madness is like love

I've struggled.
I can't help but wonder
what is me and more importantly,
what is not.
That is to say:
Where does me begin and end,
and where does the not me begin?

Is me just a soul? Is me this body?
Is me the clothes I wear or the words I speak;
the bed I sleep in, the posters on my walls?
Is me my friends? My family? My lovers?
Is me the house I live in, the city I work in,
the nation I pledge to, the religion I have
faith in, the earth I live on?
Is me the air I breathe or the grass I lay on;
or is me the food I eat, the books I read,
the songs I sing or the words I speak?
Is me my thoughts? My actions? My attitude?
My personality--
Is me the rain that falls around me, or
the sunlight that warms me, or the darkness
that blankets me each night?
Is me the buses I ride each day or the sights
I see; is me the art I look at or the music
I listen to or the philosophies I discuss?
Or is me the classes I take? The jobs I apply for?
The things I buy, the things I steal, the things
I wish for and will never have?
Is me my dreams? My goals? My aspirations of life?
Is me the hounded slave, the mash'd fireman?

We argued. But I confess that without your knowledge,
I found myself arguing more with me, than you. I'm sorry
for that--you deserved my full attention.

I stayed, and watched him circle the drain.

I found a stinkbug in my house.
Bastards are everywhere.
I hear by word of mouth
that squashing them is a bad
bad

bad

idea. Well I wasn't about to let him
go out and repopulate Pittsburgh
with his infiltrating offspring.

So I flushed him. I stayed.
I watched him circle the drain.

I did it with a smirk on my face
and yelled at him, "HOW DO YOU LIKE
INSIDE NOW?!" He got the point.

There's a flock of geese
somewhere around Frick Park,
I can hear them from here.

They sound surprisingly angry.

The crickets that live outside my window
don't seem terribly worried, though.

---

The geese have stopped.
Now it's the neighbors that seem angry.

No gunshots yet.

The crickets are still unafraid.

"Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."

ATTENTION: debate in progress.

So in my Reading Poetry class, the topic of "shaped poems" came up. The argument in our essay read that it added a new dimension to the poetry and helped develop the visual stimulation necessary to fully appreciate the words on the page for that given poem. A number of people in the class, teacher included, seem to disagree, saying its a gimmick that doesn't add value to the poem and seems to distract from the ideas in place.

Seeing as a number of poets, poetry readers, and just plain poetic souls occasionally pass by this blog, I'm curious to hear what anyone who sees this has to say. This is, I believe, the first time I've ever called out to the people for a response, so I guess it's also an experiment on that front, as well. I wonder.

bring me the stars?

I've lost my place in my mind.
Current finances indicate I can
continue living for approximately
two months.
Current curriculum indicates I can not
afford a job.
Current living situation indicates
I can not afford no job.
I will be having an average of

two hundred

pages a week to read.
Bring me the stars and I'll
take you away we'll take us away
you can take me away and
we'll live as the wolves.
The wolves.

Got my textbooks from the
reserve desk today.
Amidst three heavy accounting texts,
and under a copy of

"The Best Poems of the
English Language",

lay a copy of "The Crying of Lot 49."

I'm excited for exactly 40% of my classes
this semester.



If only I could find a place to live...

Dreaming

Oh, the colors.
Almost lime green engulfed in scarlet.
A girl, she has no face,
kisses a man, also defaced,
in secret. In secret? In the open,
under a tree, but unknown to anyone.

I wander upon them and am filled
with emotion, emotions of fear and
confusion, part, I believe,
because I don't recognize them,
but am still overcome.

Winds pick up on sight, and the trees
tear from the ground. The lovers hold
their embrace until she pushes away,
floating away into the sky. He slams
his fist, but its far too late. The
ground bubbles up and consumes him,
dragging down a long rope tied to his
waist. People watch, but no one helps.

I look to the starless sky and soon
black is all I see. A ring floats down
and hovers, it's inscribed with several
virtues. The ring becomes a snake, which
opens its mouth and screams a very human
scream.

