A Box Full of Suggestions for your Possible Heart

SLAM FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND!!

2007-05-16T04:45:00.001-07:00

The first Harford County Youth Slam Festival!

May 19th
12:00 -3:00 p.m.
Bel Air High School
Admission is only $5
**Venue opens at 11:30

Come see the following high schools duke it out in a War of Words!
Bel Air
Edgewood
Kenwood
North Harford

As an added bonus, see the Nationally renowned slam poets Jamie Kilstein, Katie Wirsing and Andrea Gibson as they swing by on their East Coast tour.

DAY 28- 5/15

2007-05-16T04:39:00.000-07:00

If animals could speak,
we would have no need for doctors.

A quick sniff
to the face has nothing to do
with what treat you had before to leaned down to pet them.

When the nostrils pulse inches
from your face
as you mind races with
urban legends of whole faces removed by
crazed canines,
they are not plotting fountains of blood
and tearing apart eyelids like chew toys.

Dogs can smell cancer in out breath.

And each time they hover inches from out open mouths,
they are trying to detect the possible death that
smells like toe nail polish or drain cleaner
on our tongues.

So I wonder how many urban legends would
be crushed if people knew this?

How many women would dangle their children
inches from razor sharp teeth
to breath a little easier?

DAY 27- 5/14

2007-05-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

Last one… I think

Walter

Leave 30th Street Station with Starbucks
and head to the food truck operated by a white haired
Greek man with albino chinchillas for eyebrows, and a
wife that doesn’t speak English, unless it’s on the menu.
But she can cook a steak, egg, and cheese hoagie on a long roll
that would make Kate Moss want a second serving.

I see the beggar.
A duct-taped trashbag at his side.
The layers of clothing make him appear able to be peeled.
An onion of a man, who, the more you remove, the
more your eyes water.

My eldest uncle could have been him… if he had been unlucky.
They probably went to school together.
He’s probably somebody’s father…probably a Walter—
he looks like a Walter.
Cast aside like an annoying insect for his illness—
he shakes like a virgin at first touch…but he doesn’t stop—
then I notice the silver band on his wrist that binds him- a shackle stamped with three letters
P.O.W.

Avoid contact, keeping my head low as if in prayer-
(Praying that he won’t see me)
and my hands in pockets, pressing my keys against my leg,
so that they won’t be confused with loose change.

“Spare any change,” he asks, as he extends a beaten Styrofoam 7-11 cup.

I walk on…

I order my food and my palette is revolted as I chew and swallow my recent actions.
I break into a run towards 30th street.
Sprinting—an admittance of guilt in Philly.

And I am guilty… Walter has been shooed away like a pigeon seeking crumbs—

DAY 26- 5/13- DAY OFF

2007-05-16T04:31:00.000-07:00

At this point I was driving home from North Carolina on no sleep!

DAY 25- Post for 5/12

2007-05-16T04:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, did I mention that I used to write a lot of poems about Philly?

Eli Price’s Fountain

Listening to the city, I perch myself
on my stand. Chained like Prometheus
by awe to this concrete geyser.

The city attacks me like an eagle,
yet sets me free with a swing of its sonic hammer:
John Henry—being of noise, static, music.

City spreads out before me
like an orchestra I conduct.

Steps of a million feet tap out a cadence for John’s blows
that lay rhythm out like the beat of a bass drum heart.

Bullets strike a snare roll while
Eli’s dream trickles out—a flute song.
The motion of the masses
staggers into a cello’s moan.

The orchestra shifts to my right
to an R&B song as a white-haired
black man sings with all the passion
of a gospel choir after it has made love to a swinging jazz band.

The singer silenced…
A siren breaks ht tempo
like a bottle of Boone’s on a brick wall.

And I know somewhere a mother is screaming out
like an electric guitar riff on WMMR.

DAY 24- Post for 5/12

2007-05-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you write a lot of poems about a city. Most of the time they are under-developed.

Center City

Steam pours up from a rusty, green gutter like an exhaust fan from hell,
as if Lucifer needed some relief.

Across the river is a train yard,
long since abandoned--
desolate and stripped.
A skeleton of all that it once was.

Raped by inactivity,
Consumed by the capital-crazed who saw it no longer feasible
to support its existence. Eventually, the juggernaut of racing iron
slowed and starved to the carcass that remains.

I gaze up at the prominent figures of the Center City skyline.
If I strove to their heights I would have a long way to fall.
Stare at the lights atop a building's peak and realize the futility of wishing on that star.
At my feet is a fallen angel with newspaper wings to keep him warm.
He looks up at the same distant beacon of lost hope through a Mad Dog gaze.

