January 2009
87 posts
Curriculum Vitae
I might have been born in Beirut,
not Detroit, with my right name. Grandpa taught me to love to eat. I am not Orthodox, or Sunni, Shiite, or Druse. Baptized in the one true Church, I too was weaned on Saint Augustine. Eisenhower never dreamed I wore corrective shoes. Ford Motor Co. never cared I’d never forgive Highland Park, River Rouge, Hamtramck. I memorized the Baltimore...
December 2008
56 posts
robot-heart:
radarchive:magiclysslyss:
Sigur...
“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I...”
– Anaïs Nin
“No one cries in Volvos, unless they’re getting a divorce!”
– Alison
Barcelona #1
None of the line breaks are real, but like I said before, I can’t really do anything about it. Aaaaaaahhhh! Here we go:
After my stint at the psych ward,
my landlady takes me out for a hot dog,
some beer, one slow cigarette. When I wake
up the next day, Barcelona is indifferent.
Chipped shutters blow open and shut,
old eyelids. People are busy, checking
their mail, buying flowers for...
Untitled #1
I told you this story about my grandmother:
She and my granddad sat on the front porch
during her last few months, drinking tequila,
letting watermarks stain the table.
He went out and bought her that cream Cadillac
she could barely drive. And a fur coat. She was dying,
it was summer in Los Angeles, but he bought her
a fur coat regardless. My words echo back somehow,
your mouth is a cave. I...
Untitled #2
You are starting
to open up to strangers.
You will stand next to a girl just like you at a concert.
You won’t know it.
You are both voting for Obama.
The music will leave your ears ringing for days.
You will visit your uncle in Los Angeles,
He will take you to eat Thai food.
You will take the train back alone,
and take the best nap of your life.
Your eyes are like McCartney,
but the overall...
Barcelona #2
Last November
wraps around me like a watch,
I can’t stop looking at it.
The city, my name
in capital letters.
Once, I kissed a cab driver
who spoke very little English.
I developed a crush on an American
and was too nervous to tell him.
I cooked him some eggs,
and moved on.
I spent all my money on overpriced liquor.
Last November,
the city became a mirror.
I drew my name on the hot fog
and it...
Thoughts on Seeing Your Beard
Two weeks before Christmas this year,
my roommate made a bikini out of barbed wire
and exploded it with napalm at a party. It went off
in protest against the exploitation of women’s bodies
and the building of the atomic bomb.
It went off orange, and higher
than the height
of two people.
She printed out her analysis of the piece
and read it to the drunkards.
When the fire died down,
I saw you,
for...
Untitled #3
The line breaks on this one come after every two lines, but Tumblr won’t let me post it like that, so it’s a little different than the real one:
Last week I bought a new sweater,
sang for my first time in a karaoke bar,
and had a dream I immaculately
conceived. The year
begins all over again. Last year
I made no resolutions, just stood
around on the Champs-Élysées
wishing someone...
About Posting Poetry that is Not Someone Else's
College can be scary. And the scariest part for me sometimes?… THE WORKSHOP, aaaaaaaahhhhh! I’m really insecure about workshops. Total love/hate relationship. But, I decided that this year I want to get over it and post my Fall Quarter poems. I didn’t take a class this quarter so these are all homespun and unedited, except for two of them that I had some girls look at on a...
Williams's "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (some...
“William Carlos Williams’ long, late poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” is remarkable in several regards. It is the fullest example of his work in the variable foot and in the triadic (or three-foot, stepped-down) line, a breakthrough form he discovered in Paterson, 2 (“The descent beckons…”) and utilized for many of his poems from the 1950s. It is also...
“Make out city is a two horse town!”
– Beck
My Anaïs Obsession, Part 1
During one of my first classes at UCSB, the professor, who I now consider to be the most one of my biggest academic influences, slammed down Pierre Bourdieu’s Masculine Domination, among other books that I felt I was not either prepared for or in the mood to read as a freshman… Anyway, he went on this rant about how everyone always talks about Anaïs Nin in terms of her sexual...
“Dear Tumblr, please let me play with line breaks without adding those annoying...”
– My cheeky persona
Emooootions
Pet is another word for guilt,
your careful mouth reminds me.
Oh, criminal, says your awful smirk. I cry,
and convince you to buy me doughnuts.
The icing seems inappropriate.
Reminds me of my crush on your father.
We are somewhere between improvisation
and downright emergency. I’m at the bus stop
with your semen dripping down my leg,
and you’re somewhere standing in a crowd,
minding your own...
“I’m faaaaaaaar too busy with Christmas to write in my blog today.”
– Myself
Hola!
So I kind of started this whole blogging thing on a whim, but the more I post, the more I’m really getting into posting/stalking random users. Normally what I put up here isn’t necessarily related to any particular subject, but as I scroll back and look at things I have posted (not to sound cheesy), I’ve decided I kind of like it that way. It’s been fascinating to see...
