The poem here was taken from a beautiful man I knew in San Francisco. I found it in a dresser earlier this week. The man was a walking poem, maybe the most beautiful I've known. But perverse and an island unto himself.
Whatever
Sex
The Sex Terror
Love is Enough
These date back to 1976
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
A poem from a man I lived with briefly
About me:
my Rose
this isn't about age but the feel of taste,
the swell of the chorale ---obligato
she liked my pirate flag, she was a pirate
too she said, and as it snapped at the mast
we took up the old bike horn and tambourine
and honked a giddy march, laughing at money
said she'd kick my ass in pool, though she didn't play;
she said i was gay, a communist, a gay communist
she asked a customer for our check once,
recalled it as the dumbest thing she'd done
when told she'd done it, her soft laugh
a moisture of stuff boys told her, nuts in love
the distortions of unhappiness! but with Rose no meanness,
sometimes a tendency to romanticize revenge or get dark tattoos;
she liked to close a hand
upon the other hand and crack her knuckles
with a sound like who cares
Rose liked strong coffee to get going and made kava kava to sleep
i always drove (she hated cars)
i nearly hit a squirrel, and a bird, which i did hit, but couldn't tell her,
not the way she yelled and pushed into her seat
enough to put me off women half my age
relying on you to take them places
she wanted Fall of the Damned tattooed down her arm,
but had no way to meet the artist, who would've had trouble with Bosch
Irish Cherokee, wine-dark lips, sorrowing Slovac
when my Rose lies down, opens and smiles and looks
down herself at you she'd say yeah to move the river
around my boat, becoming what you heard for days;
she told me i was hard to know and had a teenager's libido
which i whispered yeah to
we weren't going anywhere, we didn't care,
then I cared and in the mirror watched the bird
try to fly off the road
i'd find her, my lovely Rose, waiting for me on the road
back to her family's farm, in her jeans and jacket,
listening to her sad music on those little earbuds so nobody'd know
she didn't like the crack across my windshield,
why don't you get that fixed she said
then would pull up the soft skirt she sometimes wore
and reach over in traffic, arousing the men in my horse
lying in wait outside the gate, ready for the myths of famous dates
© Copyright 2011
Sunday, October 10, 2010
1984 & Drug Crazy=War on Drugs
Mike Gray's "Drug Crazy" and George Orwell's 1984 bring up interesting points. Drug Cray was published in 1998, before the Patriot Act.
Whoap, here is the facts, mixed between the two books. Also, for required reading for the political genere:
1.) SHOCK DOCTRINE: NAOMI KLEIN
2.) EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: CHRISTOPHER HEDGES
3.) CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN: JOHN PERKINS
4.) AGAINST LOVE: LAURA KIPNIS
5.) 13 BANKERS: SIMON JOHNSON
6.) THE BIG SHORT: MICHAEL LEWIS
7.) SAYING YES: JACOB SULLUM
-The problem with most people and their dreams is that they are so desperate in their struggles to have what they do not have, they never ask why they want what they do not own. Or what repercussions will be faced in achieving the goal. They are so consumed with the struggle that they don't have the luxury of thoroughly analyzing their options. That's an elusive quest for some aches so much that they don't see what it means in the broad scheme of things. The struggle itself is all they see.
-Enforcement of reality, and the regulation of free thought function to, and opposing of oppressed people.
-CIA is the Inner Party.
-Constantly reconstruct reality for the purpose of ignorance works in institutions to create a power relation where the masses are manipulated and controlled.
The institution for the creation of the 18th Amendment of the United States Constitution was the cause of wasted tax dollars and illusion of the drug war. Like Oceania in 1984, our country is held hostage by the oppression of a fabricated war. A war that can corrupt your children, pose a threat to your very health, and spread like a plague, “The Drug User as [a] Vampire” (page 186) across America unless we take a stand. The stand is a surrender of our tax dollars to fight a war that the CIA participates in creating, the ultimate catch 22.
The book “Drug Crazy” by Mike Gray is unique in that it does not only list the banes of the history of the war on drugs. Gray also offers a solution to the problem this hoax of a war created in America. Legalize drugs. When drugs become against the law than the law creates outlaws. This way those who partake in the recreational use of drugs seventy million Americans (page 186) are not in direct violation of the law.
“America must open its eyes and recognize that human nature cannot be changed by legal enactment”. (page 67).
