"I have nothing to say. I have probably never had an original thought in my entire life."
When I'm biking it's okay to have these bleak, self effacing thoughts because they're transient. I can fix them to a location and leave that location so quickly even an idea could eat my dust. It's when they stick or catch on my tongue in the getaway that they become a problem.
If they stick I have other ways to fix them.
I can pin them down with words and stretch them to the point of caricature. Shout them into the palms of my hands then rub them up and down the keyboard. "Look, look at what I've done. Would you tell me if I was wrong?" I don't think I'm wrong.
Let me tell you what it feels like.
Okay, imagine what you want is in the first panel, center of the frame. Okay, second panel now and it's farther away and a little bit further to the left. Third panel and it's almost gone. I think you get the idea. I think you can handle the closure between panels.
26.9.09
12.9.09
Keeping Track
heavy pumping in the legs and a steady rhythm
stretching as you cross the line then a tearing
push the skin to a new personal best
keep moving
the rabbit runs with paws pinwheels
alarm clock heart in its doomed orbit
white fur gone tawny with rust and wear
racing parallel
everyone runs their own race
and even though you've never hungered
you want the oil in your smile
the weight round your shoulders
as you cross the line look back
the rabbit in your jaws kicks
and at last you begin to stagger
you haven't won
but at last
you've lost everything just for them
and just imagine how pleased with you
he'll be.
stretching as you cross the line then a tearing
push the skin to a new personal best
keep moving
the rabbit runs with paws pinwheels
alarm clock heart in its doomed orbit
white fur gone tawny with rust and wear
racing parallel
everyone runs their own race
and even though you've never hungered
you want the oil in your smile
the weight round your shoulders
as you cross the line look back
the rabbit in your jaws kicks
and at last you begin to stagger
you haven't won
but at last
you've lost everything just for them
and just imagine how pleased with you
he'll be.
4.9.09
the curtain hits the cast
when the actress stands
steps from the box whole
expectation of blood mocked
and having bent
steel to her will carries on
the audience waits patient
as the trick is staged again
and again until it slips
and a set of legs kick
one two and stop
magician made the fool
confirmed and canonized
in his falling upon the sword
the patsy's victory
earned.
steps from the box whole
expectation of blood mocked
and having bent
steel to her will carries on
the audience waits patient
as the trick is staged again
and again until it slips
and a set of legs kick
one two and stop
magician made the fool
confirmed and canonized
in his falling upon the sword
the patsy's victory
earned.
17.8.09
15.8.09
nose bleed
it's a familiar rush of something behind your face
slipping as though in your wanting the body you invoked
this wine
bringing forth something richer than words
shaken loose from shuttling from one end to the other
in flight
thicker than family in it's resolve
but flowing given the moment
of crisis
where danger and the safe are twins
who hate you or love you or failing that
just fuck you
and your nose bleeds even when you're alone
as though you've been dropped from a height
and lived
slipping as though in your wanting the body you invoked
this wine
bringing forth something richer than words
shaken loose from shuttling from one end to the other
in flight
thicker than family in it's resolve
but flowing given the moment
of crisis
where danger and the safe are twins
who hate you or love you or failing that
just fuck you
and your nose bleeds even when you're alone
as though you've been dropped from a height
and lived
10.8.09
looking at sand as thrown stones
or anything at its most basic elements
a cacaphony of simple things emerges
recesses and combines to produce noise
static that can't be differentiated or broken down again
but rather marched upon and held to one's chest and pinned
in the way we refuse to do to each stone
but find as a compound something simpler
something ugly and easy
all i want is to melt it down
put it in a centrifuge away from stains
and sounds and poison and keep it there like a secret
until we can see every strand
or stone divided and bathed in light
held tightly and dearly in suspension
we'll call it a suspension of belief
or a suspension of hardness
or if nothing else just a testament
to how frightened we all really are
i don't want to feel hard anymore
don't let this cup pass me by
rather keep me cold and wet and pliant
formless and too easily shaped
like skin or clay
sand
if you'll ignore it's finer features.
or anything at its most basic elements
a cacaphony of simple things emerges
recesses and combines to produce noise
static that can't be differentiated or broken down again
but rather marched upon and held to one's chest and pinned
in the way we refuse to do to each stone
but find as a compound something simpler
something ugly and easy
all i want is to melt it down
put it in a centrifuge away from stains
and sounds and poison and keep it there like a secret
until we can see every strand
or stone divided and bathed in light
held tightly and dearly in suspension
we'll call it a suspension of belief
or a suspension of hardness
or if nothing else just a testament
to how frightened we all really are
i don't want to feel hard anymore
don't let this cup pass me by
rather keep me cold and wet and pliant
formless and too easily shaped
like skin or clay
sand
if you'll ignore it's finer features.
