born into this mess
this relay operator is a pipe bomb
take comfort in knowing this about me:
every weekday at precisely 1645 hrs, I am drinking a spirutein protein shake with flaxseed powder out of a mason jar.
mmm. chalky goopy goodness.
holla.
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Happy 70th Birthday, Leonard Cohen
Many men have loved the bells
you fastened to the rein,
and everyone who wanted you
they found what they will always want again.
Your beauty lost to you yourself
just as it was lost to them.
Oh take this longing from my tongue,
whatever useless things these hands have done.
Let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one you love.
Your body like a searchlight
my poverty revealed,
I would like to try your charity
until you cry, "Now you must try my greed."
And everything depends upon
how near you sleep to me
Just take this longing from my tongue
all the lonely things my hands have done.
Let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one your love.
Hungry as an archway
through which the troops have passed,
I stand in ruins behind you,
with your winter clothes, your broken sandal straps.
I love to see you naked over there
especially from the back.
Oh take this longing from my tongue,
all the useless things my hands have done,
untie for me your hired blue gown,
like you would do for one that you love.
You're faithful to the better man,
I'm afraid that he left.
So let me judge your love affair
in this very room where I have sentenced
mine to death.
I'll even wear these old laurel leaves
that he's shaken from his head.
Just take this longing from my tongue,
all the useless things my hands have done,
let me see your beauty broken down,
like you would do for one you love.
Like you would do for one you love.
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wtf
from the overleaf of a book my dad is reading :
there is little doubt that a major obstacle to reaching unsaved people in the world today is the dark spiritual power behind Islam named Allah. the first step toward bending this "strong man" is to understand what we are dealing with under the surface...
I am crushed. totally floored. how can such an intelligent and loving person read such a book. you know, "Allah" is a cognate of the hebrew "El," as in "Elohim," the most commonly used appellation of God in the old Testment. literally, letter for letter. aleph lamed. alif laam. sholom. salaam.
there's a dark spiritual power here all right, and it is corrupting the words of a wonderful teacher who taught a beautiful way of peace. who forgave the ones who killed him. I believe with all my heart that this terrible religion that has taken over this country with its contradictions, fear, selfrighteous judgement and lies is nothing like what the Son of Man taught two thousand years ago. these are the evil men he talked about (mark 13:25) who are sowing weeds in among the wheat.
it breaks my heart.
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Poem for Monday, September 20th, 2004
Theory
by Wallace Stevens
I am what is around me.
Women understand this.
One is not duchess
A hundred yards from a carriage.
These, then are portraits:
A black vestibule;
A high bed sheltered by curtains.
These are merely instances.
Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
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why am i incapable of correctly balancing my checkbook? i must be dyslexic. one mistake writing down my cell phone bill payment and now i am about to be over drawn by like 5 dollars which is going to end up being 300 by the time i get paid again.
i passed all my tests at work and as soon as i am done eating i start taking live calls. joy. no more sitting in a room with the same 18 people being annoyed.
holla.
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Poem for Monday, September 13, 2004
The Past
by Stephen Dunn
Herrings begin to glow just before they die,
never while alive. When I read this
I wanted to sit for a long time in the dark.
Nothing in nature is a metaphor.
Everything is. I thought both thoughts.
And knew inexactly why I felt sad.
Herrings dead and aglow--
I should have been properly amazed,
the way anyone looking at a star
would be, realizing it was years away,
untouchable. Yet there it is, shining.
Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
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Stay gold, Ponyboy
so I reread
the Outsiders today.
it's still so. fucking. good.
and that's all I got to say about that.
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la herencia de soledad
boy howdy, that weekend sure did go by fast.
new glasses, haircolor, car insurance. paid cell phone, changed oil, ate out 3 times, saw a rad play about the Stonewall riots, bought a new paper journal.
read two books yesterday:
the Beginner's Book of Dreams, and
Bel Canto, which was absolutely amazing.
Last night, about an hour after I fell asleep, Youngblood called me, drunk as piss, from a bar somewhere up in Maine, where he's living now. I think he was sitting waiting on somebody, or maybe just waiting on time to pass by a little faster. A thousand miles from Memphis, going through that cell phone, calling the names in order, seeing who'd answer.
After he hung up I kept thinking about Prudencio Aguilar from
100 years of solitude walking around the Buendía house at night, lifting up the lids of the pots, looking for water to wash his wound, too lost in solitude to find his way to Death.
