Ohhh Shit

My mind is blown.
This just put me in tears from laughing so hard.
No more facebook; I have to post on here.

Round Twooooowhuagh

I've been stressing this poem out all week long.
This time around, what we had to do was make a poem of alliteration, and each poet was given a letter. I was in the first group, with the letter 'b' (I think this is because I did not fare as well on the last round, and the harder letters are for more skilled poets).

It was actually a lot of fun, I sat down and read the dictionary for the first time in years, reading over all the B words. I came up with dozens of different stanzas but was having a very hard time finding anything that stuck. I finally got one with a good flow, and managed to sit down and write it, but not until today, Saturday. the day of the deadline. I really cut it close. It came out well at least, and I know i've beaten at least one competitor i'm directly against. Mine's way better. Let's hope the critics agree.


So here's my poem.

'Alabaster Beauty'

Broken, bruised and blue,
Bled the sky between
Our barren brethren,
And I - bereft,
Believed it to be
Behooving of me to
Bear the brunt
Of that blaspheme,
Brought down by our
Beleaguered brethren.

But before my bifocals,
Beaten but beating,
A brazen beam burst
Forth from the bosom
Of that alabaster beauty.

Bicuspids blare a ballad,
Brickwork boast their brawn,
A buck brays in the brush.

Oh! What benevolence
Could be brandished by
That brilliant behemoth,
Burning back that
Bindweed I have battled -
Borne out of my own
Blinding and bloated brain.

Seconds

Tic... Tic... Tic...
Second by second,
Every fleeting moment strikes you
You run, play, scream,
You fight, dance, fuck,
Contemplate your life,
Wallow in self pity,
Reminisce on victory,
All in the pass of time.

Tic... Tic... Tic...
Second after second,
Take a break from school,
Grab a drink after work,
Escape on vacation,
Read a book,
Watch a film,
Deal with anything else,
The clock is still counting.

Tic... Tic... Tic...
Second passes second,
Take a stand,
Make a change now
Find yourself and fight,
Take each moment and make it count
Because time will not stop
And the world will move on,
Each second is one day closer to the final curtain.
This is it.

Tic... Tic... Tic...

Frightening

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/04/29/how-much-time-do-americans-spend-on-elevators-a-ton/

Read that article. Look at the graph. Those numbers aren't days per year or hours per month. That is Years. Across a lifetime.
NYC is at 22.5! Twenty two and a half years! that's older than I am right now. Over a quarter of the average person's life.
Granted, NYC is pretty much a city of elevators,, but if it were possible for the study to be expanded to beyond simply standing and waiting to get on or off an elevator, the number's would be comparative across the country.
A quarter of your life, to simply get in or off an elevator. A quarter of your life, simply waiting to get somewhere.
That's just elevator time.
How many hours of your day, years of your life is wasted on simply waiting for something to happen? For a day to come? Anticipating an event to take place? Fantasizing all of the different little events that may or may not transpire at that moment.
And finally, as that moment comes, you've both built it up so much that it lets you down, and then you're also spending your time anticipating a still further moment.

Stop waiting, stop wasting time.
If you want something to happen, odds are it's all on you, so go out there and do it.
If you can't control the situations of it, then stop worrying about it, it will come in due time whether you want it to or not.
And if you're going to go down, go down with guns blazing.

Odd dream last night.
I was in a building with a lot of people, when somebody with the same name as me came in, shot and killed everyone, including myself. I'm not sure if he killed himself after.
It was reported on the news, and they named the killer, having the same name as myself.
Ghost me was still hanging around for whatever reason, and watched as everybody I knew assumed that the killer was actually me, and that I'd finally snapped. Everybody talked about me, some were shocked, and some claimed it made sense, while I was unable to correct anybody or say anything about it.

Maybe my dreams are telling me i've got too much anger inside, and it's wrecking everything that I have going for me.
Maybe my dreams are just expressing the fact that nobody knows what my true intentions are, or understand me.
Or perhaps it's just because of the comments written on my poem for the tournament, and how they didn't understand what I was going for, and I'm completely unable to explain myself which is really irritating - of late i've been trying to express my intentions more openly, in the hopes that others would understand and follow suit, so i can know what they're doing, but that's been having no results as of yet.

So I'll just explain my poem on here, as I'm the only one that reads this, but at least it helps to write things out, and at least I can track what i've written on here...
People were writing it was more depressed than hopeful, but that's I think hope is a very slight thing. If it were stronger, that would just be optimism. Hope is that thin lining of the sun, finally showing on the horizon after a long night. But that's too damn cliche to put into a poem, so I had to write about it in some other way. Apparently I should've just gone with the cliche, and probably receive better reviews, because writing a prose-poem seemed to piss one judge off, and he only gave me a 59/100. Motherfucker. I know I copped out at the end, but I would've given myself a 65.

