Untitled

I want to swim in the clear, blue wide pool
But I'm use to the still stillness of open lakes
-the full green vines of bushes around
-the sweet thick musk of dew
-around is all natural
I kissed the shallow bottoms of rivers, smooth
-a constant flow of red cool
-a rush of needed movement
-perfect for life
I've dreamed of opaque oceans
-afraid of the body consuming wave, large
-Intrigued by the dark clouds, rains, lightening, a storm that may brew
-I'm unsure a dense body can float.
I want to swim in a pool
-trimmed
-clean, toxic to taste
-wind-whipped, unabashed.

G-r-r-r-r-reat more than Good

Hey Tony!
I like the things you do
Hey Tony!
You’re sitting in my bowl
A factory in China made this bowl,
But luckily it is blue
See, here is what had happened:
The white rabbit pinned for colour
He was taken away and made a fool out of.
So, Tony
You’re a tiger.
“Hello!” She said
God must have colored your lightning bolt stripes in, black
If children could they would be striped and in a blue bowl, too,
Yet we want wheat, miniature doughnuts touched with honey nut, Cheerios
Were they made in England?
A cup of milk will help Americans lose weight.
Hunched over Japanese elders never sipped on the tit.
There!
There she is Aunt Jemima: the mother of cornstarch maple syrup
Number One
She apologizes for not being cereal
Chocolate milk
Liquid fever is chalky in the end
Nesquik remnants
His sneakers are brown
He couldn’t have stepped in shit and dirt,
Since he did not have to pick a bean from the coca plant
Frosted flakes
“Grand to meet you,” a hopeless child said, “I will tell the spoon you have arrived”

This is Kinda for A No One

Dear Johne,

I know you’ve been watching me
because I’ve been watching you.
I think it’s time to stop now.
Stop looking out the window
for a tomorrow that will never come
why don’t you ease yourself into
your cold bed and settle
between your lonesome sheets, hmm?
Don’t wait for me to kiss your clammy
forehead. Just kiss your hands and sing
yourself a lullaby. Close your
Eyes and whisper my name,
“God’s never been closer to you”

Dear Johne,

You’ve been walking with death in front
of your toes and life behind your heels.
You’re frown has never been as deep.
I hear your foot steps have a blue beat,
and yet everyone is smiling their concerns
and laughing their sympathies at you.
Johnny, boy you’ve become a member of
the How Are You club. Where friends are
walking strangers. I know you’re striving to be
in High-Five society, but why don’t you slow
down. Success comes for only a few. Sit on
this bench here. Grab a bottle that will burn
going down. Close your eyes and just shake off the "How Are You’s."
Give them a reply of a quiet no-real-air-breath.

Dear Johne,

I can see you through those brown
black eyed tears, once so full of life.
Open them wider and wider, so
wide that the neon white lights can
bleach your eyes dead.
I can call you my perfect, now.

The Theif of Hearts

Dear Jane,
You’ve been through crimson silence.
On a green night I’ve seen your face turn crooked
with jealousy. Your hands slither down the
roads of belly buttons and long curls of
hair only to feel a heat that will not comfort.
You dip in raw, flesh on flesh,
until your body quivers with empty
exhaustion. Your sullen eyes hope
to replace the coat of sweet nothings on his
forehead with something that was never yours to begin with.
Rest by his side now, he’ll leave soon for a
automatic love and children who remember his name as:
“Bye.” He’ll remember you as the open-girl-next-door.
He’ll continue to slip in the back window and you’ll live
as his secret release.
Sincerely,
Dear Jane,
Your hands and breast are cold . Your
nipples are hard from abandonment and your
fingers are laced with last night. Their
scents will forever live on your body.
I hear you’re only laughing them away with hollowness
and unsuccessful triumph. And I see you’re
walking down the street with skin skins,
but these luring masks will never hide your beating shame.
Why don’t you wear underwear, hmm?
Stop opening your legs when your hear,
“Easy access.” Smoke this cigarette fill your
lungs with a slow death because your body can’t
handle the wheel of men, who assured you that their
automatic love is ending and there is a security within
the word, “Us.” Lay your head on your pillow for one
night and remember me, “Dear God for I have sinned.”