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tenzin gyatso and the Force, or, how I passed my typing certification
So after yesterday's typing test debacle I was filled with a new determination to pass the goddamn thing today. I went to the library and got out some cool books about Deaf culture that were written by the editors of DEAF LIFE, which made me really want to work here and do an extra good job to make up for all the stupid shit that the hearing dumps on the Deaf community, which has a righteous language of its own and doesn't need us at all thank you very much. I read some interesting essays about a series of plays done at Gallaudet which made me want to learn ASL (REAL ASL, not signed English) so I could appreciate them.
Anyway, armed with a postcard of the Dalai Lama and a bloodstream full of Sudafed, I went off to take my test. I wore my ugly glasses today cos I am tired of the headaches, and I took them off and squinted at the screen and gave up and used the force. it was like that scene in star wars where Luke is practicing the light saber blind... and I passed!
woot indeed.
holla.
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...and the terrible, horrible, no-good, really bad day
it actually started sometime saturday when I was in the shower. all of a sudden I heard this weird popping noise, like when you stick a pencil into a fan. I jumped out of the shower and ran around until I found the source of the noise: my computer monitor was smoking slightly and a strange popping noise, like a series of small explosions, was coming from inside. so, adios, computer, until I have money to throw at a new monitor. I'm accepting donations, y'all.
then, I don't know if it's the early september pollen or tree rot or just the atmospheric pressure from the hurricane, but I've had this headache for about a week and a half now. it's not so much pain as it is a steady feeling of pressure inside my head, like being drunk or really really tired.
so anyway, I'm out of sudafed, I didn't get quite enough sleep yesterday, and so I'm thinking on the intellectual level of the LaBrea tar pits. then I go to take my typing test and halfway through my mind just sort of shuts down and I'm just sitting there watching my fingers not moving and listening to a recording drone on about how this typing test is just the last step before graduation and not worrying about taking calls.
I try to type but nothing but garble comes out and my hearts thumping away so fast I feel like I'm going to throw up or choke or something and the other people in the room are cackling like a bunch of mad hens and I'm sitting there in front of my supervisor who basically controls whether or not I get to actually keep my job having a full-fledged panic attack. you know, trying not to scream Miss Piggy styled curses at the monitor and smash it with my retractable adamantium fingernails...
I'm starting to worry that I am not going to make it, that I'll freeze up and never get to take calls. it's not that I think I can't do it eventually, it's that I've somehow developed such horrible test anxiety (probably due to the abject povery situation as well as my horrible perfectionism) that I am reduced to a quivering pile of blubbering when I am timed while typing.
tomorrow I am going to say, fuck you test, and tape a picture of the dalai lama smiling to the middle of the monitor and type my ass off.
holla.
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Poem for Monday, on Tuesday, September 7, 2004
The Machine-Gun
by Randall Jarrell
The broken blood, the hunting flame,
The pierced mask and the flowering shell
Are not placated--nor the face
That smouldered where the searchlights fell;
Our times lie in the welded hands,
Our fortune in the rubber face--
On the gunner's tripod, black with oil,
Spits and gapes the pythoness.
Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
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rolf...
"We don't want to have people lose their lives because of abject stupidity," Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said."
of course he IS just talking about
the weather, but boy howdy, it's just so darn funny I almost choked to death on my own spit.
mad props to the half million New Yorkers who turned out in response to the Republicans. I'm super proud of y'all. can't wait to move.
my lovely mom just took me grocery shopping so now I won't have to cry on my supervisor when I fail my typing certification cos my blood sugar is too low. I'm blaring "more than a feeling" and gnawing on some beef jerky. mmmm. I haven't had beef jerky in years. it's amazing.
happy labor day. I love you all...
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opr here cd u pls hd qq ga
it's hard sometimes to know what to say. eight hours a day in front of a computer screen on the phone really saps my desire to update. let's just say that while all is not well, it's at least not all that bad.
oh and I am going to be an aunt! my best girl from gradschool is having a little sprog so I get to be Titi Susana. I'm thinking about moving back up north so I can be close to her- it's just another straw floating down through the air towards the huge load this camel is heaving around. if she goes back home to PA I could be an hour away if I lived in Brooklyn. I could feasibly be up there in a year if I ground myself for a year.
happy labor day.
holla.
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