Bardejov

truth addicts

2006-05-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

This in no rendition
Rise above ambition
Transition into creation
Closer to death each moment out of elation
No more walking, starving Christ the foundation
Spiritual verbal soul situation
Salvation is breaking down the base
Pick up the pieces reassemble the face
My words on earth, my rhymes in outer space
Chase the finest verbiage across the promised land
Please take my hand
Before it turns to sand
Planned- one step at a time, its a rule
Listen beauty isn't no fool
Be vulnerable, scared, don't play it cool

dismal

2006-05-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

This poetry sucks
A great deal
I added the second line
Because my subtlety isn't real

collapsing aspirations

2006-05-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

The buildings they rise to grapple the sky
And we fall and we fall, we fall to the blushing pavement
The buildings they rise to grapple the sky
And we ride and we ride, we ride underground
The buildings they rise to grapple the sky
We drown and we drown and we drown in portable devices
The buildings they rise to grapple the sky
I think I want to rise and rise and rise and rise

a handful of disconcerting epistles

2006-05-01T21:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry to hear you're worried
Glad to hear you're better
We're all better now
Except, the sky, somehow

passage

2006-05-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

The train rolls by
We arise
To descend
In the seat
Riding
City arrives
The speed of
A hundred thoughts
A chapter in a book
A stranger's breath
The speed of my
One only break

gone

2006-05-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

Oh here we go
Oh
Here we go
oh
Here
We go
Oh
Here
We
Go
O
H
He
Re
We
Go
I go

fisherman

2006-04-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

Galilee is a sea where fishes dream about seahorses

and walruses

and humpback whales

and will that man who walked across the waves so ordinary that it all seemed right

will he bring them the moray eels they only read about in the Underwater Times?

But some say he was responsible for a great massacre as he brought them from the water to feed the land dwellers

"You have it wrong" says one old fish.

"He never took a single fish from the sea but multiplied what there already was."

The fishes nodded in assent and secretly cheered that the time for narwhales and tunafish would one day draw near.

poem 2

2006-04-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

Comprehending a contrary qaundry she suddenly satarized a saturated sun that became a rise by suprise nigh as the dusk grew high and so it it begins

poem 1

2006-04-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

Sometimes the flower is a broken movie left running the theater is left empty the tide talking up between the seats the night beaming between the projector streams as the day looms outside the two sit in the back necking through their eyes there for days its been so hard but it will be alright in every sense of the word except whatever enters the mind and in a moments the screen comes alive the seats fill the tide recedes the sun dies as the electricity comes alive and now she kisses him and as he puts his arm around her he realizes

what it means to be alright, to be buried alive.

Grace in a clump of shed cat hair

2006-04-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

Dead, you're killed.
Just a thing tossed away
Unworthy to be buried
Unless you read discarded as buried
Forgetfulness a funeral

Scorn is heaped upon you
An exile from the mass
A leper from the beast
An ugly site, can't be left to show
Can't be left to grow
Unless somebody would know

But I know-
I see I know know
I pick you up with my hand
I feel your delicateness
Between my fingers and
I see you aren't so dirty

There is a place in my pocket
Next to my notebook
With all my thoughts and promises
You can read it while you stay
A while until a time comes to go
But by then you'll be ready

All I ask that when I need it
I'll reach into my pocket
And feel your softness
Or dry my hands
When it rains

The circumference

2006-03-01T22:46:00.000-08:00

One drove west
The other east
Goodbye's linger as surely
As birds do fly
Lost in a line
They forgot that the world is round
They surely would meet

Olive

2006-03-01T22:38:00.000-08:00

Bardejov

That night we did not sleep
An unknown illness took us
As we searched for the olive seed
From great heights
Never felt so low
Pavement never so close

Trust these streets instantly
Insolate from the concrete
Shoes devious plots on our feet
The sky becomes a stranger
Flesh would tell us there
Would grow no tree

We part our skins
Spit brings no rain
Lips part but no clouds
Eyes close the sun shines
Been drinking dust
Been pouring wine on the seed

When we wake no more we wake
Build a roof to trap the rain
Build rooms to lock
Walls to write praise
Earth to grow trees

Marilyn Bush

2006-01-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

Special thanks:
George W. Bush "Address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, September 20, 2001"
Marilyn Manson "Wrapped In Plastic"

(APPLAUSE)

We have seen the state of our union
Guilt is a snake we beat with a rake
We've seen the unfurling of flag
To grow in our kitchen in the pies we bake
The saying of prayers
Feed it to us to squirm in our bellies
We have seen the decency of a loving and giving
Twisting our guts make our spines to jelly
Have made the grief of stranger
Creating what we're hating, it's only fear that is here
My fellow citizens
I know the steak is cold but its wrapped in plastic

(APPLAUSE)

The entire world has seen
I'm only as deep as the self that I dig
For itself the state of union
As sick as the stick in the pig

(APPLAUSE)

Daddy tells the daughter
While mommy's sleeping at night
And you did more than sing. You acted
The hour is coming
The righteous father wears the yellowist grin
You acted, by delivering $40 billion

(APPLAUSE)

On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country.
Tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Come into our home, won't you stay?
I know the steak is cold but its wrapped in plastic

(APPLAUSE)
(APPLAUSE)
(APPLAUSE)
(APPLAUSE)
(APPLAUSE)

Height

2006-01-11T17:13:00.000-08:00

Bardejov

Pass through a hall to window
Clear and vivid like a screen
Street appears where none
Existed, obscured by itself
While I walked and waited
People below actors on a set
The cars and the birds
Special effects almost real
Too good to be true
Too wise to care much
For this film it's just like
The others Hollywood puts out

