Sunday, December 28, 2008

Kala

I took my dog, Kala, on an adventure the other day. Here is what we did:

Friday, December 12, 2008

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I Envy



I'm glad I have friends that have taste.

I don't really understand how artists can put really sad lyrics to gross pop. The kind of music that will play on the radio and people will listen to it with all the windows rolled down and screaming. I mean, these artists impress me. They seem so sad and yet they put their heart out there, ya know?

I wish my throat didn't bubble up when I try to hit the high note, so that if I screamed, it seems like a much more fit way of talking my demons down.

I wish I was more afraid of God than my demons. I wish I didn't even give demons any credit. They like it when I fear them. Your deepest suffering glares at you with beady eyes, surfacing the night, all stealthy in the fog. They're sorta waiting to crawl towards you and you won't even see them because you can't really see that well.

I'm jealous of the one that makes the black and white keys on a piano soaking wet.

It's maddening when you can't articulate yourself and you keep punching yourself in the eye because you can't speak or see.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Happy Mess

Old Lady Magdalene looks up to Annie Leibovitz.
Maybe Maggie just snaps these photos to do something pretty justice,
but really she wants to redeem the mess
just as well as Mrs. Leibovitz does.

Neil Young looks Christ-like, all alcoholic and all.
Just as well, Maggie snaps a shot of a fox dying
and provokes the thought, maybe the fox died gracefully?

The fox is bloodied up all so refreshingly.

You might see your sibling scream at your mom
and hopefully it will make you as happy as it makes me
because a lot of things happy stem from something messed up.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Hotel Room

"Susie, you think hotel rooms are mundane?"

Susie says, "Well, there's no personality."

"Look, it's spacious room that a king would feel overwhelmed in, but a king size bed to calm him down."

Susie sarcastically says, "Well, that's fitting."

Hotel rooms seem to remove you from using your materials. At our home, I'll take my body pillow and put it in between my legs and rest my glasses sitting in the blinds, and have my collection of wine bottles stacked next to the VHS player. Everything in here is sorta representing who I am. In a hotel room, you'll have to use 3 sizes of pillows.

In the hotel room, it's raining outside and the TV is as warm as a fireplace. Good Will Hunting is on and you are walking out of the bathroom with your towel wrapped 'round you like a dress. The shower's dew drips off your hair like it's a blade of grass in the morning time.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

...If You Sleep That Good

I made this over the summer, but I figured I might as well post it on my blog.

Here you go:

Water

The water is silk but is heavy when an ocean.
I swim inside it but can't find my way out.
Something really pretty is only overwhelming.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Philippians 3

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Ode to Mom (Beauties, Seasonally)

On February 24th, 1988, she told me I was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. She was hurting and tired, but she's drop-dead gorgeous - the way a girl is unaware of some tuft of hair that kicks off the top of her ear, making men go crazy.

You plastered my face with anointing oil and summoned the wind to blow gently on my window.

You Know What I'm Gonna Tell You

How much do i have to explain
when the universal generalization
explains even that which i cannot grasp
for i have only experienced my experience.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Talk or Scream, Just Let Us Know

The entropy of an object depicts just how much chaos that object contains.

The English teacher shares his frustrated eyes with the class and moves his insides closer to disorder. Within a 50 minute class, he has a good enough time staring each student down to give them at least 5 minutes of how much he hates that person for not talking. He'll say, "Class, you could maybe try reading tonight and taking some notes - maybe jotting down stuff you found interesting that you'd like to share with us next class period. Just don't make me do all the talking!" Sure he's the teacher, but the class is mobile only with dialogue and interaction. He keeps looking at me and I'd love to say how much Crying of Lot 49 makes me....and then I'll scream in class because that's how it makes me feel. And some girl will turn around and look at me as if I'm a frog that just got run over by a car. My skin crawls. I keep feeling like the lights are flickering because my brain won't stop and no one in this room will talk.

Monday, October 13, 2008

CHAPTER 1: Fab



---September 9, 1979---
---Apex, NC---

I'll feel dumb when the Freshman calculates Pi faster than me. You don't have to eat all the corn that Babs, the cafeteria lady, will smash on your plate. You'll be a fat mathematician that my suite mates will make fun of. I think of the sun maybe making its way over California and how it might just get here in 3.14 hours as I blow smoke rings out my 9th story bedroom window. I live in the tallest building on Apex's campus. I've been at Apex Academy now for 3 weeks. I just don't feel like a junior in high school, what with going to a boarding school where you live at your school and all.

I try and pull up my window but it's painted shut and paint chips are falling like snow. There are 8 pairs of people below me that might sneeze, if they were to stick their heads out the window. Suckers, at least enjoy the snow I'm providing for you.