Also on (186) Grey makes a parallel with Nazi Germany in the U.S.A.: “You could confiscate….property without due process, put [users of drugs] in concentration camps, and conduct medical experiments on them against their will.” Much like the goings on in Guantanamo Bay.
The War on Drugs is facilitated by the CIA. “By the end of the Bush administration total cocaine output in the Andes had increased 15 percent.” (page 117). Drug Kingpin “Manuel Noriega had been on the CIA payroll throughout his brutal career. When Noriega was indicated in the United States for turning Panama into a free-trade zone for drugs, Bush was hard-pressed to explain the photos of himself and Noriega chatting it up in Panama at a time when Bush had to have known the general was up to his ears in the cocaine trade.”(page 112). During this exact time Bush was in his 1988 campaign (page 112).
Like 1984 people rat each other out in this war on drugs. (Page 110) Gray notes that “a 1990 study of pregnant drug users found that a black woman was ten times more likely to be reported to the authorities than a white woman.” One might conclude that the war on drugs is a race war more than a drug war. “The drug war…evolved into a race war. (page 110). [When] Ronald Reagan left office, the prison population had not only doubled in size, it had changed complexion.” Like the days following the end of slavery, prisoners became the slaves, offering free work as penance for their sins.
Before Reagan there was Nixon, who also used the War on Drugs as a political platform. “Nixon had appointed a Republican drug hawk, former Pennsylvania governor Ray Shafer, to head the commission, and his job was to create a scientific foundation for the administration’s hard line on marijuana. But after months of digging, the facts overwhelmed the folk talks and the Shafer Commission reversed engines: ‘Marihuana use, in and of itself, is neither causative of, nor directly associated with crime…’ Nixon buried the report.” (page 97).
George Herbert Walker Bush promised to be hard on drug abuse in the US. “But Bush not only failed to stem the tide, he was accused of consorting with the enemy. When the Senate’s Iran-contra investigators ripped the sheet off covert operations in central America, they discovered that the CIA had known for some time about contra drug trafficking. They also found evidence of a coke-for-guns cover-up.” (page 111). Our government, the CIA’s inner party, has been dumping drugs in the ghettos of the county in exchange for weapons to bully other countries with a wealth of natural resources. Drug Crazy was printed in 1998, before the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before the departments erected in the USA after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centers. If one follows the Presidential campaign of the then major of the city of New York, Rudy Giuliani, one would find a plethora of bogus departments and spy laws waiting to be passed as a promise of Presidential action. In a somber feminine voice a ‘orange coated curfew’ can be heard as a warning in airports everywhere, a function of Homeland Security. Homeland Security, as Wikipedia states, “is an umbrella term for security efforts to protect the United States against terrorist activity.” We are warned that we must give up a bit of our freedom in order for protection to be effective. After all, we have nothing to hide if we are not doing anything wrong and Big Brother is watching us. The syntax of the name “O’Brien” in 1984 is “Sorrow” in Celtic. Indeed he is intelligent but ruthless.
Whoap, here is the facts, mixed between the two books. Also, for required reading for the political genere:
1.) SHOCK DOCTRINE: NAOMI KLEIN
2.) EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: CHRISTOPHER HEDGES
3.) CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN: JOHN PERKINS
4.) AGAINST LOVE: LAURA KIPNIS
5.) 13 BANKERS: SIMON JOHNSON
6.) THE BIG SHORT: MICHAEL LEWIS
7.) SAYING YES: JACOB SULLUM
-The problem with most people and their dreams is that they are so desperate in their struggles to have what they do not have, they never ask why they want what they do not own. Or what repercussions will be faced in achieving the goal. They are so consumed with the struggle that they don't have the luxury of thoroughly analyzing their options. That's an elusive quest for some aches so much that they don't see what it means in the broad scheme of things. The struggle itself is all they see.
-Enforcement of reality, and the regulation of free thought function to, and opposing of oppressed people.
-CIA is the Inner Party.
-Constantly reconstruct reality for the purpose of ignorance works in institutions to create a power relation where the masses are manipulated and controlled.
The institution for the creation of the 18th Amendment of the United States Constitution was the cause of wasted tax dollars and illusion of the drug war. Like Oceania in 1984, our country is held hostage by the oppression of a fabricated war. A war that can corrupt your children, pose a threat to your very health, and spread like a plague, “The Drug User as [a] Vampire” (page 186) across America unless we take a stand. The stand is a surrender of our tax dollars to fight a war that the CIA participates in creating, the ultimate catch 22.