I step out of the theater
Located on a rooftop
I can assume from this height
There is no ground
Just as I assume
With these embracing clouds
There is no sun to be found
Even as I draw near
It seems just too drawn

It's ok its a bit too fake
Like a bad set but real
We conquered this place
Place we imagined in
The turmoil of being fish
Dragged from the sea
To feed the need for
Those who doubt the
Prophecy missed everyday
Every atom, tear, words
As happening, just happening

BREpauseATHE

2006-01-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Pause in between a breath
To take a deeper breath
To taste the air
Check for poison gases
Instead of chocking on a moment
deficit in experience
This living incapacitates
Still scenery needs to be
defied by peregrination
While you walk look up
Worshipfulness debt
Repaid one way or another
Look up

Mesopotamia

2005-12-29T09:48:00.000-08:00

This is a pastiche I made, using a Blog written by a soldier in Iraq.

Open sewage flowing into the streets
Trash, wet decaying trash
Feasting felines lapping up sewage water
Explosion doesn’t affect me so much as the thought

I needed a ticket for the train
Take me to the next station
Meet us on the battlefield
This minute is spreading thin
The present that was leaving me behind

"Is everyone okay?"
Little beads of sweat
Running down the cheek
Slum-like buildings
Trash, car parts, car frames, cats, dogs
The sun no longer exist

The radio speaks again
My train has safely reached the next station
I’m reunited with the present
I again feel relieved
God’s presence and protection
On these shitty streets

End of december

2005-12-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

A sky lies unburdened
A letter lies unopened
A book unread
On the desk
Looking at life through a glass
Not the best day to laugh

Lights on at noon
The day has put on it's hat
A brim 3,000 miles wide
We're dancing on its edge
Even without a dawn
Can see the sun
As December ends

Bridge

2005-12-20T19:09:00.000-08:00

One day walking I noticed
That the sidewalk I had walked on
For so many days to the job
Was a crooked one

Tilted and broken as the earth moved
To the same hidden forces that
Fueled the cold wind from the water
Felt as the bridge was crossed

Knuckles clenched like eyes
Missed the view of the sea
And the tall buildings
Chests covered and heads bowed
Even as the seagulls fought and screamed

In the bitter cold
Like the time when
Busy searching for a deeper meaning
Listening to hear where
The glorious steps may fall

Watching signals in between
The quick shift in traffic lights
Didn't look where we walked
As the days grew short
Trying to make it shorter, but how?
Across the tilted and cracked walk

how can i be lost in the information age?

2005-11-21T20:37:00.000-08:00

I only know what to know
Not what to know
Listening. Breathing. Listening.
Reading.
Nonsense bright as a red wool jacket
Given by a good friend
Truth dull as distinction
Between news and lies
God distant as falling in love
With a movie star

The man asked us to do the steering
Too busy to drive
As he crashed the car
A man becomes a webpage
Unique even as he arises a billion times

Getting there is so tiring
Dragging a computer tied to my feet
Tied with silent intentions
So quiet that the roads disappears
As I walk east to England
Searching for my finger tips
Hand outstretched to catch them
Will they be found on the rays
Of the golden sun?

Just want to be there
Running there before
The legs are found
Arms empty try to carry
Lips heavy I come smiling
I am sometimes going nowhere
Maybe just walking in circles
Because I love the sights so much

no updates for some time

2005-11-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

Parched brilliance
Shimmering off a star
A sun
Shot astray from its orbit
Waiting to return homeward
All is dark
All is quiet
Sometimes there is reason to forlorn
Sometimes there is reason to believe
Like a shore and the tide
What seems gone
Is never a bye

life

2005-10-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

My life is a story told is it the truth down on paper

paper on wall in a place where people walk by is the truth or just a storyfiction I'm making up as I go is there a difference?

island to island

2005-10-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

Cross the channel
In a ship
Setting sun falling through
the glass of the buildings
Statue of Liberty
Far off refineries
Churning waves
Slipping city
Bridges across the Hudson
I see Sailors
Old ladies
A woman in a burkha
I'm with two friends
Talk about some stuff

Gripping cold railings again
Island to island
I go to a place
Will it come to me?

poem for anna michaelovna zaretsna

2005-10-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

I.
She is a seagull
Or maybe not
But that's what she will sometimes say
When she doesn't think that it's wrong

II.
She is the world spirit
Of a world turned to dust
Hope and all grounded down
From this dust we are made

III.
She wants to fly far and high
Across a sky that is a stage
Polished panels clear as a blue eternity
Curtains for far off setting suns
Words and pretty lips for rising suns
Deep sadness eyes sometimes
Gray clouds that bring the rain

IV.
Still will the bird fly come the rain or the shine
Until is flew across the lake
Upon a quiet farm for people with quiet hearts
Then he brought her the bird
Whose life he would take
For a fallen world's sake

V.
If only lips could part enough
To say an entire play
If only eyes could open wide enough
To see the whole applause
If only a heart could have room enough
For dreams and the sadness that comes

VI.
With the blue left only to the eye
The stage becomes so far away
Even when she is upon the stage
And the audience watches her
Like her mind, ambivalently

VII.
She is the world spirit
And she holds the world in her
As the sacrificed bird holds
A lost man's dreams wrapped in our words
Words like this world's love
Strangely insufficient
For her, for the seagull

compute

2005-10-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

The computer is not downloading
But humming like a distant jet
Lost for a cloud as if
Heaven could compute by man's touch

petrarchan sonnet for the day

2005-10-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

For three mornings now the sky has been gray
Just as some birds never return once they fly
The earth becomes a vessel for the sky
Some seashore somewhere the children still play
Mother cooks in the lit kitchen during the day
Father’s radios turn their static on high
Some sounds sound a strange cry
Warning the Ham in us who will betray

