blogging throgh a widget

i have to see if this works, this is me using a widget on my new imac to blog from my desktop as im listening to the new death cab cd. if this works, then macs are the coolest things in the world. even if it doesnt theyre still ok. in other news, i have ankle surgery tommorow, so wish me well. here also is your cance to mock me as the drugs will keep my higher mind from getting back to you

in response to Mary's Question and another poem

mary asked an interesting question that piqued my interest. its in the comments section of the last post. she asked if i reminded her at all of Sean J. from our 518 class. The answer is yes and no. yes, i was very set and sure of myself when i was a bit younger. i see that in sean. yes i thought i could find poetic absolutes also. But part of me (the prideful part) reacts very strongly against any mention that i am like sean. I believe sean currently lacks the core humility to want to mold himself into a serious poet. he still holds on to work, and shares more opinions than poems. which i dont like. i sincerely hope he works long enough to let his talent come through his gimmicks. I havent seen enough of his poetry to compare our styles. sorry if that is a bit harsh, i know i should be nicer, but there were some comments from Sean in my last reviewed poems that i thought were rather stupid, to be blunt. wow, i feel like a bad guy now, so ill post a love poem (one of my first) and leave you for the weekend.

“A. Allen tells a woman about the first time he realized he was in love with her but does so unsolicited and overly excited because he figures that such a realization is something to be excited about” or, “I just thought you should know”.

It was on the plane
And I wanted to sit next to you so badly
And I was so worried
About us sitting together,
so worried,
and I imagined through every stereotype
every character,
that could come and take the vacant seat
between our assigned ones.
First there was a lady so small and alone
she wanted to feel the contact of shoulders
on each side of her.
Then the grizzled New Yorker
with a brutal passion for the middle seat.
Then even a socialite whose time was past
And whose children were all gone
(she needed conversation on both sides
To fill her void).

And then I hoped.
I hoped for someone hunched and of necessity always leaning forward
(where we could still be close leaning back),
I hoped for an invisible man, so I could see you through him,
Or some California blonde
So at least I could peak at you through the ears.
I finally settled hope on someone so fair
As to be opaque
At least then I could see your hazy light

Later,
I was too busy praying for the invisible man to touch my knee
And invite himself past me in a shy voice
That promised silence
To hear the close of the boarding door.
And I was too busy offering the stereotypes meager bribes
Of Spanish lessons
To notice the moment the seat stayed empty,
Or the moment you laid your head across
The upholstered emptiness
It rested on my left leg, and your black hair
fell down upon my lap, and away.
(Just so you know, it was then, just then.)

unfinished

thursday morning, and Im in my office trying to get stuff done for the day, and im listening to the Royal Tenebaum's soundtrack, which unfortunately doesnt include the best song from the movie...which makes it feel really unfinished. so im thinking about "unfinished" and i remember a poem i wrote a long time ago about the idea....so i pull it out and completely revise it and its a cold october morning and viola, you get this:

Unfinished

I had told myself it was time to go back
to when cold was excuse for contact.

I had told myself it was time for granite
again to hold easy initials in the twilight

and for the Pleiades again to dance, accompanied
only by my eyes upon them, and the cloudless sky.

Time again for all the things that left me older when they left.

I was telling myself this while looking
at barren ski slopes before the first snow

While staring at painful, painful trees
their oval leaves carried off by a wind.

Each looked so much like a man, balding,
and the wind became the fingers he runs through his hair,
lost in thought.

He is a rooted man, and a covered one
but he too must worry about the fingers in his hair.
He too must worry about leaving things
unfinished.

more new work, whats happening to me?

I must say, three solid poems (we'll reevaluate that statement 6 months from now) in three days is pretty prolific for a man who has to think everything to infinity before he creates it. Same tone as the last one, it just seems to be whats happening. i have some questions about earnestness and poetry that i want to run by EG so we should probably talk.

(i dont know what to call it, im thinking "Tiresias"

Don’t worry mother
Tonight will not be cold.
The pigeons, look how
They flutter along the ledges of the
Old brick building.
Long-necked, with pink legs out
They spin lazy circles
Before resting again
Where they began.

No, tonight everything will be gentle.
I promise it.

If I may be poetic, let me say
That if night was coming in hand with her
Tall, freckled sister Cold—she of the laziness
She who I could not convince
To spend more time traveling or singing
Or playing volleyball—
If night and cold were coming together
The pigeons
Would be a mottled grey blanket
Massed and motionless.

and please don’t worry mother,
About all the metaphors for night,
Or it’s coming.

See,
You can hold an evening like this immediately
in your hand
Like a snow globe souvenir.
And you can shake and change
the shape of the clouds
Or the angle of the sun across the building
Or even just to make more leaves fall
From the rows of maple trees.

It’s a wonderful thing
To shake an evening until the
Sunlight falls across younger faces.
Trust me, someone else is doing it too
Maybe that’s why the pigeons keep moving.

new and different work

Here is a poem that was originally three poems that still might be four or five more poems that i am really liking right now. it feels disjointed still, but i like some of the things that its doing, any suggestions?



We are beautiful and oblivious when we eat ice cream on Saturday afternoons

I would like to slip myself into the pocket of everything.
Every woman and man,
and also every pigeon and every grain of cinnamon and every five o’clock shadow.
Also every Cumbia beat.