Xmas List
Bitchy Last-minute Christmas List I Feel Guilty for Making (always amendable)
1. Terryworld book of photographs
2. Kiehl’s skincare products
3. Digital camera
4. Gift certificates for spas
5. Gift certificates for restaurants
6. Money for trips
7. iPhone
8. Plane luggage (distinction necessary because I have collected about 3 sets of train luggage now, and I need to step it...
Sometimes with One I Love
Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I
effuse unreturn’d love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is
certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was notreturn’d,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
-Walt Whitman
Dylan of the Day - My Back Pages (Another Side of...
Making a Fist
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she...
Shots with the Crosby's
One of my favorite parts about spending time at home during the Holidays is using the resources of other people's families! For better or for worse, of course. For example:
Nick: Audrey, I think we should take some shots.
Audrey: Yeah sure, what do you have?
Nick: Well my mom has some whiskey and soda.
Audrey: Yeah, that's great.
Nick: It's not like soda soda though.
Audrey: Okay, that's fine.
Nick: Dr. Pepper or Ginger Ale?
Audrey: I'll go with Ginger Ale.
Nick: Also my mom only has diet.
Yay for the Crosby family!
Pre-Bakersfield Post
What’s else can I say? I just bought a train ticket to Bakersfield and I’m heading out there tomorrow. Goals:
1. Take a picture with silver Hank Williams statue
2. Find out what the fuck else is in Bakersfield, because I have no idea. Hopefully there will be a way for me to take some pictures! (This includes the one with Hank Williams).
Urban Prankster →
Description from site:
Urban Prankster covers pranks, hacks, participatory art, flash mobs, and other creative endeavors that take place in public places in cities across the world. It is edited by Charlie Todd.
“It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.”
– Gertrude Stein
Things to Do in Mountain View
1. Eat healthy food
2. Eat healthy food from three story Whole Foods
3. Exercise every day, even in the off-and-on rain (which smells so fucking good compared to Santa Barbara rain)
4. Read without holding a pencil in hand (but still visually scanning for one from time to time…just for that one line…)
5. Stop being “cool”, “smart”, “clever”,...
http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/ →
(This is the description of the site, copied and pasted from the actual home page)
Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. Yuri Ono designs and manages the web site.
Participants accept an assignment, complete it by following the...
A little femme power for ya!
Gender Genie? →
So I was given this link to a site that tries to guess whether the author of a piece of text is male or female. After plugging my writing samples into it multiple times (fiction and non-fiction) it has concluded that I am male. But like, um… like how does this thingy, um, like, figure it out…!?? I think it has to do with the constant soundtrack of boys playing video games in the...
Snakebite
Idabel had returned carrying a spray of dogwood, and now she smelled the blooms exultantly. ”I’ve already been snakebit,” she said.
“Yes, that’s the truth,” her sister admitted. ”You should’ve seen her leg, Joel Knox. It swelled up like a watermelon; all her hair fell out; oh, she was dogsick for two months, and Mama and me had to wait on her...
Listen
“A cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sold hole, a little less...”
– the sentence fragment I just wrote ten pages on (From Tender Buttons)
Blast this shit.
Latin American Lit. Final
This is the worst I’ll ever do to a test, coming second only to a first grade spelling test when I spelled the word ‘spotted’…(first I spelled it ‘spoted’ and then I think I went for ‘sppoted’) incorrectly both on the pre-test and then the post-test. Hence the excessive blogging.
Great Service (my dad, at the Holiday Inn Express)
Dad: You know what your Granddad used to say? If you want to get a good table at a restaurant, stand right in the way of the waiters and waitresses! (nods to busy bell hop, yelling unnecessarily loudly all the way across the hotel lobby) Hey Billy! Our baggage is all ready, if you guys are ready to take it to our new room!
*side note: I never do this.
At the Pharmacy, Part 1 (there is no Part 2 as of...
Pharmacist (in annoyed tone): Can I get you something?
Me: Oh, um, I'm just here for my refills?
Pharmacist (perks up, blinks a little): Ohhh!! I didn't recognize you without your glasses!
Which is more absurd, the fact that the Pharmacist knows who I am (a sort of psycho spinoff of "Cheers"?) or the fact that she knows who I am based off my non-prescription novelty glasses? No comment.
Listen
And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that’s just common sense: if you’re going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There’s nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what...
I guess the theme for the day is…...
Red Shoes
all that autumn you step from the train
as if something were burning
something is burning
running across the green grass bare feet
that day death was only
what we lose in fall comes back in spring
something is burning
from the train you climb
smoke between the skyscrapers
Paris was so beautiful, the sky–
all that autumn
then tears
Why do we do this again?
she turns to you in the...