You wanna know what I miss about summer? In the dead of winter? Here's what I miss about summer:
Having your window cracked open just a little bit, because you're suffering hot in your bed because your parents don't believe in air-conditioning and the little lazy, indicisive puffs of air that creak through that window-space are absolute Heaven. You can't sleep out of anticipation of the next of those little heaven-breezes and the sweet, sweet sensual smell of green that it'll sneak in with it. Eventually a train will go by (a wonderful thing to happen in all seasons, but especially summer,) and the dogs of town will howl and bark in agreement and you'll envy those dogs more than just a little because, well, they're free and they own summertime.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Old things,
While digging through all those blog posts I found these poems/story-things I wrote when I was still a teenager...They're not half bad for a kid I think.
The Plague is coming
Writer; front porch, sunset, the house faces east, so he's in shadow.
The tree behind the house casts a shadow, an oddly shaped one that
looks like crooked spokes without a wheel. Leaves and a dog play in and around
the shadows. (death is not the end)
Doctor; ah yes, don't doctors know how to do it? they don't fuck it up..
You put the barrel in your mouth, deep, suck it like you love it..
You taste it and it gags you, but how nice the cold and the solidity,
comfortable, even. The Plague is coming. Doctors don't fuck this up..
Salesman; be a talkshow host, because here you already got the desk
an' everything. All the glory of turning nothing into sumthin everyones
just gotta have, you are a god, man...at the end there will be only
salesmen, so you'll have all the best stories, you know, you'll tell them
in a bar in heaven, god'll be there and boy will he look sheepish when
you tell 'im of all the many red ways the women and children died. See
the way the sunset looks through the window behind you, nah, don't turn,
you've never cared for aesthetics anyway, man...
Nurse; Oh baby, you'll see the white lights and candy fights over in there.
Kids like the place, are drawn to it. And after the evening shift, so are you.
Standing,watching. Spindley little brats. You know that a person died at this
intersection. Hanged himself from the traffic light.
An elderly couple drove through the minute he let himself swing. The tips
of his sneakers just scraped the top of their car. They didn't notice. The Plague
means nothing to the old.
High School Football Player;practicing on a desolate, washed out field, but nah,
this ain't practicing, this is the real deal, like those nights when you and daddy
threw that pockmarked foam football back and forth. It's almost night now,
and it's times like this when you almost understand what death is. It's moving
fast now...
Dog;where you are alone, there is no home. It takes more than one soul to
fill that shell, and even dogs have souls. There are hells and hells here, but
heavens are a bit more precious, more elite. No, you don't have to be good
or accept anyone into your heart, that's impossible anyway. All good dogs go
to heaven, though, and heaven is for dogs...
Ghosties
The boy was not to be engaged, tonight. As his punishment for deeds rendered the ghosts kept him in here, his grandfather's library, until their party ended. He could just hear it over the storm, the party, i mean. It was a dead thing to the boy, really, he just wanted to go so as to not be lonely for a change. Since the death of his siblings that past fall he had become ever more despondant, and this was beginning to annoy him, yet he tried to reach for something, something brighter and vivider, and was denied. He didn't wonder if it was himself doing the denying, as there was no other explanation, he just knew. This wasn't the first time things like this've happened.
But that is all beside the point, which was that there was a large bay window on the eastern wall of that liquid-black room, that in front of that window was a red velvet divan, that the boy sat on his knees, backwards on the seat, his knees sinking and sliding deeper into the cushions, facing the window, that the storm that night was glorious, the kind of thing that make you believe in gods, the old greek kind, the kind of glorious that only exists for men who believe in war, that there was lightning that lit the night as bright as midday, but no, because the sun never seared this whitely, for the sun was warm, that the sea was revealed in this light as an unrealisticly vast roiling darkling membrane of something that showed itself only to very small boys in liquid-black rooms as they sit staring out an eastern-facing bay window. That this sea, this beast was unknown to the ghosties in the next room, poor ol' ghosties never get to the end of stories, because they know what happens, too bad for them. Live as long as you can maties cuz in death there is only boredom and costume parties.
