Some Days

I won't stand for Frustration

What if instead of leaving this black trail there was a delete key chasing these words, an eraser running along and you had to keep UP with the pace or race it to say things before the eraser hit you and you were lost in blankness? Like some gross metaphor phor life you have to go go go and say things and do things and if you don’t you’ll get lost and lose your chance and you can’t backtrack- I guess you could cursor up and up and fuck this what if you just resented that eraser chasing you and why should you be pressured into saying anything and having this dumb drizzle come out just for the sake of saying something FUCK THIS I’m going to start erasing from the front from the end and CHASE YOU ERASER. What are you gonna do- run away? Run turn around? When am I going to start this reverse you ask, since I’m still clearly moving forward? Whenever I damn well want and soon and you better believe it eraser, the race is on it is going to start in a moment. When I catch myself on my feet. I’ll turn around and erase my own words, that’s right, I won’t stand for your destruction, I will erase myself all the way back to what if.

Key City Series

Patriotism

I is love will always
The Land that Isn't
Thought Place

No are isms any
or to preach follow to
No cash
No road blocks writers

everything tastes like cake

bleeds it out of heads are
all where mixing
making lands
new over over over

Pledge and we
with Mania

Something about a rose (?)

I remember figuring out how to draw bricks
And chain links
Following a diagram in a magazine for
“How-to-draw a rose”

Ah-ha,
I thought,
It’s all just simple patterns
All just where you put the lines
And where you leave spaces
        but looking at a rose next to some chain link,
        it looked nothing like that diagram.

My paintings look nothing like what was in my head when I started
But sometimes that might be because I start blank
What is it then? What is falling out?

I might wonder how you knew that my scratches
Were meant to be a rose
Words meant to be prose
And everything I say and don’t say
Contains: I love you
I’m glad to be here

and I want to know what you say
and draw, and do.

Sprout

    I’m eating my cereal and Nick is drinking his coffee and we are watching a show on the travel channel about the world’s first floating gated community, the 12 story Residensea. Neither of us has been on a cruise, but his friend Sprout- the quiet kid with the long dreads that I met last night who was working in the kitchen with Nick at Ethel and Ramone’s- got a free trip one time.

    He was shipwrecked, stranded at sea, and a cruise ship picked him up (the Explorer of the Seas). They even paid for him to reach the intended destination.

    That’s so cool- Wait, what? Stranded at sea?

    Yeah, he was sure he was gonna die. It was like a week or something (11 days). They were almost out of food and water. They were trying to go from Baltimore to the Bahamas (Key West).

    Who was he on this ship with?

    The captain and a homeless guy. You can watch the video on YouTube.

    I found it later: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AVk2pcNi9s

    And the interview on board: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91ZFGr94kXk&feature=related

    It was gorgeous that day, walking to the bus stop, thinking about getting lost at sea. Lost on sidewalks.

Regina

The sun sets out the window and the skyline lights up, the flag on the rooftop across the way wiggles in the wind and the Washington monument is an enormous sentry, just to the left. Take a step back, and a black and white photo of it sits against the wall, portrait and subject looking at each other through a pane of glass.

    Calvert mews, Guilford hops around on his three legs.

    Regina is heating up the soup in the kitchen.

    She shows me pictures on her digital camera of things she’s seen looking down into the park, says she used to snap shots at one bench all day long- caught all different people and things in one tiny frame. It’ll be a book or a blog that Regina calls, “I just live here!”

    We watch a documentary:  The Battle of Chernobyl

    I met her at a mixer for Baltimore real estate agents and lenders.

    She sends me emails with subject lines like “New Nuclear Reactor in Our Backyard.”

My First Poetry Reading Review where I acted like a Journalist, sort of

I just came across this, something I turned in for a class, and think it is funny, and not to get all journal-y, but I think it is amusing to see where I used to be. Look how silly and grandiose I am! Invoking quantum physics! Look how much better (I think) my prose gets when I'm not consciously trying to be a reporter- did I lose something by thinking about careers? Am I now just trying to notice things that I'm supposed to notice, rather than the periodic table on the wall, and the voices wandering in from the hallway? Why can't poetry from my notes make it to the final draft?

Sometime in 2008

Here's a character: Old gray haired woman with the antique-looking brown leather fanny pack on her front, beneath a loose blue jean collared shirt. This is at the gourmet catered lunch on the third floor, Hillel, during the Lavy colloquium, where I was working, shmoozing, but mainly stealing food.

Anyways she says, “Needless to say, I received the first rejection letter... because I had a BS in BS- and I'm not shitting you!” By the way she was (is?) a civil engineer for Baltimore city, waste water stuff. Hardly a BS in BS if you ask me (but maybe in shit). From College Park. The rejection was about being on the space shuttle some time back and I admired her attempt at nailing fantasy because she dreamed hopeless astronaut dreams but wasn't hopeless, tried at least. She's a self-proclaimed science fiction enthusiast.

She talked about working for the city municipality, good hours 8:30 to 4:30, good for having kids. She talked about the division of the workplace- half white men and half women/minorities because one boss thought hiring women and minorities would ensure loyalty and the other guy took whoever applied (White men, presumably). This woman, reminiscing – old people do like to talk about the past, don't they? Or just to youngsters, did I awaken some part of her brain that was a little dusty?- there were “more characters in those days”. The German-Irishman who would paint his beard green for St. Patty's every year, and (was this the same guy?) the one who smoked cigars constantly at his desk (“you can't smoke in the office nowadays”) then threw them in the trash, lighting it on fire. “Of course the Jew at the desk next to him kept a fire extinguisher!”

Renegade Sightings

The Renegade, he’s been missing for a while. Well we haven’t heard from him, at least.

We first sight him in the distance, standing out in a soggy field where some kids are kicking a ball around. It’s reckless of him, we think, standing out in the middle of commotion, swirling dirt and spit and limbs. Nice hustle, we hear him shout. What is he, some kind of soccer coach?

Our sandals are squishing uncomfortably, getting muck between our toes and up our calves, as we try to find the path of least sink. And the Renegade, he looks so calm. It’s a wonder he left no prints, in those boots.

The second time we see the Renegade, he’s at Giant buying bananas and frozen pizza. We know because we get in line behind him and watch him check out. He smiles, and we don’t know what to say exactly, we are still trying to figure it out when he picks up his bags and turns to us, behind him, says, Here, and hands us the printout coupons off his receipt. $1 off Ziplock bags- in our cart. Hey thanks! (More enthusiastic than necessary). No problem. We can see Daisy through the glass, outside the store. She waves, surely at the Renegade. When we get outside, they are gone. We buy lemonade from girl scouts who are camped under the strip mall awning.

In the night, there is racing up and down the streets, and sirens and yelling outside our window. In the moment before we get up, we imagine the scene. The Renegade must already be there. He must be rolling up, sorting things out. Like Batman, a vigilante, we romanticize him in our half-sleep.

We walk to the window, look down into the sidewalk. Voices are raised, angry, somewhere, and tires screech. There is nothing to see but red and blue strobe way down at the bottom of the hill. A cat looks up at us and streetlight or starlight is reflecting in its eyes, but we see embers. We look up and down for the tell-tale trail of cigarette smoke, look for a long time until the police car pulls away, so certain he was there. We never thought of going outside ourselves, just fall asleep to the sounds of distant chaos.

Daisy pulls up in the alley, breathless, and the Renegade jumps in without waiting for her to come to a stop. Hi Beautiful, the tires smoke, they disappear, and the night rushes back to fill in the space.