My family and I would take trips all the time to come up here, since Apex is right on the coast. When it snows, it floods the spaces in between dorms because there is no outlet for the snow to spread itself out into. My roommate, Fab, and I sometimes go to our friends' dorm on the 3rd floor and jump out his window into the snowy, pillowy mess.

Fab and I would come up here sometimes in the winter and just go lay out on the beach. There's this mournful tone that seems to permeate the atmosphere surrounding you when you walk out onto a beach and can only see the person right in front of you. The air is just really hazy because the layer of water droplets in the air near the ocean seem almost crystallized and seem to linger so motionless that everything is just really quiet and foggy.

It gets so quiet that any noise that might penetrate the crystallized air will hurt to hear, even the crunch of the snowy sand under your foot is as audible as a gun shot anywhere else. When Fab and I would come to the beach, he would always bring this instrument called a Sarangi, which is this bowed string instrument that's really popular in his culture. When he'd play it, it was probably all you could here anywhere a mile from it.

Fab is a hippie Indian. His real name is Founji Ubekhi, but somewhere along the way of him being in America for the past 4 years, someone decided to change that.

My home is only an hour drive from here in Johnson City and I feel like I can see it from this window. Any flashing light on the interstate very well could just be my dad shining a flashlight in the backyard, looking for his pot stash.

Right now, Fab's sitting in front of the tube like the dog in 100 Dalmations that sits with his nose basically touching the t.v.

"Fab, it'd be better to not eat McDonald's for breakfast, ya know. You'd probably be better off eating some of that Bengali cuisine so you'd feel better at times like this."

Fab looks at me like I'm the champion of idiots and says, "Dude, I'm only Indian because my parents are."

"Well, you also lived in India for 12 years."

Fab says, "Well yea, but I am a McDonald's fiend now. Plus, it's 4 in the morning. What I ate a day ago shouldn't be fucking with me now."

I'd like to point out how much Fab nonchalantly cusses.

Fab decides to pull out his Micky Dee's leftovers. Bad idea.
He tosses them out the window, seemingly an attempt at saying, "Suck it, McDonald's." Great Idea.

One of our suitemates, Mo, comes in and asks, "Ya'll wanna watch Animal House right now? It just came out on VHS!"

I look at Mo and say, "Dude, really, it's 4 in the morning. Let's go take a nap on the beach."

Fab looks at me and says, "Right on. Let's go build a bonfire."

I'm glad I room with Fab. Sometimes, if someone wants to pop in a movie, I feel like I should be a party-pooper. I'm so antsy sometimes. Do you ever smoke a cigarette and feel like you can't stop your hands from shaking? It might be because you're getting a buzz. Funny, I typically smoke to calm down my nerves but it typically just makes me even more nervous.

Monday, October 6, 2008

CHAPTER X: Introduction

Right now, I'm doing quite a bit of editing on my written chapters. I didn't like the idea of everything Julian Fidelt is saying as being a conversation. I especially didn't like it being a conversation to a psychologist he hardly even knows.

So, like I said, I've been editing a lot lately. I can be picky sometimes and will take out ideas or character developments and trash them completely all together. I need to learn to not be so ambitious/pretentious at times.

I plan on making movies for each chapter that will have pictures and music correlative to what's written beneath it. You'll see what I mean once I post it. What I've written lately has just been very inspired and needs the movie/music to go along with it.

Sounds ambitious, I know, but we'll see how it pans out.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

A Scene from the Psychiatrist Office

----------

I'll try and commit suicide and I'll fail. Then, some one in my family will set up this set of psychiatrist appointments.

The water jug will gulp it's water back in and blow air bubbles inside of itself the whole time the doctor's sitting there staring at me.

I'll get bored with her mundanity and say, "If you're dying to know exactly what went wrong, I'll tell you, but with a certain pain-staking knifing of my soul."

I always try to be as dramatic as possible when the therapist or psychiatrist is sitting there, staring at me with a twitchy eye, as if they are so concentrated on every word I say. They probably have to listen hard, I mean they've got to have the right questions to ask, ya know? Still though, I like to mess with them. They'll always backtrack and say, "So, you said that you went up to your room and took (insert drug here) and it caused you to _____ in the toilet and when your parents found out, they weren't exactly happy." And just to mess with them, I'll always try and trick them into thinking, "Well, actually my parents were pretty happy with the whole thing, I mean they loved how it went down." And to that, Dr. whoever will say, "Well, isn't that why you're here in the first place? Your parents forced you here."

I don't like it when the doctor gets too personal. Of course, they always do. It's their job.

----------

She sits there waiting for me to say, "Well, of course they forced me here."

I can't help but notice the vein in her neck.