The man with the five month shadow that creeps
from his sad eyes, down his face.
Long since abandoned--
Desolate and stripped.
A skeleton of all he once was.

Violated by isolation--
a job and family that saw it no longer feasible
to support his habit. A brown bag and grime become
permanent accessories to his ensemble of misfortune.

Casualties of a starved city.
Its dinner guests--tycoons with insatiable appetites,
And we are their spring lambs.

DAY 24- Post for 5/11

2007-05-16T04:28:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you run into a bully from grade school while you are in college. Then you write a poem about it (before you know how).

Class Reunion

As I walk with my wife along
the fruit covered funnel cake signs and
Clak clak clak of the roulette wheel;
candied apples and corn dogs.
I see a man that bears resemblance to someone
I used to know.

The black nylon jacket says Coach and Tom
and yes, it was him,
so I walk up and he grins beneath bushy eyebrows and
Makes monkey noises.
My name for him.

In school when he played every sport and
I weighed a buck fifty with a wet parka on
I would mock him
against better judgment.

He would retaliate—
Throwing me into a stack of
aluminum chairs,
clanging against my laughter.

Our little game,
neither of us winning,
just keeping a constant volley
of repartee and repercussion.

And I don’t think we disliked each other.

Now we reminisce, we laugh,
As we did when I would collide
with metal chairs and linoleum.

Our game, your pride, my acceptance.

So I drop five dollars in the jar for your little league team.

DAY 23- Post for 5/10

2007-05-16T04:25:00.000-07:00

Getting caught up…

So due to team finals, senior grades being due, and preparing for North Carolina, I have fallen behind on my posting.

So I will attempt to play catch up. Here we go…

CHASING SILVER

I moved into Uncle Chase’s Washington Hill row home on an unseasonably warm December day the year my father like a deadbeat cliché announced to my mother and brother that he needed a pack of Pall Malls for an after dinner smoke.
Two hours later, my mother phoned the police department and the Thanksgiving pies had cooled too much on the counter. My brother sat asleep in my father’s recliner, as I got the feeling in my stomach that something was wrong. I had had this feeling before, when Jim Smithson took off down Moravia Road and wrecked my bike into Mr. Hathaway’s new Chrysler. Then, the feeling latched onto the back of my head and spread like a dream over my eyes in the familiar déjà vu. This time, the feeling was different and like a cancer, what I would later name abandonment crept across my stomach and hardened.
Uncle Chase, or Caleb as he was born, had a half dozen row homes around Baltimore. One he rented out to a widower on Eutaw Street. The second and third rested a block and a half from Patterson Park. The fourth was on long term lease to a night-shift, emergency room, nurse two blocks from Johns Hopkins. The fifth was the one we moved to in 1967, the same year that Johnny U got his start over Shaw. The sixth sat unfinished in Federal Hill a few blocks away my new home.

My Uncle Francis lived in the large townhouse with the rest of us. Chase had furnished a small basement apartment for Francis when he returned from a spell in Vietnam. I went down to this apartment twice in my entire two years I lived there. Only one of the times was it by invite. That trip ended with Chase telling Dennis and I, “Stay out of Uncle Francis’ room. It is for the best.”
Francis never real left the war. His apartment was immaculately kept. The bed, a military issue twin, could have bounced a quarter. Everything else fell into place…the footlockers filled with Francis’ personal effects. If you didn’t know better, you would have thought yourself in the barricks of some boot camp.

One would think that Uncle Chase would have made his claim to fame as a Realtor, given the sheer amount of property he owned. Yet his true gift, that which would immortalize him was found in his namesake.
He was a silver chaser.
Unlike nowadays when you give silver to the people at the mall and lasers burn away that which is precious, Uncle Chase worked with chisels. The thing about this way of doing it is that there is always something left behind. And in the case of silver, it slides up the chisel and curls around itself until it falls off in discarded metallic ringlets.
Those who were skilled at this type of work looked as though they were chasing the silver clean off of the surface. My Uncle made gardens appear from dull gray, like the flowers were always there just below the surface and he simply cut back the weeds of a monotonous landscape scene to make them show through.
And I wonder if he knew the weeds that grew inside of him, if he would have chosen a different path. Because the only thing worse than realizing that silver was never worth anything is to have it tarnished by something that makes it useless.
But that would not happen for some time. Back to the story at hand.