The water droplets on the rug look apart of the design
An old friend will soon be met
It might leave me a reason to sink
Sink into that which is yours and mine
Why do we talk once the sun is set?
It might leave me a reason to think

please

2005-10-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

Aim to please
At least
Even when not so pleased to be
At least

let go

2005-10-08T23:40:00.000-07:00

What we see in ourselves
When the sun is obscured
We speak with lips closed
A father tells us
To close our eyes
Then look again

the sound of rain upon my umbrella

2005-10-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

Providence on a rainy day
Sick of sunny days
Sick of Providence
Love Providence
This season makes the streets a mess
The sky remnants of a huge bomb that had gone off
This place an abandoned amusement park
We can ride for free or so we believe
This ride rusts away as we grow tired and old
A fast squirrel eating a nut
Oh how wet he is!
Window open black despite the day
To let in the world that has become the sky
Windows with books windows with lights
Buildings made of glass
Leaves across the pavement
Leaves on cars
Lithe paths between trees
Busy streets
Across the University yard
The bushes and grass are as much green as gray
The sky far off even as it falls near
A good friend not talked with often
More remembered than seen
Yet near to the heart
Beneath our roofs we forget
That the rain falls so that above
Can be as below if but for a day
A break, a past that is almost a life
Tomorrow shall be green
The sound of rain hitting fabric
A thousand prayers dear

verge

2005-10-06T05:49:00.000-07:00

On the verge
Of earth and sky
We have a choice:
Dig or fly

Able sez:

2005-10-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

we must be detached from the results of our work, in order to deliver ourselves from the anxiety that makes us plunge into action without restraint. we must also be detached from the desire to see ourselves always recollected with God and to feel his presence in our hearts. that is to say, we must go to work for God, trusting that if we seek only to do His will, He will take car of our interior recollection, and make up for the distractions and failings that may creep into our activity.
- Merton

magazine days

2005-10-05T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is one I had to write for class....

People inside adhere to the page
Living by the width and depth of paper
All they could grasp is color
When they wanted to speak
They had to try to send a message
Before the page turns and they become
A mountain valley far away, hidden
In the brightly dieing fingers of the setting sun

I realize that someone is coming
Suddenly I feel that a paper people
And foreign mountains
Don’t seem so serious after all
Lets pretend that we weren’t doing anything at all
So when the people come to see
They won’t know that I like to look at
The pictures in National Geographic
Slide the magazine away
A secret between the colored skies and I
As my thoughts implode

Childhood home is your home not my home
My home is in a forest growing in the clouds
My real friends live in color you would call grainy
I would call the only thing real
Though I can’t talk to them, it’s ok
They have more than enough to say
Through the letters on the page

I pull out the paper and I ride down
A highway that runs across the page
And right across the floor
A sky that folds out of a crease
And across my eyes
I’m there even before good bye

Update

2005-10-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

Revised a river of concrete shallow at our feet a bit.

the collapse of the day

2005-10-05T07:40:00.000-07:00

This doubt, this lack of discipline
From where, from what does it come?
Is it with me right now as I
Feel it up against my heart
Even as I watch the sun bury itself in color
Off on the Horizon? Is this Evil?
It's supposed to rain tomorrow. The clouds
Will roll in as surely as the vibrant colors
Of the sunset will roll out. It will
Come as I sleep and it will be there when I awake.
A dream that lingers on, the storm once
Behind my eyes and now beyond.
That day I will ride through the underground upon the T.
Perhaps, a man will ask me about the weather while
I wonder what it matters to us who are trapped here
Beneath the streets? Perhaps it does,
Sooner or later, we will find ourselves outside
Will it rain then? When it grows dark
We have street lamps, headlights, and windows
To replace the sun. Will there be a time when
We can replace it when it rains?
Thoughts drift back to the present, as it slowly gets
Darker some of the windows do not come on
And I wonder, Is this the evil? The doubt I feel pulling
At my heart? But then I see that it is
The windows that do not use the light of a lamp
That hold the rays of the sun the longest.

a river of concrete shallow at our feet

2005-10-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

So this is Seoul
A foreign land
Where the concrete and the river
Are like thoughts and body

The sun is still high above the ancient arch
We walked between the buildings
Which the eyes understood better
Than the foreign letters
They seemed so fast towards the sky
As we walked slow

Hanja words
Wrinkles on an old women's face
Meeting eyes for an instant
Walking bye
A discarded newspaper on the pavement
Birds turning a corner
Old bricks walls rub a fingertip
Modern buildings grasp an eye
Mother and daughter
A dead bird in a gutter
Shop windows
Golden Buddha
A friend with me
Speak
Sounds like the cacophony of traffic

As night falls
The sun dipping below the ancient arch
Lights come on
Electric highways
TV screens
Warm noodles in a bowl
Glowing buildings
In some places, a lighted window is all alone

Beneath our feet it flowed
A stream from on high
Where the earth touches the sky
Running so deep
We forgot it was there
Even as we forgot why
We are here

Thought for food

2005-09-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

She did the tango
With a mango
But no one asked
Why she didn't do the salsa
With Kielbasa?

Crossing

2005-09-26T17:06:00.000-07:00

Bellow in Downtown Crossing
I could only see I-pod advertisments on the walls
A cloud of color and letters
Across a perpendicular sky

There is no seperating the man from the message
Nor the vessel from the reception
Does a cup ever resent the water?

The ads are everywhere
The turning of the head is futile
When so many computer monitors crash
From the rooftops upon my head

The train comes roaring through
A breif flash-changing the channel
Get off at another station
Is it still the same old show?