There are men and women born knowing how to dance Cumbia beats.
I would like to slip myself into their pockets as well.
(as they move)
And also there are women and men born able to understand my favorite nightmare
of floating in Lethe and trying to breathe air that isn’t air but

consciousness.

(which I place by itself because it is a strong word and deserves to be there)

I imagine there are many, who when reading this
And knowing there is someone else waiting like a lightswitch
To be in the pocket of things also
Take a great strength, and rise and live for a moment like Fezziwig.
(and also his daughters)

Slip now into my pocket, because
It’s a Saturday afternoon
And I was so very lost just now.

This is sudden,
But,
If I were a pill would you take me, concentrate?
Would you push my past your throat?
I hope you would, because I am sweet
And asked it so nicely of you just now.

a poem from the canyon

everyone writes canyon poetry in the fall with the leaves.

heres a quickie, as i went up there with a friend two weeks ago and wrote a poem that became this one:

A Wet Rock

It’s the campground pine and broken earth.
It’s the smell that moves me.
Not the leaves along the avalanche runs
Blushing and bleeding each shade.
They have long since bloomed
Beyond my ability to describe them

Instead look here
To the cool undergrowth of pine.
I am easing my hand inside a wounded tree--
I am finding in the sap
A sticky permanence




more good blogs to come. a poem came out of that "in love with everyone blog" i will post it tommorow.

reading blogs, and something awesome

i always get sidetracked. I jump on blogger to post, but end up reading random people's blogs instead. today it was a 19 year old girl from singapore (ive visited singapore a couple times and am really fascinated by the whole social makeup there) and an american graduate student studying middle eastern languages in cairo. Blogs in general are really amazing. I predict some sort of a communication revolution, i just havent figured out how its going to happen.

now for the something awesome. I went to deposit some $ at a bank this morning, and as i am ready to get my reciept and go, the bank teller lady asks "have you ever spent time in hawaii"? (The past two years i have spent a week each in hawaii performing with a sketch comedy group) I was immediately scared to death cause i remembered the teller had long dark hair and i also remembered that the only random (vacation) hook up of my entire life (on a beach, in hawaii) also had long dark hair. you guessed it... its a damn small world. How awkward the next two minutes were. how wonderfully awkward... "What was your name again...you remember mine cause its on the deposit slip." "what are you studying....why are you in provo?" "yeah, i had shorter hair back then?" "no, im not performing anymore..." "thanks, i hate to keep you from your work...at least now i know where to find you." In defense of my morality, only one ever, it was a tropical beach you would have done the same, and please dont apply any broadness to the term "hook-up", I will not elaborate...but im relatively tame.

awesome, so very awesome to run into that girl on a random wedensday. made my day in one of those random ways. y'all have a good day.

I am in love with myself, and by extension the world, and that is causing major probems.

I am in love with myself, and by extension the world, and that is causing major problems. Oh, and I am acutely aware of the mythology I build around myself and even more aware of the mythologies I create of which I am not aware.

I kissed five women on the cheek last night, touched the back of my roommates arm slightly above the elbow, caressed a woman’s head as she lay on the couch in front of me, and cornered a friend to tell him how much I loved him.

I have this curious dilemma: I have been increasingly able over the last six months of my life, to recognize in people characteristics that I immediately love. But that’s not all, what I have been able to do is recognize the mix of imperfection and strength in people and immediately love them. I wont go into whether that mix of weakness and strength is merely my perception or their reality. In fact, I want to avoid that subject atogether cause I am afraid where the train of thought will leave me. I find it enough to just love. I have fallen in love with anyone who I see struggling with their issues, fighting, striving, becoming, living the fools errand, creating, hurting, …anyone who exhibits the process of life. You are beautiful, all of you, you are the community of suffering and joy, you are my brothers and sisters and my betters and equals. Every song i want to sing seems at its heart to praise you and your godhood. I wish there were a socially acceptable way I could transmit to you just how much I love you. (see, there I go again). and therein lies the dilemma, I cannot find a socially acceptable way to show that love without all the entanglements. I feel lately like the accident victim who barely survives and, because of his closeness with death, goes around with penetrating eyes telling everyone he has ever met just how glad he is to be alive, how he was spared, and how they must cherish life. People are so uncomfortable with that man. (the wedding guest and the ancient mariner syndrome) they don’t know what to do, in the face of such earnestness they are moved, but ultimately hope it goes away in favor of a more acceptable demeanor. Ah the balance between that earnestness and crossing lines. I don’t want the women I kissed on the cheek to love me romantically,(and I certainly want to respect their bubble) I don’t want my roommate to worry bout my sexual orientation, but the spontaneous need arises in me to let them know how grateful I am that they exist and are in my life. and everytime I try to verbalize it I get the blank stares of people who don’t know how to react. And when I do get married, (my poor wife), how am I ever going to explain to her that I momentarily fell in love with a woman I saw in some random stairwell, but that she shouldn’t worry cause it’s a different kind of love? And if I write and mention that woman in the stairwell, or some other image, or a past lover, will I run the risk of ruining my relationship with my wife?

And now my mind is a bit shot from thinking through all the peripheries of this blog, so I will leave it at that….but know that I love you for reading this.