"Doc, do you ever feel like you're asking me all these questions because you're trying to figure something out for yourself? Why did your husband leave you? Do you think that maybe the woman he is sleeping with is better in bed because she doesn't embarrass a sophomore in high school 3 times a week. You always stare at the butter knife on the table. Who's gonna butter their biscuits when they're being asked what they did once their vein collapsed? I think, ya know, maybe you don't want to butter your biscuits either! I think, ya know, maybe your eyeballing your arm because you're trying to think, "How'd he really do this? Did he seriously sit there picking the vein to slice?" Say maybe you're really asking me all these questions because you really want to know the best way to do it so that yours isn't just an attempt."

Friday, September 26, 2008

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Huck

So...I'm going to Chattanooga to see Huck this weekend. Whatever.



Thursday, September 18, 2008

Pumpkin Leaves

Sitting on top of our pile of leaves, I look at mom and say, "Just don't fall in or you'll get all gooey, mom. The Evil One will eat you."

"Jules, watch out where you point that finger. You don't wanna poke the Evil One's eye out."

Mom and I have always talked about how most of the leaves we rake into a huge pile sorta make this huge pumpkin looking thing 'cause the leaves are mostly orange. For a while now, we've been joking around about how once you've carved a face into a pumpkin, you've created only a mere image of the Evil One.

When I was little, my mom would sing me "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" as she would hold an orange leaf gently in her hand. She'd scrape some dirt up from the ground with her other hand and would place the leaf in the little scarfed out hole. With her arm crowning my forehead, she'd then go on to tell me how this little orange leaf is like a seed and will grow into a pumpkin. I guess this worked on me 'cause the leaf was orange just like the pumpkin. Mom would go out and buy this huge pumpkin and when she picked me up from daycare the next day, she'd convince me that the pumpkin had already grown that big.

She'd tell me, "Jules, we'll soon be able to eat it and carve evil faces in it and scare off any kids that come on our porch to get candy. Then you'll get to eat all the Twix you want!"

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Post-Stroke Depression

"Son, can you pass me my glass next to the candle?"

I know very well what happened with my dad's whole conversion from guardian father to drunk stresser. My dad used to be star quarterback for the Tar Heels when he was in college. When I was 13...4 years ago...my dad was driving me in his Ford hatchback down this back country road and had a severe case of a stroke and the car flew into a fence post. All I really remember, there was this man shepherding his sheep in the field nearby. I ran up to him and scared his sheep away, but of course he knew whatever it was deserved the attention. I remember wishing my father would die right there and this man would take his spot. Someone would actually attend my soccer games.

I don't really remember much else. On the tube, Doug Ross always looks at his patient and treats it like it's something that happened to his father. "Strokes cause a rapid loss of brain cells and most people who suffer from stroke often struggle with post stroke depression. My dad's inability to function like a normal human being left him with a seemingly eternal symptom of post stroke depression, rather than a temporal symptom."

"Yeah dad, here you go."

Of course he won't be able to put the glass back where it was, because its contents could intoxicate a blue whale.

I always think, there isn't much dialogue between the two of us. I always think, he'd probably be able to break my back if his wasn't already broken.

Rainy

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

I Miss You

I was bored the other night.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Garden Personality

Someone at my old church (Grace Center), once told me that we all have our own gardens in Heaven. I believe this very much so. I believe that our gardens are all different because they contain what we each, individually, love. For example, I love Cran-Apple and Grizzly Bear's music and Sallow trees and overcast skies; therefore, I think that my garden will always be rainy and there will be huge Sallow trees with cranberries and apples being picked and tossed into a waterfall of Cran-apple magic and there will be this reverbed piano and vibrating clarinet embracing you as you enter my garden (kind of the same way a camera will tower over two armies fighting in a movie and then pan down abruptly to the miltary captain, fighting on the front line).

I think we will learn to love each other more in Heaven. I don't think we will enter Heaven and immediately be perfect and all-loving. Like, I think it will take people just the right amount of time to become perfect. I think we will enter Heaven and then be around people who have been living in Heaven for hundreds of years and we'll see how perfect they are, and we'll be thinking, "How and when do I get to be like that?" I'll see my great-great-grandmother and she'll be smiling even more than she did when she was on Earth and I'll ask her how she is this way. She'll look at me and say, "Take this flower to God and lay it at His feet. Take a moment to weep at His feet. God will wipe your face dry and He will dub your head with a sword and redeem you and grant you the perfection you deserve."

I think we will also become perfect in Heaven once we see how beautiful everyone's gardens are. We will become perfect once we are able to oppose the judgmental perceptions we had of each other when we were on Earth, because we are now in Heaven sharing stories and dwelling in each other's beautifully therapeutic gardens. I can't wait for my judgmental perceptions to be shot to Hell.

Like, I picture myself entering my dear friend, Elias's garden (we seem to not like each other's music very much at all), but in Heaven I will enter his garden and hear the music how Elias hears it, as really good music, that may be beautiful. I feel that in Heaven, there is no music that you love more than another form of music, it is all beautiful to you, just as God doesn't overhear one worshipper above another worshipper because everyone is on the same beautiful key to Him. The voice-cracks actually sound really good to Him.

