A New Beginning

I start classes for my MFA in poetry tomorrow. I’m going to Columbia College in Chicago and have been moved into my apartment in beautiful Bucktown for a little over a month. I’m about to start a crazy lifestyle that I don’t want to stop for a long time.

It’s crazy getting my mind situated into the reality that this is life now. It’s the first time I’ve ever really lived outside of Michigan. It’s the first time I’ve ever really lived by myself. Chicago is the third largest city in the country and it feels like it. When I go to the bar with my Michigan ID, the bouncer looks at the ID funny even though I’m sure he sees it all the time.

This has basically led to me living moment to moment. I don’t really consider my macro situation lately. It’s kind of been just finishing tasks, one after another, and getting through evenings, dinners, dishes, nights.

I’ve been drinking a good bit of wine.

As my work responsibilities wind down (I’m continuing to work part-time remotely from home), I’ve really been considering what to do with myself. I think point one is to start making a name for myself in the poetry world in every way possible. I got a position as a Columbia Graduate Ambassador for the poetry program and will be pointing this blog to my weekly posts on that blog. I am looking at contributing to blogs such as HTMLGIANT with some reviews etc. I am obviously ramping up my poetry production and will be submitting a lot more now.

I need to get into the mode that this is life, but it feels funny, like my foundation’s been moved and I’m swimming but really I’ve been swimming for a while and it’s felt funny, looking back.

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angry young man

jack sits at a diner table alone.
he picks at his eggs running, burnt toast,
bacon curled up disgusting like it’s hard
to cook bacon it’s just bacon and oh god,
the liquid light climbs up the mirror
toward the clock and the din disappears
and fork over plate he thinks
her outstretched and now that man
damn it, no, stop,
oh god,
the feel of a jaw unhinging under raging kunckles
of a bloody running no stop it and stop
and fork over plate and down and
he feels it in his neck, shoulders, chest,
eyes unfocused breath and breath.

stop. try again. food to mouth
bacon, how hard is bacon and
fork over plate
rage problem i have a problem
i’m scared of me and

stop. breath and stop. chest and neck
and breath and breath and stop it
stop it stand up cash
and door and car and stare
out unfocused stop it breath
and breath and breath and breath and feel,
for once, damn it who’s right stop,
ignition, radio and focus and clock.

three minutes.

(2 notes   /   )

shadow, dancing

i could become like a shadow
dancing on the sidewalk while
my body stands lamely
between the sun and me
sidewalk jiving,
obstructing dream
conquests i strive toward timeless
with a body stuck in time,
grinding its gears at a current endeavor
that creeps into being in the real.

we only make things to share with others
or nourish ourselves, the other.
we share time only, really,
pick a moment close enough
you’ll see that you are feeling
air exit your lungs to remind you
of your breathing

and i’m dancing, and i’m dancing,
the sun and i are dancing and
the sun’s time is leaving
and my time is fleeting and
i am a shadow existing in and out
of time with you the body lamely my mind
or a share of my mind
and my mind and my mind and
my mind shares with no time so
it exists not
less the spots.

(2 notes   /   )

artistic thing

i am a sharp thing
of the sun where i
process energy
while a rock reflects
mindlessly,

and a lens merely focuses,
but i process energy through
time in a non-linear manner,
the world’s most complicated machine
selling his time and improving his function.

can one have more thoughts than another?
are we an economy of thoughts on the market?
nobody needs an ideas person.

i am the world’s most complicated machine.
i take inputs and process them unlike
the reflective moon, so stupid though powerful,
for i am small, i am a small processing thing,
the world’s most complicated machine,
and i define output through words and my fingers
and my voice and i make them pretty
according to the world’s most complicated
algorithm,
or something,
for i am a living artistic thing
thinking and feeling and leaving
traces of my time and hoping
they are pretty,
unlike the reflective rock
or focusing lens,
approved output from this world’s
most complicated machine,
a living artistic thing.

(2 notes   /   )

Biphasic Sleeping Update: Day whatever

Biphasic sleeping is just napping and I take naps most days now so I can stay up late and it works swimmingly. The Spanish got this whole siesta thing pretty spot-on.

I’ve found as long as I try to nap in the general vicinity of 7:30 I’m fine. When I try and push it back to like 10:00 or so and just catch an hour, things get a little fuzzy.

Now to make another big push forward so I can get some of this work I’ve been doing, you know, LAUNCHED.

)

schism

and then my soul was chopped from me;
bright gem; thing i had nutured lovingly.

when i went to bed i set it aside
away from her, even, when that was right,
which mind led to disasters i’ll have you

know the truth about the matter now
was distant then, a glimmer in the glass

on sunday colored brightly and also
all that was good about those sundays when

i sat nervous and sinful at the pew
and then my soul was chopped from me.

know the truth about the matter now
from spiritual sages through the ages
and wisdom tested for eons and more:

there is no soul to cut all is the soul
sun and moon and it’s alright son it’s alright son.

(3 notes   /   )

dentist feelings (an abc poem)

always beware callous dentists.
empathy for growing heaping imperious
jarring keen lumbering monstrous
nasty omnipresent PAIN QUAKES
remains someone’s task,
until vacation with xanax yields zen.

This is for a challenge from @harriet_poetry

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Biphasic Sleeping Day 4: Keeping it real

So after making sure everyone understands that I know I’m just taking a nap every day I reminded myself of this same fact when I went to take my nap yesterday. Basically I told myself if I ended up tossing and turning too much I would just get up later. Screw it. 

So naturally I had a wonderful nap, got up at 9:00 like I’m supposed to, watched some AFL while hanging out with my girlfriend, and did some work with a beer before I rolled into bed at 3:45. It was nice, kind of like how a Friday should be. 

I could get to like this. 

(2 notes   /   )

drunk poetry with calculus

make yourself remember that beer
makes you happy. every day.
remember that beer flows like crystals
in the sand, rather sand through
crystals, keeping time in an
aggregate manner and
backwards and again.

Regression. Regression to the mean is comfortling
like gravity back to the carrying surface.

the average of existence is the carrying surface
for our lives, day by day, and gravity imitates
lives like lives imitate art.

derivatives. integrals. calculus for the artistic soul.
tangents between us shift forever, land together
in a pot of unused ingredients before lent,
and i feel rich for food and paczkis.

)