Update

2005-09-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

I have updated Divide. I'm not sure if its done, but I feel a message in it.

Divide

2005-09-22T21:07:00.000-07:00

Hotel Bardejov

Divide (verb): TO SEPERATE
Scaling mountains
Creasing Deserts
Tumbling skies
Gives a destiny to each raindrop
A plea falls
Captured-nowhere at all

Divide
I am here to trace the new
I climb mountains eagerly and fall off through walls
Not because of a shortage of wallpaper
Wish book on walls
Letters winnowed in the wind
Can you separate these far off lights from the darkness?

The divide rides
Dry and bitter, the desert nevertheless
Has explored and reseeded
Left its truth in each grain
Footsteps seep into the sky

Divide
Few men found gold here
Hundreds more found only disappointment

Brief Sky

2005-09-19T21:07:00.001-07:00

Pass a cloud upon a wing
Turn the blue in the fingers
A hand into a spot upon the sun
Race the wind to another day
Reversal
Fade to periphery
Lost
It's just a swing
Yes, I did fly
With chains, not wings
Through the distantly close sky

Rap song

2005-09-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

This is my rap song so far. This is a work in progress.

This is Z and I would be
Makin lyrical history
That's right-
I'll sell you my picture for your eye
I'm that good-thats my alibi
All commercial but not for sale
I'll bust your mouth to tell my tale
What?
Where my name from?
America ain't where I come from
Got that? you better respect
I'm number one immigration suspect
Your head
You better inspect
I'm fly- I reflect
Bullets, bombs, and sick beats
I'm superman
Batman
Slovak man
Like hell I can
Here I am but don't try to look
I'm faster than the fastest crook
I stole your talent if that's what your thinkin'
My skillz is why you've been stinkin'
I lied
Your just that bad
You can't have me
But you can be me
Only for a fifty
Dead white guys lookin' low
Just living ones and no ho
Don't think I'm no punk
You want to go?
What you gonna show?
Don't mess with Ukraine
Bitch, Risk is my game
I got North America and takin Asia too
I'm gonna wail ya
In Australia
Your rollin' ones
Against my maxed out guns
I own this board so walk away
Come back when you learn to play

Renault speaks

2005-09-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

Why was my choice ambition, the worst ground
A wretch can build on? It's indeed at distance
A good prospect, tempting to view;
The height delight us, and the mountain top
Looks beautiful because its nigh to heav'n,
But we ne'er think how sandy's the foundation,
What storm will batter and what tempest shake us!

Ottway's Venice Preserved; or, A Plot Discovered

Act 2, Scene 3, Line 1

Spam!!!

2005-09-14T21:09:00.000-07:00

I found this spam on someone's blog.

I might turn it into poetry.
Spam poetry! Crazy!

Feeling lonely? Hook up with Real Singles now for $4.99 to connect, and only $0.99 a min. A true match is only a phone call away. Give it a try 1-800-211-9293.

But I should really sleep right now.

2005-09-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

Listen to Explosions in the Sky.
Explosions are loud and oh so soft.

Excerpt from something that never existed

2005-09-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

...They ran from the fields with shovels in their hands. The boys ran across the beach to where the waves crashed upon the sand. There they dug their graves. The next morning they came to the spot where the graves had been dug. There was not a sign.

"Is this a dream Jack?" One boy asked.
To which Jack replied, "No listen. I hear sea gulls above. I never dream of seagulls, horrid birds they are!"

So they thought it a sign that they would never die...

Quest

2005-09-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

This will, this thought of mine
This personality, burden to bear
Where does it come from?
What seed has it grown from?

Today I saw a gray sky
With the only patch of blue caught on a crane
The buildings are built from the sky
But the streets we walk on
Are still made of gray

We walk day to day
Sometimes we get lost
Sometimes we hold hands
Are the children born, the mothers joy
There so we may forget that others die

Is someone doing this?
This freedom-surely man is not god
Would we chose this life?
Would we chose to walk like this
With the feet of others?
Still alone?

Karma, original sin, call it what you like
The way is not straight or clear
In fact, I would not call it a path at all
Wherever it comes from it is
An answer waiting for the right question

Update

2005-09-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

I revised my previous poem! Check it out.

Awake during transition

2005-09-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

Who are we when we watch
A sun that doesn't rise
But flows through the buildings
Spilled from a glass
Like the glass I spilled across the table
Last night in the smokey bar
Though mine was empty
While the sky's is full
The night was long- there was no sleep
Yet I feel no fatigue
My heart as restless
As a weekday morning street
Sometimes I would rather forget
Had never known at all than have
These memories of last night
They are a city behind a window
Lucid but unable to be grasped
The air isn't real in this room
If I could break a window
But what if I should fall?
Is falling air not the freshest of all?
Why do the prophets bless cups
And not the rain?
Can the rain be held?
Have to be what we mean
Yet it can seem so mean to mean

a letter to a japanese friend

2005-08-31T05:11:00.000-07:00

This is an "erasure poem" I made from an essay of the same name by Jacques Derrida, a french philosopher/writer and one of the founders of Deconstructionism.

My rules for this was to follow the order of the text. No line in here (I hope) comes after, in the text, the one that follows it in the poem.

I also didn't fuse any lines. I started new lines instead.

------------------------------------

Dear Professor Izutsu,
I promised you some schematic
A negative determination of its significations or connotations.

