Spontaneoous Me

Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d bank—
the primitive apples—the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call
them to me, or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I always carry, and that all men carry,
(Know, once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty, lurking,
masculine poems;)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic thumb of love—breasts of
love—bellies press’d and glued together with love,
Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after love,
The body of my love—the body of the woman I love—the body of the man—the body of
the earth,
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down—that gripes the full-grown
lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself
tremulous and tight till he is satisfied,
The wet of woods through the early hours,
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across
and below the waist of the other,
The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,
The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming,
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still and content to the ground,
The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,
The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one,
The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where
they are,
The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh
where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,
The limpid liquid within the young man,
The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful,
The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at rest,
The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in others,
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that flushes and flushes,
The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master
him; The mystic amorous night—the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers—the young man all color’d,
red, ashamed, angry;
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turning
her vigilant eyes from them,
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d long-round walnuts;
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals
never once skulk or find themselves indecent;
The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,
The oath of procreation I have sworn—my Adamic and fresh daughters,
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to
fill my place when I am through,
The wholesome relief, repose, content;
And this bunch, pluck’d at random from myself;
It has done its work—I tossed it carelessly to fall where it may.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

History is encouraging. That taco goes out to my fasting wrestling friend Eric. Since he can't eat he draws tacos all over his paper, so I drew him a SUPER TACO.

The next one, well, that explains just about everything with Kenyans. Piss off a giraffe, run or die.

What has happened, of late

This really needs no explanation. Right there is the fine art of techno, doing its work.

sleep

running with a streetlight streamer pulled down from the rafters of a city asleep with a neon cowboy sitting on the bar with Jackie eating lemons and tequila and sticky syrup from a navel abandoned long ago upon the polished wood slipping across with slopping foam of an amber brew thrown over to Steve who sits waiting patiently in leather eating peanuts from a crystal ash tray that slipped from a hand ages ago and busted Steve in the head, he wears the scar proudly just like the one from the war hiddin behind his bandanna under the helmet as he crosses the bar and walks out grounding his hog into the gravely knocked apart asphault of the outer city, raring down into the desert leaving and blowing the streamers about that i picked up from a party somewhere with birthday hats and cake in the midtown park before the raccoons came to gorge upon the candles and crawl upon the tables in snarling bushy masses their bandit masks hiding their true rabid identities under their oreo fur striped on the hat of Johnny with his high water overalls pulled across his bare chest with one strapped hooked as he swings his legs in the Kentucky back country off the dock that his grandpa built, Grandpa Dave with the hooker tattooed on his forearm and his chubby fat cigars he grew so fond of when he was warring with his boys, flying bombers off a southern sea and dropping those packages that exploded in a million tiny embers hours later when the flames ebbed sending tree confetti across a crispy forest with crispy houses and crispy cities, sleeping cities where the whole city sleeps and the other nations send love for the cities, send parties and clowns in white coats with their instruments plugged in their ears, humming with the beat of the faint heart and dancing in the moonlight, dancing around the horizontal bodies in the tents with the people wrapped up in their mummie stuff like the kings of old buried in the sand for six months then pulled out and embalmed and encased in gold like a christmas choclate months old in the discount basket at the grocery store in the squeeky tiled floors and cold produce section buying milk and bread before the storm comes in and kills the power in the sleeping city when the emergency lights come on and the streetlight streamers are hard to catch like fireflies on the summer nights when I was a kid, jumping for the flourescence of a summer night streaming in the cities that sleep

late night

the soft stars fall
in light speed
against the glass of her rubber wheeled space vehicle
the space in the high beams is a sucking black
misty with swirling, unique stars
the space ahead turns red
as the spaceship cruises under dozens of
streetlight suns
blanket cloud nebulas hazy in the city
the stars collect upon the outer edges of the main bay window
wiped away to fall behind
and whip into a gravitational wind
the intercom sings out,
"Tell me, will you stand by your man"
60 miles in hyperspeed
traveling to galaxies unknown
down a yellow lined road

Fishy

So swimming led me to think of, more swimming
and the word of the day


Which is!
Ichthyoid

Go ahead, say it.
Feel the tfheeeee
then make the oi
OI!
then end, let down on the sad little D
unless you said it loudly
and you spit a little
which is perfectly acceptable
and preferable
revel in the ickiness of the word

Because, sure enough, it means fishy.
If you don't love the science of fishes and little fishes and sharkses
you might not know this
so, if you're ichthyoid
you've got the terrible characteristics of a fish
which may be good in describing you're favorite swamp monster, he may approve and not swallow you whole
I may have saved your life

also use it to describe...
goldfish
platypuses-yeah, they take all the shit
your scaley friends
anglers
Aquaman
women....in context
Sardines!
People playing Sardines
People that look like dead fish.
small fry

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"

Disney freaks.