Still, I cannot wait for the next round to begin.

Metaphors

I rushed out of my house a few days ago, and accidentally put on my dad's shoes. I stumbled, stepped out of them, put on my own ones, and headed out to my car - all the while cursing while realizing that I'll literally never fill my father's shoes, and that my life is one giant fucking metaphor.
This got me thinking about how many metaphors there are in the world that we never even realize, going on all around us.
Some of them are in events, such as the message from the Coyote last week (still believe in that stuff), and everything happening in the little valley area the Zygotes would jam and live in, but I don't feel like going in to all of that.
Instead, I figured I should try and write a little list on here from my physics class.

This is the reason I took physics in the first place, there's a lot from it that transfers over into the real world in some way or another. These are mainly just quotes from my professor that I love:

1) Standing still is the same thing as moving at a constant speed. The only time you spot a difference is in change of speed or direction.

2) Magnetism is just charge in motion.

3) 'A moving clock runs slowly' - Probably sounds a lot deeper than it really is.

4) a quote from Einstein, testing one of his theories. A journalist asked him, 'what if it didn't work?' he replied 'Then I would have felt sorry for God'.

5) Time is the suspect

6) The only thing you see is light.

7) 'I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to do it with a laser'. < my favorite thing he's said all semester.

8. Entropy screws up everything. The longer you wait the more things fall apart. You have to work hard to keep it together.

9. Any change just takes pressure and time.

10. 'Heat Death', the end of the universe. Once all heat has been transferred equally across the universe, and all change ceases to exist.

11. To change momentum, add an impulse.


I didn't realize how many odd little stanzas I'd filled my book with as well. A lot apparently influenced by one foolish girl.

So I'll list them as well, front of my book to the last page of the semester.

1) 'You never laughed like
When you saw me try to dance.
That's when I knew
You were for me.

But that's when you said
You were afraid of a bitter end.
And before I could speak
You would scorn me.'

2) Will you take my heart,
Make it beat again?

3) Was it the inflection in my tone
That sent your tires screeching home?

4) I don't want our dreams to be
When you see the things that I see
I want our dreams to be
The only time you might miss me

5) Maybe it's all just frequency
But when you beat I breathe
When you think I see

6) I'm sick of doin' nothin',
But doin' nothin's where I sit
Because I'm angry about somethin'
But I don't know what it is.

I rode down to the liquor store,
Bought some tonic and a thing o' gin
Maybe that makes me an older man
But buyin' beer's just buyin' piss.

High by high noon, now ain't that clever,
Somebody said that I'm gonna die.
But who the hell wants to live forever,
So will you please hand me a light.

7) But now you're gone,
And it's time to decide,
Better to be shot through the heart
Or between the eyes?

8) When I was a child I dreamed I was a bird,
I'd swing my arms and I could fly.
If I stretched them out I could hug the world,
I would stretch my arms far as I could reach,
If I stretched myself I could touch the sky.

9) So you thought you could take me down,
Boy I bet that thought must've been pretty,
Don't you know I was born underground,
Now I'm takin' you back home with me.

But you'll never catch me.
Because I'm the blue-eyed devil.

10) Why do I always dream
Of shooting zombies

11) It was a silent grey day
With the clouds hanging low,
Morphine was dripping
Off the radio

12) Oh, happiness
Where is it that you've gone?
Have you slipped through the back door
To leave with the setting sun?

13) It sounded like a metaphor,
But I had no idea what it meant,
She caught on and flashed a grin
And I dumbly nodded my head

14) How do you look when you are alone?
When the song has died and the lights have gone?

Do you stare at bruised clouds
When the night hangs long?

But you’re just doing that trick where you turn around,
Embracing yourself, hands caressing your back - your neck,
It was the heat of passion
But from the front you’ve never looked more alone.

I saw a picture of you, livin’ it up in a bar
Hanging on your friends, dancing around upon the table
You were screaming and laughing
But I could see that look in your eyes

Were you really there, or are you back in your room,
Staring at the clouds, as the night hangs long?

How do you look when you are alone?
When the song has died and the lights have gone?


This is a pretty solid list, I think I'm covered for a while for inspiration on poems actually, these can all lead in to some song or other.
This is turning into a pretty solid month. I think after all the BS of April I'm starting to get some inspiration again.

Yellow Banana Jumpsuit

This is the poem turned in for my first round in the Poetry Tournament on Protagonize.
It's all supposed to be anonymous, but nobody reads this so I figure I'll put it up. I hope i didn't leave a link to this page somewhere.

I kept my other post blocked because I didn't want word about it until now.

But, this has been an exhilarating challenge. Can't wait for round 2, i haven't been kicked out yet.