I can't wait to be proved wrong.

Bloody Nail Quick

I used to always sit on our back porch and smoke cigarettes when I couldn't sleep. I'd take trips from my typewriter to smoking to typing to smoking. This one time, I was sitting on the back porch and all of a sudden I saw out of my peripheral vision, an orange flash to my right. My dad had come out to smoke before going to work. It was like 5 am and my dad had just woken up to go to work. He never wakes up on the right side of the bed. The right side of the bed may come once he gets off from work after organizing all the files he needed to place that day and maybe if he got a raise or something. So this morning, particularly, he woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

"You have school tomorrow, boy," he says.

"I know dad. I can't sleep."

"You think smoking's gonna help? Don't pick up my habits, son, smokin's bad fer ya."

"I know dad, I'm actually quitting, but smoking really does help me fall asleep. It sorta relaxes me, dad."

My dad, the super defensive man that he is, thinks that I am giving myself a pat on the back when I say,

"I'm actually quitting.", as if to say, "Well, at least I'm not smoking first thing in the morning before I jet off to a job I hate more than sin."

My dad just tries to act like he really knows the real version of what I'm saying. Well dad, there is no other version. I'm saying what I mean, you old man.

So, like I said, my dad's super defensive. He looks down at me, his eyes a little whiter and brighter than normal - the moon's glow bouncing off his beaty eyes, and he says,

"And I can't quit!? Psh. Son, have you any idea the miserable depths I go fer ya? I smoke the fag cos it's the only thing that will calm me down. I'm so stressed out because you are sent to a prestigious f*cked up school that makes our utilities hard to pay for, our food barely payable. We're joe's in a shack because of your education program. But what, you f*ck it up and stay up all night."

With each of those sentences, he would draw a little closer to me. And while close enough to lick my ear, he says,

"I am paying for you to be a dumbass in a classroom!"

He grips two of his fingers and plugs them in my nose and pulls my frightened face inches closer to his, and with an impulsive second of frustration within him, he decides to spit in my face. Something you'd see in a movie.

I pull myself away and look at him in disbelief.

"Are you f*cking kidding me, dad!"

He then slams the door behind me and locks it. He locks me out of the house. I'm sitting there with a bloody waterfall dripping out of my nose and saliva plastered all over my face, thinking, "What kind of father does such a thing."

I remember walking out on the back porch when I woke up the next morning for school, like a couple hours later, and seeing a Jim Beam bottle by the back door. So, he had been drunk the whole time. But who really can drink so much to become a drunk satan? I don't think alcohol can do anything worse to anyone other than my dad.

So even now, as mom and I sit on top of the pile of leaves behind the back porch, I bite my nails too close to the quick and bleed all down my fingers. I'm just nervous that maybe my dad decides to come back tonight and drink his Beam awkwardly behind me as I smoke my cigarette.

Mom's Hiding in the Leaves

Do you ever write just to feel like you are the most poetic person on the planet? I just ripped the paper out from the typewriter and it says, "The apple's heart is eaten and the seed is spitten as I bury myself in the snow underneath the old orchard tree." What does that even mean? I had been reading this Robert Frost poem called, "After Apple Picking", right before I wrote that sentence and it kinda bleeded over into my writing.

Mom's whistling for Todd, our 5 month-old Newfoundland similar to the one in Hook, to come inside, so I leave my room to greet him at the back door.

Todd's at the back door giving mom some wet chin slobbers and mom's still in her nightgown from her afternoon nap. Of course, I'm in my boxers and it's just a perfect coincidence for us to smoke together on the back porch and talk about how much earlier the leaves are changing colors in comparison to last year.

Our neighbors are probably thinking, "Why, oh why, are they sitting on their back porch in their nighties?"

Mom and I are probably thinking, "Suck it neighbors, we will do as we please."

My mom and I will try to rake up a big enough pile of leaves to where Hide and Seek can actually be a challenge. Mom will hide, humorously, as deep enough in the leaves that I mistake her for the ground when I jump on the pile and dig for her. I'll occasionally feel what I think is a stick in the pile and then 30 seconds later, I realize that stick was her arm. She's a champ at the game. She takes it, hilariously, very seriously.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Leaflet Spine

It is kind of similar
to the way my back's composure shifts.

There will be a toddler
who's experiencing fall for the first time.
He'll break the spine, accidentally.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Unseen Wounds

I desperately want to see my wounds.

I want to lay in front of God, as gently as one leaf lays in a pile of a thousand leaves. I want to feel like God is sitting on my bed with me as we listen to Sigur Ros and he is looking at me with a crooked smile, because He is proud of me but also simultaneously pissed at me for being so naive. I want to see God as the orchestrator of my problems. He is the balancer of my sin and my purity, putting things in their rightful, named places.