15.7.09
That's All
i chew my nails because i don't know what to do with my hands otherwise
i can't hit anything or make anything with them
and when i put them to paper nowadays i just feel all sore about a lot of things
i can't hit anything or make anything with them
and when i put them to paper nowadays i just feel all sore about a lot of things
13.7.09
Dress Rehearsal
These days when I sit down to write I don't know what the hell I'm trying to say. For the most part I bang away on the keyboard about one stupid thing or another, pounding every detail I can think of out onto the page just to get them written down in front of me for a second. If I'm lucky there's enough there for me to pretend I've got something to say, or if I'm really lucky I'll realize it's something I actually wanted to say in the first place. Unfortunately, that's not how I'm comfortable writing.
Kurt Vonnegut broke down writers into two types, swoopers and bashers. You've got the ones who draft out every single idea at once regardless of quality (the swoopers) and then the ones who smash their way through sentence by sentence, ensuring each is how it should be before moving on (the bashers). I identify as the latter, but lately I've been writing like the former. What that means, unfortunately is I'll spend a solid forty-five minutes at a time puking out every dumb little swooper line in my head with no idea where I'm going at any point in the process before something clicks in my brain and puts me back in the basher mind-set which immediately reacts with horror to the wall of ugly, aimless text in front of it and annihilates the entire thing.
A better man than me would just buckle down and go through the messy text, and damn if I'm not trying to be a better man, but mostly it just seems too impossible and pointless to do so. The main problem is that I know I don't have much to say about anything. I can wax poetic about my own life and the clumsy little vignettes contained therein, but when you break it on down I'm not spilling any blood here. I don't want to write where it hurts and I don't want it to hurt when I write, and I guess that's really the main problem here. I don't know what to tell you 'cause everything I'm feeling these days is too sharp still and I don't want anybody to get hurt and I don't want anybody to worry. So let's all just take a second until things seem a little less taut and maybe I can get some thinking done.
Kurt Vonnegut broke down writers into two types, swoopers and bashers. You've got the ones who draft out every single idea at once regardless of quality (the swoopers) and then the ones who smash their way through sentence by sentence, ensuring each is how it should be before moving on (the bashers). I identify as the latter, but lately I've been writing like the former. What that means, unfortunately is I'll spend a solid forty-five minutes at a time puking out every dumb little swooper line in my head with no idea where I'm going at any point in the process before something clicks in my brain and puts me back in the basher mind-set which immediately reacts with horror to the wall of ugly, aimless text in front of it and annihilates the entire thing.
A better man than me would just buckle down and go through the messy text, and damn if I'm not trying to be a better man, but mostly it just seems too impossible and pointless to do so. The main problem is that I know I don't have much to say about anything. I can wax poetic about my own life and the clumsy little vignettes contained therein, but when you break it on down I'm not spilling any blood here. I don't want to write where it hurts and I don't want it to hurt when I write, and I guess that's really the main problem here. I don't know what to tell you 'cause everything I'm feeling these days is too sharp still and I don't want anybody to get hurt and I don't want anybody to worry. So let's all just take a second until things seem a little less taut and maybe I can get some thinking done.
11.7.09
What withers the stone at the bottom of the vase.
Elated by the silent descent of rotten pedals sinking into water, I sense it like rain falling on the sea, swept into waves to join the army of currents that strike fists into silt. Currents that don't so much as pull. Currents that push and change tendencies. The stone gets broken at an unnoticed rate. The stone sinks, but only into the surface of the glass.
I'm afraid of the possibility of watching descent and not knowing it. I'm afraid of this glass' eventual break, and any other walls I can't find myself pushing against.
Elated by the silent descent of rotten pedals sinking into water, I sense it like rain falling on the sea, swept into waves to join the army of currents that strike fists into silt. Currents that don't so much as pull. Currents that push and change tendencies. The stone gets broken at an unnoticed rate. The stone sinks, but only into the surface of the glass.
I'm afraid of the possibility of watching descent and not knowing it. I'm afraid of this glass' eventual break, and any other walls I can't find myself pushing against.
5.7.09
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