INSERT REST OF STORY HERE

But as with chasing anything valuable and temporary, the chase leaves something displaced, missing. And when it is finished, and we have obtained what we sought, we are left with another type of longing. We long for the chase.

DAY 22; More from the AVAM

2007-05-09T05:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Missouri
to steal myself a dog.

And this is a feat because
I've never been to Missouri,
my car is in disrepair,
and I'm allergic to canines.

But somewhere in Missouri
there is a dog named Jim.

Jim can decipher morse code,
he's picked the last seven Kentucky Derby winners,
and he can tell the sex of your child before science can.

and I'm going to steal him.

And it is not that
I want to break some secret government code,
that I want to develop a gambling habit,
or that I have illegitimate children.

Ok, so I'd totally take him to the track.
But that is really secondary.

I realize that Jim is the exception.
He is the doghouse equivolent of
the Harvard student or the Rhodes scholar.

For every gender guessing dog that exists
there are a dozen dogs that are good for little beyond
licking themselves

often.

They are working with what they were given.
And Jim has a lot to work with.
Like me...everyday. Because every morning
after a night at the track,
we would go into the classroom.

This dog can decipher morse code.
And while it really doesn't have
any practical application anymore,
it is impressive.

And that was just what God gave him.
He has no control over who teaches him
or what he decides to learn.

But all of you do
becuase you are humans
with control over what you do
and what you decide to learn.

So if dogs can
learn to smell the gender
of unborn children,
the least you can do is open a book.

And too often I hear people
complain about their situation.
If life has left a crappy taste in your mouth,
LEARN TO LICK SOMEPLACE ELSE.

Because we are humans and we have options.

Because every one of you can be exceptional
if want to.

DAY 21: Morning Offerings

2007-05-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

Morning Offerings

I always believed that girls
like you would never give
me the time of day.

The type with hips like
grandfather clock pendulums in slow motion.
Setting a room on stun, freezing time
and leaving fantasy in their wake,
eyes of men glazed over like
frosted glass watch faces.

So our lives revolved around
seconds of second glances
that would never add up to minutes of conversation.

But then they did.

I told you how I was a morning person
and you said that you could sleep for hours,
sometimes into the afternoon.

I explained how sunlight meant sheer potential
a day with a story waiting to be written.
Hours of minutes with no agenda
except possibility.

And I wondered how you
could possibly sleep all day
and all of the potential moments that
were wasted buried under covers.

I decided that I would give you the gift of my mornings.
I heralded them in as we watched the sky lighten,
you slept on my shoulder
and we fit together like carefully carved cogs.

Watching you walk to your doorstep with dawn in your hair
I remembered how we said we made cameo in each other’s waking dreams
and knew that this must be potential
must be providence.

That night my fingers became sundial stopwatches
by candlelight tracing shrinking shadows
across your skin.

Morning daydreams were interrupted
by the sound of your bare feet
on my kitchen floor.

You wore my favorite button-down
and left over kisses like morning offerings.
Your skin still smelling of the oranges
I had traced along your lips, the curve of your neck.
I wanted to make memories of you synchronize with
the smell of citrus.

I wanted to give you my mornings.

If I were a magician,
I could somehow stretch those last days into weeks.
I could get you to hear the choir claps and halleluiahs
that chimed every time you looked at me.

But not even magic could saw in half,
dissect the moments we spent together enough
to make me believe that I had a rabbit’s foot dangling
from my chest,
the one you’d been waiting for,
disguised in the mornings on a mundane life.

I used to be a morning person
knowing that sunlight meant sheer potential
a day with a story waiting to be written,
hours of minutes with no agenda except possibility.

But mornings aren’t the same
without you in them,
and now I sleep through to afternoons.

As morning creeps across my bed.
I hope that it might find you there,
where you ought to be.

But it never does.

So seconds pass thinking of you
thoughts never manifesting as second chances,
unable to freeze time, and
waiting for you to bring back my mornings.

Waiting for you to give me back the time of day.

DAY 20: Another day of rest

2007-05-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

Taking off this Sunday to get ready for Baltimore Finals.

