Green Fire Fades

2006-04-20T17:23:00.000-07:00

Full of visuals and half wit harlequins
it's full of smiles and laughter
we'll weed them out like dandelions
and your arms like batteries
and you arms are chandeliers
bought a ticket to the picture show to rip down feelings
move these walls inside myself
i lost my car keys underneath the palm tress and city lights
avert my eyes to move northwest
This is a poem, a combinationof a sentences broken up to form a rhythm.
You are a poem, little pieces of my senses broken up to form an image.

Lyrics from a band that I like thrown together in a "creative" way.

new year

2006-04-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

All the men and women
Teens and even children
Were joyed when the clock
Struck midnight,
But I knew better
It was just another hour
Of another day
A poor excuse to celebrate,
And in the corner of my room
I could almost hear
Their screams
From miles away.

2006-04-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

Falling from the top floor your lungs
fill like parachutes
windows go rushing by.
people inside,
dressed for the funeral in black and white.
These ties strangle our necks, hanging in the closet,
found in the cubicle;
without a name, just numbers, on the resume stored in the mainframe,
marked for delete.

it'll never end,
'til it gets so bad
that the ink fills in our fingerprints
and the silouhette of your own face becomes the black cloud of war
and even in our dreams we're so afraid the weight will offset who we are
all those breaths that you took have now been canceled in your lungs.
last night my teeth fell out like ivory typewriter keys
and all the monuments and skyscrapers burned down and filled the sea.

save our ship
the anchor is part of the desk
we can't cut free,
the water is flooding the decks
the memo's sent through the currents
computers spark like flares
i can see them.
they don't touch me,
touch me.

-Thursday

One of my favorite songs, basically about the everday 9-5 workers who hate their boring, dull lives. This is what I want to avoid in my future.

Journey

2006-04-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

You enter this world with a pre-determined plan,
And are immediately greeted and welcomed in.
Smiling faces surround you in every direction you look,
As you begin your journey towards a single goal.

Somewhere along the line, this plan you have seems to break.
New events always cause change, and there is no escape.
It becomes apparent that some peoples plan,
Is simply to throw obstacles in your way.

Greed, Anger, and Frustration become controlling forces,
And all you want to do is leave this world, cut this journey short.
But what keeps you going is your responsibilities to others, and promises made.
So you quickly recover, and march on more determined than ever.

Time continues on, as you keep checking off the parts towards your one main goal,
And finally comes the time when you are allowed to leave this world.
But before your life is considered a success,
You must wait in line to face one last person.

They say as one person leaves this world, another one enters,
And there will always be greetings and smiling faces for them,
And you and your journey are quickly forgotten.
This is the world we call Wal-Mart.

This is my latest workshop piece. I decided that I would write something a little different than my usual style so I tried this.

Story

2006-03-23T15:20:00.000-08:00

Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.

The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the fell of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the littlest woodchuck's face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.

Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.

There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream

I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.

I really had mixed emotions about this poem. I think it was really well written but there was a cruelness to it. I think this was meant in a bigger picture than just killing woodchucks.

Recipe for Reflection

2006-03-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

Begin by turning everything off until there is nothing but silence.

Add about 80 years of life.

Throw in millions of memories, as many as will fit.

Add a dash of recollection and a pinch of emotion

Wait as the reflection cooks

Stop when inner satisfaction is achieved

Time varies

Enjoy

2006-03-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

"To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug."

-Helen Keller

2006-03-17T06:45:00.000-08:00

Sweet swamp meets the living room of an old abandoned house
Where a tree breaks through the window where you once looked out
As the air flowed freely in that cool summer breeze
Dust becomes undistinguishable with dirt
Friends have long since passed to a place you can only hope to reach
Dreams broken down and scattered like the boards on the ground.

lyrics

2006-03-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

Then looking upwards I strain my eyes and try
To tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

"do they collide?"
I ask and you smile.
With my feet on the dash
The world doesn't matter.

When you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride
When you need directions then i'll be the guide
For all time.
For all time.

links

2006-03-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

I finally have all of my literary links up so check them out, they are pretty cool.

Setting

2006-03-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

Vacation

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls...
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby's wail and the baby's
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge...

Rita Dove

busy days

2006-03-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

Have you ever woken up early on the morning of a day that you know is going to be extremely busy or there is something that you have to do which is causing you great stress, and as your putting your shoes on to leave you see your dog laying on the couch carefree, bathing in the sun. You think "you lucky sonofabitch, I wish i was a dog and didnt have to worry about this stuff."But then again how fun would that be. You do the same thing every day, and although that's easy, it would drive us humans nuts. So when you have a busy day, at least be thankful that each day brings you new surprises, and no new day is the same as the last.

