Tomorrow is February

Tomorrow is February already. I'm ready for spring so bring it on.

I haven't posted much due to a sick kitty. Her name is Opal. She's at the vet right now. She had to stay the night. They can't figure out what's wrong with her but she won't eat. I just want her to come home. I miss the little booger.

Not much else is new right now. I'm still waiting to hear from graduate schools. But that won't be until March or April.

So here's a poem. Enjoy.

THE KISS

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby , you fool !

Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see -- Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!

Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.

My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.

~Anne Sexton

Golden Globes

So I watched the Golden Globe Awards Monday night and was pleasantly surprised to see Brokeback Mountain win for best drama and best director. Too bad Heath Ledger didn't win best actor. I was also happy that Walk The Line won and that Joaquin Phoenix won. I loved that movie. It's about Johnny Cash and Phoenix portrayed Cash and even did his own singing. Oh yes, Reese Witherspoon won as well. Very cool.

One thing that pissed me off was when Dennis Quaid was introducing the Brokeback Mountain segment he made a horrible comment. He said something about it being a type of movie that rhymes with Chick Flick. The only possible thing I can think of is Dick Flick and if that's the case then that's horrible. The movie was very tastefully done and to undermine it in that way is just downright rude. Quaid seemed a little homophobic to me. Why bother making a comment like that? It pissed me off. It was definitely in poor taste.

Today I went with my mom to Peoria. It's my older sister's birthday. We went to this italian restaurant called Avanti's. It was pretty good. They have great bread there. But happy birthday Monica!

Love to all.

Brokeback Mountain

Hello all,

Yesterday I finally saw Brokeback Mountain. I thought it was okay but long. There were parts that I was bored but other times that I was intrigued. I thought the direction and cinematography was good. There were quite a few older people in the theater and I wondered if they knew what the movie is really about. Anyway, I think that it could be up for some oscar nominations. At least directing. I thought Heath Ledger was great as was Jake. Two good lookin' cowboys!

That's about it for now.

Cheers.

Boring Life

Hello all,

Life is pretty boring lately. Today I watched my cousin's baby, James. He's a cutie. Other than that it's been reading and writing. Actually, I'm going through all my poetry document files and pulling out ones to fix. It's quite a task. Right now I'm supposed to be doing that. I'm sitting here with Matthew and John (Matthew's friend from work) and listening to David Bowie, David Live. It's an older album. In general, I'm just hanging around until I find out about graduate school. But anyway, here's a poem. It's an older one that was published in Dream Fantasy International. Although I never saw the journal. Hmmm...

Dreaming the Death

Father dies as I descend
the last set of stairs. Antique, black

scissors plunge through
his heart, I saw the blood,

the darkness of impossible
roses seep the blinding white of

his serious shirt. A pale
buttoned, unbuttoned everyday

for thirty years. His cotton army
hangs in the closet, white after white.

Father, you know
I’m left here

with a report, a file in my
hand. Feel the smooth

dead of the fiber.
A tree has fallen.

There is work to do before
they return. I cover you,

the mess of roses
spreads to the chair.

The sun is setting behind your
death. Tomorrow

they will replace the chair.

New Poem

Here's a new poem that I wrote today.

Crash

A plane crashes. The people all die.
Somewhere someone is loading
a gun. This is the end for many.
People sleep with nine irons
beside their beds.

Violence replaces love as the world
sleeps. We search for a drug
of choice. Something for the depression,
the mania. For now nicotine will do.

We are in the middle of nowhere.
There’s a gas station, a Wal-Mart
and a drug store, a McDonald’s.

We have too much time but really
it’s not enough because death
is at our heels.

That loaded gun
will do the job as that someone
takes his life, just a small dot
in the chasm of this racing
yet still world.


Any feedback would be appreciated.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everybody! I know it's a little late but I've been busy with whatnot.

Here's a poem from Mark Doty that I think is pretty good.

To Garcia Lorca

A whole acre’s containment and release,
yellow exhalation; stiff stalk and copper blaze
blaring into the Seventh Avenue A.M.
--sunflowers,

in a square rusting tub casually set
on the linoleum of the corner market
on 17th Street, where the large brusque
and tender Rumanian

barks your order back at you, then places
change in your hand like a benediction.
Against the wall, away from the counter,
sulphurous heads

fused into one radiating distillate
of the infinitive to bloom.
And almost entirely ignored, since
we understand,

even in the eight-o’clock scurry toward
purpose commerce engagement,
that the principal beauty of New York lies
in human faces.

But these foot soldiers of summer—flown
from a Mexican field, boxed north
from Alabama?—neck to neck in an impossible crowd,
they’re our double

and mirror: a hundred fierce dawns
up to their hard green waists
in cool water, shocking
in their sameness

and startling again in the shag
variations of their faces dreaming . . .
nothing language knows. Though they
are dreaming,

gazes both open and elsewhere
at once. And in this way also resemble us,
half asleep still, unworldly, carrying our sacks
of coffee prepared

as we have requested it, this town’s
flowering and respiration conducted
through our ten thousand acres’
bud and scatter.

This morning on 16th a dragonfly
--intricate, upside down, probably lost but entirely
self-possessed—clung to a brownstone wall,
immobile,

a cistern’s discolored bronze. Fountain
of refreshment, still point of the neighborhood
while taxis fret the air wild between the curbs,
already honking

and braking the song of ongoing and indifferent
setting out, same chorus as my tub of bloom:
basket refilling itself to fuel the multitude
who doesn’t want them,

since we are already flowers, already carry
shoulder to shoulder that diffident power,
stand even now stalk to stripped stalk
in the killing tub,

enough water to sustain a little while,
flaring out at the pores, out through
this dark-rimmed,
gold-dusted seeing.

~Mark Doty from School of the Arts