February 2012
6 posts
It’s a good man who puts sad Devotchka songs on the jukebox for you.
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Between taking someone to the doctor and writing snappy website text about engineering outreach today, I also spent half an hour inside this building. Two feet from the filing cabinets.
Surrealasaurus.
I do not like going to the doctor, but I like taking people to the doctor’s office.
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Home
The passenger pigeon tattoo I want was inspired in part by Aldo Leopold’s essay, “On a monument to the pigeon.” I picked it up the other day and read it again.
Whenever I read Aldo Leopold now, I think about this time in South Africa. About a month after I’d arrived, sitting around a music festival with a handful of Capetonians I’d just met in one of the most...
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January 2012
6 posts
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Do I just have weird friends, or does everyone joke at the 9-month mark that they’ve been together “almost long enough to have a baby.” And then squirm uncomfortably at the thought of a baby.
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December 2011
9 posts
I’ve decided that getting old means being excited about kitchen presents. I have a new dutch oven and I just made the most delicious chicken stew.
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There is no privacy on the internet anyway
So a piece of me is precancerous and I have to get it removed. It’s not a big deal and I will likely be fine in both the short and long runs, but it’s kind of frustrating to think of the body as an enemy already. I’m sure this has been written better elsewhere, but anyway, I had this dream a month ago that little green worms kept tunneling out of the backs of my hands and...
How's it going, abandoned Blogspot? →
No promises.
This hurts me.
rosalarian:
Nobody uses the word “inception” correctly anymore.
“A thing inside of a bigger version of the same thing? Inception.”
No.
No it isn’t.
Oh.
My god.
No.
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My Saturday plans include something like...
me: But yeah. Getting there before the official start time is usually a good idea for rallies. Especially if we wanna talk to folks. Which, as a predatory newsperson, I like to do.
he: Journalassic Park.
me: Veraciraptor.
he: Oooh, good comeback.
me: Damn straight.
he: And, of course, you prey on brontosources.
me: With the occasional anonymous triceratips.
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let's take this scam on the road, baby
I went to a museum with a veteran last week. It was going to be expensive - like $65 for the two of us. But I really really wanted to see this museum.
“Do you have a veteran’s discount?” I ask the dude at the ticketing desk, expecting, at most, a $2-$4 discount.
Instead, a three-minute response about how it’s a crime that they don’t have a veteran’s discount,...
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"Hey, you want to seriously freelance for us?"
I might not write/read another poem until after Scott Walker has been recalled.
November 2011
8 posts
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The only thing you cannot be is the floor of my...
I’ve been spending this poem-a-day month writing Relationship Poetry. I’ve never really been into that, it’s too personal and weird to me, but the process of diving at uncomfortable subject matter over and over again until you’re forced to explore every single angle and image and set of feelings is…weirdly refreshing.
Also, writing weird uncomfortable too-personal...
“I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested… As I’m standing...”
– Retired New York Supreme Court Judge Karen Smith, working as a legal observer after the raids on Zucotti Park this Tuesday, via Paramilitary Policing of Occupy Wall Street: Excessive Use of Force amidst the New Military Urbanism (via seriouslyamerica)
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“Finding the perfect present for a loved one” is a feeling that should be bottled and turned into the only song you are allowed to play in public places from November to January.
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there were wrecks and wrecks, the keeper said: “At... →
Anne Carson and I wave the same weapons.
carrieabigstick:
“At least half of your mind is always thinking, I’ll be leaving; this won’t last. It’s a good Buddhist attitude. It prepares you for life as a Buddhist. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I’m just sad.”
-Anne Carson, from an interview at the Paris Review.
If you…
there were wrecks and wrecks, the keeper said: The... →
carrieabigstick:
It feeds for the most part in a clammy fat juice-coming forth of the oak. It hath two little horns. It goes on fix feet. When the head is cut off, the other parts of the body live long, but the head (contrary to the usual custom of Insects) lives longer. This is ? to be dedicated to the Moon, and…
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L.S. Pratt
Knickerbocker
Suppose a man steps out of the fog to meet us. And suppose he is plastered from head to toe with blank checks, having just left his deathbed, & it’s not so bad—the paper trail is brilliant & it smells like the New York Stock Exchange. And let that man give fair warning under a buttonwood tree & broker for us the underworld. And if all he shares is traded, let the...
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More Moby-Dick
Nantucket
“Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights...
October 2011
8 posts
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I already love Moby-Dick
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and...
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writing night
“I want you to fill me up with houseplants, Irish coffee, and small, snuffling dogs.”
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Letters couriered by passenger poets.
“You are like a potato chip tree, except the chips are healthy to eat.”
Went to our nation's capital. →
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Bullet points
Granddad is holding steady with oxygen and home care.
I did not make a roller derby team, but I’ll keep trying. I am the strongest I have ever been in my life. More please.
I may be completely awkward, but my “I love you” is smooth as hell.
Scientists confirm I have the right job: Wow. You got it. I am impressed that you were able to give such an accurate description…...
September 2011
4 posts
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Illness, patriarchs
Things are not looking good for my grandfather’s heart. He’s 89 and needs a valve replaced, but is probably not in good enough shape, right now, for the surgery. There might be more of note, but my dad’s the one sending updates, and his communication skills are atrocious - long dumps of vitals with no context. My mom asks me, “So what does this mean for the wedding (in...
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communicado
I feel like my most important words have been trapped behind my teeth for several weeks now. I’m not even sure what I am trying to say. I like waiting for these things to unfurl. I feel like an absorber, observer, and shrimp net.
Unrelatedly, I am copying Carrie’s postcard poem idea, due to a surfeit of postcards and a web-building urge.
Tumblrs, do you want a poem? On a postcard? I...
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August 2011
13 posts
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something like an update
Things are bettering. This morning I left point A at the same time as a train, drove parallel to it, and managed to cross its path, twenty minutes, several idiot drivers, and one red light later, before my route to point B had quite closed. The usual math problem: If we both are going 35 miles per hour in the same direction, will you run out of fuel first or me?
I cried, hard, exactly twice last...
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a baby poem →
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An example of my job writing. →
Wi Recall →
Today feels like a scary/hopeful mix of “today is the final exam in your hardest subject” and “you are six and it is Christmas and you really hope you get that toy pony.”
So much has happened since…
Illness, paternalism →
My dad’s sister has bone cancer. I had lunch with him today and found out it was much more serious than he had previously led me to believe. He said a while back she had something benign in her…
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This unfurliness is far too spacious.
Championship - Melissa Broder
God keeps unfurling me with God’s gigantic helium. There are scratchmarks all over my life. That’s from my mitts. Other human, this unfurliness is far too spacious. Would you lend me some muscle? Let’s write a sermon on control. Let’s write a love song for heavyweights and by heavyweights I mean everyone.
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I'm vegetarian unless angels are on the menu
Love Letter to Jim Brodey (by CAConrad)
Dear Jim for those whose acid trips were a success ...