Sincerely,
Dear Jane,
I can see you through those red eyed tears.
Even through the crimson silence, I can see your hand searching for a day-night love. Let your
hands fill you because loves comes only for thieves.

Yours sincerely.

A Facebook Wall Story: Dedicated to Charlie, Jonia, and Innocent

A FaceBook Wall Story:

I screamed, "Love me, love me! Why won't you love me?" From in a relationship to single; I was depressed, and then

a great wind blew in the window as if there wasn't enough air to breathe in a house; a storm had to brew to get me to see the vastness of my living room. There is loneliness in contentment, so I took a few steps outside.

--

I felt social. Five hundred and sixteen friends.

--

Just above me there were heavy, saturated with moisture and warmth clouds. Even though they're miles away they've manage to say, "Hello. I'm here for you." The walls wear no expressions, but they still hear me. . . and when I'm not watching they steal everything I own. . . I still can't find my shirt and my computer died a curious death. I stopped watching porn a long time ago, but there were still viruses. The inanimates our out to break us, but "I'm not a toy, do not toy with me I breathe!" But I think there are four walls for a reason:

September Box us in.

December Cage us up like chickens.

February Rip our skins.

May Steal our hands and feet for soups.

See More

-

“Hello dear,” her shriveled hands covered my skin, “Have you ever tasted real chicken noodle soup?”

--

Samantha Rodriguez and Jak Mussington Cooper are now friend with. . . “Damn, just limit your profile, so no one can read your wall”

--

I do not want to be a mystery. Honest Box: Do you believe I am a quiet person?

--

I'm a troublemaker, I hate college, I love parties, and single doesn’t mean I’m looking for somebody. 8 hours ago. Comment. Like.

--

When people die their FaceBooks live on. Jonia Mendonca Guterres, Charlie Scanlon, Innocent Mutetwa they do not appear on our news feeds . . . and their names are bold and black not like the hyperlink blue. Facebook somehow knows they’re dead.

--

I do not have enough friends, but I will not add just anyone. Just because your last name is ‘Mussington’ does not mean that I should add you . . .

--

It could have happened when I was on FaceBook, Jonia must have died while I was scrolling up and down her profile, commenting on pictures, commenting on her friends, commenting on her life, but I wasn’t there.

--

Jonia went down to the river by herself, removed her towel from her petite waste, and began to swim. The water was cold, since it had been raining up until then, but her body began to adjust once her head was fully submerged. She treaded water until she was comfortable with the temperature then she decided to do laps in circles. Suddenly, a sharp pain ran up her leg, a muscle spasm. She kicked and thrashed about to get above the water, but she was in too deep. Water rushed into her mouth; she tried to call for help.

--

I logged off.

Series of Mediocre Events: Romance

Series of mediocre events:

I'm happy because I'm done with work! Turned off the computers, music equipment, closed up the music library, swing open the doors and of course it is raining. I'm wearing a short-sleeved, v-cut, lime green shirt, high waters, and pink oxford tennis shoes (I know I'm not matching, but at least I'm not wearing white). Before I go down the stairs I hesitate, testing to see how hard the rain is falling.

It's raining really fucking hard and to make matters worse the wind is blowing, so once I move from the protection of the terrace a thousand and one water droplets are going to smack me in the face and they do.

Now I'm running home, the rain can make you do crazy things look at Spiderman and MaryJane and all those other romantic movies and scenes that involve making out (sex) and rain! I run across the grass and mud, Hulet and Jenks, and I'm on the path that leads to parking lot.

This average white guy (I mean come on I'm in Canton, NY and a black guy in the rain that's asking for too much! It's like asking for fried chicken in Dana! . . . plus as Sam has pointed out: a black guy running in the rain would be considered ghetto (he must be running from the cops) for a white guy it's innovative, romantic (he's running to his lover)) with groceries comes out of no where. He's running really fast. He runs past me and our shoulders bump.

He looks back. I look back.

He calls out, "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," I say loud enough.

Womanhood

Goo-bity-goop
flowing down from

the middle.

The first time tears
mixed with blood.
On her knees
Her lips quiver
pretending to imitate
the joy
of womanhood.

Gut Feelings

If a man makes you feel. . .