Check out www.slamicide.com

DAY 19: More ideas from the AVAM

2007-05-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post a few things that I found:

"I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her."
--Ellen DeGeneres

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
--St. Francis of Assisi

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
--Albert Einstein

WONDER DOGS & HEROES
There is a monument in Marshall, Missouri to "Jim, The Wonder Dog" (1925Ð1937), a black and white setter. It is said that Jim was able to follow complex directions spoken or written in a half-dozen different languages. During a joint session of the Missouri Legislature, Jim demonstrated he could accurately interpret commands tapped-out in Morse code. When presented with the list of entries, Jim correctly picked the winner of The Kentucky Derby seven years in a row and was renowned for identifying the sex of unborn children in dozens of pregnant townswomen. After extensive independent testing, even the most skeptical university professors from the fields of psychology, agriculture, and veterinary medicine concluded that Jim was truly a wonder. No trickery or collusion from Jim's owner, Sam Van Arsdale, was ever found. Van Arsdale never sought profits from any of Jim's predictions and refused all commercial endorsements - turning down offers of big Hollywood contracts, lucrative dog food promotions, and six figure bids to buy his beloved Jim.

That there may never be another dog quite like Jim doesn't belie the fact that almost all dogs can hear and smell in a range far beyond human ability. That dogs also exhibit a capacity for extreme faithfulness to humans has made their talents particularly invaluable. Most people are familiar with how important "seeing eye" dogs are to their sight-impaired owners, but in the last few years the number and variety of trained service dogs has skyrocketed by the thousands. Service dogs help warn their owners of oncoming epileptic seizures, diabetic sugar imbalances, and panic attacks. Because dogs have a keen perception of time, they are also being trained to inform forgetful owners when to take medicines.

The single most common theme of visionary artists worldwide is their personal reconstruction of The Garden of Eden - or some other utopian, personal world.

DAY 18: A few fragments

2007-05-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

So today I went on a field trip with my Creative Writing students to the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore. HOLY CRAP! If you have not been, you need to go.

The three hours we spent there was an exercise in unfair.

Everyone should go.

Here is something that came out of the trip.

"I'm trapped inside that apple tree"
he told them, but they had heard that sort of talk before.
When you work with shizophrenics,
you get used to the splinters of words that snag
you as you walk down the hall.

But somehow, he convinced them to take
the tree that had fallen on the west end
of the asylum back to the common area.

And this man, who had never
out pen to page, brush to canvas
said "I need to create myself in my own image."

So they let him.
Once per day,
under strict supervision,
he chipped and chiseled away.

And when he was done,
it was exactly as he appeared
the chest caved in from his
ongoing struggle with tuberculosis
like the soil over the uprooted tree
he used to recreate himself.

There was no exageration,
the eyes that were carve into the wood
were the same sad ones that strolled
through the courtyards.

But unlike him, this sculpture
th only work he would ever create
would be remembered
and last
forever.

DAY 17: Crazy week

2007-05-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

So I've had a real interesting week with lots of things to keep me from cranking out new stuff. Therefore I have to hit the vaults again. I hope that next week (once grades, lit mag, and finals are over) I can return to new thoughts.

76
Driving into the city I focus on the galvanized landscape:
an arboretum of artificiality that sets the stage for an industrial tableaux.

To both sides of the highway are rows of billboards
--incollapsible dominoes--lined like the mummers we came to see.

Putting on costumes, fabrications which are no way
reflective of their lackluster lives--they seem plain when they
put out our fires and take out our garbage…nut today they are spectacles.

The boards wear their costumes…
NOKEA, MARLBORO, YUENGLING--
the vestments of sequins and feather of the stationary dancers. Yet,
in the distance there is one barren, sickly-white dancer,
naked….

Only scraps remain scattered across its chest
like the bits of glue and paper that nostalgically cling
to a beer bottle. It wears the bits of old fabrications in splotches across its void--
NEWPORT maybe-- but

It stands there an awkward without arms to cover its naked flesh
or legs by which it can run.

Even those wearing the ugly HEROIN DETOXIFICATION CALL…
or WHO'S YOUR DADDY? dna tests are more pleasing than vulgar,

exasperated white.
We wear our NOKEA's and MARLBORO's, even

Our HEROIN DETOXIFICATION CALL…
In designer jeans, haircuts, and metal

studs that seek our most sensitive parts,
procreate, and start dysfunctional families.

Adorn ourselves with attitude like YUENGLING
for to be a the pasty ghost of a fleshy billboard is unacceptable.
For your sake, don't be a barren domino, you are not fixed in concrete supports

And you will get knocked down.

DAY 16: Idea

2007-05-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

So we are in the midst of senior superlatives. I was just thinking, what if we had real superlatives that mattered? What if we did them as we got older? Do we already?

Another thing, what if we gave superlatives to classic writers?

Who would you pick for:
Most likely to succeed
Best all-around
Most spirited
Class clown
Friendliest
Least Friendliest
Best Dressed

Post your responses.

PS I know this seems like a cop out, but I am going somewhere with this.

