Diving In a Sweater

On a porch in unseasonable weather
vapor brawling bitter air with the sweetness
of the last, the lucky
the two winds and I socializing and
carving equivalence
into the surrounding space like
courtship on tree bark
and I'm thinking about the appeal of sparsity
of exodus

The literal stomping of my feet to keep warm
cracks the exchange
into shiny fallen angel feelings
shivering on the concrete steps
barking raspy bittersweetness from what seems like
miles below

Piping for a heat wave
half dreaming with my fingers outstretched and
palpitating on those rarified type keys
it's no wonder that I haven't traveled


This poem was "published" in some issue of wordletting.com a while ago.  My only claim to recognition. 

American Ingenuity

As you can see, this simple metal device was NOT installed with "this side down."  Did they admire the embossed lettering?  Were they practicing some secret form of mechanical anarchy? Or was this person illiterate?  The possibilities are endless.

P.S. This is a toilet paper holder in a public restroom.

P.P.S. I am furious that I did not check the underside of this mechanism to see if the same message was displayed.  That would have made my "bathroom experience" a rabbit hole in a toilet bowl...

Her Clavical Is Broken, My Clavical Is Askew



Me naked...sort of.  Have you ever taken a naked picture of yourself?  It's illuminating.  And the drawing looks much better than I do.  You can see my signature at the bottom...so that scribble compounded with the obvious fracture/s in my collar bone mean that I am terribly disjointed.  I would have said "askew" but I already used it in theTitle.

This is Vonnegut on Kafka

1. It doesn't have to make sense to you.

2. I write in all capital letters as well, though I do not make critical literary diagrams.

3. If you put a dot in each side of the infinity sign it would look like boobs. This might eliminate some (if not all) of the "ill fortune."

4. Vonnegut was a genius.

5. Kafka was a genius with less of a sense of humor.

6. END

How Things Happen

I wrote this story a couple of years ago when I was entranced by "micro-fiction."  I'm sure the style has acquired many other names by now.  I imagine that this is how married people are.  At least affluent married people.  I like knowing that I re-read this story before posting it because I get to be the first person to judge it, as if it wasn't mine.  It is mine, just when I was a different version of myself.  Maybe the present version of me will re-write it...



How Things Happen

Their wrists were banging together impatiently, waiting for the water to get warmer. Four hands, twenty fingers, all waiting for their turn, like teenage girls pushing their way to the front row of a concert. He asked, "Is the water OK now?" The hairs on his knuckles were knotting and smashed. She said, "Yes, it just fine. Hand me the soap." Her fingernails were chewed down so far that the tops of each finger looked like a newborn baby head, pink and raw and sick. One nail even began to bleed as the water infiltrated that incalculable space between her different kinds of skin. She wasn’t embarrassed, and he didn’t notice. He said, "This soap smells like smoke and birthday cake." He wrinkled his nose and thought about shoving his fingers into her mouth. She said, "And now, so will you." Their wedding bands were beginning to glare at them through the foam. They knocked clumsily into one another and tried making a spectacle of themselves, knowing that they meant something only slightly better than banal.
When he washed, he squeezed one hand inside the other and pulled the soap off like a glove. When she washed she wove her fingers into a little fence and rubbed them vigorously back and forth like cricket legs.
The sink looked blue when it was dark outside. He said, "This used to be charming." He felt like he was betraying himself, washing away all the work he had done during the day. She said, "That was when we were in love." She said it apologetically, but without tribulation. He began to think about what it might be like to touch her with a tainted hand. What it would be like to put a his palm between her legs and know that he was giving her the memory of his day.  He wanted transference, mixing the debris of his tiny existence with the newness of her body’s sexual extrusion. Never in all the time he had known her had she given in and had sex without requiring the ceremonial hand wash. He said, "I don’t mind your germs." He looked at her, not hopefully, but just in case she broke down at that very second, just in case she started to cry. She said, "Thank you," and scrubbed a bit harder.
Usually the wash was a silent one, a routine that required no dialogue or discussion. This time he said, "I feel like I’m going into surgery, like I have to operate on you." He thought about opening up her stomach with a scalpel and squishing around inside her until he found something he liked, until he came out with a souvenir and sewed her back up. She said, "You wouldn’t have the precision for surgery." She didn’t mean to be malicious; she was trying to take away the comparison so he wouldn’t imagine it that way. He pulled his hands out of the sink and slapped them savagely into the clean towel dangling from a hook.  The hook was an afterthought. She looked up nervously, still washing. He crossed the threshold into the hallway and headed for the front door. His ankles were heavy and one hand still dripped a tiny procession that followed him on the carpet. He thought about how dry his mouth was just then. She called after him, "Where are you going?" She still wasn’t sure if he was upset or had just changed his mind about the sex.  The soap was interfering with the signals. He mumbled something about medical school and slammed the front door behind him.

The Pips

I invite you to meet The Pips of the famous Gladys Knight & the Pips.  I heard it through the grapevine that they would be making an appearance at my friend's Halloween party this year.  As you can see, they are dressed to the nines and ready for the performance of a lifetime (or deadtime?).  Gladys will be there as well, Pips "on hand" ready for singing opportunities that are sure to arrise.