The snake, beginning at its tail, eats
itself, consuming the virtues inscribed on
its belly. The last, I remember, is
forgiveness,
and it is there that the snake bites itself
off, killing itself, and vomits its own remains
into the sky.

I gather the snake's head in my hands and look
first to the grave of the man, and then to the
skies. I bury the snake in the soil, and
immediately, a tree grows. The same tree under
which the lovers sat. The lovers are gone.

I sit under the tree, alone.

A girl approaches me.

A soft blue, and people recognize us.

I Reflect on Currents and Pasts

At work yesterday, I
re-edged beds of river rock
on a very upscale house in
a neighborhood called

"The Legends".

While pushing stones away from
the edge,

I sometimes do my best thinking
while pushing stones uphill,

I thought of a number of things:

Humbert Humbert's folly was not
his attraction to Lolita, but
in his failure to distance
himself from her, knowing his
attraction was both illegal and
immoral.

Fallen birds remind me of fallen angels.
Eternally dead but ceaselessly beautiful.

When one looks through windows of
life and instead sees mirrors, one
of two things is in occurance.
---One, you can successfully apply
---everything you learn and see to
---your own life,

---or Two, you are so vain as to think
---that everything you learn and see
---is about your life.

"Caught me making eyes at the other boatman's wives,
And heard me laughing louder at the jokes told by their daughters.
I'd set my course for land, but you well understand,
It takes a steady hand to navigate adulterous waters."

To be perfectly honest,

I'm afraid to talk to you.

fiction is

I live in car crashes.
There's something incredibly
sensual in the chaos
of two vehicles joining
in a violent ballet of
twisting metal and showering
glass, in one swift moment,
and at ninety-two Gs, leaving
the fates of (at least) two
lives in the hands of unforgiving
steel and merciless asphalt.
And physics.

I live in car crashes, I wait for
them. They are final, and lasting.
They define beauty. They define
desire.

I got pictures on my mind

Twenty days later and empty.
Starting over.
Reboot.
I may find myself forgetting
casual consumerism.
To the greatest extent possible.
What's the point if I can find
another path, one of least(er)
resistance?
Hello, the year is 1984 and I
live in Airstrip One.
Where have I gone?
Where have I been?

Where am I going?

"Believe me,
if I started murdering
people,

there'd be none of you left."

Our world is sane
and I am out of my mind.
Out of my mind.
Ot ou me mine.

The sun is in tune.

I've lost my mind.
My soul.
My self.

Bring it back.

Jazzman

There was a man standing
in front of me,
a tall lanky black man,
at least fifty.
I would have kept walking,
but he was looking
right at my face, smiling.

I nodded a hello,
and he lifted a long, thin,
arthritic finger and pointed
at me. He squinted a bit,
and with a smirk, said in
a thick N'Orleans accent,
"You look like a blues man."

Confused, I offered the only
response that seemed rational
and true,
"You look like a jazz man, yourself."

He grinned. "My brother,"
he whispered, and hitting
me on the shoulder, shambled
on his way.

looking glasses

and what, if anything,
do you take from this,
your own idea of what
dreaming is, what life
is, and what death is?

listen.

are you uncomfortable
with yourself or with
your life or with your
appearance? there was
a time in history where
realism was art and
expressionism had no
place.

we're all pretty vain
now, aren't we?

don't make sense don't

your stars my stars
only impulse
find sky motherless

have gone away,
lost in a sea
of complacency
and consumption.
Forgotten forever
in tomorrow.
As a balloon,
free,
in the open air,
towards the heavens.

When people look at me,
they see one thing.
My identity has become
a reflection,
nothing is mine.

I am different than I was.
That much is true.

I am more than that,
you know.

Encounters with Birds

One

A bird lay
under a bush,
and I stepped too close.
It hopped a few feet,
then rested. It's wing
was broken, or something.
We stared at each other,
and it hopped away.
I understood pain, and
survival.