The book “Drug Crazy” by Mike Gray is unique in that it does not only list the banes of the history of the war on drugs. Gray also offers a solution to the problem this hoax of a war created in America. Legalize drugs. When drugs become against the law than the law creates outlaws. This way those who partake in the recreational use of drugs seventy million Americans (page 186) are not in direct violation of the law.
“America must open its eyes and recognize that human nature cannot be changed by legal enactment”. (page 67).
Also on (186) Grey makes a parallel with Nazi Germany in the U.S.A.: “You could confiscate….property without due process, put [users of drugs] in concentration camps, and conduct medical experiments on them against their will.” Much like the goings on in Guantanamo Bay.
The War on Drugs is facilitated by the CIA. “By the end of the Bush administration total cocaine output in the Andes had increased 15 percent.” (page 117). Drug Kingpin “Manuel Noriega had been on the CIA payroll throughout his brutal career. When Noriega was indicated in the United States for turning Panama into a free-trade zone for drugs, Bush was hard-pressed to explain the photos of himself and Noriega chatting it up in Panama at a time when Bush had to have known the general was up to his ears in the cocaine trade.”(page 112). During this exact time Bush was in his 1988 campaign (page 112).
Like 1984 people rat each other out in this war on drugs. (Page 110) Gray notes that “a 1990 study of pregnant drug users found that a black woman was ten times more likely to be reported to the authorities than a white woman.” One might conclude that the war on drugs is a race war more than a drug war. “The drug war…evolved into a race war. (page 110). [When] Ronald Reagan left office, the prison population had not only doubled in size, it had changed complexion.” Like the days following the end of slavery, prisoners became the slaves, offering free work as penance for their sins.
Before Reagan there was Nixon, who also used the War on Drugs as a political platform. “Nixon had appointed a Republican drug hawk, former Pennsylvania governor Ray Shafer, to head the commission, and his job was to create a scientific foundation for the administration’s hard line on marijuana. But after months of digging, the facts overwhelmed the folk talks and the Shafer Commission reversed engines: ‘Marihuana use, in and of itself, is neither causative of, nor directly associated with crime…’ Nixon buried the report.” (page 97).
George Herbert Walker Bush promised to be hard on drug abuse in the US. “But Bush not only failed to stem the tide, he was accused of consorting with the enemy. When the Senate’s Iran-contra investigators ripped the sheet off covert operations in central America, they discovered that the CIA had known for some time about contra drug trafficking. They also found evidence of a coke-for-guns cover-up.” (page 111). Our government, the CIA’s inner party, has been dumping drugs in the ghettos of the county in exchange for weapons to bully other countries with a wealth of natural resources. Drug Crazy was printed in 1998, before the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before the departments erected in the USA after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centers. If one follows the Presidential campaign of the then major of the city of New York, Rudy Giuliani, one would find a plethora of bogus departments and spy laws waiting to be passed as a promise of Presidential action. In a somber feminine voice a ‘orange coated curfew’ can be heard as a warning in airports everywhere, a function of Homeland Security. Homeland Security, as Wikipedia states, “is an umbrella term for security efforts to protect the United States against terrorist activity.” We are warned that we must give up a bit of our freedom in order for protection to be effective. After all, we have nothing to hide if we are not doing anything wrong and Big Brother is watching us. The syntax of the name “O’Brien” in 1984 is “Sorrow” in Celtic. Indeed he is intelligent but ruthless.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Richard Brautigan
These two poems have nothing to do with each other. One is about a lack of love and one is noticing someone- an act of love. Here they are, but first, a tale about the writer. He spoke at Humboldt State University and was so drunk and horny that the English department rented him a hooker and a hotel room.
Here is one of my favorite poems by him:
"The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster"
When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
I'm a Auditory Thinker
In my Linguistic class we had a homework assignment. We picked one acronym of this: AVK. Auditory thinker. Visual thinker. Kinesthetic thinker. You can transition in time, or be more than just one. As a poet, with words I should be a master of all three categories. As I listen to Johnny Cash's "The Wanderer" as I write, I have pretensions toward auditory thought. I dig music.
This blog has been a work in progress in thought for a long time. Since a jazz Professor told me that my foot steps while running connect to my heartbeat and would heal me from a family death. So I am waiting to feel that: The rhythm of my running and the click of harmony between my foot step on the Earth, my beating heart in my sweating body, and the sounds around me. My body should be a vessel for the rhythm of music. An orgasm.