Things change from one context to another
"Western" metaphysics
"My" language a serious [sombre] problem
Annihilation or a negative reduction much closer

Nietzschean "demolition"
Association appeared very fortunate
De la maniére d'apprendre les langues
Value only from its inscription in a chain of possible substitutions

A region of the timeless East
A language reaching its own state of perfection
Only postpones the problem
Without saying

I "meant" [voulais-dire]
Deconstruction aspires to
Meaning and not the totality of what
Negative theology

Neither an analysis nor a critique
Translation
Is not a method and cannot be transformed into one
It is an event that does not await
Consciousness
Or even modernity

It can be deconstructed
My dear friend
I am only thereby increasing the difficulties
Deconstruction takes place everywhere
It [ça] takes place, where there is something
Not therefore limited to meaning

We still have to think through what is happening in our world, in modernity
A gathering of the destiny of being
The unity of its destination or
Its Dispersions
Will never be very convincing

What deconstruction is not? everything of course!
What is deconstruction? nothing of course!
I do not think
Good word [un bon mot]
Not elegant [beau]

Despite its essential imperfection
Transcribe in a word
Be more beautiful
Of the other which will be more beautiful
Risk and chance
How to translate "poem"?
A "poem"?...

With my best wishes
Jacques Derrida

The Musician

2005-08-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

He tunes his skin on metal motion
Hands take the shape of sound
His veins vibrate strung against the flesh
The Rhythm reverberates and amplifies in the hollow of his eyes
He becomes-as the silence dies

---------

2005-08-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

The Death

Just as under the late afternoon sky
The Windows hold one another in reflection
So will the hunter and I

A sign reads: Chinatown resident parking 10 p.m.- 8 a.m.
Buildings begin where roofs end
"I love you" just where one rooftop's embrace descends
Towards the sky like Herod

The sidewalk covered in refuse
They move forward through the behind
Though the children play-a move

Don't know is what is followed a marginal street it's way through
Direct gaze inward outside the President with a dollar mustache
Spilled ink upon canvas run across the sheet trying
To remember what it's like to be Dutch
Was it Paris? Or a bay in the sea of buildings?

Suspicion be not a stare -lonely-to meet a building always seen
Thought known so at a last too deep anger
An endless stretch so imagined seeing what's been a you for too long
Down sad free

Awoken asleep the moment I-the air is asleep too- concrete obliges bird prayer
Everything trembles piano key fingers falling a clear patch upon the street above below
Sound
The second illuminates parish falling drown oh blessed breaking
Is I oh-
Dead

Too exist

2005-08-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

A flutter too near
Deafens my eyes
As I chain a bird to my breath

A face in the face of the crowd (August Edit)

2005-08-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

Hotel Bardejov

Editing is very important- thus an edit.

This morning shoulder to shoulder
The way gray sky horizon meet
Leaving the crowd be a parting from this day

This-

"Pardon me, but have you noticed the that at one end the tunnel goes outside, brightly lit, and at the other end, it
goes underground into darkness.
The light fades into nothingness. You can walk a path-
Depending on your direction-
From darkness into light or from light into darkness,
Or you can stay into the gray in between."

-never happened

Crowd by the dark end shortest walk from the stairs
Day is too far away
Night is near

inexistent a existent.
"How could this day be today? I thought I'd ask you."
Never be.

Off the train come to a stop while I go
Buildings and cars close in pass by
Sky stumbles bye

"I don't know you but I love you!"
Is it real?
The embrace of the masses is your unspoken goodbye
Nobody in everybody
Somebody in nobody- I'm destined to be

Morning Angst

2005-07-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

Bardejov
Consciousness holds a grudge against my awakening
Open the eyes but do not see but
Blindness is seeing seeing is waking waking is being
Rise Fall
Bare skin Naked air
Inhale...eye Exhale...lips
Think to be
Sleep is dead
Just out of bed
This pain you feel
I am in…..... morning

Good morning for what is gone

Imprisoned Cross

2005-07-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

Location: Ground Zero

Revolution- Peaceful War?

2005-07-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Night non (revised)

2005-07-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

I know I don't know how to know All I can do is try to talk to the words the rush of the moments explains all of the past as
one sentence writes the whole book

Though I have no voice

On the outside the day is gone the night is gone the night is light the light is night
I can see the way i can read my little notebook i can see my shadows on the street

As if there were a perpetually setting sun

In this brightness there is no sun street lamps are the only stars because sky is black not black enough
a childhood memory faded in its brightness

The night and I we share the same silhouette

The night and I we live in a glare so bright we cannot see cannot
be
drawn to the lights

We forget what we are

Thoughts turn on a rusted axis a thousand miles too small unconscious awareness is conscience believe to dream dream to believe in dreams
Perception explains why we have been blind

Is this what i wanted since i live in their world is this what i want as well or walk away from the lights into the darkness
silhouette fades into shadow
Shock this night

fades into a blank white

Art Gallery

2005-07-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

Outside the color washes away- the world was painted upon a
canvass of gray
The summer runs down the drain as
The bleak few shiver in a step and say "The sky is rain"

There is a golden light through the gray
A flashlight beneath a blanket, a fire burning in the fog.
Leave the apartment (forgetting to turn off the rain)
And get onto the elevator outside into the building

Fly upon plaster wings in dream and float
As light as light ricocheting off one too many edges
(So rough-fingers always find an edge)
With metal rods so firmly planted- you and I- so high, free above it
all
Knowing life is only an abstraction of someone elseÂs abstraction

Cut this with interpretation watch
The blood run from plastic flesh whenever the beauty becomes too
much
Tears shine out of electronic light when the poetic vision is just
right.

Read the unreadable only when it is
Etched through the paper, the paper gone,
All that is left are a few strokes that contain
Several intimate foreign lives that frequently travel through time to buy eggs

Dance with the figures that never move
Touch horizons that can never be stood upon and
Live out lives in vast landscapes smaller than a wall
As lips embrace when two photographs are pressed together

But is it all real?
Or just a real illusion?
Too direct, perhaps just allusion to delusion?

