Journal 44 - Trains Lions and Elephants

Trains blow from out of the mouth of the lion
torturing neighborhoods and terrifying children
with their lumbering heavy iron roar. The
universe may be shaped like the oval of the
soap bar or the cylinder of the condom – or it
may be flat like a chocolate chip cookie, what
an analogy for typical galaxies. Dark matter eludes
us; inference is the sandy bottom of hard-core
objective science. When will the public confidence in
science slip away as it did for religion? Will the
State be next? I would like to sit in the sun
and open up like a tulip or a sunflower, raise my
head and unfold myself until everyone saw the
inside-out beauty it's claimed we all contain. Milk
drips down the side of my mouth and snuggles in
my terrorist beard. Would you like some molasses
with that? Mole-asses – such an adolescent and
delectable word. Yes I'll have molasses with my
tired sour milk. Along with the milk my belly
bulges like the late lazy Buddah. Perhaps this means
wisdom is creeping my way. A sedentary lifestyle
is a gambit and gimmick – fat drowns the voice of the
muse. Only the fat would disagree. That's not true.
The city inebriated cabals around the dry country would
certainly disagree. Wisdom is after all disagreeing
with whatever your conversational partner says. Or
is that intelligence? No, it's just disagreeableness.
It's just the exterminator on a hot June day spending
too much time under houses. How many potential
serial killers release themselves by becoming exterminators?
Maybe just the prototype. The sound of the lion in
the distance train reverberates like a kitten in the tree -
I'll be outside where I can raise my head, smile and pee.
I sometimes like to walk around my house and yard
and urinate in strategic places, marking my fancy
territory. Why not? We're animals too I hear. Of
course it's true as far as truth may go. I don't see elephants
tearing a hole in the ozone layer. Nor do I see antelope
creating statues of Rodin or Poor Juila.


5.5.09

Journal 43 - Old Kentucky Winner

(Note: it's been a while. I'm going to try to at least get the rest of the writing journal digitized and posted. I haven't done these exercises in over a year. Fiddling with other stuff - namely a new obsession with photography - but writing will return)

There's the singing of Old Kentucky – before the
Kentucky Derby – I feel I should be more moved
or emotional. I'm distant. Though the ritual felt
like a typical college football event. The announcer
talks like an auctioneer – words spoken quickly
and only indeterminately intelligibly. I'd like to be
a racing horse though. Or bloodhound dog. Ironically
or not the people here in the bar have their ties
and their dresses and their hats. How socially aware.
Melissa the waitress drags the trash across the floor of
the bar – but don't tell her I noticed. How un-dorkyish:
the drunken souls are gravitating toward the loud spoken
TVs. How much do the South Carolinians know about
the races? Probably more than my Mississippi ass. I
mean seriously – the suits and sundresses are
infiltrating the windy Rooftop bar. Like a spirited
troop of aristocratic ants. All shiny and curly (and
giggly). Words are sometimes like rain in the middle
of June down South. If I don't turn my head
toward the magnetic TV will I be banished and
ridiculed? Hands are clapping. Oh so serious for
such a long build up and and ejaculatory short
finish. Fifty to one it seems is enough to win
the hearts and minds. Fifty to one by a landslide.
Or many feet. Bahhh. I'm out of breath but not
from racing. You can really claim anything when
you've won. And are a winner. “Of course I knew
I would win.” Well I certainly don't. I know
next to nothing – different from Socrates's knowing
his own ignorance. Sea-gulls or something ocean-y
shit on me with blessed indifference. I should be
shat upon. Like a good citizen of planet Earth. The
eagle shits upon the hare – why not I? Earth
is a violent malevolent self-first place of hedonistic
existence – why blame ourselves for doing something
wrong with global warming? We're evolved ancestors
to chimps – why hold ourselves to higher standards?
Survival is equally strong across Darwin's lost species.

