Write After Breakfast

April 16, 2013

We read Jane Kenyon’s “Having it Out with Melancholy.” The original prompt was to explore conflict with an emotion, but Donald brought up the idea of the interplay between imagination and memory, so we wrote on either topic.

Imagination/Memory

by Donald

Where do they go when not in use
Somehow fast/slow, mostly duck abuse
The latter has strength while the
former grows old
In their house, they trade seats then
slide down the bench
Because of all the chatter and space
between the former/the latter none took
the matter for gold
They must be sister/brother
so told the former two the latter, same
home, same mother



That Space between Imagination and Memory
by Matt

Full speed ahead, warp ten.

Watch out for my cell phone, or I’ll call everyone you don’t want to call.

Rest is the space between what you think of and what you know.

To not contemplate the beginnings is to complicate the endings.

I don’t know what this means, and I definitely know what this does.

Concrete answers are the stuff of losers.

Why does everything have to rise, and rise, and rise, and rise like a goddamn symphony?

Why can’t we be satisfied with the simple things and angered at the comprehension of reason?

Meh. Not black, not white, but gray in the middle.

The above is all God ever wanted us to know.

Vacations are for babysitters, the total angst of which is unknown.

Why we reason certain things and ignore certain others is beyond me.

Why we memorize certain things and ignore others is beyond me.

Those who know there are no definitive answers are the cherished monks and prophets of the future.

Those who believe they have the final answer should be institutionalized forever.

Walking blindfolded is all we should ever know together.

Run for the hills, and stop for the future.

The mutation of amoebas is all we ever know.

What happens in Boston is of no concern to me.

What happens to other people is the only thing that concerns me.

Fruits and vegetables are the solution to almost all of our problems.

 

When you run fast

by Robyn

When you run fast you 
think of fruit, the sections
of an orange peeled apart.
In a picture, a girl’s leg
is made of skin, you can tell
by how it’s cut. Imagine slicing
a knife into the mango 
and your hands are sticky.
In Boston the streets 
are red. When I run I hold 
in my head a rope to cling to 
when I can’t breathe. A man 
is on the ground. A woman prays. 
In my head a rope blisters 
clear bubbles like eyes
of my palms, and I run faster.
You think of the way 
an orange is so easy to pull 
into parts, completely boneless 
under the rind. There is still
so far to go. Between where I am
and a finish line: 20 miles of gray 
with storm clouds or smoke.
Somewhere the sky is large.
There is no point to not stopping.

Persona Poem

We read Louise Gluck’s “Gretel in Darkness” and discussed persona poems. 

Reality Nuance.

By Matt

Where are we going?

Where have we been?

What is the meaning of this?

Who knows? Who cares?

I’d rather be swimming in butter than know the absolute answers to things.

God is dead.

No, he’s in New Jersey!!!

We know that we have want of things, that we know not what they are.

Prune juice. Automation.

Why do we seek what we already have?

The world is going to end!!!

No, it’s going to continue forever.

Answers that are vague are, by far, the most clear.

People that know what’s going to happen tomorrow are scarecrows.

Lemon juice. Apple strudel.

What we want for is what we already have.

Visionaries live in the darkest hour that I know.

I’m gong to make a command decision today to do nothing.

What we already have is almost what we almost always want.

The annihilation of the sense is the candy of the future.

Wax paper. Bed bugs. What we often don’t know is what would help us the most.

The final curtain is almost never the answer.

People who are confused should be our most cherished world leaders.

I think what we don’t know is probably going to happen.

 

___

Delilah speaks of need

by Robyn

Tell me what you want you 
say and if I started the words 
would unspool like crows
at dusk: a thickening line of black
nouns, of thousands. What
I want is red ribbons and kohl
and twenty pieces of silver, wine
and oversweet white peaches
and a place with a horizon
softened by trees. I want 
the tricep of your left arm strung
between two nails on my wall
so I can study the way light
traces it like a finger even 
when you turn to leave. I want
to understand your tongue
and the long twine of your braid
and the twelve muscles I see
sliding one over the other 
in your shoulders. If I told you
I wanted to unhook the thin
rubber band holding the clench
of your jaw, to see your face melt:
as if you weren’t hard, as if 
you could be touched, would
you still sleep? Would your back
still be to me? Would the vertebrae
still line up one by one as inanimate
and unsoft as stones? Once
I told you what I wanted was 
to know how you were strong,
and you told me, and you lied.
Because you wanted me like 
the woman I am: pliable and fleshy
and made of the thousand 
feathery wings of wanting.

Place

The week previous, David wrote about the place of his youth, a small town in Michigan and the characters there. It inspired us to write about place. This week I brought in a poem by Philip Levine, “The Two.” It conjured parts of Detroit I don’t know, but many in the workshop have a long relationship to that city and so it brought up a lot of stories even before we wrote.

