Exclamation points

Can be reserved for texting
But when you're painting
The oh-so subtle contrasts
Show you really care

One Two Three steps back
One Two Three recitals wrecked
One Two Three fell swoops

Heading South

At 46 miles-per-hour
a windy two lane
hurls gravel, wispy dust clouds,
the occasional
possum carcass, and glaring
sun right in my eyes:
a short-term, momentary
vision extended
through time--recurring, novel.

Swimming in student papers
and there's a broken
record spinning in my head

Sunny Saturday
Sitting in the house
Watching football

Dogs pacing the floor
Uninspired
By the ad for ADT
Home security systems

Keep looking at the Preacher
Gone to Texas
sitting on my desk:
a cigarette
and shadows cast
by musculature
orange and black

I wish there were
a thousand words for love

so it wasn't always
hot or cold
"ouch" or "yeah"

and we could better
see the humor
in our crossed wires
and misplaced messages:

ecstatic or depressed
asleep or awake
sober or drunk
confident or not

the world around us moves
through our perception

Excelsior
the yellow
sword

Wasn't but a minute
before
I stopped what I was writing
and let myself feel
the neighborhood sounds,
autumn air
alive and rumbling.

Weak

How 'bout just running some hot water
over yesterday's grounds
to save me a trip to the store...

I wonder what ever happened
to those words
we used to say.

It happened to be

the first day of school

when rumors of tornadoes

whipped through town.

They took us by surprise,

scattering papers and plans

like some elaborate

slapstick routine:

a hoax of grand proportion.

It made us laugh for hours.

WOW

It's been a long time since I've been on here...but I'm starting back up. So, hold on...

May Day

The first day in May
Saturday
Coffee stains on the keyboard
C F V and G
In particular
I stapled 30
Pages of a book to its front cover
Just to hold my place
An open window
Lazy dog snoring
This must be peace

before i know it days have passed

been looking at the same old cobwebs
hanging in the corner
wafting unadorned

a cool quiet wind
and a wooden matchstick
the window cracked: a new
flame flickering

Percolate Faster

Caffeinated brain
KA-BAM
Bright moaning
Star crossed words
Osmosis
(Almost) slowing down
For one more second
Before it's done
Like THAT
For now

blank computer screen
sunlight glaring through the blinds
little thoughts disperse

This is something to pay attention to:

Armed Protesters March On (or at least near) D.C.--Scheduled for April 19th

It's funny how the yellow flowers
erupt beneath the morning sun
when I have eyes to see them.

Dwight

it's tempting to be
sentimental in the spring
when evening drags on

there's a mournful song
i love to hear, those simple
slow ecstatic tears

a leaf of dried sage
still smoking in the ashtray
spark wind haze and ash

While I slept

I dreamt about grocery shopping
with a gal I used to know.
We never used a buggy or a basket
but in the dream she had
this army green rucksack
that she dragged across the dusty
industrial tile.

I always hated soy milk
and I swear to God she filled
half that bag with boxes of it,
then several jars of peanut butter
a single head of iceberg lettuce
and a King Size pack of Twizzlers.

I was walking
about ten paces in front of her
and drinking from a jug of wine,
not even bothering to screw the cap on
in between sips. I remember
squinting into the flourescent
lights.

Nietzsche:

To the realists. -- You sober people who feel armed against passion and phantastical conceptions and would like to make your emptiness a matter of pride and an ornament--you call yourself realists and insinuate that the world really is the way it appears to you: before you alone reality stands unveiled, and you yourselves are perhaps the best part of it--oh, you beloved images of Sais! But aren't you too in your unveiled condition still most passionate and dark creatures, compared to fish, and still all too similar to an artist in love? And what is 'reality' to an artist in love! You still carry around the valuations of things that originate in the passions and loves of former centuries! Your sobriety still contains a secret and inextricable drunkenness! Your love of 'reality', for example--oh, that is an old, ancient 'love'! In every experience, in every sense impression there is a piece of this old love; and some fantasy, some prejudice, some irrationality, some ignorance, some fear, and whatever else, has worked on and contributed to it. That mountain over there! What is 'real' about that? Subtract just once the phantasm and the whole human contribution from it, you sober ones! Yes, if you could do that! If you could forget your background, your past, your nursery school--all of your humanity and animality! There is no 'reality' for us--and not for you either, you sober ones--we are not nearly as strange to one another as you think, and perhaps our good will to transcend drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that you are altogether incapable of drunkenness.