The lovely and talented Jennifer Simmons is resposible for "booking" the act.  Her crafting ability never ceases to amaze me.  A Motown Halloween.  Jealous?

It's Only a Few Points Above a Nut Roll

I went to see Jacob's Ladder tonight at my favorite independent movie theater.  I was admittedly stoned, but of sound mind (I think).

The car was parked in a garage across the street from the theater, headlights responsibly turned off.

Theater in sight, I walk the 30 feet of concrete to the door, and I make my way briskly across the street (it's chilly, mind you).

PROBLEM:

I notice a glowing fun size Butterfinger lying directly in front of me on the ramp up to the theater.  I would swear on Carol (what I call my mother) that it was in pristine, unopened, edible condition.  My heart jumped.  I bent down and picked up what I thought would be a delicious pre-movie treat.

PROBLEM: I was not willing to wait until the movie to eat the candy.  

PROBLEM: I picked up candy from OFF OF THE GROUND and had every intention of devouring it.

PROBLEM: What I actually picked up was a piece of trash.  It was an EMPTY fun size Butterfinger wrapper.

PROBLEM: Because my body subsists mainly on sugar, part of me literally died. Additionally, my most significant dream of the day was crushed.
PROBLEM: I don't even really like Butterfingers. It's only a few points above a Nut Roll.
POSITIVE: There was no string attached to the wrapper.
QUESTION: What would a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?

Something About Worker Bees

Drinking too much cofee and
free thinking
and knowing what hair actually is
makes it difficult
to put on nice pants and go to the
office
where the smell of everyone
adulterates
and life plays the part of the
one trick pony
your boss only knows a few
words in English
so you go to the bathroom to
count the holes
in the drain when he is walking
toward you

by - Me

This Is Water / Capital-G Guts

Excerpts from David Foster Wallace's Keynote Commencement Speech in 2005 as they relate to my post:
"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
"The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance..."

"This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger." (a terrible, and probably accidental foreshadowing)

"...awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

And now, this is me (your blogger) speaking:
I should have read this speech a long time ago, but starting college at 25 has put me behind.  You try to read Infinite Jest so you can brag to your English major friends that you get it, that you know what it "means." Then you read anything else that DFW has written so that you can keep up.  And then you hear, you know, that DFW hangs himself 3 years after giving that speech.  The problem with the water is that your awareness of it will NEVER save your life.  I find myself unfortunately resigned to the fact that he knew this as well, but chose to keep it out of the speech for obvious reasons.  Less than an hour after reading this speech I was driving home from work, listening to community radio (which I almost never do) and the song The Great White Ocean by Antony and the Johnstons began to play.
 
"Swim with me my Sister when I die
In the great white ocean we must try
Try to find a way that we can see
See each others faces in the sea"

It seems melodramatic to relate one to the other, song and prose, bla bla bla.  But the only thing I could picture (which is an unfortunate consequence of over exposure to pop culture) was DFW hanging in his bedroom while The Great White Ocean played on repeat on a faded yellow record player a la Susanna Kaysen/James Mangold.

The water is the little things, the big things, the things you forget to remember, the passage of time, the inconsistencies,  the obsessions, the lack, and as DFW puts it - "The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death."

What worries me is that while the water surrounds me, my capital-G Guts inhabit me (variety meats, brain, belly, marrow, etc).  If DFW believes that we all worship something and that there is no such thing as atheism, then he worshiped his Guts.  And now he hangs above the water. 

David Foster Wallace Keynote Commencement Speech 2005 can be viewed in its entirety here:
http://publicnoises.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-foster-wallace-kenyon.html
 

Complaints?

The Poster goes a little something like this:

Is your band struggling to come up with a name? (Go with something that starts with "the" or try using three unrelated words to astound/mistify/impress your audience)

Do the animals in the zoo look sad to you? (Like, because they're in cages...or whatever)

Are you confused by the paradoxes of sex and art? (You should be. That's the point)

This poster exemplifies the ideologies of the 20-30somethings who inhabit my urban neighborhood.

I do, in fact, have a complaint: General complaint.

I have never called that phone number.  I like that it floats out in hipster oblivion without a real person on the other end.  Perhaps I should prank call them with a "Prince Albert in a can" joke since they are so consumed by "vintage" EVERYTHING. 

At Least They Didn't Sigh In My Mouth

1. Don’t anthropomorphize my lunch. I already purchased the tots, I don’t need them to sing, dance or bathe themselves in salt and ketchup. The fact that they are fried makes them appetizing enough. Trust me.

2. I prefer not to have philosophical differences with my food. If the tots believes (yes, I will play along for a moment) in some kind of divine inevitability, I would rather them keep that to themselves.

3. The tots tasted good despite the nuisance of a carton in which they came.

4. "As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is [a tater tot's] destiny and the meaning of [their] life." - Napoleon Bonaparte