Wednesday, April 23, 2008

to a former best friend

i think we both knew it'd be like this.
you with your friends and beer.
me with my friend and games.
a past left to gather dust
in a place where the tumbleweed is gone
and memories are ever-fleeting.

it was fun for the time it lasted,
but i hold no hope for our future.
an abandoned friendship thrown on the roadside,
its thumbs cut and forced to hitchhike.
but i guess so long as we're happy,
we'll never need to see each other again.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

a failed attempt at humor

in may i'll be spending around 2 full days on airplanes, going from atlanta to LA and then LA to australia, and then 6 days later from australia to LA, to atlanta.

with all the recent security issues regarding airplanes, you'd think i'd be scared that a wire in one of the tires is going to get stuck and the plane will crash on landing.

or that the fact that i'll be flying over the pacific ocean, with virtually no safe locations of emergency landings.

but no - i'm scared of something else.

farts.

the average human farts 14 times in a day. (it's a fact, look it up).
the standard passenger boeing 747 can carry about 400 people (it's actually more, i'm being fart-generous here).

that's over 11 thousand farts on my combined air travel time. and there's no way that stuff is going to escape, either. you can't exactly crack a window. with stewardesses walking back and forth and people constantly falling asleep (which increases flatulence when you try to hold it in) i'm starting to wonder why they don't give you complimentary nose plugs to go along with the floppy pillow and blanket that was purposely created three sizes too small.

maybe i'll find another use for the emergency oxygen mask.

seriously though, folks, airlines have no business serving meat and soft drinks. and telling people to chew gum for their ears will actually make them swallow more air, which leads to more farting (again, they're facts).

nervous people with fast moving bowels also tend to fart more. and honestly, who wouldn't be nervous flying in an airplane thousands of miles away from any scrap of land that could remotely be considered an air strip?

i wonder if halfway there they make sure nothing is messed up, so if they have to they could at least stop by in Hawaii.

hopefully they'd serve beans there... (which make you fart, but contrary to popular belief aren't actually that smelly).

my fart-facts are quickly depleting (did you know fart noises are NOT creating by flapping of the butt cheeks?), so i'll end this soon.

right after i get this fart out.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

clench, clench, CLENCH
DO NOT see it,
close them tighter
IT ISN'T REAL
clench clench fists, eyes, toes, mouth, brain,
go insane.
tighten up,
like a spring,
a bullet.
let go, release.
swallow pills.
relax.
sleep.
be misunderstood.
i didn't want for it -
for us -
to be over...
not this soon.

why couldn't our leaf
have been carried by a wind?
instead of falling
straight to the hard earth.

i sit, i wonder,
what it was i did wrong.
what i should've changed,
how i should've been.

yet the pain has taught me,
life works this way,
in laughter,
and in tears.

it hurts to think of you,
an abandoned future.
and if i should forget you,
will you have existed at all?

Saturday, April 05, 2008

it's like a running shoe.
looks good, smells nice, fits snugly.
then it gets older, smells worse.
like a hot, moist cave of bacterial filth,
with new viruses being added all the time.
to cleanse itself of this filth,
it drains dead refuse, dead bacteria,
and dead spermatazoa.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

the man who played alone

there was once a man with no hands
who played like a master on the piano.
but he wouldn't play for company -
only if left on his own.
if you tried to peek in the room,
he'd stop dead in his tracks and remain silent.
so someone set up a camera,
to see how this man played piano
with no index, pinky, ring, or thumb.
some guessed he used his feet -
but he didn't play that way.
in fact, he didn't play at all
if anyone was watching him.
the media learned of this,
and covered the man for a while
before people lost interest
and the paper lost money.
walking by his house one day,
i hear the sound of the piano
emanate through his house,
and realize it is quite a fine tune.

---

It is the sound of his music that is amazing, not the mystery surrounding how he plays it. Enjoy what life hands you in the way it hands it to you. Don't alter what needn't be altered.

power

i spend a lot on band-aids
for various scratches and bumps.
and i've lost count of how many times
i've fallen down the steps.

i wear long-sleeved shirts and jeans
but can't cover the marks on my face.
the thick makeup hides most of it,
but he still calls me an ugly whore.

a spot on my head hurts
that didn't hurt yesterday.
i wonder if i bumped it in the night
or if he hit me so hard i forgot.

take me out

take me out to the slau-ghter
take me out to the war.
buy me some ammo and hand grenades
i don't care if-i-die-in-a-raid
'cause it's root, root, root for the big guys
if they don't win it's a shame.
for it's one, two, three hundred dead...
and we are all to blame.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Poetry in a WWI dugout

On our way through France
I say to my best friend
"What d'you think's our chance?
Of making it to the end?

He didn't say, he didn't know
and in the dugout we lay
thirty feet below, below,
left to wait and pray.

The hospital beds are red,
lingering with dread,
"Fight on," our sergeant said - I thought:
some day we'll be "millions dead."

Many went crazy there,
driven to insanity.
artillery shells and bullets fly
before we're forced to spree.

I kill a man from fifty yards
and never knew his name.

The pounding sound drives my friend insane
and he runs across No Man's Land.
I have no emotions, no hope,
for him.

Suddenly,
I WANT TO DIE,
when...

the artillery's
stopped,
i must run
to
the machine gun.


---


This poem starts out with an ABAB rhyme scheme, but quickly disintegrates. The poem itself matches with the emotions a soldier in a WWI dugout was likely to experience. At the beginning of the bombardment, the mental state of soldiers is relatively stable. As time goes on, and so also the poem, it begins to crack. The poem loses its rhyme scheme (as the soldier loses his mind) and thoughts become fragmented.

The third stanza in particular notes that "some day we'll be 'millions dead.'" This refers to the fact that today we read back over wars and proclaim that "millions died" in battle. But we know nothing of those people, nor do we think about how the deaths of each and every one of those men affected their families. We simply call them "millions dead."

The narrator of the poem sees his friend run across No Man's Land, the area between two trenches, and feels no emotion. At this point he is beyond the point of feeling hope or emotion. After seeing so many of his close comrades die, he is simply waiting for his turn.

During a bombardment, the narrator begins to lose his saneness in the dugout. He proclaims he wants to die. Not because his friend perished, or the war seems pointless, but because the threat of death being so imminent each day has finally taken its toll.

The ending of the story describes the tactical aspect of trench warfare. After bombing the other side the entire day, the other side then rushes the opposing trench after ceasing artillery fire. The other side must therefore climb out of their dugouts and reach their mounted machine guns before the other side does. Their only clue the other side is coming is when they stop firing shells. Our narrator is left with only this animal-like instinct in the end of the poem. He only wishes to reach the machine gun, so he can kill, rather than be killed. He is reduced to something less than human, a product of war.