Thumbtacks

A white, plastic thumbtack drops,
vanishes into the cream-colored carpet.
He won’t find it for weeks.
Not until it pricks his foot,
sticks, and hangs in his heel
when he lifts his leg, horrified.

In a ratty, rickety, royal blue recliner
I am reading a historian who says, in horror,
incensed at the senselessness of the idea,
that there are missiles missing from armories
across America, and abroad as well.
There and about an atom bomb unaccounted for.

I cringe, clench my jaw to keep from screaming.
I need a cup of cold water to calm me, cool me,
so I coast barefoot across the carpet to the kitchen.
From the corner of my eye I notice a poster,
one corner flapping freely as I pass,
and dread the day we find all our missing thumbtacks.

some things to consider . . .

excerpted from "the greening of america" by charles a. reich:

what have we all lost? what aspects of the human experience are either missing altogether from our lives or present only in feeble imitation of their real quality? let us take our list off the yellow pad where it was jotted down one fine morning in early summer.

ADVENTURE, TRAVEL the yukon, the hebrides, a blizzard, fog on the grand banks, the lost cities of crete, climbing a mountain on rock and ice in elemental cold and wind.
SEX experiences with many different people, in different times, circumstances, and localities, in moments of happiness, sorrow, need, and comfortable familiarity, in youth and in age.
NATURE the experience of living in harmony with nature, on a farm, or by the sea, or near a lake or meadow, knowing, using, and returning the elements; thoreau at walden.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY chopping wood, carrying a boat, running, walking, climbing, experiencing heat and cold, swimming, building a house, paddling a canoe.
CLOTHES clothes to express various moods, and to express the body, its strength, its shape, its sensuality, its harmony with the rest of nature. clothes for fun, for work, for dignity.
MORALITY having a moral stand with respect to something happening to oneself, to others, or to society; maintaining that stand, and giving it expression.
BRAVERY
WORSHIP
MAGIC and MYSTERY
AWE, WONDER, REVERENCE
FEAR, DREAD, AWARENESS OF DEATH
SPONTANEITY
ROMANCE
DANCE
PLAY
CEREMONY and RITUAL
PERFORMING FOR OTHERS
CREATIVITY in more primitive cultures, creativity and art are part of everyday life, and each person has an opportunity to exercise his creative side.
IMAGINATION
MIND-EXPANDING DRUGS
MUSIC AS A PART OF DAILY LIFE
MULTIMEDIA EXPERIENCES music, light, smell, dance, all together.
ALTERATIONS OF TIME staying up all night, getting up before dawn, sleeping all day, working three days straight, or being wholly oblivious to measured time.
SEASONS observing the four changes of season by stopping other activities for a while and going to some place where the change is fully visible.
GROWTH, LEARNING, CHANGE constantly learning new things, experiencing changes of feelings and personality, continually growing in experience and consciousness.
HARMONY enough time and reflection to assemble various experiences and changes into a harmony within the individual, relating them to each other and to earlier experiences.
INNER LIFE introspection, reflection.
RESPONDING TO OWN NEEDS staying in bed when the need is felt, drinking a milk shake on a hot afternoon, or stopping everything to watch a rainstorm.
OUR SPECIAL EXCELLENCE having enough independence to disregard other people's standards of excellence, discover one's own special excellence, and then pursue it.
WHOLENESS being completely present with another person, or completely given to some experience, rather then being partially withheld as most roles demand.
SENSUALITY being sensually aware of all the stimuli at a given moment; smell, temperature, breeze, noises, the tempo of one's own body.
NEW FEELINGS experiencing feelings or emotions qualitatively different from those previously known.
EXPANDED CONSCIOUSNESS experiencing previously unknown kinds of awareness, new values, new understanding.
NEW ENVIRONMENTS experiencing a new total environment long enough to make adjustments to it and understand its terms (such as six months in the tropics).
CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT taking whatever elements are given, natural, human, and social, and making a unique pattern out of them as one's own creation.
CONFLICT, DISORDER
SUFFERING, PAIN
CHALLENGE
TRANSCENDENCE
MYTH MAKING and TELLING
LITERATURE, ART, THEATRE, FILMS
BARE FEET
AESTHETIC ENJOYMENT OF FOOD
NEW WAYS OF THINKING
NONRATIONAL THOUGHTS
NEW IDEAS
ABILITY TO LISTEN TO OTHERS
PEOPLE: PERCEIVING THEM NON-VERBALLY
PEOPLE: SEEING THE UNIQUENESS OF EACH ONE
PEOPLE: CREATIVITY IN RELATIONSHIPS
PEOPLE: EXCHANGING EXPERIENCES
PEOPLE: EXCHANGING FEELINGS
PEOPLE: BEING VULNERABLE WITH THEM
PEOPLE: FRIENDSHIP
AFFECTION
COMMUNITY
SOLIDARITY
BROTHERHOOD
FREEDOM.