Until I feel this, I am building up this blog on the music around us. My tea kettle going off. The wind rustling tree branches. A unity in nature that matches my beating heart. Johnny Cash talks about the spiritual aspect of music. "I left with nothing but the thought of you, I went wandering". I'll finish this blog one day. Right now I have only words to describe what I beg the Universe for when I sprint to this certain bridge, collapse on the wood over a river, stare at the open water, and thank the holy force that guided me to where I am in life. The stars are always above us.
To every question there is an answer if you are quiet enough to listen. When I played the clarinet in the school's band there was a moment of unity where all instruments knew their part. It felt like a brotherhood. It felt sacred. That feeling is what I look for in my foot steps, and in the heart of one to love. One day this blog will be authentic.
This blog has been a work in progress in thought for a long time. Since a jazz Professor told me that my foot steps while running connect to my heartbeat and would heal me from a family death. So I am waiting to feel that: The rhythm of my running and the click of harmony between my foot step on the Earth, my beating heart in my sweating body, and the sounds around me. My body should be a vessel for the rhythm of music. An orgasm.
Until I feel this, I am building up this blog on the music around us. My tea kettle going off. The wind rustling tree branches. A unity in nature that matches my beating heart. Johnny Cash talks about the spiritual aspect of music. "I left with nothing but the thought of you, I went wandering". I'll finish this blog one day. Right now I have only words to describe what I beg the Universe for when I sprint to this certain bridge, collapse on the wood over a river, stare at the open water, and thank the holy force that guided me to where I am in life. The stars are always above us.
To every question there is an answer if you are quiet enough to listen. When I played the clarinet in the school's band there was a moment of unity where all instruments knew their part. It felt like a brotherhood. It felt sacred. That feeling is what I look for in my foot steps, and in the heart of one to love. One day this blog will be authentic.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Accomadating
This is an original joke that my older brother Tim told me this morning. He also came up with the "I'm an alcoholic beverage" joke that I take credit for. My grand mother sends us a lot of Reader's Digest magazines to warp our humor this way. But this is very clever so I'm sharing what my Physics Brother sent his Literature sister. Whop here it is:
Commas aren't the most attractive punctuation marks, but this one particular comma has her heart set on getting into the dating scene. She asks a period for a date, but the period says, "I don't date commas, period." She asks an ellipsis, but the ellipsis says, "Um, let me get back to you on that...". Finally, after being rejected by every punctuation mark she's asked, she gets desperate and decides to ask the exclamation mark. The exclamation mark says, "I'll go on a date with you, but I should warn you that I shout everything I say, and I often give people commands!" The comma says, "It doesn't matter, I'm a comma, dating!"
Commas aren't the most attractive punctuation marks, but this one particular comma has her heart set on getting into the dating scene. She asks a period for a date, but the period says, "I don't date commas, period." She asks an ellipsis, but the ellipsis says, "Um, let me get back to you on that...". Finally, after being rejected by every punctuation mark she's asked, she gets desperate and decides to ask the exclamation mark. The exclamation mark says, "I'll go on a date with you, but I should warn you that I shout everything I say, and I often give people commands!" The comma says, "It doesn't matter, I'm a comma, dating!"
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Character Development in Writing
I've been meaning to write down everything I learned as a writer at San Francisco State. This will take a few blogs. This one has to do with, well, what the title says. First some quick theory.
Since I live in the land of bumper stickers and Jimmy Hendrix posters, this thought came to me which is loosely based on character development (it's a stretch). The thought occurred to me how stupid it would be to buy a poster of Neil Young (who I love) or any other face for sale to put on your wall. I love my family and I don't post giant mass produced posters of their faces on my wall (that would be creepy). Beyond celebrity worship, it's just plain stupid. If you like Neil Young, listen to his music. Gandhi, be nice to your fellow human race. Frank Sinatra, throw someone out of an airplane in motion.
To expand more on this thought (I think I had two shots of espresso in my coffee that day) I was thinking of a character and the person as a whole. It pigeonholes the person as a certain belief or idea and ironically, half these living celebrities are trying to avoid just that (Neil Young being the best example). So this theory ties into what I learned about character development because people are too complex to write about with purity. But let's try.