5.2.09

Journal 42 - Footprints of Mojo

The music has stopped or the music's over. The
Lizard King may still live in the deepest parts
of unexplored Africa (whatever that means – apparently
true). Yeah Right. Mr. Mojo (ain't) Rising. He made
sure of that. I'm curious as to how much nonsense
I can excuse from my regurgitated brain. It seems
I write a lot about wine and drunkenness (like now) -
this should probably stop. Aber. In vino veritas. That's
obviously a lie. I hate reading stream of consciousness
bullshit in writers of recused fiction – style changing
fiction – but here I am writing adolescent secondary
words that fall out of the convoluted crevices of my
haphazard brain like gum-balls from the oak tree.
Blown about from the indecisive churnings of the
well-laid wind. I'm no Aeolian Harp though -
Shelley and Wordsworth were full of their own shit -
though their shit was less bull than my own – or
so I would hope. There is a subtle tan beauty with
a pink shirt – brunette with black toe-nails. Amazingly
it works. Beauty and Sex are distracting when they plop
themselves down in living color. I should sometimes
prefer the cold death of the painting or the indirect
abstraction of the poem. Contrary to popular belief,
well – expected belief – I'm not that abstract. It
betrays me and overwhelms me in its career building
opportunities. Sometimes I wish I were an air-
conditioner or a satellite dish – serving a well-
known function that provides some sense of sweet
appeasement. But it seems I (we) want more than
that. Our lives are short and potentially final -
there comes a point when the footprint we will
make rises up out of the shot-down warnings of
our fore fathers. Should we live our lives as though
there is something after or not? If so, it seems we
need encouragement (treasures in heaven); if not, there
is the ambivalence – it matters not or this is our
only shot. Leave something behind. Our children are not
exempt from our own immortality. But immortality is
just as much a drug as cocaine ecstasy and alcohol.

5.2.09

Colorful Words

Surely I have not let go - surely
I have not let slip - surely I would have not
not known that she could replace the
moon, and refrain from blending her red lips’
warm smile in a sad disarmament of sense.

But surely now she’ll never know what
snug music we could have undercovered.
Surely now she will forget what art we
witnessed together. I must surely take
my wine and smile and prattle and whisper
undone, in fragrant discontent.

The wind blows cold through the trees.
A brief winter tease.

Laughter

How many many pasts must we
survive to remember that the dream
has died. I have waddled, crawled,
walked and run only to fall to the
bed and cough with sobs of regret.

Soon my wife will awake. Soon our son
or our daughter will be born. And soon
we will make the mistakes of all our
terrible pasts. And smile at the lacerating
idealism of youth. Laugh at the arrogance
of the passionate youth. The dream that
permeates the ripe mind of the ever-young
has died. And yet we smile and laugh
at those day we lived. We smile at the rain
and the clouds. We smile at the days we have
yet to see – we laugh with the lack of
decision.

Rhapsody

I
‘It is impossible to say just what I mean’ J. Alfred Prufrock


lilacs have withered in the dawn
geraniums lay splayed in St. Benedict's hands;
down the alley, among the shadows, a throng
of black-hooded footsteps echoes off the wall –
while blood-stained thorns penetrate his death coronal

I have kissed the rusty orangutan
and found him not my own;
I have lain with the signing rhesus monkey
and still I am alone

in no dank corner of this dark world
have I followed empirical meaning;
but on a ledge, on a cliff's edge, searching
the nagging depths - my mind begins to groan,
and at least find meaning in the arms of a girl

Philosophy, that comes to men
Men of Age, with unassuming ties
confines me to my heart, and refolds
my crumpled mind with never-unified lies
where Kant and Hume and Descartes’s voices end


II
Song of the X-Generation


we do not care we do not care
we do not care what song you sing
we who wear our colors in our hair
we do not wipe our soiled hands clean
with one more wasted political vote -
do not dare disturb the universe
with one more wasted discourse
on laws to end all pain;
we let our willow souls lapse into a strain
of a songbird's unrelenting note
for a life not so diverse

we do not care we do not care
we have our PlayStations, we have our games
we walk the crowded streets with faceless names
that even you would recognize; -
that's not the sun that burns our eyes

we shall not measure out our days on
frequent flyer miles
and country club dinner-dates
with fine Riedel wine glasses, dancing drunken spirals


we will not walk the streets with our fingers straightening ties


III
‘Hirtengesang : Frohe und dankbare Gefühle nach dem Sturm’


we care for the chimneys, the sparrows and rabbits;
we care for the sheep and care for the fences;
we long for a present with less past-tenses
that batter our days with unbreakable habits

just the winter frost on morning’s window pane;
bald eagles flying high above the grimy rain;
we care for the breathing; we mourn the dead -
we hope for a vision of promises lost, words left unsaid

December Rose

I

nevermind the lofty faces that you meet
the faces that you nod to quickly on the street

recall....the dance of the yellow-jacket’s ritual
around the nipples of the honey-suckle stems;
the nights her pants would lie beside your bed;
songs of birds singing well past breakfast -
her leg around your waist, arm across your chest:
recall the plaintive face staring out your window
and sighing - for another breath to relieve her of
the strain from more uncertainty.


