May 2013
1 post
April 2013
5 posts
“Everything is an affair of the Spirit.”
– George MacDonald
“A man reaches the height of egotism during moments of spiritual ecstasy. He...”
– Leo Tolstoy, “The Cossacks”
A Lesser Form
“Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin… and what you hear is the rhythm of your heart, the beating of your heart… Writing as a lesser form of dance.”
-Paul Auster, “Winter Journal”
I think of me, when I was smaller, and I...
1 tag
A Poem For 4-1-2013
Roses are red
Violets are blue
This is a poem
…
Fart.
March 2013
13 posts
This Water Is Not Living
Some days
I drink too deep
My stomach
Fit to burst
Still guzzling
Still gulping
Still slavering
For sweet taste
And my whole
World shudders
With the slake
And the weight
And the mark
And the blood
The levee swells
And the flood
Is a gnash
And a hunger
My flesh is gorged
With the wellspring
Bulging, and gasping
“Enough!”
Yet still I thirst.
Should A Poem-Place Become Us
I wrote a poem once
About Cheyenne, Wyoming
She was a pretty thing,
I dressed her
In metaphor
And fine-spun
Western imagery
But she whispered of places
To which I had not been
And of lives
I had not lived
She crawled in the corners
Of my eyes
Hiding with memories
Of my grandmother
She tugged at my earlobes
And laughed
At my thoughtless passions
In a way, she became me
And...
Our Eyes Are The Rust Belt Poets
We seethe
With the thunderous eyes
Of young, carnivorous poets
Who linger in
Coffeeshop corners
Waiting for girls
To read their minds
And our hearts
Sink like iron in oceans
In lieu of beating
We make love
Like the state of Ohio
Bitter and rusty
With memories of
Golden days
Our wills eroded
And well past their prime
Nothing left
But hunger
And anger
And dark hollow eyes
“Moose… Indian…”
– The Last Words Of Henry David Thoreau
“Tim Allen is actually kind of funny.”
– Best bathroom graffiti in the history of ever.
“To put it bluntly, the current state of academic publishing is the result of a...”
– Aaron Swartz Was Right - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via infoneer-pulse)
February 2013
11 posts
“It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to...”
– Henry George (via hipsterlibertarian)
Some People Believe
That the greatest opening line in literature comes from Melville’s “Moby Dick,” or from Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years Of Solitude,” or from Dickens’ “A Tale Of Two Cities.” But I firmly believe that the honor goes to Richard Kadrey and his novel “Kill The Dead.”
‘Imagine shoving a cattle-prod up a Rhino’s ass,...
Cry up from the dirge
And the drone of the earth
The bones, the coal, the strife
Make us a lantern
Give us a Way
Towards life, and life, and Life
When I Grow Up
I wanna be just like Jeff Goldblum.
Ecclesiastes Sticks Sometimes, I Guess
Give up our nameless empties-
And shy not from the tomb.
Our pale and formless bodies
Are but ghosts of vacant rooms.
So as our moments taper
From the hallowed ‘I’ to ‘Thou’
Remind us, we are vapors
In Your grand, eternal Now.
“You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let...”
– Mitch Hedberg
“Nazis. I hate these guys.”
– Indiana Jones
An Open Letter
To whoever donated your VHS copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark to the Salvation Army,
You are kind. But you aren’t THAT kind, because it wasn’t rewound.
Regards,
-Me.
At Which Point A Final Attempt At Reconciliation...
I pledge my heart
And play love’s part
As the fickle pathway narrows
And lo, your words
Are a wrath incurred
And thick with thoughtless arrows
I brave the squall
Though bound to fall
Neither loved nor needed
Your love is the dream
Of a fool, it seems
For this battle is oft repeated
You lay dormant
And dreaming, to me
You are laid bare and splayed
A barren tree
In winter
Life lies hidden
And softened and green
Pulsing beneath
Your bark-faced sheen
You splinter
Into morning pieces
Your eyes are sunshine lit
With the love of Jesus
And the droning of forests
Yet it seems that your dream
Is a patient thing-
Shining, and sighing,
And waiting for spring.