Two

Working for the old man,
I spotted a mother turkey
with twenty chicks.
She strutted proudly and
with authority, and despite
standing on a cement driveway,
completely outside
the boundaries and comforts
of home, she stood tall and
showed no waver of confidence
in front of her young.
I called out to her, and upon
turning her head, I recognized
the importance of family, and of
initiative.

I understand death now.
I understand pain.

The Most Important Thing

What do you do
when you're alone,
in a sinking ocean,
with weights tied
to your ankles?

When there are
too many ears(eyes)
and none at all?

(If a Friend walks
by after you've
already sunk below
the surface,
will he ever know
you were in distress?)

On the Road

I am

lost.
It's dark out,
I don't know
where

Iam.Iam.Iam.

I don't know
who

I am(have been)
displaced.



Hello?

Hello?

Peggy's Alright...The Baby's Dead.

Weeding a garden,
I pulled at a clump
of dirt and found
in my hand the remains
of a baby bird.

I paused, and lay the bird
out in my palm. Bits of mud
clung to the baby's feathers,
talons curled underneath its
frail body as its head fell
limp between my fingers.

I mourned the bird's short life
for a moment, then glanced
to each side, and when no one
was looking and against orders,
I returned the broken body to
the ground, covering it with
a patch of sod, ensuring it would
no longer be disturbed.

567-555-4561 or Lobster Party

I awoke to a
lobster infestation.
Seemingly unaware of
the significant
lack of hydration,
they scampered across
the floor, snapping
their claws and hissing
their horrible lobster
hiss.

I shouted at the
invading crustaceans,
"Get out of here, you slimy
black bubble munching
invertebrates, or
I'll boil you up til
you're red!" But the
monsters just snapped their
claws and tapped their toes and
danced

their lobster dances.
That's when I realized that
I had stumbled upon a
lobster party, in
the middle of my
living room, one of
great succes, I might
add, and I'll be
damned if I didn't
take off my shoes and join
in.

What are we, if not
memories? Entire lives
spent in the past, who
are we to call ourselves
more than such? Without
memories, have we identity?
One can argue, we are as
we are seen in the eyes of
our family and friends.

But are we not memories
in their minds? All of our
actions and words, our appearance
and feelings, interpreted into
memories, directly recallable
only as long as the lives of those
who experienced Us.

Do we have presence outside
of the minds of those of ours?
One could argue that our presence
exists in the physical Now, but
is it too much to consider the Now
as just the most tangible memory we have?
What is Now, but an infinitesimal point
on Time's map?

By definition, a point has no physical
value, only serving as an eternally small
reference location for a given value.
Therefore, an inability to measure the
value of the Now leaves us with no measurable
concept of physical presence. Now is Now,
and we are our past. Past Nows can be measured
in quantity, so we can measure our worth in
past presences, or memories.

We are who we are. I suppose.

Where have I gone?

Remind me to consider creating another chapbook once the semester is over. Not for a reason, just because I find it stress-relieving...compiling things you worked on. It's fulfilling. The end.

PS. Stress. Mess. Less.

Questions create illusions
and where do we go from here?
Well, for one, you'll
be here soon.

You know, I'm one to admit
I take life for granted,
and I get upset over a lot
of things, but in the end,

the sun comes up
in the morning.

It's a sight to see.

Money's an issue. I think I've sent out at least 30 applications/resumes. A few have responded, none have taken me, thus far. I know I won't have enough to pay this month's bills but I may be able to work it out with my roommates. That won't last forever. I've been considering another loan, but I don't know how to do that. I know so many people that say "Oh, I just had to take out another loan," and when I ask how they did that or what kind of loan they say "Oh, just go to financial aid." I go there and they say "Have you tried the Stafford Loan or our other grants." YES I'VE TRIED THEM I STILL DON'T HAVE MONEY BECAUSE YOU TOOK IT ALL. So I started looking at the options at the bank's website and it just scared me. So. Square one. I'm in a familiar position. Never underestimate the term "poor college student."

Green