January 2009
20 posts
The Day
This era’s presidential inauguration, the annual timely response to the fervor of elections mere months preceding it, is undoubtedly historical. The monumental character of this inauguration is perhaps felt completely differently amongst the vast grades of American people. College-aged Americans, for example, do not quite yet have to deal with politics in such a direct way; paying taxes on...
Lately I have felt like I am riding a ferris wheel and cannot get off. We have so much control over our lives but we rarely exercise it. We are caught in this monotony that makes our lives predictable and comfortable. It sounds cliche, but cliches are overused because they almost always accurately apply.
Currently: drinking an amaretto latte reading a Kurt Vonnegut essay in the library. ...
Talent?
There is no doubt in my mind that Annie Dillard’s article outlining the true nature of greatness comes from experience. Annie Dillard, a Pulitzer-Prize winning author, has blamed her success not on a greatness that has indwelling roots, but rather, a greatness that has been tediously forged and carefully honed by way of her own hand. Dillard addresses this “greatness” as something that cannot be...
English is a Foreign Language.
For the first time I’ve written a poem from my personal experiences. For as long as I’ve called myself a poet, I have only been truly haunted by one man’s critique. In the aftermath of an audience-rousing poetry slam in which I had performed, this man sought me out through the crowd. “You’re a good writer,” he said, “but you need to go off and...
Sandcastles
When the moon is full My blood loosens, rocking lullabies between capillaries and my aorta valve. Ticking survival seconds like an ancient calendar counting the planetary metronome of natural satellites in space-limbo, telling us when the moondust that compiles us is needed again for other things. Every morning I wake up and count new creases in my neck the liquid in my larynx is aging slowly...
“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Reality.
Here’s to not knowing what is real. I have gazed into an abyss knowing that I can’t turn back for some time now. Humans are too smart for their own good. We know we are going to die, and this is horrifying for us. In comes religion.
I stumbled upon a little video about the Kabbalah today. It was really thought-provoking and it made sense in a strange way that only things you are...
“Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling...”
– Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums
Do you know when there’s a decision you have to make that seems like it’s just the same as any other decision you’ve ever made, but somehow it’s very different? Like it’s meant to happen in a certain way, and you have to choose the right path?
And if you make the wrong decision, the magic doesn’t happen?
Well I want the magic.
“Lying together in the park on Seventh,
our backs smoosh grass and I say
I will...”
– Derrick Brown
The New York City Poem
Your vanilla milkshake tongue sticks to my mouth like
sandpaper and I pull my insides from you.
I like chocolate.
I can see your pores
sweating my makeup and taxi cab exhaust.
And that night on the subway sitting across
from the girl with the lily-of-the-valley dress
I noticed she was with a boy who didn’t know
what he did to deserve her.
We quietly watched and you
squeezed my...