I want to worship God as though something really bittersweet just happened, with a tear of joy rolling down my cheek. Such as, when you attend a funeral and find that most of the prayer is not sad but happy because everyone is in agreement that this person was taken from Earth to worship God in Heaven.

I want to worship God and thank Him, just as my grandfather, William Wemyss (my mom's dad who died a couple years ago), does as he sits in front of God, alongside Ronald Reagan and my dad's dad (Glenn Rucker) and 14 billion other worshippers, as they kneel on a golden road, throwing flowers at God's feet and chanting, "Holy is Your Name!"

Monday, August 25, 2008

Dusty Typewriter

I start to blow the dust off and I look up in the air to see the dust scurrying about the room like the purple dots that seem to line the inside of your eyelids when you close your eyes after looking at the sun for too long. There is a binding warm/cold feeling when I sit in front of my typewriter when I come home. It is like a boy who comes home from a long roadtrip and sits down to write, having to pick through his brain.

There is this documentary I watched once, called, "Thumbing for a Musical Trip", and it's about this teenager, John, who is discovered by one of the head-hanchos who works for Rolling Stone magazine. John tours with this band, called Belle Doctor, and becomes really good friends with the band members, but especially the lead guitarist, Billy Thallow. John's shown at the end of the movie, sitting in front of his typewriter, reflecting back on the trip, editing his writing that he had written on Post-It notes. The movie shows John holding this one polaroid of Billy in this retro pink vest, scandalously making out with one or more groupies. And the typewriter is shown, out of focus, behind John, but if you press Pause on your VCR, there's this split second where you can read what it says on the typewriter, and it says something like, "After one of the shows Belle Doctor played in Guatemala's Mazatenango, Thallow and I streaked butt-naked across the Guatemalan desert on a beer run. The next..." And you can't read the rest. It's blocked out by John's hand. But if I had to guess, John had probably written something like, "The next day, we found a group of girls on the side of the desert while driving in our tour bus back to San Pedro and we couldn't think of anything better to do than to play Spin the Bottle in the middle of the desert." It makes you think if Rolling Stone would actually think that's great shit and put it in their magazine. Who knows? I mean, John did become famous off that article. He toured with Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd - all because he wrote an article about how he streaked with this small band that no one cares about across this desert in a town no one has ever heard of.

When I sit in front of my typewriter, I feel something very similar to what John probably felt. John probably was in a very nostalgic position when he's shown sitting in front of his typewriter, reflecting back on all the good memories of streaking.

I like to leave my window open and let the fall breeze's old and classy smell come drifting into the room. This fall smell hovers over my typewriter as I pin up pictures on the wall right in front of my typewriter. I like to pin up vintage polaroids of my friends and clippings from magazines, showing some Asian muscle man summitting Everest. I light my incense that's called, Christmas Kiss, and the smoke scurries about the room and meshes with the typewriter's scurrying dust.

Home Is a Naked Person

Mom looks at me and says, "Jules, I got you your fave coffee from Coffee Smoffee."

"Well, Dr. Seuss, it wouldn't happen to be Dead Dice on rocks with a hint of cow poop?"

"Of course."

Mom and I like to mock certain customers at certain coffee shops. It seems like some of them woke up one morning and just decided to have a nickname for everything that caffeinates them.

Somehow, Dead Dice means frozen mocha. For some reason, you have to say "on rocks" even though the ice is what makes it a frozen mocha. Somehow, "cow poop" means caramel. Just remember, when you go to Coffee Smoffee, ask for the Cold Caramel Mocha. You'll save your breath.

Home seems so much more homely when you've been away from it for a while. Whatever dorky scientist figured out that "distance makes the heart grow fonder" is an epic genius.

My mom has gotten the drill down. She figures me out fast. I like to come home and get my warm hug with the Cold Caramel Mocha. I'll get my massage and calm her down, which I love doing, because I know very well that I genuinely am calming her down. I'm basically her sinus relieving headache medicine that actually works. I'm warm to her as she is to me.

As I swallow my cow dung, I can see through the window - my mom's volkswagen parked under our Sallow tree. It's probably the only thing she does that doesn't make any sense. Sallow trees have this very abundant, watery sap that just drips everywhere and gets all over her car. My mom tells me stories about how she used to take me up into the tree when I was little. She would sit me in her lap and pet my head and sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" to me. After a few weeks of her singing that song to me, I mimicked the lyrics and somehow said my first words as something like,

"If you get to heaven before I do,
Comin' for to carry me home.
Tell all my friends I'm comin' there too,
Comin' for to carry me home."

Of course, it probably sounded more like, "Ith doo det doo deven duhdoor dah doo..." I apparently was a huge baby talker until I was like 5. I had fat cheeks. I was a fat 8 pound baby.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

I Can't Sleep

I used to just lay there in bed for hours and not be able to fall asleep because I'm thinking too deeply about something.

