Blog Lovin'

Check out the wordpress blog Literature Police, one woman's brilliant take on the publishing business & the below par writers selling millions of paperback copies of their commercial drivel to the below par general reading public. 

"I have lived on the lip of insanity" - Ruma

Liquify by Aira

Music for The Late Summer Blues


Arms of a Thief by Iron & Wine
My Will is Good by Port O'Brien
Animal by Neon Trees
The Infinite Pet by Spoon
More To Luv by Minnutes
Coastal Brake by Tycho
Play by Stephen Fretwell


Books to Fill The Silence 


Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls
The Thorn Birds by Colleen Mccullough
The Group by Mary Mccarthy

Showing Off The Fruits of My Post Secondary Education: Shake The Dust

Shake The Dust by Anis Mojgani

This is for the fat girls, this is for the little brothers,
this is for the school yard wimps, and for the childhood bullies that tormented them,
for the former prom queen,
and for the milk crate ball players, for the Night Time cereal eaters,
and for the retired elderly Wal-Mart store front door greeters
Shake the Dust

This is for the benches and the people sitting on them
for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns,
for the men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children
for the nighttime schoolers and for the midnight bikers who are trying to fly
Shake the Dust
This is for the two year olds who can not be understood
because they speak half English and half God
Shake the Dust,
for the girls whose brothers are going crazy!
For those gym class wall flowers and for the twelve year old kids afraid of taking public showers
for the kid whose always late to class because he forgets the combination to his locker
for a girl who loves somebody else
Shake the Dust.
This is for the hard men who want love but know that it won’t come.
For the ones who are forgotten, for the ones the amendments do not stand up for
for the ones who are told to speak only when spoken to and then are never spoken to.
Speak every time you stand so that you do not forget yourself,
never let a moment go by you that doesn’t remind you that 
your heart beats 900 times a day.
That there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean.
Do not settle for letting these waves that settle and for the dust to collect in your veins.
This is for the celibate pedophile who keeps on struggling,
for the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacation alone,
and for the sweat that drips off of a Mick Jaggers singing lips, and for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner’s shaking hips,
and for the heavens and for the hells for which Tina has lived.
This is for the tired and for the dreamers, for those families that will never be like the Cleavers,
with perfectly made dinners and sons like Wally and the Beaver.
This! Is for the bigots, the sexists, and for the killers,
this is for the Big House; pin sentenced cats becoming redeemers,
and for the springtime that always shows up right after the winter,
Make sure that by the time the fishermen returns you are gone,
because just like the days I burn at both ends,
every time I write, every time I open my eyes I’m cutting out a part of myself to give to you.
So Shake the Dust, and take me with you when you do none of this has ever been for me,
everything that pushes and pulls, pulls for you.
So grab this world by it’s clothes pins and shake it out again and again
and jump on top and take it for a spin and when you hop off
shake it again for this is yours.
Make my words worth, make it not just another poem that I write
not just another poem like just another night that sits heavy above all of us,
walk into it, breath it in, let it crash through the halls of your arms
like the millions of years of millions poets coursing like blood pumping, pushing
and making you live, shaking the dust
So when the world knocks at your front door clutch the knob tightly and open on up,
running forward into it’s wide spread greeting arms
with your hands before you your fingertips 
trembling,
though they may be.


See it in its Spoken Word Glory HERE

Suess Doesn't Mind

Be who you are & say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, & those who matter don't mind.

- Dr. Seuss

How to Be Alone.

Bukowski

"I Met a Genius" by Charles Bukowski

I met a genius on the train

today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.
it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

My life for the passed year be like...

"Starting Now" - Ingrid Michaelson
"Your New Twin Size Bed" - Death Cab for Cutie


"Where painfully & with wonder, at having survived even this far, we are learning to make fire" 
- Margaret Atwood's 'Habitation' 

"The Girl Who Played With Fire"

"This world & all the creatures in it are on fire, & some of you know it." 
-Nion McEvoy

"An Invitation from Shikshantar" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting

your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled

and closed

from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain,

mine or your own, 

without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, 

mine or your own;

if you can dance with wildness and

let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without

cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being a human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;

if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy. I

want to know if you can see beauty even if it’s not pretty every day,

and if you can source your life from God’s presence. I want to know if you can live

with failure, yours and mine, 

and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver moon, ‘Yes!’

It doesn’t interest me where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair,

weary, bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you from the inside, when all else falls

away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

This week be like...

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye.

A fish hook.

An open eye.

-Margaret Atwood

"Infinitely Gentle, Infinitely Suffering" T.S Elliot.

Digging through an old anthology of mine, i found a T.S Elliot poem riddled with all of my half comprehensible notes. I dislike the first two parts, so here are parts 3 & 4. I bolded the parts that I wrote the most about. So this is, called "Preludes" by T.S Elliot. 

III.

You tossed a blanket from the bed 

You lay upon your back, and waited;

You dozed, and watched the night revealing

The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted;

They flickered against the ceiling.

And when all the world came back

And the light crept up between the shutters,

And you heard the sparrow in the gutters,

You had such a vision of the street

As the street hardly understands;

You curled papers from your hair

Or clasped the yellow soles of feet

In the palms of both soiled hands. 

IV.

His soul stretched tight against skies

That fade behind the city block,

Or trampled by insistent feet

At four and five and six o'clock;

And short square fingers stuffing pipes,

And evening newspapers, and eyes

Assured of certain uncertainties,

The conscience of a blackened street

Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled

Around these images and cling:

The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hands across your mouth, and laugh;

The worlds revolve like ancient women

Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

iLearn in June.