All the when-when-whenevers {giggles}
Whenever you think about his face
Whenever his smile crosses your lips
Whenever his eyes become a stare
Whenever that small freckle under his chin is your sweet spot for him
Whenever the smell of his hair can be traced on your clothes
All the when-when-whenevers {giggle}

Well, I- you know, well don't you?
I-I get those butterfly flutter feelings
The fluttering, bubbling in my womb is
My bodies reaction to his everything.
I'm queasy with ill love, love poisoning
And I need to rush to get him out of my system.
I need a second, space, so I can double over and
Breathe out this fever
The green bile that's rising from my throat
Is his commitment
Slicked with his saliva
I'm quivering with sweat because I-I . . .
I need to shit,
He gives me diarrhea

All the when-when-whenevers have come together and I need a toilet.

. . .Tell him, "You make my stools loose."

To Shy-Momo

Shy-Momo I think you are very annoying.

You're not like Semi at all. . .

You're so damn needy, too damn needy, but I understand.

I found you in a green fishnet bag with your brother or sister

And in a cage with white rabbits that were larger than you.

It took you a while to start liking me, but I understand.

You were up at 5 AM, decided to claw at my skin, then you licked me with your rough tongue,

and then you meowed so damn much,

so I gave you milk and moistened cat food.

You're so annoying. . . I also think I am allergic to you, since

I woke up with red puffy crying eyes

I don't like you

But in many ways I love you.

Shy-Momo I hope you stop hiding under the bed and furniture soon.

Don't piss on my clothes !

Don't shed !

I want to hide you in my dresser. . . but

I understand it takes time for kittens like us to adapt to our surroundings and eat a full meal. . .

And stop hiding under beds

And not claw when touched,

So I understand why I need to spoon feed you and give you time and space.

But you're so very annoying

I don't like you very much

But in many ways I love you.

But I'm going to shave off your fur.

Open ended promise

dear dearest. . .

I'm well now, but

not as, as can be

touchable and in touch

I promise to stay in reach.

series of emotional movements (dedicated to 21)

series of emotional movements (dedicated to age 21 also dedicated to the bracketed we, not the plural form of I)

“I wish I didn’t date so many pushy women? Next time. . .”

-

“When you come back from Korea maybe we can. . .”

-

“. . .”

-

Yes, I told him, but I was thinking, 'No.'

-

No, I told him, but I was thinking, 'Yes.'

-

Yes, I told her, but I was thinking, 'No.'

-

No, I told her, but I was thinking, 'Yes.'

-

"Please let's be. . .” I begin.

-

Please let's be, I want.

-

“Fluid?” I asked

-

He didn't understand what I meant by. . .

-

She didn't understand what I meant by. . .

-

I meant an ever-changing . . .

“. . . You can do better than him. . .”

She can hear her friend’s words, but she doesn’t believe her.

“What’s good with her? She’s all right looking, but you can do better than her. . .”

He can hear his friend’s words, but he doesn’t believe him.

-

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

We can hear our friend’s words, but we don’t believe in ourselves, that is what wrong with us.

-

He wants to point a finger at all his friends. She wants to point a finger at all her friends; somehow their friends’ perspectives have lead to this:

Heartache

Temporary Heart Ache

Hurt Feelings

Temporary Hurt Feelings

Feelings of Loss

Temporary Feelings of Loss

Absence of Heat

Temporary Absence of Heat

---

Actually, it often happens in a quiet area, where the pavement stretches to no place important. It is in these places we become decisive and everything about everything is wrong.

-

I called person number seven on the telephone after I wished, in a text message, the connection we were creating never existed and all the promises he was touching thumbs to were sugared.

-

Just before the twelve text messages I called person number eight and asked if he would be willing to meet me in a café somewhere downtown in the center of New York City.

-

Just before confronting person number eight, I called then texted person number nine,

‘Hello.’

‘What happened?’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘How’s your grandfather? Arts and crafts session?’

But after the summer I was given the silent treatment.

-

I just wanted an honest answer. They all wanted an answer. . .

-

Do I belong in your life? Or am I a piece wedged in?

-

I'm sure I don't because I am too complex. . .

-

“Well it’s because. . .” He twiddles his thumbs then grabs the cup of coffee that is in front of him.

-

I never asked to be treated or seen as a princess. . .

I never asked for candied nothings. . .

I never asked to be trusted, but . . .

-

I wanted to slip into these fantasies.