..>
..>
mean ol' buzzards...
Sam is in his dream town, a place scattered with buildings that meant something to him when he was younger, will when he's older, maybe. When he comes here he's always crouching next to the streetlight next to the house he grew up in, and he seems to have been studying the dust and various motes of something swirling in the spare drafts pushing the air. He is never able/never has enough time to figure out what, if any, significance this has. Buzzards circle, broken white-colored people congregate in sequences that mime the buzzards' lazy drifting. There is no traffic on these streets. When Sam stands up to do anything, he is dragged around by powers beyond his will, then he realizes that the buzzards are dragging him, are, in fact, dragging all of them, the strange broken white-colored people, as if they were all on puppet stings. Where are they being dragged? Why, to the cliffs of course. Where else would a buzzard drag someone? To the cliffs in their hungrily lazy aggresion. Sam wonders how the birds have acquired this power. With half-lidded eyes, Sam scans the peoples' features as they pass by him, nearly colliding, in fact, on several occasions. It is an amusing passtime, is all.
The Plague is coming
Writer; front porch, sunset, the house faces east, so he's in shadow.
The tree behind the house casts a shadow, an oddly shaped one that
looks like crooked spokes without a wheel. Leaves and a dog play in and around
the shadows. (death is not the end)
Doctor; ah yes, don't doctors know how to do it? they don't fuck it up..
You put the barrel in your mouth, deep, suck it like you love it..
You taste it and it gags you, but how nice the cold and the solidity,
comfortable, even. The Plague is coming. Doctors don't fuck this up..
Salesman; be a talkshow host, because here you already got the desk
an' everything. All the glory of turning nothing into sumthin everyones
just gotta have, you are a god, man...at the end there will be only
salesmen, so you'll have all the best stories, you know, you'll tell them
in a bar in heaven, god'll be there and boy will he look sheepish when
you tell 'im of all the many red ways the women and children died. See
the way the sunset looks through the window behind you, nah, don't turn,
you've never cared for aesthetics anyway, man...
Nurse; Oh baby, you'll see the white lights and candy fights over in there.
Kids like the place, are drawn to it. And after the evening shift, so are you.
Standing,watching. Spindley little brats. You know that a person died at this
intersection. Hanged himself from the traffic light.
An elderly couple drove through the minute he let himself swing. The tips
of his sneakers just scraped the top of their car. They didn't notice. The Plague
means nothing to the old.
High School Football Player;practicing on a desolate, washed out field, but nah,
this ain't practicing, this is the real deal, like those nights when you and daddy
threw that pockmarked foam football back and forth. It's almost night now,
and it's times like this when you almost understand what death is. It's moving
fast now...
Dog;where you are alone, there is no home. It takes more than one soul to
fill that shell, and even dogs have souls. There are hells and hells here, but
heavens are a bit more precious, more elite. No, you don't have to be good
or accept anyone into your heart, that's impossible anyway. All good dogs go
to heaven, though, and heaven is for dogs...
Ghosties
The boy was not to be engaged, tonight. As his punishment for deeds rendered the ghosts kept him in here, his grandfather's library, until their party ended. He could just hear it over the storm, the party, i mean. It was a dead thing to the boy, really, he just wanted to go so as to not be lonely for a change. Since the death of his siblings that past fall he had become ever more despondant, and this was beginning to annoy him, yet he tried to reach for something, something brighter and vivider, and was denied. He didn't wonder if it was himself doing the denying, as there was no other explanation, he just knew. This wasn't the first time things like this've happened.
