tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85198346621836608012024-03-07T20:08:03.464-08:00poems, goldfish and vodkaSometimes sober. Sometimes not. Always yours.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8519834662183660801.post-40683298298056446362010-04-06T11:34:00.000-07:002010-04-07T16:09:18.584-07:00The Ivory Towermy knowledge--best thriving on card-board<br />livers and gray-veal pages--<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> the Ivory Tower.<br />I <span style="font-style: italic;">am</span> the gloating resentment of everyday.<br />I am silence, its disconcerting<br />narcissism. In a corner, watch me swell<br />and redden, explode in finite,<br />twinkling<br />ideas.<br /><br />I <span style="font-style: italic;">am</span> the Ivory Tower,<br />its quiet intellectuals, grateful liberals who<br />only see torture in novels and<br />historical<br />accounts. Our language is slow and painful.<br />we have white skin, like the sick, imposing<br />Aryans.<br /><br />we live and breathe and communicate within<br />walls<br />inside, stifled, deliberately choking on<br />knowledge. we know war through<br />Hemingway, violence through Palahniuk,<br />drugs through Hunter S.<br />but none of these we know through<br />ourselves<br /><br />these walls--<br />white ivory, pure and untainted--have, like curtains<br />drawn themselves<br />and closed.<br /><br />we venture out only<br />when it is safeUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8519834662183660801.post-37464902689958151982010-04-01T21:20:00.000-07:002010-04-01T21:51:07.399-07:00The Death of Finalityideas,<br />bubbles in the universe<br />swinging<br />on bus stops<br />in paperbacks, on<br />desks carved in heart-strings.<br /><br />foucault had them,<br />as did aristotle and atwood. beauvoir blew<br />voice into the swift, catapulting<br />balloons of shifty<br />ones.<br /><br />platonic ideas--floating above us?<br />like air-circuitry; a network<br />of flying<br />knowledge?<br />kantian dreams; morrison bleeding<br />with heroin<br />and bukowski sewing<br />stories out of<br />dismissal slips and empty, shivering<br />wine bottles.<br /><br />in understanding we are lost,<br />in finality,<br />stranded in doubt.<br />in the unconnected, vibrant waiting, in the<br />not-yet and the not-to-be<br />in the never-was and<br />never-will<br />we are the always-here.<br />always waiting, catching circles of thought--idly and<br />ideally--in our palms like<br />unfinished, string-thin dreams.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8519834662183660801.post-30567167442470840102010-03-24T15:35:00.001-07:002010-03-24T15:36:53.931-07:00New Layout<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=";font-family:Georgia,";" >In an effort to procrastinate, I have created a new layout for my dear blog.</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=";font-family:Georgia,";" > Please comment.. what do you like better? Personally, I miss the old one. </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8519834662183660801.post-11333861571648738702010-03-22T20:07:00.001-07:002010-03-23T17:09:33.849-07:00Art as Redeemer<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">many will say that art is a way to let out anger; to rearrange subjective trauma in an effort to make it coherent and valuable. writing is therapy. its even a form of meditation (according to over-priced self-help books). it <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">is</span> self-help.<br /><br />but i've always had trouble with this. is art <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">only</span> a form of therapy? if so, it fails to play any larger, cosmic role in mankind's history. art becomes a free therapist you can scribble on while he sits quietly and listens. I've been troubled by the idea. it seems to diminish art.<br /><br />what's more, it seems to posit that all we do is spill our feelings and watch them flourish, without any real intellectual work. this is far from the case, as we know. take writing, for example: there's editing, submitting to publishers, grovelling over plot and character errors. there is--in essence--an entire <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">life</span> to it. painting is similar: there is the picking of right colors, symmetry, symbolism, metaphor. its a network of communication. rather than being a simple release, art is simultaneously a giving-up and a taking-in. we <em>give up</em> our experiences in order for them to be <em>taken in</em> by someone else, creating a slow, deliberate dialogue--a telepathic communication between two souls. is art a Redeemer for the human race? definitely not. one can argue that clay pots and bone fragments have as much archeological significance--if not more--than literature. but what's <em>in</em> clay pots and bone fragments? they neither reveal to us aspects of the human condition nor their makers' subjective toils. they are <em>voiceless</em>. </span></span></span></span><br /><br />get out your pencils, paint-brushes, notebooks, canvases..<br />and redeem the world :)<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br /></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8519834662183660801.post-9276019947135888412010-03-12T18:26:00.001-08:002010-03-12T18:42:49.252-08:00The Shamanthe shaman perched on <br />building-steps, black glass between his<br />nail-bitten fingers; lapping <br />quietly at<br />dreams.<br /><br />"I'm always out of body,"<br />he says when asked.<br />what is he? I think. A traveling<br />salesmen bundled in ghost-thin<br />spirit? a <br />moving apparition, eating auras and<br />spitting demons?<br /><br />grand, drugged-up<br />mess--living in a liminal<br />mind state.<br /><br />between classes. wandering,<br />diving, swimming, falling<br />off edges and climbing <br />down<br />upward.<br /><br />through misunderstanding, i had<br />deemed it <br />noise--bombast and unnecessary.<br />for what is misunderstood is<br />a growing, sour<br />hatred of <br />ourselves.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8519834662183660801.post-21149020105602942802010-02-23T15:03:00.000-08:002017-11-06T18:11:36.547-08:00Pogsseven Pogs and a wooden<br />fence, brown and<br />dangling in the<br />past.<br /><br />Lion King with <em>Disney</em> on the<br />back in purple, dusty<br />letters. One-fifty at the<br />dollar store.<br /><br />Out back, a lake swelters in the<br />mid-day sun, waiting<br />for small, muddy feet.<br /><br />these Pogs: treasures lifted from<br />the sea-bed, quick fingers<br />luring them with<br />allowance money.<br /><br />somewhere it was so sunny<br />one could hardly<br />breathe.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3