An odd combination

2006-03-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

Here's whats up. This is a piece that I wrote in english class today using a combination of lines from a Robert Frost poem, my chemistry book, and a few were my own lines. It turned out to be much better than I had expected which really surprised me. There may be some things that could be changed, but here it is as written first.

A winter garden in an alder swamp
A supersaturated solution is unstable
Freely flowing in an ocean of white dust
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree
We should expect every collision to result in a reaction
Without frequent change there wouldn't be satisfaction
It lifts a gaunt luxuriating bear
Emphasis to making qualitative predictions about entropy changes
And why does it matter how fast this occurs
Her loveless birds now flock as a winter friends
Still a semiprecious metal
In the heart of the land
To say which buds are leaf and which are bloom
Production is by direct reduction
To give life a new generation

My poem

2006-02-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

Here is my poem that i used for workshop. I figured I might as well put it up here. I made a few changes, but after thinking about it, I decided to leave it untitled. No title I could think of seemed to fit, but if anyone has suggestions I'm listening.

Dawn eased in on the shore of a lake,
Whose water appeared clear and pristine,
Surrounded completely by mature evergreens,
In the grayish dull light that makes eyes dilate,
And silence so intense, it pierces ears in a high pitched ring.

But slowly arose the rumble of boats,
That persisted all day in a monotonous tone,
All colors of the rainbow could clearly be seen,
In the water which was poisoned with leaked gasoline.

Broken shards of glass and rusty tin cans,
Sliced the feet of children as they playfully ran.
Escaped plastic bags decorated the trees,
And waved around in the afternoon breeze.

Soon the sun completed its slow arching descent,
And the shadows again blanketed the land,
Where all creatures were once free to roam,
Now stolen be exaggerated vacation homes.

And through the darkness came howls full of suffering and pain,
Only to be drowned out by the fireworks bang.

random lyrics i like

2006-02-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

Its those nights alone where your driving

And the sky just looks a little funny

Your thinking of the worst you figure out the worst

Right after you figure it all out you find a way to straighten your head out

But what if you are wrong and the world is adding up

Its throwing signs from random places

To keep you at your toes so you dont figure it out

Before you figure it out

I hate myspace

2006-02-16T19:25:00.000-08:00

Myspace

If you dont know what is you won't understand anyof this, and you're totally unhip in the world of teenage girls and creepy men.

What a good idea, a place where everyone can have their own "webpage". Seems innocent enough. No nudity allowed or otherwise offensive material...but their are downfalls. And a lot of them.

I have witnessed the progression of myspace from a casual activity to taking over the lives of millions of americans. It's addiction. Who doesnt get excited when they see the prompt for new comments or new friend requests followed by an exclamation point!

omgomg who is my new friend...ooohh its my best friends boyfriends stepcousins half sisters grandmothers godfather. Sure i'll add him.

13 year old girls also seem to think its required to put pictures on that fall just short of nude. And when you are a 58 year old horny child molester, that is friggen sweet. It makes me sick.

People actually fight in person over myspace. O M G I am sooooo not in your top 8 friends and you definityly left some chick a message that said "damn girl you be lookin' fine". I found it after navigating for 16 straight hours. I hate you. We're through whore.

..... gotta love it

imagery in lyrics

2006-02-11T19:18:00.000-08:00

These are lyrics from a song by Death Cab For Cutie. I put them on here because i think that they paint a perfect picture in our minds of a place we've all been before.

And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time. As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409. And I rationed my breathes as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today. As each descending peak of the LCD took you a little farther away from me.

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye. It stung like a violent wind that out memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds. But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all. And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself.

Imagery

2006-02-09T13:45:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt from Sister Godzilla by Louise Erdrich. It creates a clear image in the readers heads of this womans hands. A simile was used along with two metaphors to compare this womans hands to things that we can easily picture in our heads, making this a perfect example of how imagery works.

"When she swept the air in a gesture meant to include them all in her opening remarks, her hands fixed their gazes....Her hands were beautiful, as white as milk glass, the fingers straight and tapered. They were the hands in the hallway print of Mary underneath the cross. They were the hands of the Apostles, cast in plastic and lit at night on the tops of television sets. Praying hands.

what a beautiful poem

2006-02-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

Little
white clouds big with
different funky shapes
circles, squares, triangles and octagons
I like bananas!
But not as much as grapes
I like strawberries so much better
I like Ice Cream so much better
On a cold day
The crisp air was fresh
because of the rainy weather
it was hard to see
I can't believe they are laughing at me
And I don't understand why
But I understand so little
I am unable to see the truth
My eyelids stitched together

This is an excerpt from "A Sand County Almanac" by the late famous writer Aldo Leopold.

2006-01-31T17:02:00.000-08:00

We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.
In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks.
We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
* * *
Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.