Simpering

this is incredibly disturbing
and I don't lie
when horses and other animals die
they melt them
at the hospital
and give their fat to
soap companies
so, think of Fight Club
when you're showering down

To be clean, true, in the purest form, what must you go through to find that?

Must it be a following of morals set?
By people long ago, or religious factions that wrote it for you, to be followed out.
Not strictly, but just guide lines, and they will always forgive you, even if you purposefully break the rules.

Or is it, giving up everything you have a stake in, throwing it off, and finding what you believe is right, and writing that down so that other people do not have to find what is theirs, but can follow you.

Or is it taking a shower, being baptized, going through trials.

Is it all these?
There aren't answers, and I refuse to find them.

I didn't write this, this is my stolen poem to men

A Woman waits for me--she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.

Sex contains all,
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results,
promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal
milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth,
These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of
itself.

Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his
sex,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that
are warm-blooded and sufficient for me;
I see that they understand me, and do not deny me;
I see that they are worthy of me--I will be the robust husband of
those women.

They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right--they are calm, clear, well-
possess'd of themselves.

I draw you close to me, you women!
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for
others' sakes;
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.

It is I, you women--I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable--but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for These States--I
press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually--I listen to no entreaties,
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated
within me.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new
artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
interpenetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I
count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,
immortality, I plant so lovingly now.
-Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is so full of himself
I tried to cut out a part of this poem I liked
I liked it all
Walt Whitman is always in teen spirit
and I'm pretty sure he would have wear flannel
and chucks
if he was alive
he understands
every age of man

so here's to you
men ....and Walt

Dock of the Lake

The dock was warm
and below
the murky iris color
of his eyes, the water
was cut in darker and clearer portions
by the evenly proportioned wood
nailed together
on which we lay
I wondered what lay beyond
and his thoughts
that I wish I could read
what lay beyond
in the strawberry ice cream
of his brain
I did care
whatever he may say about the sky being my lover
I may be entranced by what lay beyond
the blue
but more, really, by just what he saw
with his mind
the neurons firing on and off
to make him breathe
I wanted to know
what he thought


But, at the same time
I was so far apart
so seperated by unusual ramparts
that I built
only by my own confusion
in a salt-lick castle
built on sand
so impersonal
as if I was the sun
I worshipped
I tried to give him insights
if maybe, too, he was wondering
as to where the citrus center
of my pink grapefruit brain
was wandering around
or maybe it was just sitting
blank faced
as many vegetables do
on a park bench somewhere

The wood of the dock was cutting into my back so I pulled myself up, the water that was soaking into it from my hair leaving a shodow of where I was originally. His eyes were shut as I walked to my bag where the rest of the dock was set in, immovable, with posts, but I knew as I traveled farther away he could see me, squinting down past the rest of horizontal body and against the incessant glare of the sun. Grabbing two towels seated on the top of the bag I stuffed one under arm, flipping out the other one and wrapping it lopsided over my hair, taking the step down to the tethered, unmounted dock we were both laying on, my weight depressing it only slightly. I walked back over, the lake breeze cooling my body and I wrapped the towel around my shoulders and stretching out to tap him on the shoulder and lift his head up so that I could lay the towel under his head. Instead he sat up, ungracefully, propping himself first on one elbow, then on the other, then pushing off with the arm farthest from me, so that he had rolled his body toward me, his eyes still not open completely. I knew at the moment that all he could see was white dots as the sun had left its imprints on his eyes. He took the towel from me and sat completely up, drawing his legs in and involuntarily shivering, the heat sometimes chilling you and warming you simultaneously. I sat back, pulling the towel completely across my back and around to the front of my knees with thumb and forefinger holding the edges, looking past him to the rest of the lake and looking back as he settled, sitting indian style closer to me. I rested my chin atop my knees and he smiled, hazily, honestly, and scooted closer so that his shins were at my toes. We both sat there serenly, a million things to say, but no better way to say them. Wrapping the towel around his own shoulders he patted down his hair, then set his hand on my foot. I smiled at him then.