I've always said that people like Tarantino for the wrong reasons. It's his dialogue, Shakespearean format, and character development that make the film and writing critics love him so dearly. Not his 'coolness' (which I've been meaning to write a blog about). So I'll use one of his characters to start with as a good example. The film Jackie Brown and the character played by Samuel L. Jackson: Ordell Robbie. This character was stuck on a certain drink: vodka and orange juice. He was tough but had principles and a certain patience. I'd say that this character was deeply developed. His diction was unique. So I'll show you how to do that as best as I can.
Generically! Well, we had a ditto that helped us to refine our characters. What do they drink often? What does this character love most? Their smell, do they smoke, what color is their favorite, do they like comics, video games, ect. And the only way to take something beyond a love for screwdrivers is to write and write and write about them. Here is a good way to do that.
Take a picture and spend AT LEAST 25 minutes (for starters) on what is behind the picture (of the character in your head). After 25 minutes you reach a breaking point where your mind produces stuff past the crap on the top of your brain. Do this often, but in spurts and highlight what fits the character in your head, then write more to expand.
Then simplify. Remember we are talking about the human brain so you can get as vast and creative as you want. Does the character speak other languages? What books would they read? Their level of morality, etc. After you highlight, then pear down. Get an idea of who you are dealing with before putting them in your story. To me, a character makes the story good, not the action. But later I'll talk about how action can define a character, after you get down all their habits and lusts.
This is one of a few blogs I'll write on what I know about writing. One of my favorite fictional characters in film (and I have blogs about characters in literature) is the film Bottle Rocket with Owen Wilson's character, Dignan. My next blog (and I'm lazy, which is why I don't write often) will be about creating a background for your characters to live inside. The third will be how to move them around, followed by how to complete a story. Start with your characters. And have fun with this.
Since I live in the land of bumper stickers and Jimmy Hendrix posters, this thought came to me which is loosely based on character development (it's a stretch). The thought occurred to me how stupid it would be to buy a poster of Neil Young (who I love) or any other face for sale to put on your wall. I love my family and I don't post giant mass produced posters of their faces on my wall (that would be creepy). Beyond celebrity worship, it's just plain stupid. If you like Neil Young, listen to his music. Gandhi, be nice to your fellow human race. Frank Sinatra, throw someone out of an airplane in motion.
To expand more on this thought (I think I had two shots of espresso in my coffee that day) I was thinking of a character and the person as a whole. It pigeonholes the person as a certain belief or idea and ironically, half these living celebrities are trying to avoid just that (Neil Young being the best example). So this theory ties into what I learned about character development because people are too complex to write about with purity. But let's try.
I've always said that people like Tarantino for the wrong reasons. It's his dialogue, Shakespearean format, and character development that make the film and writing critics love him so dearly. Not his 'coolness' (which I've been meaning to write a blog about). So I'll use one of his characters to start with as a good example. The film Jackie Brown and the character played by Samuel L. Jackson: Ordell Robbie. This character was stuck on a certain drink: vodka and orange juice. He was tough but had principles and a certain patience. I'd say that this character was deeply developed. His diction was unique. So I'll show you how to do that as best as I can.
Generically! Well, we had a ditto that helped us to refine our characters. What do they drink often? What does this character love most? Their smell, do they smoke, what color is their favorite, do they like comics, video games, ect. And the only way to take something beyond a love for screwdrivers is to write and write and write about them. Here is a good way to do that.
Take a picture and spend AT LEAST 25 minutes (for starters) on what is behind the picture (of the character in your head). After 25 minutes you reach a breaking point where your mind produces stuff past the crap on the top of your brain. Do this often, but in spurts and highlight what fits the character in your head, then write more to expand.
Then simplify. Remember we are talking about the human brain so you can get as vast and creative as you want. Does the character speak other languages? What books would they read? Their level of morality, etc. After you highlight, then pear down. Get an idea of who you are dealing with before putting them in your story. To me, a character makes the story good, not the action. But later I'll talk about how action can define a character, after you get down all their habits and lusts.
This is one of a few blogs I'll write on what I know about writing. One of my favorite fictional characters in film (and I have blogs about characters in literature) is the film Bottle Rocket with Owen Wilson's character, Dignan. My next blog (and I'm lazy, which is why I don't write often) will be about creating a background for your characters to live inside. The third will be how to move them around, followed by how to complete a story. Start with your characters. And have fun with this.
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