Theoretically
It was muggy at best,
A southern panorama of gauzy warmth and damp distraction
The afternoon class was in an outdoor trailer or
“Individual motorized unit”
Our school’s dedication to positive educational environments
We had notebooks
And anonymous poster boards
Scissors
Glue
And all the while the iridescent singe of philosophy hung heavily in the air
Lanky and silver haired,
Gratuitously charming
He asked, “What is your heart’s desire”
And the boy said, “To be fit in body and mind”
He was vain because he was intermediately attractive
And she said, “To save people”
Phony altruistic future middle-aged women,
And they said, “To be a millionaire, to have super powers, to rule the world”
(That was the despot in the class)
And then he leaned my way last
And asked the question,
In a waft of hazelnut caffeine and certainty
I paused
Hoping to concoct a brilliant reply—
A scholar’s approach to existential questions
A consciously timeless, excessively deliberate daring display of ingenuity!
Potentially in complete alliteration
But all I could think of was
“To be content”
What a disappointment
“That’s all you want? To be content? Your heart’s desire and that’s it?”
But I couldn’t say
“I want you and everything about you and everything you will be and might be your smell your intention the space around us the objects you converged with your contemptible optimism your nicotine breathing your constancy the corner of your gaze you for eternity you and your misery for the price of my interrupted isolation: you and just you”
So I said yes,
“That’s it.”
To Hell with E.E. Cummings
i preoccupy myself with
your animation
that provokes my premeditated distraction:
a bro,ken narrative along the
lines of your face,
which induces an onslaught of quixotic
v
-e
--r
---b
----ii
-----a
------g
------- e. The worst being
love
and its second perpetrator has to be
depth
To hell with ee cummings
I demand the unembellished—the physical lexicon,
The linguistically unexpressive image of
Your eyes
Not resplendent like the stars and heavens and
Your heart
Uninvolved with blossoms, buds or nightingales
Or with mine for the present.
(Empty)
Phrases safeguard action and mock intention,
So go ahead and capitalize your sentiments,
Ensure your intimacy is of Roman lower case
But there is enough space between us that
My words
Must be unquivocallysuffocatingina
Or else this verse and its euphemistic predecessors mean
Nothing
To hell with poetry
I would trade a resoundingly flawless adjective,
An aesthetically provocative stanza
For a kiss
Vocabulary
I could not think of a single word. That expression on his face was singular. It deserved one entry that could be flipped to, pinpointed. It was a flicker—maybe a one-syllable adjective, one that rang with full but deep intention. He walked up to the bench; she walked up to him, and bang! There it was. I was looking at him. I don’t know what she said, but I was looking at him and his singular expression. Give me a word. It was so exact, the way he looked at her, so unequivocal. Rummage through the piles of your daily phrases. Shuffle through the boxed-up vernacular of your past. Poke and prod at every half-formed verbal manifestation of your physical life. I need a word. I need one seamless, even, fit of a word. I need a word because if a word for that does not exist, then what will become of us all? Imagine if you were me, if you had seen him there by that bench, and her by that bench, and in one fragile instant of lips moving, and vocal chords constricting, he feels something in him that pulls the muscles in his face so that he looks? Blank. That’s what I am.
Risk it all, and dive into the muddy spring of your private passions. Drown yourself for one moment, because in that moment of frenzy, in that gasping anticipation for what is necessary and what must be, you may breathe in that life-giving word that found its way to a boy and a girl and a bench. I didn’t hear what she said. But I do know he felt. You can’t go to them. You can’t walk up and sit at that bench because everything will break. She will put a lock of hair behind her ear and fold her arms, and he will lower his eyes and put his hands in his pockets. And when you try to listen to them and look at them, the word will turn to many words. Do not let his face become many words. Do not let them speak again. I didn’t hear what they were saying, but I did see his face. And he looked with the same single intention as a gun pointed at the heart.
Memoir of Billy Danger
Sometimes, I get in these moods. It’s like after I watch some heavy Indie flick that makes me want to smack someone then ruminate about it in the shower for three hours. Or after I read some fucked up avante-garde mess of text, and I end up in this crazy Dostoyevsky-ish pattern of psychotic thinking driven by a Holden Caulfield way of deciphering life—something like that. So, I went outside with my sheepdog Philomenus, drank a gin and tonic, and sat on a lawn chair breathing. I sat there and breathed for an hour, in and out, really huge breaths.