I should tell you.

I don't have school tomorrow, the realization is sweet. I may stay up and try to become the genius I'd love to be. Or I could stay up and....watch television, read Walden, do core work-outs, create cookies, and memorize Johnny Cash songs. All of which are better if you have a person to share it with, a cup of coffee and you could find that one viral video of Allen Ginsberg dancing in his documentary.

"Doth grow the greater still, the further downe;
Till that abounding both in power and fame,
She long doth give the sea her name."
-Thoreau

I've done some late thinking on the past year since we are officially seventeen days in, eighteen in an hour. I probably should have done the thinking over the Summer or possibly while the events of last year were occuring, but my thought process has always been to sit back and watch how things play out, and that putting a hand in only caused the events to occur more erratically. It also happened with this last year that I just didn't understand enough to care.
Getting feedback on what I've been doing, just how it affects...everything, should probably lead me onto further self reflection, even though that doesn't sound remotely interesting.
I'm promising myself now, on well, electronic paper, that this semester will be different than my mediocre performance in the last one. I could bring myself to say a million excuses for my performance, for the grades I've pulled out, but I can't do that. I've done that too long....for everything that has happened in the last half of last year, too.
But, the whole slate is wiped clean with this oncoming week. With this burgeoning year, a new semester, with the calm that comes from having someone that will always be on my side. Thank you for that.

I've realized a great deal

A. I do not understand pre-cal, and I probably should. I should also learn more than what I have learned...up 'til now. It's barely getting me by.

B. That I like writing, but I don't like sharing what's closest to me, and I'm sorry if you expect that.

C.That constantly talking to people leads to less self reflection, leads to less creativity and less revelations, even though I don't have much need for them. Let's face it, if I haven't wrapped my mind around the subjects now, I'm not going to. Not unless I become bedmates with my textbook and cut myself completely off. Both of which sound very cold and unhappy places to be, especially comapared to lately.

D. I should probably get my priorities straight about exactly what I want. With everything. Everything. Even if this IS an unobtainable goal.

E. That besides everything else, January has been a very lucky month.

Sing it, if you feel the need

I always sing the praises for
alcoves
and for the misty, blanketed nights
that reflect city lights so easy
and call to them moths
I will always sing the praises for
trees
and lilies that only bloom in July
and the soft moss that only grows in the shade
I will always sing the praise for
purposely sitting in the dark
and then turning the lights on
in front of a mirror
just to watch your pupils dilate
I will always sing the praises for
the music that gives you goosebumps
when you push the right pedal on a piano
and the note stretches
long into eternity
and a howling guitar
and attempting to sing a harmony and a melody
all at the same time
I will always sing for
the whistling birds
scraping the skin off your knees
the smooth acceleration of running downhill
the pervasive feeling of chalk dust
Praise, I will
how in a crowd of people all milling
and talking muderously to the ears
you can always find the voice you want
I will always praise
a mountain sun
a warm shower
slowing your heartbeat
and taking long breaths
and sinking back into the water
holding yourself there
and counting out
how long you can hold your breath there
your lungs burning

Zydeco continuation

Zydeco in it's English translation means green beans
or American music
so you should all, all be listening
because it is also dance music
did you know that?
I expect not
so here

there you go
go
go

Zydeco

"One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter."
— Henry David Thoreau

It's been hard to put thoughts down this last school week, because I was pulling out too much material for writing, and when that happens the door shuts on anything I actually feel confident writing. And when it's shut, there really isn't any prying it
unless I want shitty writing

But, I've been under the influence of music....sort of
and summer
and Thoreau
and Sophia Coppola
and the laziness of running, and then sitting back and realizing
that there weren't any due dates this week
so I didn't push myself
very hard
at all
to write decently, even about things I'm passionate about
failing my exams put a damper on that
and I'm going to wait attentively for the repercussions
but for right now I'm going to be incredibly lazy
so there