Now I'll get in bed and realize immediately that it's just not in the cards for me to get much sleep that night. I'll go out and smoke a cigarette because that usually tires me and makes me feel sorta drowsy anytime past 1 in the morning. There is the undying hope that's been filling up my time as of late. A lot of my nostalgic late nights have changed. There will already be a changing of leaves starting at the end of fall when the leaves have already changed from green to red; the leaves are always changing to me. I have a very cold, eery feeling and the leaves seem to always be falling, because I want them to. I'll drive to class in the morning and "The Gravel Road" by James Newton Howard from The Village OST is a skipping record in my mind as I drive under the Island Home bridge and see our side of town's culture fishing like they should be. I'll see downtown's side of culture, dolled up with ties for work, planned faces and games, an attitude, prestigiously. After class, I'll go thrifting and fail every time trying to find a retro pair of jeans, because South Knoxvillians beat me to it.

"Never go through a Wendy's drive-thru," I tell myself. They will always forget one of your burgers. A lot of girls storm my mind, so my forgotten burgers aren't that big of a deal, because basically it probably went out to that girl I have a fat crush on. Classes used to suck butt, but it's no big deal when you want your knowledge to make girls dig your groove. That sounded so prideful, but I can also say I don't have that kind of knowledge.

I can sometimes take pride in my insomnia, because I am learning cool things when everyone else is asleep and I'll sleep when you're at church this morning. Did you know that this Olympic season, they had the largest fireworks show ever? Well, that's what this article says that I just read. But really, how do they know? Does any firework shooter actually count all the fireworks they shoot? Or were these people judging the largeness of the show off of how large the explosions were?

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Coffee Smoffee / Red Carpet Martinis

There's this gas station I always get coffee at. It's called Coffee Smoffee. Dumbest name on earth. Best coffee in the galaxy. I always think it's hilarious when a gas station advertises their coffee over their gas, as if coffee takes priority or something. I feel like they prefer all of their customers to get their coffee before pumping gas. Maybe a truck driver is too tired to pump gas, like he might accidentally fall asleep at the pump and spray all of the other cars with gas. Then all the other customers will drive off and light a cigarette and explode. Of course, all these customers that shop at Coffee Smoffee will have to caffeinate themselves so they don't get put in jail for Unleaded Gas Spraying Homicide. I can see this being on a Mastercard commercial:

"A gallon of gas = $2.43.

A vehicular homicide at the pump = priceless".

Every time I go into get coffee and am waiting in line at the counter, I'll look at the magazines with all the celebrities blushed up with makeup on the covers. I'll see that some desperate housewife who likes to make her rounds on Oprah is cheating on her husband with Tom Cruise. The reason she was probably on Oprah in the first place is because she somehow got herself in bed with Tom. Oprah just wants Tom's body and so she has this desperate housewife on her show, basically just so she can hear all the dirty details.

I've always wondered how celebrities become such good friends. Do they just meet each other on the red carpet with Martini's in their hands and say "Toast"? Jimmie Stewart and Donna Reed are probably standing there on the red carpet and see that the host of that year's 1945 oscars, Jack Benny, is walking towards them and so they start talking to each other in order to escape an awkward interview. And so then they strike up this conversation and realize all that they have in common. They both like Martini's. What could go wrong? Or I bet some actress heard some musician's No. 1 hit on the radio and just dug his groove. And so maybe she called him up and asked him to meet her for coffee. Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe probably got caffeinated a lot together when 5 & diners were the shit.

Max Patch: Part 3 - The Chocolate Bundy

The gravel road that leads up to Max Patch has this information center at the end of it, this little dilapidated shack with spider webs in the windows. There's always this old man, maybe 60 years-old, sitting on the porch, smoking and reading. My friend, Mo, and I call him Jabba the Hut, just because he never seems to move. He's not fat, he just never moves. I'm sure Jabba runs the place, ya know? He probably made all of the brochures and maps in the little shack. He's got to know every trail around the place like the back of his hand. He doesn't do anything creepy, I mean, he's nice and waves at you while you pass by. It's just kinda strange to me that he's always doing the same thing every time I pass by.

Have you ever read "The Chocolate Touch"? It's this book about this kid named John Midas that loves chocolate so much and eats it so much that he acquires a magical gift that turns everything his lips touch into chocolate.

I feel like someone that loved chocolate a little bit too much kissed Jabba one time and it turned him into a brick of chocolate. And that's why he never moves. Because he can't. He's got to sit there and hope that someone who doesn't like chocolate might drive down the gravel road and if they kiss him or something, then the magic will be reversed.

Mo actually doesn't like chocolate. We always joke around about how Mo should kiss him.

"Hey Mo, kiss him."