Everything was fine. But when a man looks at everything he has and feels nothing, then it’s time he moves on. When you’re particularly vulnerable and subject to erratic impulses, it’s best not to be around anything that could induce strange decisions. Unfortunately, sitting outside on that musty night my attention was drawn to Philomenus. So there I was, contemplating my life, and Phil conveniently runs around the yard chasing some birds. And I watch Phil and I watch him chasing these goddamn birds around the yard, and I see myself walking into the kitchen and pulling out my address book, and calling my real estate guy Lee and asking how much property in New Zealand is. So, Lee calls me back and gives me the descriptions of some available estates, and I’m like, “No Lee, look, I want property with hills and grass, nowhere close to the cities, I’m talking wilderness Lee, yeah, like valley near the mountains.” And he keeps telling me there’s this 25,000 square foot monster that some retired corporate head just put up for sale because he had a condition so he needed a warmer climate, and I keep saying “No Lee, look, just find me some patch of wilderness by a damn mountain where there’s grass.”
So Lee hooked me up with this contractor who specializes in atypically complex structures. I tell him I have a project for him in New Zealand. Basically, I want him to build a natural looking hut with good utilities because I can’t do without long showers, and I’m not intending to make this a Walden experience or anything. So, he takes his guys over to this gorgeous property in the middle of nowhere and they build a really quaint-looking cottage that sits on the edge of these beautiful little hills at the base of a mountain range. I call up some distant cousins from Scotland who may or may not actually be related to me and they found some local shepherds whom I then flew over to my hut. I asked them how I should set up the pens and what sheep I should get, and if Phil can be trained to herd them, or if I should get some other dogs. The whole process takes about six months, and a couple million dollars, but finally I had this inhabitable hut, a couple dozen sheep, and Phil.
Now, let me take a moment and acknowledge what you’re thinking, by means of inserting a Flaming Lips lyric:
I don't know where the sun beams end and the star
Light begins it's all a mystery
And I don't know how a man decides what’s right for his
Own life - it's all a mystery
Here is my artistic effort at explaining the state of mind that drove my actions. And a little psychedelic alternative rock never hurt anyone. Anyway, I was just sitting there that foggy night, and boom: life. I guess my shepherd desires welled up right there, right from that spring of mystery, just a bubbling mess of spontaneity and unshaped longings.
I Was There
Lights go out,
I’ve been waiting my life to be here,
But I only knew that four days ago.
Twenty thousand people behind me but the only four that count
Are right there, right here, in front of me—
Poised in front of a silver fogged backdrop,
Beams raking into, through and out of their dingy forms,
Breaking apart on the awkward edges of headstocks,
Microphone stands, amps, a glaring rock and roll truss.
Vibrating,
That collective shudder, running from fingertips to spinal columns,
To the pivots of the knees,
Until I think, “I’m going to fall”, except that I know I can’t,
Because I’m fixed, eyes, brain, vital organs,
Fixed to that solitary, opening note,
To the first of each committed beat and crash,
Every vital undertone of plectrums plucking,
To that an agonizingly stirring articulation
Of plastic and metal and wires and sentiment.
He whirls,
Tosses about the stage, pushed and prodded by forty thousand voices,
Ninety-seven lighting fixtures,
And all the while I’m so close I can see the dark stains,
The dripping product,
Of his everything being thrown at us, at me.
I reach,
I pull every riff and vibrato, every resonating chord,
Every motion of his spirit, every vault of his chorus,
And I fill myself with it,
I fill myself and spill over,
Inundated by the speed of sound.
Random Song Lyrics
Potential band name: Running Barefoot
Why don’t you sit with me?
Here, on this heap of stardust and broken bones
Here on the other side of the evening silver and rose scents
Come sit with me and run your hands in the sky
And dangle your feet in the grass
Shake your hair in the wind
From the running current of dripping nighttime
Sit here and let me be with you
Let me sing to you in shattering poetry
Let me talk to you in velvety tones and burning notes
And sugary lifts
Let me croon in a whisper and a sleepy rhythm
In a twisting wreath of rainy life
With an upturned face half-lit and half-open
A lock misplaced and threaded with the backwoods
Because we came from there
Right there a little farther up the hill
And the white beaches and the gray rock dunes
But there’s only a little bit further for you to come
And sit, here with me, here in this divine
Unreligious disorder that’s just a little more perfect
Just a little more unbearable then that one below,
The place you came from
Just a little more perfect
Sit here and let me be with you
Let me sing to you in shattering poetry
Let me talk to you in velvety tones and burning notes
And sugary lifts
Let me croon in a whisper and a sleepy rhythm
In a twisting wreath of rainy life
Because it’s all we’ve got,
And it’s all I can see from now till just before the bright end
To the farther side where it gets a little lighter
For you and maybe for us both, we’ll see
But it won’t be anything at all
If it’s missing you and all of this,
I want it just a little more perfect
And let me be with you
Let me sing to you in shattering poetry
Let me talk to you in velvety tones and burning notes
And sugary lifts
Let me croon in a whisper and a sleepy rhythm
In a twisting wreath of rainy life
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