Woody Allen; poetry; dinosaurs. These are perhaps three of my most favorite things ever.
(Source: poetsorg)
Woody Allen; poetry; dinosaurs. These are perhaps three of my most favorite things ever.
(Source: poetsorg)
Black Culture: In 2011, NYPD Made More Stops Of Young Black Men Than The Total Number Of Young Black Men In New York
During New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s first year in office, the New York Police Department stopped and interrogated 97,296 people on the streets. By 2007, with the Bloomberg administration pushing the a stop-and-frisk strategy, police made more than a half a million stops. Last…
(Source: thinkprogress.org)
SUBMITTED BY: nextglass
Day #22 - I have skipped many drafts
Exploring the Attic
When the sea first opened
and whales poured into the
cavernous blue Pacific,
I was a quivering speck
of star dust somewhere between
Andromeda and the fifth planet.
This I remember—
how I was connected to all things
through electric grids, wormholes.
Before the moon tattooed her own
face blue, jealous of the oceans below,
I knew of the gods cranking the
levers of creation. Strange how
I would know to remember this, but
cannot recall my birthdays, the space
between waking and sleeping again
or how I almost drowned at a water
park. I can remember the orange glow
of night at the south tip of the barrier
island, the color of smoke over the river,
the sunsets watched from rooftops (all colors).
I could pore through the attic, rifling for
evidence, connective tissue of faces and
concerts, the empty boxes from hair dye,
new sneakers, shipping & handling. The smell
of mothballs hits me first, then cinders.
Everything has been burned away.
Day #16 - 17/30 poems
I have spent the last two days thinking heavily on Malcolm X. Hopefully I’ll check back in with a poem for him soon.
Water Does Magic Tricks Again
I put my hand in a shirt
and feel around for something warm inside—
beneath a beating heart there is a sphere
the heart fire we talked
about once before
(it rained and
the drops steamed
as they fell
around your face).
I dreamed I tumbled into that cradle pumping
magma like blood,
stretched out through fingers,
Down sides and into the grid
hidden beneath the pavement.
On the other side of town, a lightbulb glimmers
a moment too long;
cats yowl and clang trash can lids like cymbals.
When I do this, when I tuck my hand
there, restless as a shell in waves, I wonder
how the earth knew which wave to
choose, which long green mouth of softness
and sand yawned, pressed me into
the ground, a sea stone risen from abyss to sun.
Day #??? - What day is it??
Caught in the throes of finals, most of my Napowrimo stuff has become nonfiction. I am also still several days ahead, so I will only share the things that are #1 not too uncomfortably personal or #2 not too evocative of my incredibly scatterbrained approach to everything right now.
Short Poem for a Sailor Whose Only Friends are Fictional
Hands broad and brown like spiders halt, thick
with the work of hammering sentences, the
yank of full sails into the push of
the long story (it writes itself you know)—
limbs taut ropes wound round into
the cradle of a cargo net.
The pear he kept nestled on his hip has
softened into the flesh he promised
her he’d wait for (you’ll know when
she said) and he clutches its roundness,
cupping the mole on her belly in the
bruised curve of the fruit’s hip.
Day #7 - Without Roads
As you may have noticed, I am really into tercets right now. Sorry these posts are out of order, I keep changing my mind about what to share and when.
Without Roads
In twelve years, he said, all of these houses will be torn down
like the industrial factories abandoned since the seventies. The vines’ll reach out
and pull them all down. That’s what gravity really is.
We looked out. There were houses and beyond, mountains. We imagined a world
without roads, with shopping carts, with a little permaculture plot
of root vegetables.
We’ve got to start it now, he said, or by the time we need it, we won’t be able
to sustain ourselves. People need to teach their children this shit.
I sipped my coffee.
When the world ends, what will happen to our stuff?
Aluminum-free deodorant, BPA-free plastics, shears, tires,
light bulbs, all of my poems—
Will mushrooms eat them all slowly, the most convoluted
compost imaginable?
Murals would remain, but what is the role of poetry
after the apocalypse?
Day #8 - Train
Train
A quick flick of wrist from forehead signifies
good-bye. She wonders if she was ever meant
for anything more than hot pavement, cold hands
and nightly moon rises over the edge of the mountain.
Again, the clock chimes midnight and crows flutter
into a murder in the purple sky beyond. The mug shivers
with the train’s long quiver in the valley below. We
know about the future but our watch hands stick with dew,
stack books into perilous towers and pet dogs with
dirty hands. We did not hear about the storm shattering
mailboxes two counties over until it shuddered over us like
a cymbal. We hid in the basement with flashlights and blankets,
plastic gallons of water meant for hiking trips. Ten
minutes later it had passed and we rolled up pant legs, waded
through the storm surge, hands entwined like children.
Day #5 - Fag
I’m getting really far ahead of myself in this whole #NaPoWriMo thing, specifically about three days. When I write, I tend to start 3ish pieces when I create intentional space and time for composition.
(Is it cheating to transcribe the scattered mutterings of my notebooks into something resembling fractured prose poetry?)
I wrote this particular piece in response to what happened at my house at 4am on Wednesday; for the sake of the piece, I will introduce no more context.
I did, however, almost read it at the Redaction! reading on Thursday (which, thanks for asking, was fucking brilliant and heartbreaking) but chose to read prose instead. Who am I becoming?