But that is all beside the point, which was that there was a large bay window on the eastern wall of that liquid-black room, that in front of that window was a red velvet divan, that the boy sat on his knees, backwards on the seat, his knees sinking and sliding deeper into the cushions, facing the window, that the storm that night was glorious, the kind of thing that make you believe in gods, the old greek kind, the kind of glorious that only exists for men who believe in war, that there was lightning that lit the night as bright as midday, but no, because the sun never seared this whitely, for the sun was warm, that the sea was revealed in this light as an unrealisticly vast roiling darkling membrane of something that showed itself only to very small boys in liquid-black rooms as they sit staring out an eastern-facing bay window. That this sea, this beast was unknown to the ghosties in the next room, poor ol' ghosties never get to the end of stories, because they know what happens, too bad for them. Live as long as you can maties cuz in death there is only boredom and costume parties.
..>
..>
mean ol' buzzards...
Sam is in his dream town, a place scattered with buildings that meant something to him when he was younger, will when he's older, maybe. When he comes here he's always crouching next to the streetlight next to the house he grew up in, and he seems to have been studying the dust and various motes of something swirling in the spare drafts pushing the air. He is never able/never has enough time to figure out what, if any, significance this has. Buzzards circle, broken white-colored people congregate in sequences that mime the buzzards' lazy drifting. There is no traffic on these streets. When Sam stands up to do anything, he is dragged around by powers beyond his will, then he realizes that the buzzards are dragging him, are, in fact, dragging all of them, the strange broken white-colored people, as if they were all on puppet stings. Where are they being dragged? Why, to the cliffs of course. Where else would a buzzard drag someone? To the cliffs in their hungrily lazy aggresion. Sam wonders how the birds have acquired this power. With half-lidded eyes, Sam scans the peoples' features as they pass by him, nearly colliding, in fact, on several occasions. It is an amusing passtime, is all.
I'm not much one for dwelling in the past (who am I kidding? I love doing that) but here's an old post that I find interesting still. In thinking about where I was when I wrote this (on my currently mostly ignored myspace site) all I can say was, wow, what simpler, hectic times. I do wish I could go back and tell myself "get your act together, man," but that would be a hurtful insult to a person who was trying so desparately to get his act together.
Spooky Ol' Highway 18 July 2007
Just some thoughts:...
Last evening my sister and i went a-strollin' through the merry ol' town of Butterfield, pop. 394, according to one sign, and 200 and some according to another, and as we walked home from the local fuelling concern/convenience store I began musing aloud about the seemingly inherent spookiness possessed by highways. If you miss what I'm saying, I mean take a walk down a fairly quiet highway at twilight and see if you don't start feeling it, kind of like...well, like I said to Jerika, it's similar to the creepiness of hotel rooms, a place where countless people before you have passed through. And you don't know anything about these people, what they think, what they've done, what they did earlier the day that they stayed...highways, or any kind of well-traversed trail or path carved by human beings, have a similar nature, i think. By the shear number of the people that use them they become stained or marked with the quotidianness of the commute, yadda, yadda, yadda. Thus imbuing said road with...not something as melodramatic as a consciousness or soul, but maybe with a mood...I mean how many of those countless,commuting, faceless people are bad? How many are crazy? How many are murderers, child molesters? How many are on their way at that moment with nefarious intent in their destination?
Jerika pointed out that roads are a daily feature in many peoples' lives, and that when people die, (some of them on the road itself), roads are just as likely as houses to become haunts for souls compelled to stay at places familiar to them in life...if you believe that type of thing...Is this the core idea behind the spookiness of roads? A road isn't a place, really, it's a transitional phase or system, a means to many ends, but not really an end itself. Something like Death, with a capital D? w/r/t that idea, get this; one of the more chilling scenes in Joe Hill's novel Heart-Shaped Box is when the protoganist Jude gets a midnight phone call from his assistant Danny, who says calling from a payphone on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere...he's suddenly realized the nature of his whereabouts and tells Jude that he killed himself a few hours ago and that this road in the dark, this is dead. The moment is very poignant, to me anyway, because it seems not only plausible, but true. Or valid, at least. Death as a road. It makes more sense than eternal paradise or eternal damnation merited by the mundane actions of one's life...