I would like to share with ya'll...yeah ya'll a little tasty music

that I may or may not have been listening to
not that you like my music, but personally, I've learned not to take offense

let's see
eins) Ella Guru- Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
zwei) I Think Ur A Contra- Vampire Weekend
drei) Slow Poison- The Bravery
vier) Governor Slugwell- Lord Buckley
funf) (the most fun number before sechs)GNG BNG- Flying Lotus

jeepers, that's it

western

the sky is one rippling
cable knit sweater
a sweet faded old lavender pastel
the twisted knits blurred as
the farbic is washed and rewashed
and cleared into a chlorine clear
hard blue topaz set in prongs
and ruffled only by
the lightest whisps
of spare cotton blown about
that catches the light this afternoon
a cashmere sheared a millenia ago
and much longer still
longer than I could possibly imagine
but would like to, even with the fragile limitations
of this human mind
how far beyond
the lilac dye spilled and diluted across
that far stretched space does splay
behind me the western sun
makes mauve inside the boundaries
above and beyond where I stand
in front, along
the wall of untouchable clouds
that when it sinks to Earth
is only a white mist
so it has more beauty far above
me and the rolling hills
though it looks soft and warm
as the sienna tints back toward the west
spread in arcs and visible bands
across the fabric of the sky
weilding a loom
that ties in bands
of heavenly brass
wrapped in the muted fabric
along the east

Head Splits

Sitting, sitting, sitting. The whole house is empty. Not a person, not a piece of furniture fills it. Except for me. I sit in the backroom, sit on the floor there.
Here I can hear everything, but see nothing except the white walls in front of me. I can see the marks that scuff up the wall, put there by a family that isn't mine. I can see the ill fitting door with the broken handle. I know there is a window behind me and when the blinds are not pulled down against the gray of the day it views a field and beyond the road, unoccupied during the afternoon. There I sit. I sit and sit. The floor's cold chill travels up through my back giving me that feverish chill from the oppressive heated air, unmoving in the stillness of the room. The heat radiates out from the radiator in the back corner of the room behind me but the heat isn't enough to warm me as it fills the upward expanses of the room. It cannot slide through the floor to the center of the room as the cold pulls the heat down into the ground, down into the first floor, out through the outer walls, the crawl space, the closet at the side of the room, the hallway that the ill fitting door leads off to, down through the first floor to the basement and then into the red clay and rock sitting under the cement. Behind my eyelids the room looks red where the light has traveled in through the blinds and blinds me by jumping off the milky bright white walls. The light cuts a bright square hole out of the floor, makes the wood glow orange as the rest of the floor is a stale brown. The light shimmers upon the dust of the room that has not yet settled upon the floor, settled around where I sit indian style. My back is curved uncomfortably as I sit, I sit...I am sitting, with elbows perched on my knees, the palms of the hands cradling the chin that I am too lazy to hold up high. Each breath makes my back ache, makes me want to shift my legs and lay there in the warmer patch of sunlight, but I am too lazy and unmotivated and the sunlight is bright on the eyes and my head is spliiting from the gathering blanketed heat. So I sit, sit there retracting my thoughts back from beyond the room into myself and into the room, replaying past eras through my mind. As I do the dust gathers on the jersey of my dress, in the folds that collapse between my knees and around where my elbows touch my knees. My thoughts then are let free and return back to my fingers and I heave a sigh. I think of the bright painted ceilings that look like the sky, a sky that is untouchable and full of airplanes and men laying upon different clouds trying to touch hands. I think of how the room would smell like paint if I painted this sky that is only past my eyes upon the ceiling of the bare room. But it is too hot, and I am sitting, sitting where the room is cold and clammy, the paint would drip and form a sky around me on the floor, the drips stretching from ceiling to floor would make bands of blue sky and airplanes that I could walk through, the bands elastic and stretching as you climbed your way through to open the window and the bands holding you back as they catch like glue upon my arms as I break away from the fresh paint smell.

A car named Desire.

That tan bronco, that tan bronco that sat all through the end of the summer and into the early parts of fall outside the tire store on the main stretch cutting through town. That tan bronco was one of the loveliest cars I had ever laid eyes, sexier than a T-birds wings or cute little german import. There was so many things I wanted to do in a car like that. Smaller than a regular bronco and unpretentious with a matte sandy paint and grey leather seats. I didn't know what year it was, how many miles per gallons it got or how many miles it had on it. It was used, it was me, and all those things didn't matter. I would take it at its face value if I could have it, and oh how I did want it. I asked my dad everyday before I got my real liscence if we could take a look at it, just to look, so that I could put my hands on the door handles. He claimed that broncos were risky, they flipped and that I didn't have the money to pay it off. That was true, I was saving with pennies for a college education, but I wanted that to be my car. I was heartbroken. The whole idea of it, so many stories I would have with it.