II

below the afternoon bridges, under
a street-lamp flickering and unstable -
I swallow the crisp dusk air and
watch the violet sunset recline
into a cloudy chamber of forgotten repose;
while she returns a letter
written by her abstruse young friend -
         (my irreverent brother)
when the seasons were less cruel:
but forgiving in quiet December evening snows;
when the mornings were less forced:
resolving themselves in capitulated scenarios

Journal 41 - Technological Toenails

Papier-mâché pedicure flip-flops, orange macaroni
cheese vomited sheets draped over the bathtub -
my BlackBerrry silently ding-dongs with its berating
red light – attention starved like a 2 year old.
Except that I want it to flash like a hooker at
me – I'm the sex-crazed starved 2 year old it seems.
I'm not sure iTunes can sync to my soul – I
wonder at the efficacy of downloading the content
of my life from the media store. Now is the time
I recall the outdoorsy tree-breathing lake-fishing
iPod-less cell phone nary having days of my oh-so-
glorious youth – bereft of these concrete jungle
technological trappings of the remnants of the
western Industrial Revolution. Science is king or
haven't you heard? What else would be? There
are contenders. But I digress (No!) I won't decry
the interior life I've nestled down in to. If I'm
this way now, blogging and Facebooking and Googling -
how did my childhood without these things somehow
benefit me or make me 'better?' Nature versus Nurture -
I know, so Yin and Yang, or Chicken and Egg. Nurture
is hard to beat but Nature difficult to overcome.
My jeans at least have self-inflicted holes, like
last year's philosophy class on the virtue of
epistemology. Ethics it seems it the foundation
of life and philosophy and religion and yes, even
science. The ethical is certainly a base layer of
interpretation. Brute facts are like leprechauns or
Santa Claus – such a good story to keep the
masses at bay. Masses exist in the white-walled
world of science. Infected. Like my jack-rabbit
heart – under the radar of awareness. I know,
science turned on the lights and washed our dishes
for us. Indeed, it also decimated Nagasaki and
Hiroshima. I don't think stem cells are all created
evil – nor is their use worse than everyday passing
hypocrisy. I want to start a jar of my fingernail
and toenail clippings as a reminder I am nasty and
dying and filled with deposited excess.


5.1.09

Journal 40 - Blue Nights

She walks in Beauty like the night – Byron was
one crazy son of a bitch. To whom is the night
so beautiful that Heaven denies any gaudy day-
time joys compared with the alleged tenderness
of cloudless skies?¹ So far removed from a quaint
apparition of delight that we must remove ourselves
from the tender innocence that starry skies seem to
bequeath. O the blue of the nighttime sky -
O the night in blue and dark-blue – illuminated
by the light of weak reflection yet faint commensurate
joy – Jesus and Socrates enjoyed that yellow moon
bulging in the nighttime bluish sky, like a big
pale yellow child's balloon floating away into
the starry skies, the chemical explosions in the
sky, the beautiful random unintentional poetic-
infused human-personified starry chemical
imbalances that light the dark Charleston green
of the celebrated night-time sky. Van Gogh
understood the blue of the night. My life is
a cheap forgery like well-copied forged documents
of an unimportant merchant of salt and pepper -
spices dominate war just behind religion -
that is world-views in conflict. I'm a world-view
in conflict. I hang my heave grape-laden head
over the imaginary cliff of the lethean canyon
of behavior. I stare at overgrown toe-nails
listening to the regurgitations of the famous
Pole. B-minor is the key for me. Well, that
and C-minor; I am Pathétique. I would gladly, at
least, tear the wings off the dragonfly or the
ever-grooming fly just to have a taste of
Keats with a Grand Vin from Haut-Médoc. Ah
the Left Bank can be kind indeed. No subtle
binaries though – the Right possesses its own
enormous gems – artists are surprisingly split
across the paths of the brownish green world.
Yes I enjoy blue. Colors like adjectives of any
kind will only do for a time and place not
contracted by me or you – but absorbed into the
blackest blue.²


4.27.09

  ¹ If that doesn't make sense to you, you're not alone.
  ² In fact, if that entire post makes less sense than most of the drivel I post here – you're not alone there either.