DAY 15: At home for week 3

2007-05-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

Something old and pretentious.

OCKHAM SHAVING

FIRST INTENTION
William shaves the faith from
the reason of his face.
“Musn’t complicate the chin
with plurality of hair…
to do so would be vain.”

He finds all the pieces unique
in the basin and laughs—
“I think I will name that one Aquinas”

SECOND INTENTION
William assigns Aquinas
the symbol “hair”
and it begins to loose significance
resembling the other floating
objects in the white water.
Aquinas becomes hair.
No longer particular or individual.
“What a nominal idea,” William says.
As he dumps the basin of universals from
his second story window,
they no longer exist.

It is easier to rid ourselves of the namless.

DAY 14: Without a net

2007-04-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes
my heart is on
the flying trapeze

launched into nothing
but a spinning, free fall
of motion.

My stomach is an acrobat
flipping end over end
in my midsection.

I practice this routine daily.

Each time
I wonder whether you
will be there to catch my
outstretched hand.

DAY 13: Sunday- Another week, another day off

2007-04-30T05:21:00.000-07:00

Just got back from peer leadership. Working on the lit mag. Taking the day off.

DAY 12: Day Off

2007-04-27T04:55:00.000-07:00

Taking this Saturday off.

DAY 11: Something old

2007-04-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

I have to leave for a retreat in 8 minutes. So here is something really old- it is actually the first poem that I wrote for Slamicide.

9:00 am

Third day

British Lit

When He asks arms, crossed,
booked closed,
legs extended…
first row,
“Why do we have to read this?”

And there it is,
the question that sticks
out like a giant hairy mole;
the one on a first meeting that you try to ignore
but you can’t;
so you are left uncomfortable.

And I stall, because I know the
real reason;
it’s what I’m supposed to do.
It is covering the ground set
by navigators that
I know
are
lost.

“Well you see,
Beowulf is a historically
important text to Anglo Saxon culture in England…”

“But we are in America…”

And suddenly my classroom is transformed
to the OK corral,
the showdown has begun
and even though he is right,
I draw and try to shoot him down,
cause, after all

mutiny on the first week is never
a good thing.

“Well, it shows us the cultural ideals…
The hero was what a man should be in that society.”

“But that isn’t our society…”

And he’s right…
We don’t have men willing to
humble themselves,
lay down their weapons,
and fight
bare-handed
because it is honorable.

Weakness hides
behind blue steel,
black powder,
and a trigger.
Cause that’s what
makes a man.

Or else it is six
on one
beat downs in hallways and
bathrooms.
Turbulent seas of baby blue…
as if cowardice has become
something to be strived for.

Boys sulk away from
obligations to new life like
an armless Grendel
to sink themselves deep
into the marshy fen of the
next naïve girl.

Father figures are
fading fast and
what remains are
simpletons
that tell our boys that
passing pills and
making money is
more manly than
doing right.

I want to defend the
planks of these
hall-my Herot,

Rip off my shirt and
stand bare-chested

“You want this place? You gotta get through me first.”

But I know that Beowulf dies
and I’m not sure that I’d take with me
the dragon that plagues our young men.

So I stand there, book in hand--
broken sword.

And fight a
question
that can’t be silenced
or answered
in 180 days.

DAY 10: An apple a day

2007-04-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

So in honor of Syracuse, I did a speed writing exercise with my last period class. You throw ou a theme and everyone writes for at least two minutes on that topic. When someone yells STOP, everyone must do just that. The stopper shares and calls on five others. When they are finished, the stopper picks the next theme. Repeat.

Someone threw out the phrase "an apple a day..."

I decided since I need to post and writing poems about fruit will win you a National Indies Champ title that it was worth a shot.

Someone once said
that you cannot peel an apple
inside your imagination.

You could spend hours
thinking of each curve
the way the light reflects off
its skin
be it red, green, or yellow.

It doesn't matter.

Once you try to
slip off the flesh,
strip it of color,
it will change.

The bruises that
appear will shift
their location.
The knife will
melt into another
knife when hidden beneath
waxy skin.
The length of each peel will become distorted.

They also say that
an apple a day will
prolong your life.

But I think that
if you keep trying to peel it,
you will improve
so that as your
last breath slips like
an orchard breeze from your tongue
heaven will appear.

But not as a brilliant white light,
but as a naked apple that will never turn brown
sitting perfectly beside one
complete
unbroken
peel.

DAY 9: Sick Days

2007-04-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

Today my hatred of the outdoors
is liquefied
and sloshing around inside my head.