-

I often leave without a real explanation. I don't want to hear the truth.

-

“Because. . . I just want you. . .”

-

While I was on the phone I recited to myself that I didn’t want person number seven; however I still asked if he wanted to be friends. He said, “Yes.” I asked him if he was sure.

-

But why?

-

“. . .”

-

“I like you for who you are. . . I mean. . .”

-

“Sweetheart. . .”

-

“. . .”

-

“I. . . I,” he released a sigh, “I’m sorry I ruined the mood.”

-

‘Keep aimlessly smiling, tell everyone what they want to hear, so that you’ll never lose these sources of comfort.’

-

“. . .Stay. . .”

-

". . ."

-

“I could treat you like a princess. . .”

-

". . ."

-

“I. . . I-I’m sorry. . . I’m confused."

-

We all were.

---

My final message to and conversation with person seven and person eight, since both of them seemed to be wishing me wellness was: 'A chicken can't fly because it never stepped off the branch nor can a fish breath air because it wasn't born on land. Wishing is for water and air breathers.'

-

In a round about way I meant don't make promises that are well over your limits; you see I just wished them well, it sort of ended there.

-

Perhaps I was just being stupid.

4 to 5

The radio is on fire, but he doesn't need no water just Sean Paul and the elixirs of 21 it will undoubtedly give her stains in her underwear, but this night will just burn away leaving ashes, a trail of mice droppings, as evidence for this arbitrary moment of sweat and two bodies.

The lights are on and off like video game seisures, they all have something to hide; she and he are ugly during the day. In the darkest corner they coincide in the rhythm of lust, it doesn't need to lead to a bed, just a reminder of who they can be in the light.

Ahhh! I didn't die! Oh and Goodbye

So, I was really sure I was going to die at the poetry reading. Luckily, I got sick with a stomach virus on tuesday, so I was distracted from my anxiety. In fact, I didn't feel my anxiety that much at all, which allowed me to sing in my highest voice that song. Hope no one's eardrums exploded. I was very glad I was able to come this far with the help of this course. I had a great semester and I learned a lot of cool and interesting things to do with my poetry. Thanks for an awesome poetry class guys. It was really awesome to be around you all. Goodbye =]

Last Blog!

So I was surprised at how easy it was to read at the poetry readings. I thought overall everyone did a really great job, and a lot of the performances were really creative and intriguing. I thought it was interesting to hear everyone's unique personalities and styles come alive. Everyone reads their poems aloud during workshops, but a lot of times that is more rote reading off of the page, where as everyone's stage presences were a lot more involved and lively. I was very nervous to read my poem. I do not do well with public presentations and I am especially nervous when reading something that I have personally written. I was truly surprised by how easy and painless it actually was. Overall I thought the poetry readings were some of the most valuable and enjoyable assignments we have done all semester. Great job to everyone on their reading!

New Addresses

I chose a book of poems by Kenneth Koch. He currently resides in New York City and teaches at Columbia University. I purchased his book from the book store because I was immediately attracted to the cover. The book is titled New Addresses and looks as if the cover is filled with hand sketched drawings and segmented poems which make it look like a private diary. When I opened it up, the titles of the poems that are listed in the contents are captivating and grasped my interest. For example, To My Twenties, To Psychoanalysis, To Testosterone, To Piano Lessons, To Carelessness, To Living In the City, To Insults, To Fame, To My Fifties are just to name a few.

Reading the poems, I learned that the individual poems work together in a cohesive manner by using lines or phrases from earlier works in Koch's book (assuming the reader started with page one and so on and so forth...). Each poem is addressing something, hence the title, New Addresses. As he addresses his topic of choice, the poems speak out to readers such as me, yet he was from an older generation, like my grandparents age (me being 21). Koch makes the reader feel as if his poems could have been a stream of consciousness during his earlier years. His technique is not extremely abstract but made me think of surrealist poetry and the New York School of Poets we had studied earlier in the semester; this observation was funny as I came to find out Kenneth Koch was a poet of the New York School where he knew people like John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara.

Kenneth Koch writes about the addressing topic by using the pronoun "you" a lot; I feel like this technique works because when I use "you" in poems it allows my readers to consider themselves as the "you" or the poem can relate to the reader, making them feel as if they are the speaker and the "you" is someone they know. As I came to see how the "you" makes the writer's poems relate to his readers, I also felt the situations and the way the incidences happened in his poems are techniques which emphasis the poems' uniqueness.