Driving down 460 East with both windows down, my left arm a bit darker than the right as I set it on the windows ledge all summer, baking it in the hot summer heat. My hair splaying out against the head rest and my white t-shirt light and yellow in the evening sun. Sunglasses tan cutting across my freckled cheeks as the streaks of sun pour through my spotted windshield like light through bubbly, cold beer. In that car I would drive through Waverly and hunt up a large tin of peanuts, homemade peanut butter, a bag of blueberry bagels, a couple of oranges and a jug of water. I'd set these in the back seat filled with plastic buckets for collecting shells, a bag of t-shirts and shorts and my mom's old sweaters, a shortie wet suit, a skim board and a big yellow dog named Lily. Conor Oberst would cry to me through my speakers as I'd head furthur East down to the port cities I haven't visited extensively since I was a child. Picking out salt water taffy in the corner stores I'd roll past the hotels and tourists. There I'd meet with old old friends and learn to surf in the Atlantic's small pull and push and visit the state park where I'd once gone as a child and seen horse tracks cutting through the white deep sand. There I would park and climb the dunes with my dog and read about the secret of Virginia Dare until the daylight ran out and I'd pitch my tent upon the sand or lay the back seat down and curl up with a dog as my partner and a towel as my pillow. After a deep dark night with a sea breeze chill along the leather seats I'd wake and run down the beach. Playing in the still cold water at dawn and watching the dolphin fins on the small rollers that hit the beach minutes later I'd fill up a whole day. Playing in the water before the start of fall takes all its warm heat away with the curving currents.

A car that smells like grapefruit and irish spring soap and has room enough for a disco ball in the back seat. Thats what that bronco would be. I still dream about it, about tracking sand onto it's floorboards and singing with Linda Ronstandt to the cold open sky along the deserted pine lined back roads, illuminating glowing eyes in the headlights as I rush by.

I want that car.

Candy

A couple weeks ago I finally saw the movie Candy. A harrowing tale about two heroin addicts. The movie was...sad to say the least and I didn't get into it as deep as I thought I would just so that I could stay sane. But in the preview (which I watched several times before seeing the movie, sort of like looking over the cover art of a book to see if that book 'looks' good, I love aesthetic appeal...yadda yad) it has Heath Ledger speaking one of the most beautiful pieces of prose I may have ever heard other than All The Difference (Nature Camp thing), by e.e. cummings. Here it is, enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrudC0STJ0U

the lines are from
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

-usually I'm not much for sappy love poems, but this is different in a way I can't explain like,
the roses growing on the brick walls of my house
or the pine trees that lay past the creek where the bobcat tracks are

timeless in a sense that it could all rush away happily without you.

the complete poem

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
e.e. cummings


watch the movie if you dare try to understand the power that drugs hold over people, but nature is a much more serious drug. It's what we are all born into. It can be sweet and sour and gorgeous breathtaking and life shattering.
Maybe that's why I love it so much. Eternally. I don't mind talking about it this way, where I live I can always touch it. Maybe not the mountains, which are so very enticing, but I've got the hills.

