Moses Monet Socrates invented the parenthesis, and he still works at Dairy Queen

it has been a week full of chasing suns (in more than one galaxy). i don't know how students keep their mind focused while working on one task. for example, as i read rabbit, run by john updike (a novel i am enjoying very much. good choice dr. rai peterson!) i let my mental list of things to do bleed all over the pages. concentration on a single thing is difficult for me. my eyes will move anywhere. i have been training them while reading to really eat each line like a perfect portion, to give rhythm to the swing of my ocular muscles as they climb down the page (very slowly that is. i am a tortoise at the page. but i enjoy it's not a bad life).




i tried to write a flash of realism this week (ala kim chinquee. i read oh, baby one night. it was pleasant). it was difficult for me to stick to realism. it's my tendency to ache my lines toward the alternate dimensions (i really have it out for the particular dimension we're stuck in). it was about a family in the dark

The Candles from the Basement

The electricity went out so the family pulled the living room into a messy oval. The mother said there were candles in the basement. The father hesitated to give her the flashlight. For a few minutes, two-thirds of the family contented themselves with the darkness and the eerie, wind-blown elms scratching the top of the house. The mother returned with a handful of candles. Some were scented. She tore away a match (The Hotel Aruba Restaurant graphic and phone number on the front of the cardboard flap) and placed the little flames around the room. The room became comfortable enough to read. The father had a beer. He said of his expensive ale, “Can’t let this get warm.” He read an issue of Science. The mother wrapped a wool parka around her and her son, age four, and plucked soft melodies into his pink ear. She kissed him in gentle rhythm at each chorus. His puny marble eyes sunk in slow waves, and soon, he was asleep. She carried him to his room undisturbed, candle hoisted in hand. She straightened the messy sheets, placed the limp boy under layers and folded him in. She left the candle on the dresser, its soft tongue of light dancing in the mirror.


professor lovelace awarded me a nine out of 10 on this one. i believe on the next draft i will add a bit more conflict, maybe give it a bit more length, give the little kid a fever or some sort of viral infection, the father needs to be more of a douche to contrast the soft gentle aura glow of the mother's kindness. hmmmmm. LOTS TO WORK. goodgoodgoodgood as they say in Minnesota.

i also read high water mark by david shumate. i really dug the cover and enjoyed the poems.

another flash for ya. i like cool pictures.

Bunker

Like a mannequin looking lost, and between the iced retaining walls that gave my apartment the facsimile of a bunker, I chomped a Camel in noncommittal patterns of in-hale/ex-hale. That week there was a lot of ice. Crooked lines of black walnuts keeping the street wavy and white oaks loitering behind this lot were weighed down but were strong and didn’t ache or splinter. I watched the second floor across from my ashes and foul smoke crumble in. I watched the roof resigned to rehabilitation, right then and there. People ran out of units onto the cat-walk style balcony. A kid grabbed a bike. His skull slipping out of a straight-bill cap. His legs pumping underneath jeans bleached fucking nuclear. A woman, a grandmother, a brother and a little sister in braids and a ribbon, blue, in the file of entropy, burst out and screamed at the bicycle bound boy. Like the collapse was his doing. Like they had just found weather plans in his journal, or on notebook paper tucked in a nightstand drawer. The back of the bicycle flailed like a fish on sand, and he floundered into a gray storm. Sirens wretched up and down the esophagus of the empty avenues. I didn’t think anyone was hurt. I lit another cigarette mumbling light prayers. I studied them as they cleared the living room with plastic shovels.

this is a goddamn poem or whatever but it's not going to have the perfected (ha!) line breaks showing. stupid blog incompatibility bullshit monster.

agodfearingman’sguidetothecompletehistoryofwoodrowwilson’sfinaldaysinthevalley

they call him professor they call him president they call him nineteen eighteen they call him nineteen twenty-one they call him governor they call him new jersey they call him president they call him world war II they call him the federal reserve act they call him versailles peace conference, they call him no conquest, they call him no dominion, they call him no desire – they call him papa on the token, they call him communist of the waves, they call him beating the children with glasses; with bones, people laughed and they told other people about it. they told him to drink five hours in four calories, and he said what the fucking shit; he stormed out the toilet with pants around ankles, making locomotive vowels. he punched his mother, punched his grandmother, stabbed his father in the left leg and broke the dog down into columns of metal. he floundered to the river and waded into the creek; he thought of a man far off, playing the violin.


over christms break, my granddad gave me a coin (it's actually called a token as he corrected me every time i said yea hey, this is a real cool coin granddad, thanks). the token was a component of campaign strategy, mainly used a trinket for people who came to particular events. it's the size of a quarter but is gold in color, maybe it's bronze, i'm really not sure.

one last cool picture and then i'm done with this gig...