There is no knowledge in the rendition of essence
The pieces held together only by the hope of imagination.
When the rain falls off the roof though the roof into the hallway
Feel wet while dry-

There is a man who lives only by what comes naturally
Just as whatever South Ender made this world.
He turns the parabola of a passage between two shores
Into a straight lines corridor color shape coalescence simplicity become complexity

Another revelation in a storm of ultimate meaning and truth
A flood of beauty is still a flood
Let the drowned corpse of the artist fertilize the next crop

So it seems that truth and beauty are not right in the head
Straight lines create curves, the dark shades shed brightness
When the architect forgets his building he finds cities
The musician puts his strings up on the art room wall to play his song
Those searching need only to walk away

East Boston sky

2005-07-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

Bardejov

A movement of clouds has broken chords
With the concrete symphony that performs across the sky
Playing to the orchestration of jet engines nowhere to be seen
The conductor is in the control tower
"More Bass, more Cello. Flight 3445 you are clear to land"

We don't know what's going, scary, but we're laughing

To the tune of moving gray
Off in the horizon the buildings appear to disappear to disappear to reappear
They come and go, to think we thought that we knew them so well
That they would at least grace us with a polite "good bye"

Farewell though I knew you not so well

The fog clouds stumble and trip over one another
Sometimes revealing only the tops of the buildings-
Banks and investment firms rise from the clouds
Telling us that heaven is for the stock broker and CEO
Sometimes they reveal only the bottoms-
Does that mean those people in there are dreamers?
Their heads stuck in the clouds?

I reach up but I cannot touch the clouds

Gaze to the rooftops nearbye:
The building's antenna's signal to the storm
sending out the dreams of a computer age to the dark heavens
With all our thereabouts still so far, so far

Download a file "Somber gray day" save it under "Irrelevance"

A patch of blue sky in the gray
Hangs caught on the end of crane
A mevelous accomplishment
until one realizes that they were trying to catch a steel beam
What a blunder! What can you build with a piece of heaven?

How much can you sell the sky for? Not much according to Wall Street.

But if I were in charge
I suppose I would move one of the buildings onto that patch of sky
And with the antenna's
The people there could call back and let us know
Whenever we feel down
that's the sky is all clear
Blue
No enemy bombers
No tornado bearing clouds
No angels

We could be the Horizon, we could always go

Night non

2005-06-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

I know
I don't know how to know
All I can do is try to talk
Though I have no voice

Outside
The day is gone and the night is gone
The night lights
I walk down the street following my shadows
I can read my little notebook
In this brightness there is no sun
Street lamps for stars
And a sky that is black but not black enough

I laugh and cry
Isn't this what they made?
Isn't this what they wanted?
Since I live in their world
Is this what I want as well?

And I am alone as I am one
With everyone

Oqalaluit

2005-06-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Bardejov
This in an article I wrote my freshman year. This guy was amazing. One thing I will never forget is when he told me about a scheme he cooked up with a bush pilot to smuggle Narwhale horns. The pilot chickened out at the last minute.

“If they told me that this was a suit and tie only campus, I’d tell them I don’t know what to do.” That, in a nutshell, describes Lawrence Millman, arctic traveler, linguist, writer, and amateur cultural anthropologist. He is a man who knows the ins and outs of arctic culture, has survived some of Earth's harshest climates, and knows several languages, but he couldn’t tell you where to find a nice suit, though he isn’t shy about telling a funny story or two, or ten.

Mr. Millman would certainly agree that a person has to have a good sense of humor. It would seem almost essential considering the places he has focused his travels on, Greenland and Northern Canada, some of the coldest and most inhospitable regions of the world, studying a reclusive and little known culture, the Inuit.

In fact, if it weren’t for a terrible accident, he would not have become interested in the Inuit. While taking pictures with a friend in Greenland, he fell off a small precipice, through the ice below, and into freezing cold water.

It was also his plunge into the ways of the Inuit. It was, as he described it, the Inuit who healed his body (with Crisco) and his soul (with merciless taunting).

Thus he became introduced to the two things that fascinate him to this day: That the Inuit are not the igloo dwelling savages as many believe. They have a culture and history that goes well beyond what has been depicted (including an intense love for misfortune!).

He learned their language to overcome, as the Inuit put it the “Unreasonable fear” that is inspired by whites. He was able to learn things few people know first hand, like that the Inuit give their children terrible nicknames, even naming them after excrement, just to "toughen them up".

Mr. Millman is above all a man of interesting, if not sound advice such as “If you have the opportunity, make friends with a bush pilot instead of an ordinary pilot. They take you to more interesting places.” But above all else he has a wealth of anecdotes that he has built up from traveling and studying with the Inuit.

One interesting story he recounted was how he was able to meet the last traditionally trained Inuit shaman in Greenland as he lay on his deathbed. Apparently, to become a shaman the candidate must walk miles from any inhabited areas and alone beat on a drum for a day and a night. If he or she is successful, then a primordial polar bear will rise from the earth and eat them. The would be shaman’s bones are spit out and as they strike the ground, the person is regenerated as his or herself, except that they are a shaman.

Some of his stories were humorous. He told one myth about a man who loved food so much that he needed a second stomach. He went out and searched for a stomach and finally decided on a mountain. All seemed well until the mountain fell on top of him.

Not all the anecdotes were on such a light note. Mr. Millman is greatly concerned with the difficulties facing the native peoples of Greenland and Northern Canada. He spoke at great length describing the challenges faced by the Inuit. As he put it, “They [Inuit] are not good as being white people.”

