots out of my hair.

like just gettin outta there is gonna get me outta this

2008-02-10T13:51:00.000-08:00

our fingers dipped into the surface of the water
like tree branches skimming a stretch of sky.
the ground was pulsating under our feet
but the river was still and we entered it.

and i thought we wouldn't leave.
we could harvest the spears of sunlight
piercing the depths - with them,
we'd catch fish and occasionally
dolphins, with which we would sustain ourselves.
i saw the flesh between our fingers stretch into webbing,
and our toes flattened; our necks opened into gills.
after the first week we didn't want to go back,
and we developed a fear of the horizon under which we hid.

i had been mistaken.
we didn't intend to leave, but after a few minutes underwater
our mouths opened; we breathed in.
and the river wouldn't let us stay like that.
it spit us out on the opposite bank.

my heart's the long stairs

2008-02-07T22:14:00.000-08:00

i filled balloons with all my prayers and gave them a send-off,
but my hopes are never high enough and they settled
on the ground. i took an iron to my thoughts
but even that didn't straighten them out.
my muscles wound into curlicues and
my eyes turned into funnels. it started to rain.
when noah's ark was sinking,
i helped seal the holes in the boat with scotch tape.
still it was too heavy to float.
i threw my balloons overboard and we were off;
they fell to the sea floor and burst.