The Wisdom of Solomon

"When the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom . . . there was no spirit left in her." -- 1 Kgs 10:4-5

"But king Solomon loved many strange women . . ." -- 1 Kgs 11:1

I am Solomon, wise
except in love. I am a fool's fool,
you my favorite forbidden mistress.
I am always worshipping women
who make me to serve stone idols.
I am always wandering after women
who turn my clay skin to stone,
who turn my clay heart to a puddle of red mud
which reflects each feminine image.

I have lusted for women whose black skin
had the dark luster of obsidian.
I have known lovers whose fit young breasts
rested, suspended from their chests,
like pairs of firm yellow pears,
women with stomachs smooth
as the waxy, white rind of the ripe honeydew.
I have savored mouths which hint of the scent
of fresh mint, citrus, and basil.

Now here we stand,
you, my favorite forbidden mistress,
I, Solomon, wise except in love.
Now here we stand,
concealed in my chambers,
beside my downy, crimson couch.

Your arms dangle around my neck,
you hang there, careless.
Before you I am still and helpless
like an ancient column, overgrown, green
with grape vines, your arms the thin tendrils
which caress and cling to the column
and slowly cleave its stony surface
until the cracks and the red, wet weight of the grapes
climax in its collapse, and it crumbles.

One Night We Angered The Sun

In the dark by the car we stood,
under stars at 4 am. She pressed me
to spend the night, pinned me to the door.
I told her there was really no night left to spend,
but wouldn't it be fun to wake up the sun?

We made love loudly in a bed with a wooden frame
until the lazy sun roared out another morning.
I think the sun was angry --
it shot hostile spikes of light through the blinds.
I apologized for the clamor but calmly explained to him
that it's a sin for a man to refuse a woman's love.
He argued back in harsh yellow tones,
his saffron fingers slapping my face through the slats.
I could only squint and sigh and quickly close the curtains.

The sun sure is stubborn,
refusing to accept the necessities
of properly loving a woman,
spewing severe light, spoiling our dark fun.

we are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon . . .

sometimes you'll meet a person whose soul has known yours.

not to say that you are soulmates. i don't believe in soulmates.

i just mean that sometimes you're lucky enough to find someone who knows where you're coming from.

****************************
Passage

If you want to walk I will lie down,
stretch my grassy legs southward,
offer my thin brown arms
as a clay path that wraps west to east.
My throat will head north, to the crown
of this marbled and mottled world.

Darling, if you want to walk
I'll become a road that you can amble down
barefoot, without fear of glass or gravel.

get it on, bang a gong . . .

so saturday night i hooked up with my very good friend's younger sister. i'll spare details (a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell . . .), but may it suffice that she is an awesome girl. i was sort of weirded out, however, when i walked out of the bedroom the next morning and bumped into my friend brushing his teeth. it was a tad awkward, but i talked to him about it later that night and he was not mad at me.

anyway, her name is lyric (what a kickass name!) and she is coming to visit me tomorrow (4/20!). i definitely have a crush on her. i'm even starting to feel that feeling i used to feel . . .

******************************

pull back the blankets, love --
you and me, we're warm enough.

a work in progress . . .

The Sex Connection

Some girls are forgotten almost as quickly as they come.
Like my first, frenzied attempt -- I call it a fuck;
we did not make love.
She had hair some shade of brown, I'm sure.
Otherwise I cannot begin to describe her.
I didn't even take time to take off
my pants. We shielded our innocent skin,
wore our shirts and socks.
The bedframe groaned with each quick stab.
She stayed silent, her voice lost to me forever.
I was in her for a minute,
but she never got inside of me.
No, it was not kind, but can a man feel guilt
for the carnal crimes of the boy?

Then there are those with whom I want it
to mean more than a moment
of closed eyes and clenched muscle:
a short girl with long brown hair,
her eyes a pair of sea-green whirlpools.
When she moved over me it mattered.
Her smooth belly slid over my belly
like a warm wind on my shuddering skin.
A girl like that you look in the eye.
I cannot forget her expectant gaze,
which saw something in our sex
connection that couldn't be cut.

so . . .

. . . i'm participating in an undergraduate poetry reading in the union art gallery at 2 pm on Sunday??? come if you're really bored or if you have a taste for (mostly) shitty poetry.







party tonight at lee's! tomorrow night -- the terror of the sea!! be there or be gobbled alive!!!

always talk to strangers

i was just walking down state street and i passed this jamaican guy with kickass dreads chilling on his stoop smoking a cigarette. i was scattering gravel down the sidewalk with my feet and he yelled out to me.

"ey mon, wheh ya shoooes at?"

i shrugged and said, "it's a nice day."