The order he chose for his poems made the book more personal than if he were to lay them out in any other order. I write a lot of personal poems which I am going to put in a particular order for my chapbook in hopes of making my work more personal as a whole, but relatable as individual poems. Koch’s poetry includes a lot of poems in which people can relate to, but personal at the same time. I believe the order in which a poet sets up his or her book is a technique that makes the piece of work very personal. My chapbook will also use a technique which allows my personal issues to relate to my readers just like Koch has. I'd like to think my poems are pretty "straight-forward" and, therefore called prose poetry. Well, the poet and I had something else in common because his poetry was to the point as well! All the similarities I share with this poet made me appreciate his work even more.

When I think of poems that acknowledge the poet’s personal experiences, I can't help but think about Christian Bok. I remember he mentioned how he came about his style of poetry because it was a style that was almost as dead as Latin and he had told his friends that he would never write poems about himself. So, if you are a fan of sound poetry, then maybe this book isn't for you. However, when you can make personal poems as witty, relatable and entertaining as Kenneth Koch, including the snazzy cover, then you must take a glance at New Addresses and other poems about a happy, healthy life!

book review # 2

So the book I chose to review was The Bride of E by Mary Jo Bang. I found it just by walking through the browsing section of ODY and leafing through a couple different books of poems. It grabbed my attention because it was structured around the alphabet and kind of reminded me of some of the poets we have been reading during class. In particular I was reminded of Christian Bok's Eunoia, because the praise on the back of the cover claimed that through writing the book Bang discovered that each letter in the alphabet appears to have their own personality. Bok once spoke about he thought each of the vowels from his Eunoia had their own personality too, and the idea of letter and words has having their own identity and personality has really intrigued me this semester.

The entire text is structured around the alphabet, though some letters have more poems than others. Some titles are centered wholly around the letter, such as C is for Cher, while others such as In the Present and Probable Future just address ideas relatable with the letter P.
My favorite poem is actually the first one in the book. It is called ABC Plus E: Cosmic Aloneness is the Bride of Existence. It describes girls flirting with boys in bars, and seems to critique the strange way people cling to eachother and seek partners only because they are alone. I really liked how it was written, but I also liked a poem that critiqued love instead of praising it as so many poems seem to do. It seemed like a really fresh idea to me.

Though the overall structure of the book is obviously the alphabet, the book is also divided into two different parts. Part one seems to follow the sequence of the letters while Part two seems a little more interesting because while each poem is still attached to a specific letter and idea, they are not ordered in any particular way and only the letters G, J, S, L, and U are addressed. Overall , I really enjoyed the poems in this book and would definitely recommend it to others.

Failure-Philip Schultz

I decided to read Failure Poems by Philip Schultz, published in 2007. I chose it because I tend to be drawn to poems that are passionate and filled with emotion, ones that make a reader feel. Even if the emotions are those of intense failure, they still are about a feeling and I get a great deal from them. As it turned out, this book of poems was about a range of “failures”, every day failures that are entirely relatable to the regret of death to fear, even the fear of losing new found success.
Each poem reveals a little about Schultz’s life, both past and present. He is married, in his early sixties, and has two young sons. He has known sadness, depression, death, regret, but even in these failure poems, the reader understands that his sons and wife have, in a way, saved him from some of that.
The poem Talking to Ourselves (p. 2) is one that surprised me and made me think about the theme of the book because on its own it does not seem like a poem of failure. In two sentences per person Schultz tells the stories of four different people and himself talking to themselves or just saying a word or two out loud and what those utterances meant. The context of each is where the failure happens, but he writes the poem so that each word is heavy with regret or confusion. He obviously had a troubled relationship with his own father, and in the poem The One Truth (pp. 46-7) he says: “is this what failure is,/to end where he began,/no one but a deaf dumb God/to welcome him back,/his fists pounding at the gate” (47). It feels here like the whole book has been working up to that moment and from there everything is a bit clearer.
In terms of format, Schultz doesn’t do anything too formal in his poems. Most are written in full sentences; it is where he chooses to break the sentences into lines that emphasizes his voice. The poem My Dog (p. 17) is about the death of Schultz’s dog and it’s written in five stanzas of three lines each. Two of the stanzas end in the middle of a sentence and the sentence is continued on in the next one. I think this was done purposefully to illustrate his inability at first to let go of his dog and in that way he used the format of the poem to convey more than his words could.
The poems aren’t particularly long or complex, but they say a great deal about Schultz as a person. A young writer might look at his silences and his ability to say a lot and convey great emotion in just a few words.