Yellow Banana Jumpsuit


It’s a Small World After All.
That’s what I was thinking of,
Humoring myself as
I gazed out the window.

Fancying the bus to be
Some wild Disney ride,
That the people still waiting,
Instead of being so damn glum -

Beaten down, tired eyes
Casually pondering the
Fabric of their shoelaces -

That they would instead
Sing and Dance and Wave,
All together chanting
That ceaseless chorus
Which bores into your head like
Some giant, unswattable Mosquito,
Drilling in to lay its unholy egg,
Otherwise referred to as
‘It’s a Small World After All’.

With a lurch,
The bus rolled forward,
And from a slight turn,
I caught my own tired eyes
Looking back into me
From the rattling,
Plastic and iron window.

I was brought unfairly
Back into my own reality,
Heading home from the
Santa Ana Central Jail.

My friend had been laughing,
Saying he’ll be out Tuesday,
And I laughed back at him,
Though we both knew,
He’d be going nowhere,
While deep down I knew
That I might as well be
Sitting right there with him,
Dressed in a pretty,
Yellow banana jumpsuit.

I may be on the outside,
But you don’t need
Walls to trap a dog.
You give it food.
You give it shelter.
You give it a routine.
And however stale the meal,
And however cold the house,
And however hard the day,
That’s where the dog will go.
That’s what the dog will know.
And he is yours,
Before he could ever run away.

And so Santa Ana is my prison,
With nothing to do, nowhere to -

‘What are you thinking?’

‘What?’ I blink, and
Facing me is a pair of
Perfect hazelnut eyes,
“What are you thinking?
You look like a puppy,
That lost it’s way home’.

What was I thinking?
‘Oh, nothing important’.
She gives the tiniest
Curve of her lip,
And I give mine in kind.

Has this woman been
Sitting here the entire time?
She’s still smiling.
Say something, stupid!

And in the very back crevasses
Of my mind, something itches
Waking to remind me
That perhaps,
There is still good.

Poetry Tournament

Today marks the start of the Spring Poetry Tournament on Protagonize.
Needless to say I am excited.
For the first challenge, due by Sunday, the challenge is that each participant is given a word, and the poem has to be about the word, and instill or invoke the feelings of said word.

My word is Hope.

I can't think of a better word to be given. I'm going to have to do some brainstorming now, because I don't want to lose this thing, especially in the first round. I have a lot to think about to throw in to it lately, from something completely symbolic like the Coyote who crossed my path, to the sudden explosion in musicianship. I'm now the bassist for the Zygotes, after a badass jam in the basement of a broke-down, abandoned, condemned building in the middle of nowhere. Next I jam with an art-rock kind of band on Sunday. I also might start another side project with a couple friends.

But the poetry tournament will still stress me out, I'm up against an interesting mix of people, form 16 year olds (albeit ridiculously talented), to people in their 40's, to middle school teachers.
I wonder which person I'm up against in the first round. I hope it's not Archi or Alipix. Alipix is a newcomer too, so newcomer's might just be pitched against each other. But Christ, she's good.

So let's see how this all turns out,
I'll start posting the poems as I write them.

Coyote

Today As I left class a coyote crossed my path. The biggest and most handsome Coyote I've ever seen.
He was chased by two birds, as he ran right in front of me.
Nobody else saw him.
This felt like a sign, so I went home to look up what a Coyote might represent.



'The Coyote is a clown in the natural world, and in many Native American tribes view the symbolism of the Coyote as that of trickster, shape-shifter, and transformer.
The Navajo never kill Coyote because of their belief that it accompanied the first man and woman into the entrance of the first physical world.
Also, in the same myth, the Coyote brought with it seeds of life so as to sew new growth upon the new world. This legend depicts the Coyote as a bringer of life and a new birth symbol.
However, the Shoshoni believed the Coyote to be the bringer of death. The sighting of the Coyote was said to bring natural disasters such as illness, floods and harsh winters. This was not viewed as something to be feared - rather it made way for new beginnings. Essentially, the Coyote was the "way-maker" of new direction as it went about its symbolic role of completing the cycle of life in nature.
The Coyote tells us to be mindful of our actions - be wary of playing tricks on ourselves or others. Coyote also reminds us that the consequences of our actions effect more than just ourselves.
The Coyote comes to us with a message that only by learning from our mistakes will we ever be free from shackles/restriction.
This wonderful creature also reminds us that no matter what form we take (as we "shape-shift" our personality) or how many difficult situations we may find ourselves in - we must always take time to laugh.'


So animal symbology may or may not actually mean anything to the world. But that the Coyote represents the death of one and the beginning of a new, and to never forget to laugh, is fairly apt for everything happening in my life today.