According to Albert Pike:

"In the visible aspect and action of society, often repulsive and annoying, we are apt to lose the due sense of its invisible blessings. As in Nature it is not the coarse and palpable, not soils and rains, nor even fields and flowers, that are so beautiful, as the invisible spirit of wisdom and beauty that pervades it; so in society, it is the invisible, and therefore unobserved, that is most beautiful."

On the tip of my tongue


When Sunday morning starts at 4
and coming Spring has roused the tourists,
beatniks, and leftover church folks--
livening their steps--
I'm floating down the sidewalk
above them all, a lovely rock star
on my arm, and wearing last night's
clothes feels perfect.

As we cross the street
a tangled lock of hair dances
in the breeze, brushing the soft skin
of her neck. Resisting
the quiet urge to stop right there--
amidst the traffic--and kiss her
up and down
makes my vision shimmer.

poem before bed...

Church on Monday Morning

A 30-foot extension ladder,
hood pulled tight around my neck,
the clouds exhaling quiet rain,
I press myself against the house—
a perfect time to talk to Jesus,
working in the cold
and feeling every breath
just come and go.

Normal Guy

writing about rhetoric is

...a story about the reality of a story about the reality of a story about the reality...

A Portrait of Early March

A Portrait of Early March

The snow from yesterday
has melted into slush—
caressed by the sun.
A muddy paw print on the futon,
long-johns draped across
the creaky rocking chair,
outside the window swirling
clouds of woodsmoke:
the kettle on the stove
begins to sigh.

Life is Life

Crusades Take Time

A Christian War

my way

I'll Take Mine Black

Two spoonfulls of winter sadness, quiet insurrection, inertia of elasticity: stirring my morning coffee with a ballpoint pen.

The February sun screams out—the coming Spring, Ecstasy, an inner vision bearing fruit.

I told everybody, when I come out the wilderness. Lean and lonely Lord

Exhaling slowly, until the emptiness fills itself, an impulse far beyond thought.

Crush in the Ghetto

Poem for a Sunny Day

Lucky


When I was a kid
I loved to flip pennies
from tails to heads,
so other lucky kids
could find them,
opening their eyes
with hope
for what’s to come.

Today I found one
heads-up in the driveway,
and slipped it
into my pocket,
expectation
growing.

It pulled my fingers
like a magnet,
smooth metal
warming under their touch,
a sunny breeze
blowing at my back.

Tao

The way can be spoken of,
But it will not be the constant way;
The name can be named,
But it will not be the constant name.
The nameless was the beginning of the myriad creatures;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.
Hence constantly rid yourself of desires in order to observe
it's subtlety;
But constantly allow yourself to have desires in order to
observe what it is after.
These two have the same origin but differ in name.
They are both called dark,
Darkness upon darkness
The gateway to all that is subtle.

Words and Champagne

Got to see/hear/feel Saul Williams last night...and it blew my mind. What an important artist--so courageous, so honest, so real. One thing he said in response to a question about the power of language has really stuck in my head this morning (this is a paraphrase): I like to treat words like rappers treat women in their videos...I pour champagne on them and just wait to see what happens...whether I'll get slapped or not...
Anyhow, as one of my primary occupations involves writing about words, their uses, and in particular their power, I'm thinking I should go get some champagne to mix with my orange juice and my investigations this morning...just to see what happens. Don't we (I) take words too seriously? Isn't the whole thing (living, feeling, being) really much deeper and much simpler than a lack of silence?...

A Student-Made Video for Saul Williams' List of Demands

Saul Williams...Resistance

Black Stacey

What to do about sunshine?

Freedom, Fear, Thunderstorms, and Ultraviolet Light: a post-9/11 reflection published in the Economist...(I ask: Is this message not timely still?

Milksop Nation, by Jack Gordon

Sual Williams--Amethyst Rock

Palin & Beck...

Obama fields questions from GOP

Nostalgia for Bush/Cheney Radicalism

Where is the Left/Right divide when it comes to civil liberties?

Getting poor --> Getting high

in California:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marijuana-initiative29-2010jan29,0,6132946.story

S.P. on the State of the Union

It's funny (scary) to me how Palin has a hard time even with the talking points...

Presenting the new rogue political expert...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig1X9ZZaJf4

State of the Union

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/31