a quotable:

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become."

-Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

ashraf, i've decided to take this book on and leave frank for shorter reading periods... one or two digressions a day. the floating at on the cover of this book, and this quote, are egging on me to dive in. i'll let you know just how much i like it when i've finished it.

5/17/07

i wrote a whole punch of poems in my journal on the seventeenth and finally feel the urge to share them... this urge partially brought on by my recognizing the lack of poetry here recently and acknowledging that i don't have the gusto to write new poems for you right now. hope you like...


relive (you)

reborn the finch
enter the spring in a Frank O'Hara play

we forget our friends
and avoid our family

hord away lovers
hold long ago affairs (closer)

evertyhing is okay -
i'm waiting to start -

bit it feels like you love
everyone of them (at first)

and i believed you
when you said you loved me too.


summer

he used an electric typewriter
to steal my heart


*red poetry to be insider*

lift the pages
the dates are old
and she goes
in and out of couplets
for different occations

she only practices her penmenshp here
were her hand is good
you love her less
the perfect word is neat
but too tired yet

where she crosses lines
you love her more - like
see through tops to secret things
she won't show you
because you never ask.


butter

felt guilty all of a sudden
for reading another man's poetry


reactive

I
i can only write what
the 'she' thinks

and she has no outward reaction,
she just writes and breathes

II
she wants to write
on the back of all the pages


untitled dream

i dreamt that kate and ling had to leave the program and the country because mark k took my car. my car was small and read. i left the engine running when i went in to get them. i was in a bad mood. i told paul to get out of my house and that it was all of his fault even though i clearly didn't live there and his ugly, scared face stuck in my mind. if only i could have apologized to him. but i cried for kate and ling and cursed myself for leaving mary to herself - especially in a dream.


untitled poem for jack

jack wanders by
leaving the window
and says he loves me
on his way back.





*

the body of work (part one)

his sleeves were two fold
long over short and she watched
as he pushed one up with the other

an unbalanced effort to keep

Bug

i was upset at all those people in the theatre that laughed when the film ended when i was almost in tears.

i know my small readership isn't going to run out and see Bug because i liked it... in fact Ashraf, we've been pretty much opposite feeling about most films recently, so i recommend you leave this one unwatched. but, maybe Michelle will appreciate my wavering commitment to horror.

ryan and i went to see Bug last night. i had only a passing notion of what to expect. i'd only seen one trailer and thought the idea of a virus that made people think they had bugs looked creepy and clever.

no virus.

no gigantic man-eating queen mother bugs.

no twists.

just a couple of lonely, paranoid delusionals in love. it's brilliant. and engaging.

from the opening, sweeping shot of the Oklahoma landscape (giving an immediate sense of isolation and desolation) to the final syllable of dialogue, the film fed the buzzing in my ear and the tingle at the back of my neck. the film is tense without being irritating. only one scene made me squirm and we can call that the definite climax. from that point on, we watch as the bugs truly take over.

it was a compelling film that doesn't ask too much of any audience, but that audiences seem to be asking too much of. the woman behind us at the theatre last night, when the film ended, asked, approximately, where the monster was. she *completely* missed the boat as it were.

for me, it was a beautiful study in storytelling and film making. and an engaging study of the effects of isolation, loneliness and self-destruction.



*

Tension kicks in from frame one,
and for most of the first act,
Friedkin does what he does best:
instilling the mundane with an underlying sense of dread.
-Andrew Kasch (Dread Central)

everyone likes 'A Good Joke'

reading something

lunch time for bears.

will tell you what i think later or not.

armed

the under side of her forearm
is raw from the sugar-bleach compound
that comes from scooping ice cream in public.

he's purring

a small cat
sat on top of a wheel
of carefully aged parmesan

sinks his teeth in.

a piano lesson

part one:
when i saw the piano i asked 'do you play?'

to which he replied 'no, do you?'

part two:
it came with the apartment
and made a muffled noise

i jammed the keys

part three:
after clearing the cover
of the box piano with blue paint chipping

we found the skeleton of a turtle
scattered and broken among the strings

part four:
we placed the bones in a way
to make them look as much like a turtle
as we could imagine

the broken shell was the hardest part

part five:
after the burial

he asked 'scones and tea?'

to which i replied 'have you got cream?'

oh Fogo De Chao

we went to philly for the weekend. stayed with ashraf. went to this place called Fogo de Chao. most delicious meat i've ever had. EVER.

gauchos -in gaucho pants no less- come by your table with meat on swords. they ask politely if you'd like whatever it is that's been impaled onto their sow rd. if you say yes, you get a fresh, hot slice of heavenly tasting seasoned meat piled onto your plate in manageable cuts. the house special was to die for.

not only did they provide a constant supply of meat on swords served by gauchos in gaucho pants, they also had a gigantic parmesan wheel at the salad bar. to get some cheese, you hack at the wheel. best tasting parmesan i'd ever had, and went beautifully with the meats being served.

i think we had about 12 gaucho-style servers.

it was not only a dining experience, but one of the best meals i think i've ever had in my life. we planned, before ashraf, ryan and i even left the table, that we're going back in november to celebrate my birthday there and eat more meats.

^_^

i heart gauchos

who cares (about poetry) ?

a blogger's effigy

what i would have been
when he could have been:

frank, love me.

two things

one, i really did see a helicopter on my way to and from school today

and two, tonight (in less than half an hour) i start my newestest summer job at the polar cave!!!

simple procedure

(in favor of a simple procedure)
we wait until it's warm to do our chores

i saw a helicopter hover
over a cranberry bog on my way home

and i saw my neighbors' lawn mowers
covered in grass and worn out

i covered mine in grass, now
i'm worn out for something

a new skirt with pockets
and a new career path
_____- ice cream diva

my little bro made a zombie movie!

and it's totally worth watching all the way through (am not saying that because he's my brother).

Kate, PIPPIN IS IN THE VIDEO!

i made a site from scratch

check out aboxfullofletters.com

i made it with hand coded html and css as a project for a class.

my client, the lovely Kate, also made somethingkaty.com from scratch for the same project.

^_^

between

the sun through the window on our faces
your fingers dance over my warm cheek

over my eyelids to shut them, to rest,
early on a tuesday napping with the cats

in the air, the notes, the pleasure
of getting lost between you and sleep

new love

the traffic barrel hawk over sees
the suburb fire and fields of marks
--pink chemical flags--

her voice, a trickle of hope,
scratched to match his candor and volume
and his hips move back and forth
with her eyes and her heart and her need

jeffers' hawk on a plastic yellow barrel
looks up at the traffic
--it's four on a thursday--
while he sucks on the cap of his pen

she's desperate for his truth
for his form and for his tongue
to enter her with more caution,
but he's too divine to comply --to her.

tainted love

an ode to my old green all stars

for the diction of a worn shoelace
the ends tattered and chewed
to the rhythm of growth,

for the predictable slip of the tongue
to the left of each foot
as a reflection of pace,

for the hole in the back of each soul
where the weight of the world
presses down on us,

and for the white stained green
from the grass-juice emissions
of a two year old lawn mower.

in spring

for a procession of passing ducks

i'll come to your party, but only
if you promise to wear your bow-tie
__ and fitted suit with cuff links





.

new feature

<-- check him out.

pictures of kitties - how unusual, i know...

springing

the fruit of my autumn labors

the flower moon

from the farmers almanac


the early may moon rises over the lake
our lake

the one radclyff and i pretend
no one knows about - but us

the lake where we saw each other's reflections
in the wake of slow going sail boats

¡ahoy!, our flower moon rises
with the dandelions

said radclyff over the edge of our canoe
to a procession of passing ducks