Mo says, "Sure enough, he was out there. He's too far back now, though. Maybe next time, ha. I don't know though. That guy's always kinda creeped me out. He seems all jolly and all, but I always see someone like that being on TV for some committed murder, kinda like Ted Bundy or something. I'd never kiss Bundy."

Ted Bundy is this American serial killer legend. He apparently killed like 30 people in 4 years. Sometime in the 70's. His methods were just plain creepy. One of his first murder waves, he killed this girl that went to Washington State. He clobbered this girl with a metal rod from her bed frame while she slept. He seemed to always murder sleepers. It's kinda strange how much I know about serial killers. My friend, Drew, and I are really into telling scary stories and so we sometimes do research on serial killers and stuff so that we can always have the creepiest stories to tell. Yea, we blow people away.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Max Patch: Part 2 - Kissing Is for the Birds / Moon's Romance

We couldn't quite find a spot bare of dead skin, so my ass is probably gonna be sore.

Mo keeps yapping about how he wishes I were a girl. I can't help but wish the same of him. There are some timely moments for wishing there was a girl by your side. Especially when there's dead skin all around you and your ass is sore as hell.

Mo starts talking about the same girl every time. "She used to enjoy kissing me when my beard got long."

I can almost complete his sentences... "Once you grow your 49th beard, she starts getting irritated with it."

Mo always adds some intense, graphic detail in there to try and make you think he's more of a man than you are, or really just that he's a better kisser than you will ever be. Of course, he'll say it like he's reading it out of a Faulkner novel or something, just to show that he's also more pensive than you. He'll say, "I red her lips with scratchy loose furs and her lips bleed from my biting."

Does he think I'm gonna say "Cool" to that?

I think to myself, surely the moon-rise says "Goodbye" or "Goodnight" to the sun as it's setting. Surely, the two have some sort of relationship, but I don't know if the moon would make the sun's lips bleed. I think Moon just takes Sun out on dates sometimes. They probably go to some quaint and fancy restaurant and sit in the back underneath the television that all the other eaters are looking at, yelling, "Gooooaaaaaallll!!!" Moon probably pours Sun some Brandy or Scotch or some sophisticated drink as they laugh about the silliest of stars.

Max Patch: Part 1 - Dead Skin

"The moon-rise is maybe my favorite thing in the world."

Mo says, "Same and my second favorite thing is Max Patch."

The moon-rise is humble but it's a king. It's even more of a king when risen over Max Patch, this colossal field a dozen miles above the border of Tennessee as you begin to rome into North Carolina. It's naked and treeless, just tall blades of grass during the summer when it doesn't get mowed as much as it does in the winter. My best of friends, Mo, and I are up here tonight on a surprisingly chilly, June night.

Mo, in his usual cheesy slang, says, "Wash your paws, fella, this is a night you don't wanna dirty up."

We aren't really experiencing a ball dropping in Time Square tonight. We aren't exactly robbing a bank or doing anything adrenaline-rushing for that matter. Mo always says, "This is a night you don't wanna dirty up."

"Didn't the weather man say there'd be low wind chill anywhere near Asheville?"

Mo says, "Even with wind as dead as this, there will be debris."

What he means is, every 13 years or so, a number of cicadas just decide to flood the nation. Sometimes, with high wind, the skin of cicadas will fall like leaves or feathers and might land on you.

Mo points out how the consistent cicada noise is droning out the wind-howl.

We really had too look for a spot that wasn't covered in dry shells that these suckers left behind.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Happen A Lot To Me

The stars are perfect here. Only kings and queens come across this.

Sam, you wear your hoodie like a queen, but I ask of you, "Won't you come out from under there? Star gazing's a two person thing, ya know?"

We dangle our feet above the quarry of Swayva Vas. Your shoe falls off and in its tide.

"Oh, the moonlit sky -its mirror is now broken!"

I always liked how you called water, a mirror.

"Sam, everything will be fine. We'll just make our way down where the water comes up."

Headaches can come when you feel every terrible thing is pressing down on you in the same moment. But all you did was lose your shoe.

"Sam, it's a shoe, don't give me that face."

I kind of like how a girl makes a small something into the world's number one historical tragedy. We'll probably find the damn shoe.

You slowly but surely wade out into the tide of Swayva Vas. You look scared that the fish might bite - curling your lips and blenching with a pale face, as if to say, "God, why have you forsaken me?"

Samantha, how you do. I tell you, "You're already wet, so get soaked. You really need not be afraid of the fish. They won't bite."

The real tragedy begins when a fish dies in a pond he's kind of claimed his territory over a certain number of years. The tragedy ends when you realize kings replace each other and everything runs in a circle. You become a fool when you forget that a story can repeat itself and good things happen more than once.