Mucus is an incubated chicken inside of my skull
it is pushing against every side
pressing against eardrums
chipping at the slimy, white prison.

I wish that when I heard it stirring
I could get crocheting needles
and prod into my ears
that have been as congested as the
New Jersey Turnpike since birth.

I would spray those standing too close with
geysers of thick yellow snot
like a liquid light show
that smells like sickness
and ruins clothing.

More than anything, I wish my kids would realize
that the reason that I am screaming
is because they are screaming.
And I in addition to wanting to lance my own ears,
it is painful.
Every time I move my head to shoot one of them a
look like "I will cover you in snow first."
the contents of my head shift
like a poorly packed moving van.

I would take a sick day, but I can't.
I know this is my fault.

This is the same reason that my father set out
pills made of his sickness
the fever that plagued us ever time the temperature rose.
His routine of protected him until the pollen
settled around him with the falling leaves.

If he missed any work
it was for the most serious of ailments.
He never hid from his flaws but instead
took them in until he became immune.

In my class there are 6 empty chairs
in a class of 29.

Maybe it is too easy
to hide from our flaws.
Take a sick day from our problems.

But what if we took them in-
inject indecision under my skin
like an allergy shot,
take two doses of my own passive nature,
and call that someone in the morning-
the girl with that smile that causes me to look away,
the better job that complacency has prevented.

I would spread symptoms and cures simultaneously-
to the close mouthed kid that the only way you are going
to overcome the speech impediment is to speak.

That we need to take in every bit of our
problems until we learn to deal with them,
so that we never have to call in sick again.

DAY 8: Driving/ Not Paying Attention

2007-04-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

Well here ia an idea that came to me while driving. It is a new post though nothing to write hoem about. Day 8 down.

I want to tell him it's too late.
That steel plus neglect always equals
screwed to the power of slow decay.

But these are not things you say to someone suspended
fifty feet in the air,
working nights,
pissed off,
with a welder.

But he knows better than anyone
that once water slips like a lover
beneath the sheets of paint
that you either catch the symptoms
or begin the process of deconstruction.

But this overpass has been forgotten
patches of brown flakes
creep up the side like industrial ivy
and these men are asked to revive this city like
some secret garden.

But in the tending of
sparks and flakes
they are sowing
splinters of metal that move when you press them
even years after the restoration.

Their fathers planted
marigolds of sickness in their lungs
through years of
sucking in the pollen of their livelihood.

But some circumstances only allow so much growth.

So sons of blue color grow to
fill the same gaps in the latticework of
Baltimore that their fathers did.
Once this life slips like water into your lungs
You begin the slow drown of blue collar.

Each night as his wife winces
in the dark at the touch of his hands
from the roughness of his neglect,
he wishes that he could turn fingertips like
briars back into
thick mounds of tilled soil.

it's too late
but he already knows that.

DAY 7: Something

2007-04-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

THOMAS

Yellow lines lay down like the perforated promises.
St. Christopher hangs from my rearview as necessary as an appendix.

Dusk descends—a Pentecostal spirit—as my eyes begin to sag with Jesus-posture bearing their cross of exhaustion.
Terrain as barren as her eyes when she said, “It’s been fun.”
The sunburned dust finds comfort in the baptism of twilight.

I pull up to the solitary stone figure on the landscape,
a psychedelic light show of stained
glass illuminated like a multi-colored moon.

Smiling seraphim
Welcoming.
Oak doors, wide as possibilities at age five,
Thick as close-minded hate.
Take the hammered steel handle in my hands
And pull with an almost-prayer
To find the house of God is closed for renovations.

Chuckling Cherubim is laughing his angel ass off.

Excommunication,
Return to the roads flagellation…mea culpa.

SERVICE STATION 1 MILE
Steeple of double crosses, slightly slanted
calling me to repent the road.
I must confess my faith is restored
in commercial gas chains.

Gospel:
Willie Nelson wailing the commandment,
“Thou shalt not let thy babies grow up to be cowboys.”
Sacraments a chili and cheese dog with a Coke.
Jim, grease stained pastor, dons his vestment overalls and cherry Skoal breath

Another 158 miles to my next confession…

DAY 6: At home week 2 (a sestina)

2007-04-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Something from an old notebook; I am going to count it as my at home this week. (Be minful that this online format may change the line breaks a little).

Parole
First memory of the morning—footsteps
that sounded on the dusty ground of the prison
like steel-toed raindrops. The sleep that barely found me was the eye
of the storm that brews in the courtyard below. A tear
slides down my face, for the hunt
in progress has ended my slumber—jarred by the stirring beyond these walls.