According to Mr. Millman and Dr. Potter, a English professor here at RIC who was also present, years of ignorance by whites as well as blatant attempts by various governments to rob the Inuit of their native tongue and culture has left the natives with a lack of identity and social problems such as drug abuse and alcoholism.

He feels that the Inuit had more to loose from white culture, even with the new medicine and technology that they now have access to. He said, “A culture with ties to the land and society is far better than a culture with medicine…drug abuse and alcoholism is worse than starvation and cannibalism.” The starvation and cannibalism is in reference to the harsh life Natives of Greenland led before they came in contact with whites.

Those interested in further exploring the Inuit and Lawrence Millman should look into the books written by Mr. Millman, eleven in all including Our Like Will Not Be There Again, Northern Latitudes, Last Places, Lost in the Arctic, and his recently republished A Kayak Full of Ghosts, his 1987 book on Inuit myths.

His writing has also appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic Adventure, The Atlantic Monthly, and Sports Illustrated.

Serendipity

2005-06-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

Bardejov
The most wonderful thing in the world is when something catches you off guard the first time you are experiencing it.
You don't expect it, but you are struck with a moment of truth, beauty, intensity, sadness, or connection.
Images race through your head as the blood pumps faster through your heart.
You reach out for this moment but it already holds you.
You lose all connections to the place you are in, everything becomes a powerfuly subtle embrace.
Then, just like that it is gone, over.
You listen to the song again, read the page through once more, take another glance at the photograph, but its gone.
This flower only grows once and you must pull it from the ground if you ever to truly appreciate its beauty.

Blue Paper

2005-06-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

I got that feeling again...like I'm not here, like I'm in a different place and time. I'm traveling somewhere, all alone, and I don't know where, but I'm going.

It's a feeling as happy as it is sad, as confusing as it is meaningful, as comforting as it is scary.

Its the most honest lie I've told myself.

A face in the face of the crowd

2005-06-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

Shoulder to shoulder
The way the gray sky and I meet
Leaving the crowd
Would be to part from this day
Off the train
It's all come to a stop while I go
Buildings and cars
One closes in, one passes by
Crowded in isolation
Swipe my card like the rest to get downstairs
Face to face
The crowd is gone, individuals remain
Eye to eye
To we talk? Do we connect?
Courage come disappear
A cold blast of wind- the oncoming train
Pass me bye
The embrace of the masses is your unspoken goodbye
Nobody in everybody
Somebody in nobody- I'm destined to be

Bardejov

2005-05-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

Love

Love…
“I once fell in love,” he told me.
La la la-laaaa la-la
“I once fell in love,” she whispered to me.
Laaaaaaa….la-la-la-la-lalalalalalala
“Oh, what was it like I asked?”
Blaah blaaaah-blah-blah
“Don’t know,” they said.
“It must have been nice though.”

I get on the plane. I don’t know where it’s going. The ticket was expensive. I spent all my money on it. I have nothing else left. It’s ok, right?
Love?
God it’s raining so hard. Can all this rain be good for the flight? A slippery tarmac…an endless gray sky….an empty wallet…and we're off…don’t know where.

…love…

2005-05-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

Run, run, run,

Missed the train again. Where have I been? Five minutes a year, nothing is near.

Wait, wait, wait

Have to wait a while, force a smile as I call on the phone. No people around, just alone.

Ride, ride, ride,

Riding the T, everything is backwards here, passing me. Everything goes by, no future, just the past in my eye.

hold, hold, hold

Holding on to the bar, in the orange train car. Have you ridden all day, it seems like its always the same way.

Watch, watch, watch

Watch the people, they all talk by not talking at all. We're together by being alone.

Walk, walk, walk

I should be glad, I got the big job, but just don't know, got to go, to the river where we used to talk, while the birds disapeared into the city lights like the coin that I tossed into the river in spite of it all.

Think, think, think

The river and the street, buildings and the sun, all are one, if you're going nowhere, wandering. Its ok, found the cure, for my self. The sure is my self.

Hold, hold, hold

Passing by, stop to wonder why, I never let go. Just got to hold on, and just got to be myself.

Wonderland

2005-04-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

This is based on some notes I took on March 31st when I rode the Blue line to its last stop, Wonderland.

Wonderland
We’re taking the blue to Wonderland
Dirty tenement houses pass us by
Building without a home
Memories without a tone
Loneliness
Poverty
Abandonment
Childhood memory
If this the way to Wonderland?

And as this train feels its way
Through distances that are here to stay
From the blue I gaze at the blue
Ocean, sky, an occasional beach rolls by
In the distance, to the distance
Planes are always taking off from the ground
They can be seen, but not heard
Like a person singing when a train roars bye
I can’t help but think that if Wonderland is on the ground
Why do the planes go up into the sky?

“Wonderland last stop”
A crackle like a distant applause
Then static, a relic from far away
Awaken with a crackle
“Wonderland last stop” a voice over the intercom says.
The word “wonderland” gives me a hopeful feeling
But hearing last and stop, makes me feel a bit sad
The train stops. We’ve been riding for a long time and we just aren’t sure.
We don’t know….our hearts aren’t sure
“You have to get off here” a passenger tells us.
Is wonderland not a beginning, but an end?

Spring is harsh at Wonderland.
It is here but so far away
We stand on the concrete platform.
The wind is cold, numbing, yet strangely refreshing, compared to the stale air of the
subway.
Nothing here seems special- roads, cars, faceless apartment buildings, concrete as far as one can see
The people walk off the platform indifferently
Coming close from afar- I come to see a wall.
Blink to make sure, there is wall and beyond it
The unmistakable haze that is the ocean
Yes, lets
Let’s head towards the sea
This is surely where Wonderland will be?