"When I first saw Candy, birds flew in the sky"
sweet paper rainshowers

Sunset Kin

I worship the kids that are alright
with eyes like light-brights
cutting holes into your walls at first dawn
like stars cut through the dark with their brawn
muscled bright with rays of pumped iron
lifting the sleepless from their bed like a house fire
running down the streets with boots on
throwing rocks at you from your front lawn
the rocks land on the floor of your bedroom
wide eyed you stare stiff as the shadows loom
but you worship the kids that are alright
showing up like restless candlelight
flicking through the town like old magazines
dialing up the pace of a running frenzy
escapades through tunnels of a living train
running fire through it as it starts to rain
never shaving or bathing or caring at all
just lighting a match through your brain as they call
the spark starts to burn down the leg to your feet
and you catch them moving down the sun warmed streets
you can't catch them, you know, their so damned fast
with their pants legs sawed off and calves of burnished brass
they race towards the fields where the grass is long
and gracefully weave with a flag and a song
a path towards the trees where the fires lick
at the boughs of trees made of needles and sticks
these kids that I worship make signs in the air
and breathe smoke out their nostrils in a sinking trail
their bodies are fierce and made of smooth stone
and the voices boom freely through our shaking bones
my legs are aching and my body is cold
the faces in the firelight look shadowed and old
drawn out in grisly expressions of love and hate
this scene would be diminished if I tried to recreate
the way they stared into the evening dim
over the smoke in their eyes making a transparent film
and did squint and suck in their mouths with distaste
at foreigners like us from a civilized place
then one stepped forward with a mellow aura
walking around the fire we could see she was wrapped in flora
flowers flowed out of her dirty locks
and her garments were an assortment of leaves and rocks
she breathed into our ear the life that we could now have
behind our eyes her words did calve
an iceburg from the glacier of our civilized world
a future life, unhasseled, unworried dripped into our souls
pumping in the heat, the vision she made worked like a fire bellow
at the spark from the match that had originally caught our brains
and made them run after these wild spirits through the pain
these alright kids are my kin now
worshipping them would be close to sin now
we are all gods upon the rocky ground
and through the yards and fields we do bound
now I throw the rocks that land upon your floor
and with heavy feet you roll out the door
to follow us down the darkened streets
to dance with flushed faces around the fire to pounding beats
and join a world you had no part of
until we wrenched your bitter soul from a civilized world.

Personally Impersonal

This will be my first personal post,
just for the record, the Anthony Todd post was, I must say, pretty personal, but since it was obviously all about how awesome Anthony Todd is and about the whole cute, deep, inside parts of our relationship, it only halfway counts. And the one about music, is too abstract to be personal since I really hate that I wrote it.

But, this post shall be all about Baine's, the small, or somewhat large, depending on what you are comparing it to, coffee shop/bookstore/music/CD/guitar supply/pottery selling/ good food making/live music/ latte art creating store we have here on main street Appomattox. Now, Appomattox, is to say the least a very...slow paced town, with somewhat like minded people that are saddled in their ways of 'down to Earth', 'homegrown'...thinking. So, one might think, a cool but not hip, definitely not hip, but more urbane place might not catch on here. But, thankfully it has and celebrated its 5th birthday last year. The building itself was dilapidated and went under a restoration well before that, as well as most of mainstreet and first evolved into an antique's shop, or this being my first memory of any store that is in the original Baine's building. The shop was very large if I can recall and seemed to be busy when it first opened, but, I guess you could say, fortunately closed. Bryan Baines, the owner, then bought it along with his wife Debbie and developed a coffeeshop from it. The shop was very sparse at first and the furniture and books was bare bones at my first memory of it, being that I was only 11 at its inception. The hardwood floors were dark, but, overall the store was light, helped out by a sky blue ancient sort of tiled lifted ceiling and large front windows that look directly out onto the street, to the railroad tracks and farther on to Liberty. Not until last year was the upstairs open as well, which is pretty spacious and very quiet, usually, for studying or reading or just hanging out. I really did sort of fall in love with it when I was younger, just the feeling of being there, usually when it was cold during the winter, on Fridays or Saturdays when live bands come and play covers, their own songs, or music in general, and I would sit with my friends or my sister, squeezing into the kids section and playing scrabble since the leather couch space was always occupied and I didn't want to hover near my parents. The delectable drinks were also a draw, and I should probably credit the store for a coffee addiction that has only grown over time. Treated to cheescake and warm drinks and lively bluegrass music I spent good times developing memories there. As I got older, though, my time became split and I didn't have the ride, nor the free time to spend there as much through early high school. I always wanted to work there though, but Jude beat me sophmore year since he was older than I was. I then pestered Bryan the rest of the year about him possibly hiring me, until, I think, inevitably he caved and I was promised a job in late August, a couple months after my sixteenth birthday when the summer was coming to an end. The job cut lengthened an already collosal schedule and unfortunately I stopped running because I couldn't manage everything. But, I still loved working there and as my schedule shortened and the days became shorter as well, I took running back up. Now, my Friday nights are more eventful with me working, the crowds usually come in waves as church groups come to visit or friends meet up and it varies on the celebrations or performances of the night. The store caters to many different types of customers, old to young, talented, artistic, talkative or sociable people who like to come in, smell coffee, listen to music and chat. I don't mind the late nights, even when I have to study because there really is no other place I would rather work here. I am also developing my latte art skills, even though I'm not allowed to mess with the expresso machine. I'm not a hipster because I work there, I just love my coffee, my music, and that store. What better way to spend time working than to enjoy your work?