Shake the morning’s dew from my head and find the far wall
is papered by a large, dark man who steps
cautiously towards me as if he were hunting
some furious beast. “I assure you I’m not dangerous imprisoned.”
He smiles, he doesn’t know my language, but tears
me from the urine-stained cot a sadistic satisfaction in his eyes.

A priest greets me at the door with sorrowful, avoiding eyes.
He would like to help me, but I see the crucifix on the wall
behind me and think, “Who saved him?” If only I were still Catholic…long since torn
away from that disillusionment. I turn from him towards the steps
that lead me to my release, far beyond the prison.
Rays of light strike me like the arrows of the sun-hunter.

Frantically try to shield myself—hunting
for clarity. Hoodwinked by the light’s haziness, my eyes
finally find themselves. Guards line the farthest side and a sniveling mass of a prisoner
the other. Fuego. The ground becomes a palate blood, saline before the canvas of wall.
A uniformed man steps onto the Dias. A guard tears

my knees from function with his stick. Shirt torn
from my back—a flogging maybe—the man hunts
for the words—conspiracy treason. Sticks step
across a drum. Sadist offers me a cigarette and a blind for my eyes.
Take the free smoke. Towed to my predecessor’s pool, I wish the wall
would embrace me like a protective lover. Another priest from the prison

asks me if there is anyone I would like to write outside the prison
I blow smoke into my eyes. Maybe I can blame it for the tears
that have arrived like unwelcome guests. My only love, the wall,
knows my sole desire. My hands hunt
behind me for a door that I hope my eyes
had missed. The priest hangs his head in the soon to be memory of me and I step

back hard hoping for mortar of the prison will give way. Fuego. Bullets hunt
my organs with precision as they tear through me, leaving me with a dozen blind eyes.
Painted on the wall with each bullet’s brushstroke, I crumple. Sadist takes my cigarette—I die to his fading footsteps

DAY 5: Day Off

2007-04-21T16:15:00.000-07:00

Using Saturday as my day off, but oh man do I have an idea.

DAY 4: Random Picture Exercise

2007-04-20T07:00:00.003-07:00

Ok so for this exercise, I decided to type a random word into Google images and use it as a jump off point for a timed writing exercise.

So here is what I produced with the word RANDOM typed into Google images. (Apparently it is a picture of a random alley in Vancouver). (Ah Canada).

There is something reassuring in an alley.
No lanes to choose.
You pick the pace
and if someone else turns in,
you hit the gas

drive baby.

You’ve committed to the outcome;
no turning back now.

Just drive.

Knock over debris.
It might be all that stands in your way.
Maybe that’s why it's here
you’re here-
we’re here.

Discarded.

Your city life lead you down claustrophobic corridors
far from the predictability of
suburban cul-de sacs
with plenty of room for avoiding mistakes.

Not you.
No convenient K turns
or places to pull off.

Drive baby.
This is your rebirth.

Pushing us out into something better
a road that leads somewhere-
regardless of whether it is
a final destination or
just a throughway to something else
temporary.

Some help

2007-04-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

In case you need something to write about each day:

Links for Inspiration:

100 quick prompts
www.timesaversforteachers.com/index_page0010.htm

Writer’s Digest
www.writersdigest.com/writingprompts.asp

Poetry Power
www.kristinegeorge.com/poetry_power.html#Candle_Flame

Short Story Prompts
www.shortstorygroup.com/exercises.htm

Writing Fix
www.writingfix.com/leftbrain/!Left_Brained_Poetry_Home.htm

DAY 3: Suggestions welcome

2007-04-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

From staples to self esteem

Do past flings find
pink slips in their minds the moment
that you move on like
they’ve been fired as the CEO
of your heartache?

Like there’s a memo informing them
that they can forfeit that nice parking space in the moments of your silence
where thoughts of them bubble like a water cooler.

Is that why they come back?

Groveling for their job and
your affection
that they didn’t mean to fall
asleep drunk on the job
and let someone else in.

That they’re requesting
severance pay for the weeks and years
of riding shotgun through sad songs.

Apparently they missed the classified ads in your eyes where
you sought to fill the loneliness
with temps, flashing help wanted.
So desperate that any warm body would do
taking applications no matter how unqualified
or inadequate
this position needs to be filled.

Just to find out that
this one is worse than the last
can’t even begin to make correct change in a damaged life,
or worse yet
steals office supplies.