Is this Wonderland?
Vault the concrete to the beach
It lies just beyond where the blue and gray meet
The wind is harsher than ever here
Will it whisper the truth?
The warmth of a smile or two is all we need
The cry of a seagull is all that is received
The people here are quiet- in a way lonely
Perhaps they’re just like everyone else
But this is Wonderland after all
A few couples, joggers, people sitting alone
People mostly like us
People who look like they don’t belong anywhere-
Is that wonderland?

A friend says that there aren’t too many waves on the sea
The beach here is strange
Thin
Desperate
Its flesh is littered with the refuse of the sea and the city and into both it crawls and is consumed
It is trapped between the infinite blue of the sea and the infinite blue of the concrete
Trapped- it wants to escape
Instead it is enslaved by its own existence
What is their in a name?
They’re so useless anyway
But when it’s all you have
It’s something you have to live up to
Is this Wonderland?

As a child I played on beaches like these and though they were wonderful
Now I feel like a child again
Silly
Feeling sorry for a beach
Maybe our dreams go up too high?
Like the water that becomes the rain
Like the birds that fly
Meant to one day to fall from the sky?
Then what will we say? What will we do?
Wonderland will come for you

Conquistador I 5:08 - 5:22

2005-04-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

Here' something I've been interested in. Poetry done to the sound of music, or to put it another way, poetry that describes a song: it's sound, imagery, and sensation.
I've been thinking about it for a while. I think its kind of what Kennith Goldmsith did when he recorded every sound and motion his body made and turned it into poetry.

A sudden pause, dramatic in its brevity
The silence gives birth then dies
Female voices sing in a stark unison
In language between prayer and supplication
The somber notes flow and rise together
A flock of depressed birds
Gray skies praying for blue
From the cloud of timbres
Falls a solitary rain drop
A drop of rain lonesome in the storm
One voice from many that rises before it falls
Eyes meet in the crowd, a heart beat heard in a tempest
A siren that drags me to my sadness
As my joy races through my ears to my eyes
The beauty, the height of feeling
Forshadow the inevitable fall
Repeat-return to unison

Rambling thoughts across a rambling land

2005-04-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

This post will just ramble a bit. Tonight I am a rambling man and it's been a while since I updated.
(Able is still a punk)

As soon as I find the time, I will clean my room. Not so much because its dirty but because I don't feel like myself there. I don't find it to be a very productive/happy space, and I think its because I don't think it reflects who I am.
I have this problem with the two places that I spend most of my time in. At the newspaper office I really can't offer a solution. I only have a desk and I can't really control what the rest of the room is like in terms of appearance and atmosphere.
But my room I can change. Right now the problem is that I just put things down anywhere. This does nothing for me in an organizational sense, or in an aesthetic sense.
I used to think self expression just came naturally, but I now realize that its something you have to work at.

I don't think anyone can truly live without self expression. Each person is willing to settle at a certain level of self expression (most, in my opinion, settling at a low one) but everyone must express themselves none the less.
So what happens when expressing yourself bring you into conflict with individuals, powers, and society as a whole. Do you bend and conform, or do you keep going on regardless of the consequence?

I think who you truly are is constantly at risk, in danger of being destroyed by people you meet and social groups you join. The person you are most of the time, is really a simulacrum, a copy of something that doesn't exist, but that copy becomes reality, therefore creating what it copies.
You enter a certain group and you think "I must be like them...so I can be me, so they can accept me." So you become, copy this me that is provided by the needs of the situation, and suddenly this new you was always the real you.

I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Some might call it growing up.

Freud theorized that all neurosis was linked to the suppression of the pleasure principle, the need to gratify oneself, that the child makes so that it can "grow up".
How many of us suffer now in hopes of gaining a better future? How many actually see that better future?

A better picture for my screen
Stuck up in the sky
Grow wings and fly to it
I Fly like an airplane under the sea!

Identity

2005-04-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

“If every object derives from its difference from other objects, then every thing or object and every idea or concept refers to something else to be what it ‘is.’ ”
- Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan

You have lost yourself because you have lost your point of difference. At some point you began being just like everyone else. That’s when your identity disappeared.

Today at Able's

2005-04-02T18:20:00.000-08:00

Today had to be one of my most productive days I've had in terms of creativity and work produced.
I'm not sure what it was. Was it the weather? Having good friends for company? The music?
Maybe it's what Yoshimasu Gozo said (paraphrasing) "Keep writing everyday, and you may encounter something good. It's more than communication, it's something you look for, something you find in yourself."
Able creates a very inspirational environment. I'll try to keep some of it with me in my heart so I can keep looking and searching, until in a day or in 50 years, that instant will come along.

2:37 p.m. EST

2005-04-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

Sadness
Pain
Depth
Memory
Numbness
Culture
History
Slovakia
Communism Falling
Gracious
A tear
A smile
Heaven
Future
Hope...

Up.Date

2005-04-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

Our language and writing has an inherent rhythm to it. But can that rhythm be changed to produce new effects and insights?

Difference
Dif. Fer. Ance
Differ. An. Ce
D. Iff. Er. Ance

Hello
Hell. O
Hel. Lo

A lot of singers change the way they pronounce a word to fit the beat of a song. Especially in hip-hop. So I wonder if it can be applied in poetry?

Can. You. Hear. The. Rain. It sounds so sad?
It. Is. Because. Of. All. The dreams we've had.

It's tough. There is definitely a fine line here.

inception

2005-04-02T10:22:00.000-08:00

This is what you do on rainy days at StudioQ.