You're a good thing, so you best be happening a lot to me.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Samantha Dancing

The kitchen is comforting when the coffee is warm. The neighbors all do the same thing at the same time when storms come. Some of them say get your raincoat but I'm in my kitchen where no rain will bother me. Some say find your safe place. But that's cheesy and he who is drowned is not troubled by the rain.

Some drink too much liquor but I won't and I just like remembering you when you're away. I remember when you get home and show off a waste of money by flaunting the skirt while I try to take my nap. I'm up now, honey, and wide up now, thank you very much. But Sam, you're looking so good and a few weeks from now will be a storm and I'll remember this.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Hound Nostrils

It's raining outside
you mosey on over to my area
on the porch

where the rain beads
up on a rhododendron bush.

Our blue tick hound –
he sniffs the dewy breeze
as he always does when it rains.

As patting his head,
you look at me and say,

"All my clothes need washing,
so I borrowed some off your cousin."

I notice my cousin must wear
a few sizes too big for you,

seeing as how
the bra strap
keeps slipping off your shoulder.

While I move the strap
back among your shoulder,
your eyes are fixed

upon our hound's twitching
nostrils, rustling.

When Frustrated

Dear, sometimes your eyebrows raise
underneath the crinkled skin on your forehead,
but only when you're frustrated.

To stop that and to start a light heart,
your eyebrows will lower, naturally and naturally.

Your body will loosen with natural thoughts
because you think but only natural thoughts
won't you try acting upon studied thoughts?

For you, it's all played out as child-play,
but to you, that is free, and to me, i'm frustrated.

The whole time, i'm thinking,
maybe you are doing what hurts less
and i know it feels good to not feel,
but i want to feel, but only if you'll feel with me

It means nothing to no one
if we won't explore a thought that might be human
then we won't be human.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Susy Anne's Nap Sack

Why certainly you must pass me my
glasses next to the ash tray.

(ashes spill to thrillfully hand you
what you've asked for)

You okay there sitting comfortably
in my nap sack?

(a slight movement of your hand's
favorite finger)

This action suggests the nap sack's
as much yours as mine.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

A Heart

A heart that brings
stomach problems.
My mind rests for a while
but only because my heart
is heavier than should be.

A heart that stings.
Fake palindromes.
My kind is a different style
but only because my part
is more clever than should be.

A heart that rings
in a lake of hopeful gems.
I find your love tart
but only because my heart
is not loved back by you.

as you block my view

oh, ok you're humming the clarinet part
of that song...

..."Warlock", i'll tap your stomach to help
you remember.

why would that help dear, you know i'll
remember if...

...i do an impersonation while standing
up with the glass in my hand?

yea, it always helps when you do the fake
drunk impression.

as getting up
your glass spills lilac wine on my radio.

as getting up
i take your hand so you don't break a leg.

you point out the new citrus moon sun
as you block my view.

i've always liked when you point somewhere
as you block my view.

leave me be.

I sit now with legs crossed
glad mom taught me how to sit

Shut up, I'll pose how I want
more mature than your mouth.

I look mature, not showing
my spiky words never spoken

Honestly I am
the evil you'll never know.
So just
leave me be.

Vermillion Tongue

Draw tight your utmost.
Bury it in your body’s warm chamber
where you will find a projector projecting
math equations onto the inner skin of your stomach.

Broadcast the creamed Mormon rain of stars,
tossing sandy milky ways into thin air.

Work on your composure and straighten your shoulders
or the leopard moon will leap upon you and shank your back
with a fine blade among the lick of his vermillion tongue.

The sour and sultry girl (pt. 2)

you kill eyes
you little sultry gal
muddied my vision
of everything surrounding you.

you're ocean is distracting
its gleam shot my eye
like a rave club shoots my ear
with techno, hypnotic trances.

i bought glasses because of you.
thanks a lot.

if someone
walks in to this coffee shop
they may think
they have astigmatisms in both eyes...

or atleast one.

you're a joke you're too sightly.

The sour and sultry girl

Dear sour and sultry girl,
you chilled my spine yesterday.

you look only at the pages
when you read a book
and never remove your eyes
when you try
to put the straw in your mouth.

i look only at you
when i sip the same coffee
and i never remove my eyes
when i try
to put the straw in my mouth.

Remind yourself,
you're pungent.
and i'll remind them
ladies and gentleman,
watch out for this one.
she's a killer.

You'll never know me if you sleep that good.

I can't fall asleep good
Shit, you're asleep

I wish you had trouble sleeping
then you'd know me


You hear me mumble words during the day
that I'll say clear that night.


You're fast asleep and I'm talking to you
Wake up
so you can hear me love you.

Cleansing

These puddles reflect our rainy days
when I'd push her into mud
and she'd laugh
pulling me in.

I'd push her in the mud
so I'd have the
privilege of cleaning
the mud off her

as I'd hum the beat of my heart to her.