Isn’t that always when we
find that promising new applicant
with overqualified laughter
and kisses like good references.

But isn’t that the Monday morning
the disgruntled employee of
last loves comes
barging into our office
and says “You won’t get rid of me that easy.”

To which you respond, “I’m sorry.
someone new works here now.
You can look for employment elsewhere.”

Because there is nothing more satisfying
than firing the source of all your sorrow,
and watching them realize that
everything they’ve taken
from staples to self esteem,
like them, can be replaced.

DAY 2: In Case of Emergency

2007-04-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

When I was young, my mother would
come into my room, check to see that I was breathing
and go back to sleep.
Since I moved out, she has no other option than
to pace the floors and pass the hours until she can call and
hear the reassuring sound of my breath.

She says she’s
been having dreams again—
the ones that find me
handsomely dressed in caskets.
She’s been having them all my life.

These dreams are not premonitions.

These are exaggerated memories.
These are contractions three months early.
These are the tears of
water breaking before it should.
These are the nightmares of a woman who almost lost her first son.

Because by all accounts,
I should be dead by now.
The survival rates of premature infants
in 1978 were so low that
two pound babies didn’t live more than minutes.

The average birth weight of a child
is eight pounds.
I was born six pounds incomplete.
Sometimes I think that some of my missing pieces
remained, settled somewhere in my mother.
She’s carried the weight of it ever since.

So every time she paced the kitchen
floor was my mother rocking back to sleep
her worry that roused in her like
a restless child.

After her latest dream,
she asks me to carry my next of kin,
in case of emergency.
Says she can’t go on wondering.
Every time she calls and gets a machine
rather than my voice, she settles in for the worst.

I tell her that I do,
but the part that I don’t tell her is:
“If I die, you will be the last to know.”
I’ve made sure of it.
If something should happen
her phone will not ring.
Paramedics will place long distance phone calls
to friends to cities hours away.
Word of my demise will travel down highways and pay $6 in tolls
to be delivered.

My parents spent three months watching me grow
inside a plastic womb.
Time with their son revolved around
intensive care visiting hours.
Mechanical beeps and buzzes whispering,
“It is OK.”
“He’s fine.”
And so machines will not comfort them--
It will be flesh.

It is out of love that
I’ve listed friends rather
family to carry the casket
of bad news to my parents.

And this isn’t a premonition.
This is a memory of the strength lacing my bones.
Memories of hearing about my father, who, when confronted with
bad bedside manners from a doctor who said,
“You might as well leave; there is nothing you can do.”
He responded with “You are talking about my son.”
It took two grown men to restrain him.
Two men to pull back strong shoulders, force him into another room.
And I am his son.
So don’t worry about me.
While I may have been incomplete when I came into this world,
I am whole now.

My life has been an audition for others.
For people strong enough to carry me
through this life and to the grave if that’s what I need them to do.
Shoulders strong enough to support you, Mom
and carry your tears if I don’t come home.

So sleep,
sleep now and
know that this weight
is no longer yours to carry.

DAY 1: State Lines ( a work in progress)

2007-04-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

2 hours before I leave for work
12 hours before you leave the continental United States,
I am in a state of denial.

I ignore the fact that like all the
other women that I have been interested in
you are leaving the state.

It has reached such a level of predictable absurdity
that dating me should come
with baggage
but I mean real baggage
like suitcases and steamer trunks,
cardboard boxes for the stuff you will inevitabley
pack up and take with you.

But somewhere in the silence
of this morning
I have found the boarding pass
for letting go.

The Project

2007-04-18T05:31:00.000-07:00

Section V:
30 Days

Start date_______ end date _________.

To follow in Morgan Spurlock’s footsteps, you will have to do something for 30 days. But not just any task, you will have to maintain an online writer’s journal (blog) for 30 days.

I will provide you with a blog site that I would like to use.
www.blogger.com (this is especially good for those with gmail)

Your responsibility will be to post to the blog regularly for 30 days. In that time you will:
-Post written works or writing exercise responses every day**.
-Once per week you will post your at-home (complete piece).
-You will network with the other members of the class and read their blogs.
-You will read and post substantive comments on at least FIVE of your classmate’s blogs per week.
-Over the 30 days you must visit and post to every one of your classmates (ie you should not just visit your five friends and ignore everyone else).
-** You will be allowed one day off per week. You must post the words DAY OFF or it will be assumed you did not post that day.
Your blogs will be monitored on a weekly basis.

On day 31, you will post a reflection on the blogging process and what you enjoyed or would change about it. This response should be no less than 500 words.