These are bits & pieces of my day, a bit of Children's Lit: Fantasy reading, a bit of writing. 

"An adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived"

- Ursula Le Guin's Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?'

"Female sexuality, the maturation from girl to woman, takes place in the darkness of the labyrinthine passages & tunnels beneath the ancient tombs of the dark powers of the earth" (Textbook)

13.06.2010.6:03am

Mornings building pregnant pauses

overcome with greenery

.

Cartographers in the 15th & 16th Centuries, who made maps of a steadily expanding world, were often forced to leave sections of their maps blank because no one knew what was there. In those blank spaces the would often write:

"Here Be Dragons"

Uncertainty.

This Week Be Like...

Movie: Disney's 'Alice In Wonderland'

Song : "Cath..." by Death Cab for Cutie

Book: "Eat, Pray Love" 

Omnoms: Orangina

This Week Be Like...

Today was a good day. I thought I'd share with you, the non-existent reader

(much like the non-existent intruder i imagine is always lurking in the corners, proving

that my life ultimately consists of a collection of imaginary people), a collection of weekly recommendations. 

05.25.10

Song - Life is Beautiful by Vega 4

Movie - The Grass is Greener (1960)

Book - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Foer

   

       

Riding Red Cap

Out of my irrational, neurotic fear of futility i have succumb to the energy suck that is the summer course. In an effort to avoid anything terribly challenging i took Children's Lit, which, as it turns out is significantly more difficult than one would think. The most interesting subject I've discovered so far is the folktale "Little Red Riding Hood". Below are my study notes. I know you don't care but i thought it was interesting & it's MY blog so whatever, go write your own blog. Cunt. 

Moral : Whatever their guise, a wolf is capable of making a fallen woman out of any sweet unsuspecting virgin. 

Perrault first wrote "Little Red Riding Hood" possibly as a cautionary tale for young women to avoid the blatantly sexual devouring wolf. It focuses on vanity and an unconscious sexuality, which is summarily punished. In the story Red Riding Hood undresses & climbs into bed with the wolf immediately after arrival. Within the context of this story Riding Hood makes no effort to escape his advances or fight back, making us believe that she's either incredibly stupid or is hoping to be seduced. 

The Grimm's Brothers also wrote a version of the story entitled "Little Red Cap", in the Grimm's Brothers story a woodcutter (representative of the father figure) rescues red riding cap and her grandmother from the wolf, where as in Perrault's version the wolf devours the little girl. 

Motif: Pedophilia. The wolf doesn't directly differentiate women by age. But is intent on having the younger of the two. 

Symbol: The Red Cap. Symbolizes violent emotion/ sexual emotion. Red is representative of blood & in turn, sexual maturity. The cap comes from the grandmother, demonstrating a transfer of sexual attractiveness, further accentuated by the grandmother's being too sick and weak to even answer the door. It's suggested in the text that Red Riding Cap is too young to manage the symbolic weight of what she's wearing. 

P is for Pablo Neruda.

Just thought i'd put half of a BA in english to work, all the while proving to myself that I read an acceptable amount of literature per month... by my own standards. Anyway, I've been reading a lot of Pablo Neruda. If you like this look up his poem The Flea. 


So That You'll Hear Me by Pablo Neruda

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes. 

Plath Love.

"Mad Girl's Love Song" By Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Dear Ginsberg, we will both be lonely.

Allen Ginsberg is my favorite person from this particular week in scholastics,

Haiku. 

Drinking my tea

Without sugar- 

No difference 

The sparrow shits

upside down

--ah! My brain and eggs

Mayan head in a

Pacific driftwood bole

--Someday I'll live in NY

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.

I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?

Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.

A frog floating
in the drugstore jar:
summer rain on grey pavements.
(after Shiki)

On the porch
in my shorts;
auto lights in the rain.

Another year
has past-the world
is no different.

The first thing I looked for
in my old garden was
The Cherry Tree.

My old desk:
the first thing I looked for
in my house.

My early journal:
the first thing I found
in my old desk.

My mother's ghost:
the first thing I found
in the living room.

I quit shaving
but the eyes that glanced at me
remained in the mirror.

The madman
emerges from the movies:
the street at lunchtime.

Cities of boys
are in their graves,
and in this town...

Lying on my side
in the void:
the breath in my nose.

On the fifteenth floor
the dog chews a bone-
Screech of taxicabs.

A hard on in New York,
a boy
in San Fransisco.

The moon over the roof,
worms in the garden.
I rent this house. 

This Week Be Like...

"People tend to overstate my resilience, but, of course, I hope they're right."
David Brudnoy

Working Girl.

Postcard poem being submitted tomorrow. Wish me luck friends.

Home is where your heart is, where your art is.

Where the breaking point moves like a hurricane

leaving the rubble of our lives in its wake.

The egg white sofa covers stained with

the sleeping bodies of children

who ache & sway like grown ups

resting away the stench of liquor & shame

Home is where Anderson Cooper is

singing the praises of the war torn diplomats.

The kitchen floors don't creak & they're always clean,

the room full of the stainless steel appliances

my mother never taught me how to use

& i know i don't belong here like the smooth rumble

of spanish hymns

all hips & breaded meat & femininity

Home is where the heart is.

Home is where the art is.