Well anyway, hope you enjoyed my ramblings, or at least understood them. Comment me if you have any ideas or anything you wanna add.
Spooky Ol' Highway 18 July 2007
Just some thoughts:...
Last evening my sister and i went a-strollin' through the merry ol' town of Butterfield, pop. 394, according to one sign, and 200 and some according to another, and as we walked home from the local fuelling concern/convenience store I began musing aloud about the seemingly inherent spookiness possessed by highways. If you miss what I'm saying, I mean take a walk down a fairly quiet highway at twilight and see if you don't start feeling it, kind of like...well, like I said to Jerika, it's similar to the creepiness of hotel rooms, a place where countless people before you have passed through. And you don't know anything about these people, what they think, what they've done, what they did earlier the day that they stayed...highways, or any kind of well-traversed trail or path carved by human beings, have a similar nature, i think. By the shear number of the people that use them they become stained or marked with the quotidianness of the commute, yadda, yadda, yadda. Thus imbuing said road with...not something as melodramatic as a consciousness or soul, but maybe with a mood...I mean how many of those countless,commuting, faceless people are bad? How many are crazy? How many are murderers, child molesters? How many are on their way at that moment with nefarious intent in their destination?
Jerika pointed out that roads are a daily feature in many peoples' lives, and that when people die, (some of them on the road itself), roads are just as likely as houses to become haunts for souls compelled to stay at places familiar to them in life...if you believe that type of thing...Is this the core idea behind the spookiness of roads? A road isn't a place, really, it's a transitional phase or system, a means to many ends, but not really an end itself. Something like Death, with a capital D? w/r/t that idea, get this; one of the more chilling scenes in Joe Hill's novel Heart-Shaped Box is when the protoganist Jude gets a midnight phone call from his assistant Danny, who says calling from a payphone on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere...he's suddenly realized the nature of his whereabouts and tells Jude that he killed himself a few hours ago and that this road in the dark, this is dead. The moment is very poignant, to me anyway, because it seems not only plausible, but true. Or valid, at least. Death as a road. It makes more sense than eternal paradise or eternal damnation merited by the mundane actions of one's life...
Well anyway, hope you enjoyed my ramblings, or at least understood them. Comment me if you have any ideas or anything you wanna add.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
What indecision?
I finished Zadie Smith's perfect essay on David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and just last night I read Wellington's Frostbite: A Werewolf Tale. (I think I may have mentioned starting that one.) Before that? Shteygart. Today I ordered a (used, these are frugal times) copy of Whitehead's Sag Harbor. And Joe Hill's Horns is the literary event of the year, for me, I'm thinking. What does any of this signify?
Am I a reader of wide taste? Does this mean easy, or even no, taste? What does this say about me as a potential writer? (I say potential because, though I feel I have it in me to write, do I really? What does potential even mean?) Will I feel bored/unsatisfied writing literary fiction? Will I feel like a hack writing horror? Is there any way to even begin combining the two without seeming like an utter shit? Is it moral, in the Wallacian sense, to even contemplate doing it? I guess the first thing to do this to come up with some use, some allegory for horror fiction. And then some reason for wanting to tie it into a more intellectually demanding form of writing, aside from "formal stunt-pilotry." After all, isn't that what I would be trying to achieve? A look-ma-no-hands literary ease?
Am I a reader of wide taste? Does this mean easy, or even no, taste? What does this say about me as a potential writer? (I say potential because, though I feel I have it in me to write, do I really? What does potential even mean?) Will I feel bored/unsatisfied writing literary fiction? Will I feel like a hack writing horror? Is there any way to even begin combining the two without seeming like an utter shit? Is it moral, in the Wallacian sense, to even contemplate doing it? I guess the first thing to do this to come up with some use, some allegory for horror fiction. And then some reason for wanting to tie it into a more intellectually demanding form of writing, aside from "formal stunt-pilotry." After all, isn't that what I would be trying to achieve? A look-ma-no-hands literary ease?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)