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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

facebook

i caught up with old friends tonight,
anonymously of course.
they all seem so different,
when i feel like i am the same.

t.d. grew his hair out,
k.t. lost weight and worked out,
m.t. looks like he got a girlfriend
and i'm the same as i was 3 years ago.

they've all socially grown,
just like at lunch period long ago,
while i sat outside,
reading a book on how to be happy.

jesu, joy of man's desiring

i told her very explicitly
that i wanted it to be in piano,
but she insisted someone sang
those once-German lyrics.

her ancestors were from France.
which, of course I knew,
because we talked like that
when we were bored of each other.

neither of us cared about cakes,
centerpieces or card invitations.
she picked a dress she liked,
but wanted a song she loved.

so i teased, and said i'd sing it,
and she teased, and said O.K.,
and i teased, and printed the lyrics,
and made her laugh on our wedding day.

If you look up into the night sky at all the stars, you will only see about .0001 percent of all the stars in just our galaxy, the Milky Way. That is about 5,000 stars.

The Milky Way is just one of more than a hundred billion galaxies that can be seen using modern telescopes.

The nearest star to Earth, other than the sun, is Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C). This star is four light-years away. Our fastest spaceship would take ten thousand years to reach it.

The largest star, VY Canis Majoris, is over 5,000 light-years away. Its volume is a billion times that of our sun, and it would take over 650,000 years to walk a full circle on its surface.

Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Human origins date back some 200,000 years. The whole of human existence accounts for a mere .004 percent on the world's time line.

Realizing the true insignificance we all hold in the entirety of the universe, it's really no wonder why people rely on religion to understand and give meaning to their lives.

paper airplanes

i remember standing on the back porch
and reaching my arm back as far as i could
before springing it forward with force
and sending the paper contraption into the air.

my friend and i would lean over the porch rails
and try to make it over the fence in his backyard,
but we never got halfway there,
even after trying several times.

his airplanes looked different than mine,
and i realize now there wasn't a simple reason
to explain why, when thrown at the same time,
mine would always go farther than his.

standing next to my best friend on his porch,
i could have never known then, throwing paper around,
that the distance between our airplanes
was but a precursor to our future apart.

a speck upon a speck upon a speck

a speck of dust from the banister
floats through the screen door
and into the lazy summer air.

the wind carries it down the street
and lets it go at the corner,
where it falls on an ant.

the ant is sitting on a small pebble,
infinitely bigger than the ant
compared, at least, to the dust.

in a nearby yard a child looks up,
shields his eyes,
and wonders how big the universe is.

we're all drifting through a stream,
at times calm and tranquil,
inching through glass-like waters,
ripple-less and clear.

still at others the water is black,
turning and contorting in wrath,
with an acrid, salty taste
you can't help but breathe in.

the stream never empties into a lake
or ocean or river or off a cliff.
however, it may run into other streams,
and they may powerfully bind together,
creating new rivers, and mountains,
and eventually, streams once more.

first i learned to live day by day,
then - slowly - moment by moment.
i'm still working on it,
but i'd like to think i can
flow seamlessly from sadness
to happiness, without so much as a hiccup.
of course, speed bumps exist in life,
possibly on purpose, to throw us off track.
but if you accept them for what they are,
and realize that the best you'll ever be,
is all that you are in the present,
you can start living in the moment,
or - at the very least - day by day.

the day after valentines,
i'm looking for a girl.
one who thinks flurries
technically count as snow.

the thing i miss the most about her is her hair. it was always soft whenever i ran my fingers through it. i told her she should dye it black, so she bleached it an eye-blinding blond. i washed it, twirled it, adored it. now i miss it. even more, i miss holding it back while she used to throw up from drinking too much. it was a simple role, but one i dutifully undertook. now when she slides out of bed at 3 a.m. to throw up and ever-so-quietly wakes me, i bury my head in my pillow and cry.

stress is milk on the floor,
long past its prior prevention.
and if you cry or mourn,
you further its extension.

tissues are mops in hand
to clear away the mess.
we may not understand,
but certainly mustn't suppress.

slopping around in the mud,
surely won't make you clean.
but with help from a flood,
we can feel alive and pristine.