"yeh . . . ettis," he said assentingly, and took another drag off his cigarette.

when we were kids our parents told us never to talk to strangers. that makes good sense when you're a kid -- unfortunately the world can be a dangerous place for children. sadly, too many people never forget this advice and go on avoiding interaction with strangers at all costs. but sometimes good connections, human connections, can be made by talking to a stranger, or just by smiling at someone. so go ahead. talk to somebody you don't know today. pick up a hitchhiker. it's time for some existential communication.

Black Dog

He was a five year old's first dog:
Buddy, a black, bristly-haired
bastard of a hound,
squat like an iron stewpot.

I remember, age twelve,
an ice storm, the wintry weather
withered the city.
Buddy sat in the back-
yard, covered in chilly chunks.
His furry, frosted eyes were fixed
on the frozen moon in the frozen sky.
He would only stay inside
long enough to lift his leg
and piss on the corn blue couch.
Then he'd lick his black beard
and laugh and beg
to be left to his frozen solitude.

Buddy, that son of a bitch,
learned to unlock the latch
on the door from the back porch.
He'd hightail it, nose through the neighborhood,
pick doggy fights and break doggy hearts.
He'd harass postmen and heel afternoon joggers.

Then one day Buddy bolted for the last time.
I guess he decided he couldn't be confined,
and no one saw him after that. We looked,
but Buddy didn't want to be found.
Buddy, the beast, the bodhisattva,
his breakout meant that life is only lent,
life cannot be spent behind fences.
I do not think he died.
I doubt his bones would stay buried.

A Love Poem in Similes

You're warm like a knife
in a belly bursting with wine,
soft, like a tickling, flickering feather of flame
that boils the meat of your finger.
You are gracious, merciful,
like a quickly slit gullet.

Your love is surprising
like the thud of a thumb
under a hammerhead.

i looked and the tree bloomed.

today i had a lesson in nonattachment.

i lost my led zeppelin tshirt. or, should i say, i accidentally dropped it somewhere between my car and my apartment and someone jacked it. one of my favorite tshirts, gone. it's silly, i know, but that tshirt rocked. just like zeppelin.

it's good though. i am learning to give up the transient things of this world. damn whomever invented the concept of ownership.

in springtime i'm always influenced more by my buddhist sensibilities. i think it's all the new life springing up around me. it's all about possibility.

the key to buddhism, and to living i think, is that you cannot take too seriously a life that is completely illusory.

if you're completely submerged in this life you cannot see it for what it is. the idiot distracted by the shadows on the wall of the cave doesn't see the sunlight streaming in through its mouth.

if you don't take life too seriously you can look at it objectively, make better and more rational decisions. you can play your life like a game, like its meant to be played and enjoyed. then you can shed your skin and smile as your soul slithers out.










p.s. it was only a matter of time: http://www.collegehumor.com/news/2005-01-20.napoleon.php

i want to be clear.

i like that phrase. i want to be clear. i think, most of all, that's what i want. to be clear.

when you say "i want to be clear" you're not just saying "i want you to comprehend what i say."

no. you're saying i want you to understand me so well that i become transparent to you. you're saying i want to be so honest and open that you can see right through me, like a freshly cleaned window pane. you're saying you want to have no secrets, no motives, no intentions.

i hope i am clear.

i want to be clear.

fun you can eat!

hehe.

i took the title of this post from a bag of "new! twizzlers sourz" i bought recently. i thought it would look really funny out of context. i hope you found it amusing.

right now i'm all jacked up on the sugar from the twizzlers.

today i thought about this:

our brains control much of what we do and say and who we are, generally. yet, we have seemingly very little control over our brains, that is, over their chemical functioning, and to a certain degree, over the information that is fed into our brains subconciously. still, we go about our lives and we make decisions and act in the world and we have triumphs and shortcomings and when we fuck up we face consequences. but, given that we are not at all in control of our brains and therefore of ourselves, really, then how can anyone be held responsible, or more than that, be punished for any mistake, no matter how big or small? if our brains are truly just a web of cells which are tiny chemical factories which are composed of atoms and protons and electrons and quarks, then how can we be culpable when they go haywire?

the only two answers, that i can see, are that we either admit that the above is true and discontinue punishing anyone for anything or disapproving of anything at all, or we admit that people are somehow something more, that we have souls, or a consciousness different and superior to that of any other living thing known to us, a consciousness that exists apart from the workings of the brain and the body, that is not subject to their operation, and that allows us to judge critically and objectively, to have moral reason, to empathize. we'd have to believe that a person should be held accountable for developing these abilities and that failure to do so should be a cause for censure.

so, it appears, we must either abandon all our concepts of law and morality, or we have to recognize that science, alone, cannot explain the existence of human beings or the consciousness that has been bestowed upon them.

what do you think?

is anything worth dying for?

if not, is anything worth living for?














beauty is the only thing in which i still believe.