January 2013
23 posts
Vapors
I had a hope,
I had a dream
I had a thought
Placed in my skull
And it rang
From the depths
Like a fleshless
Miracle
Eternity crept
In my heart
And it cut
Like a knife
Because the dream
That I hoped for was love
And the Word
That I thought of was life
We wear veils
Of burning paper
And in our own strength
We are vapors
Berserker
Grim, I meet the arrows of the south:
Iron-wrought, and God-cursed
Fathers, hear me now before I die
And grant to me your bloodthirst
Maker
There is a hole in the Maker
From whence we all are born
And the whole of all creation
Is but His shadow taking form
When He breathes His life inside us
We are vapors in the wind
We are a whirring flash of atom
Raging on in Adam’s children
This is an eternal moment
In which all things are shown
And through all joy and sorrow
The Maker makes his purpose known
The streetlamps glow
Like old discarded halos
And in the alley
A windswept paper blows
A piece of trash
Or a wayward ghost?
Well I’ve been
Both of those.
I can hear them groan
I can hear them groan
The molderings that thunder
Underneath our skin and bones
Where a righteous spirit
Makes itself a home
Believing dreams of sunlit sheen
Where tender green things grow
In the rich dark soil
Of all our decomposing shadows
All Those Thoughts
I had of you
And photographs
Have staccatoed
Into Braille
Splayed out on
So much
Loose-leaf notebook
Paper.
You yourself
Are a collection
Of summits
The Andes
In a treacherous
Half-smirk-
And yet
Your memories
Are flat
And perforated,
The whine of an
Antique kettle.
Rusted orphan words,
Drowning
In kitchens.
We are the engines
Of our own descent,
And we’ve forgotten how to love
So it just drops by accident
But love is a road
We choose to walk
And not a hole
That we fall in
So for good
Or for ill,
A pleasant stroll
Or a long, hard march uphill
True love, in the end
Is only something we can kill
My Reputation Precedes Me
(As I patiently wait behind a guy in the parking lot who is leaning out the window, chatting to one of my fellow salesmen.)
Coworker: Oh, hey, man, you're blocking Duke in.
Guy Who Works Upstairs: Duke?
Coworker: The guy behind you? Salesman, has a beard?
Guy Who Works Upstairs: Oh! The rabbi!
“There’s no such thing as Pierce Brosnan. He was made up to frighten...”
– Chris Fieldhouse
“I’ve never killed a midget before. But there can always be a first time.”
– James Bond
If your heart is a caged bird
Thrashing up
Against your ribs
Its your body hungering
For something that
Your spirit hasn’t felt yet.
It’s every grain of sand
And the tragedy of man-
This gift of impermanence
In any given situation
While the dust
And our heads
Are lush
With dreams of celestial station.
Some Words Are Withheld From Me, And For Good...
Some days, when I wake, the words are cruel to me. They writhe a murmurdance just outside my field of vision, and they alwaysbeckon, and they never. Give themselves over. To the tip of my tongue. Or my eyelids.
In a way they are like women.
Perhaps there is a beauty in strangerness, in the outside-linger of creatures too lovely to approach. In a longing too easily made into resentment. Perhaps...
“Beware
The Average Man
The Average Woman
BEWARE Their Love
Their Love Is...”
– Charles Bukowski (from The Genius Of The Crowd)
I Resonate With,
and at the same time am repulsed by, Charles Bukowski. What a horrifically honest and terribly brutal writer. Reading his books is like rubbernecking a tragic train wreck that one just happens to be on.
"Anything with Willie Nelson in it is better."...
Coworker: I'm sure Willie Nelson tastes like chicken.
Me: Would that be herb-encrusted chicken?
“Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our...”
– Henri Nouwen 