Book Review #2

For my second book review I decided to read:
Six Sections from Mountain and Rivers without End Plus one by Gary Snyder.

This book is very simply presented (and the library version is currently in pretty shabby condition): a solid blue paperback cover with the title and author written in plain font and nothing written on the back except for the price of $2.25 in the left bottom corner. Under the title and author on the front cover is a drawing that seems like it could be a scribble someone drew in a classroom. But this is what I liked about it. This cover is not ostentatious or pretentious, it doesn't beg for your attention. It feels as if the poems inside can hold their own, they don't need any aid from a flashy cover. It is only 44 pages, and as the title suggests, it contains seven poems all by Gary Snyder.

I enjoyed the poems themselves very much. They're written in a narrative style in both what seems to be his voice and the voice of others (in one poem a high school aged girl who is pregnant talking about a river). They are all written using different methods of writing, which keeps things interesting. The first poem reminds me of Jack Karouac's "Dharma Bums", as Snyder he talks about going hiking in the Sierras and the style is somewhat (obviously there are difference between poetry and prose. The second is the voice of the pregnant girl. The third describes experiences in different cities or towns along a highway on a trip taken by hitch hiking. The towns are listed along the right side of the page adjacent to their descriptions on the left. I thought this was especially cool, especially with the intent of the poem. The fourth may be my favorite, and is describing what someone is experiencing while under the influence of what ever it is that they were under the influence of.
Etc, etc, etc.
The last poem uses images (drawings), that look like native-american symbols to separate different sections of the poem. Different languages are used and it almost seems like a song or chant when they're used... like the drawing/symbols indicate a "sing-along" time as they sometimes do in books for religions practices or other situations I can't think of right now. It reminds me of books used in Jewish practices when there is both Hebrew and English translations of things and both are read (I'm not Jewish, so I don't really know that much about this).
Well, now that I've given you a silly summary of most of the poems in the book, I suggest you go read it for yourself. All of the poems really drew me in and kept me interested. I guess the cover was right, the poems could stand on their own. Good job, cover. Yeah.

Cyber Poetry

I thought our discussion in class yesterday was really important. I went to class not liking cyber poetry at all, but our exercise we worked on as a class and hearing other people's opinions changed the way I was feeling about cyber poetry. I didn't like the style while I was doing the reading simply because I didn't get it. When Theo asked me about my opinion and why I felt weird about the style, I said, "I don't know, it was weird!" I had no specific reason except for the style being too complicated for me to understand.
I had never heard of cyber poetry till now. When our class came up with a list of visual and cyber like poetry, I learned that this genre of poetry has a wide range. I reading liked the "choose your own adventure poetry." I thought it was going to be easy then it really was when I constructed on with my partner. But, instead it confusing and we did it completely different then we were supposed to. (I wonder if our construction could still be called poetry.) I like how everyone else's turned out and I felt like other people got as confused as we did. However, the activity overall showed me the art behind the genre which involves cyber poetry.

Flarf and conceptual writing

After going through some of the readings today I would have to say that I am more drawn to the Flarf school of cyberpoetry than the Conceptual. I felt like the poem from Blackice that we read was more or less just technological nonsense. I found it difficult to read because I didn't know what to do with the website addresses or double slashes in the middle of the lines. Probably because of all the attention we have been giving to performance poetry in preparation for our own poetry reading, I couldn't help but wonder if cyberpoetry will ever be able to escape the computer screen and be performed? Maybe it already has, but I wondered how a poet would perform something like that, and what the audience might lose by not seeing such a technological poem in its original technological environment. So much of the inspiration for both schools of cyberpoetry is derived from the internet and computer that I think it would be interesting to see if the content of the poem transferred when read aloud and was removed from the computer screen. It will be interesting to see what comes up in discussion for today's class.