(A note: Tumblr needs to get its shit together with regards to spacing. Difficult to translate lineation when half the lines are wonky.)
Etymology
Yesterday morning I woke up to fag smeared
on my car in yellow cake icing.
I’m queer! I yelled in the street, indignant
in my sweatpants.
I wondered which neighbor had scrawled
the slur into my sedan, presumably intended for my more overtly homo housemates;
but I wondered,
could they be right? Am I a fag?
So I looked it up:
Fag. Noun. Slang. A cigarette.
and A rough or defective spot in a woven fabric; blemish; flaw
& (Chiefly British) drudgery; toil.
There was nothing about me sunbathing in a flannel shirt and no pants,
hairy legs crossed under a book last weekend;
nothing about the three boys with almost-
Mohawks shirtless in short shorts shoveling dirt
under the cool arc of the hose.
Nothing about our rainbow flag strung across
the living room, just begging for a dubstep dance party.
I will assume that the defective spot referred to the hooligan
himself, in that, within his assumption of my fag
status, there floated the knowledge that I would never
fantasize about his stringy naked body adorned with cross tattoos,
memorials for friends lost to dirt bike accidents;
nor his slug of a cock shriveled beneath sagging basketball shorts.
I will assume that the cigarette refers to the cigarette that I will not
smoke after fucking him, and that the drudgery and toil
must be the lonely life of someone
with nothing else to do at 4am than spread sugar dye
into words that are intended to signify derision but fall sadly
flat when faced with a language student’s etymological curiosity.
For the next time, I know to shave my head in the middle
of the street, burn my bra and roll Bible pages into spliffs
to be shared wallowing in the cesspool of sin that is my house.
Day #3 - Freeform lyric prose poem
I am de-genre-ing these scrawlings; genres are exclusive and I am leaning more about my own craft by freewriting. Sometimes they enjamb, other times they just don’t.
Regardless, here is this one (day #3 - day #2 is incredibly rough and as we all know, there is no writing, there is only rewriting) (another note - most of this is found from conversations occurring in my living room):
I have it, I might as well use it.
My friend Hilary was a barista and she was like, “hey come with me. I’m gointa buy some weed.” This guy Dylan was like, hey guys let’s smoke a bong. Should I hit it? Fuck. It is for free. But then I was too stoned and about to go out like fuck. Woman. D’ya want me to start.
And next thing you know, you’re tripping mushrooms on Wednesday.
No one knows what you’re saying. I don’t trust that bitch.
Isn’t it pretty much all the same thing? A butterfly, cherry tree dandruff shimmering in waves down like rain. A car stalls on the hill outside my house; the train rummages along, wails down into the mountain.
So after I said I got really stoned on that bong rip. We went to the bar. I was like, fuck! I got some cocaine! Doin’ a shitton a’ key bumps. I was like fuuuck! My face is so numb! Jacked up and stoned freaking out.
Sounds like another night on Front Street with packages of cigarettes soaked in vomit. Remember when we got really stoned and I ate most of G’s Danish cookies and he got really upset. That was after he finger banged you under the blanket while watching Princess Mononoke? Yes.
And then I had a threeway with her.
I did cocaine every night for the last two weeks of high school. AP exams and all. Literally wasted the night before for my AP Environmental Science exam; passed. Spent approximately $8,000 and didn’t pay for nearly half of it; wish I had that money now. Lost 40 pounds; did everyone know I was on coke?
(Is this a prose poem?)
kale for dinner, toast for breakfast. A smoothie sometimes. Always coffee. Matt made me coffee earlier. 6:30pm and we decide that coffee is the only solution to senioritis and spring fever sleep deprivation (birds chirp until 7am – what do you expect?). They whistle by the beach until evening, nap, and commence at midnight. That’s why it’s called a nightingale.
Fuck I said, unsure. The red light blinked and Donta dozed off in the passenger seat. D! where do I need to take you? He muttered in response and tucked his head further into the cold elbow of window, pulled his hood up over his eyes.
Fuck. I drove. It didn’t matter where we ended up really. The streets would be cobblestone for another ten blocks, dumping out into wood extended over the river, flashing in orange lights and wake dumping in from the ocean.
There were monsters everywhere down there. Men in dark pants, scratching their heads and moaning. Seaweed octopus heads ripped from the shoulders of leviathans. A crab.
There were occasional bodies in garbage bags. I knew this. My father saw it on the news, made sure I knew that could have been you if you’re not careful, teetering in white socks, faced glossed as if through a storm window.
He pulled in the umbrella last week in the heavy rain leaning tropical storm. Landfall in Haiti and two days later the umbrella resumed its rightful perch until the next swirling mass of hot and cool collided for the television audience into something we could call by its household name.
Once, Hurricane Floyd ripped out my closet. We got back from Richmond to pine trees hanging by their needle branches from our roof, desperate. I opened the doors in my room to check on posters, trinkets, my bookshelf; branches jutted out like spikes from behind t-shirts the color of Disneyworld, the wall haphazard as a torture device. I screamed, imagining gravity’s tilt swiveling and bodies run through by the skewers. Just the drywall, my mother said.
I don’t remember much else. Things twist away down a drain plugged into the back of my skull. Tastes remain, and dresses from photos, but memories are sucked into the eye, god pulling and pulling, cheeks caving in to sop up every good, sensory detail until I am left with what can hardly be called nonfiction.