______________________________________________

[A lonely lighthouse of the Ottoman]
— by Michael + Places

A lonely lighthouse of the Ottoman
A picture by the wannabe newly discovered
A passion for new Atlantis beginnings
B with underwater alien safety parking lots
B for or against in a Judicial miracle
B Q as noise is made gently on plain
C if a third eye blind really is mens intuitive
C the biblical year of a Christian calendar
C to C like I to I or seven wonders of the world
D sent a daring parachuter from near space
D a son’s nickname or logo for a city
D a miracle I didn’t flunk altogether
E said the pig who was scared or not
E the phonic start… of a sentence or question
E it seemed easier as a child
F another phonic start of a sentence or reaction
F not a good grade to bring home
F U C Kay tell her I love her
G are you or you, a line from blondie
G whiz Mr Cleaver
G man walk the other way

_________________________________________________

— by Donald

2nd writing class since 2.21.13 exit

1. This is my chief Definite Aim, but the class struggle keeps getting in the way. Mostly all day even sleep comes with the price of the class struggle. However, difficulties have their bounce with life. Spicy is the term I use. Hardships can sometimes rhyme with misery recycled to an untimely degree from mild to malignant.

The point is, the order of priority on the chief definite aim with super glue. Much to write, much has been written. Now is phase 2, match it with deeds. Speed up on the littles, patch on the bigs. Next, get your feet wet by/with change. Change the title, approach, change the method of organizing. Change toward efficiency. Move toward certainty. Above all, apply effort.

_________________________________________________

Bones
— by Courtney

Vertebrae vertebrae neckbone.
Mud dog in the compost again.
Buzzards descend on the thawed roadkill.
Most moments are painful or plotless.
The weather coming through his shirt.
Nigh sweating, night waking.
I heard the mud dog heaving again in the dark, licking
the dirt off the wood floor to calm her gut.
Day-fog rising
not burning exactly.
Barn cats huddled on the exposed porch.

We kept a cardboard box and cut out a door,
a window, screwed in a doorknob,
taped a pink cloth napkin over the window, curtain-like.
Cut a slot in the cardboard door for mail.
I slipped in a Ritz cracker for Henry,
and a post-it with a heart drawing, dark red.
He taped it up inside on his dark cardboard walls.
Sticker letters with his name on the door,
which he unpeeled from the cardboard and stuck to my shirt
in another order, no order. N on my shin.
E on my collarbone.

Paper bones on the dining room table.
Jesus rose from the dead.
In the song Henry loves, the skeleton collects his bones
and builds a body from his body.
Mud dog throws up something and eats it.

Poem in Three Parts

[For the prompt, we read “The Selvage” by Linda Gregerson. Since the poem was written in three parts, we wrote poems composed of three sections.]

“Selvage”

By David KE Dodge

Another old word, new
To my vocabulary,
Like “purl” and “baste”
Old words, second
Nature to those gone,
Now dead.

Wednesday afternoon
Spent watching TV
Courtroom, instead of 
Convening around
A frame to render
Fragments into whole
Quilts.  Time to converse,
For conversation that
Knits the community,
The counterpart of 
Men gathered for the 
Wednesday evening
Lodge convene.

What have we lost?
Baseball on sand-lot 
Diamonds?  Faux-war
Between invaders and
Defenders of make-shift forts?
In favor of what?
A direct link to persons
An unknown thousands miles
Away, to knit together resistance
Against The World Order,
While the neighbor, who
Is planning to kill a Kindergarten
Class, goes unnoticed?

What we need is a website
Where people converse, but is 
Accessible only by people physically
In Washtenaw County.
A local universe of possibilities
All close to home, and
Exclusive of the distant voyeur.

~

Bush Pig

 ~

Preparation
by George

#1
The burger
The bun it comes in
The smiling faces used to sell it
The drive through
The fast food counter
Where to stand one minute is too long
The cheese

#2
Trucks on Route 94
Between Detroit and Chicago
Taking turns too fast at the swindle spin
Cracking up in the stretch near Jackson
Bearing down hard to the West
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters
At the wheel

#3
Crows pick meat from a carcass
Maggots and bone and hair
One eye in each direction
On watch for the vehicle
That would do to them
What it had done to their dinner
A preparation

~

Ice Tripych
by Robyn

1
Once I watched you take 
off in a sprint over a snow
and ice covered hill. The way
you sprung: like a plane
unsticking from the ground.
Like an ungulate. Like a train.
A wild thing. Without slipping.
Without a fall. Then you were
gone and the woods breathed
and each white lined branch
was an exposed finger bone.

2
Should we keep going, a man
says, six hundred feet 
from the summit, because
the way the sky creeps
frostbit gray and the wind
has teeth and Scott says,
hell yeah. Within three years,
he will be dead. But now
the mountain is cold, cold,
ice sharp as wanting, 
and in two hours, the men
will be on top, the sky will
be there, the storm clouds
gathered, they will still 
have to climb down, and they will.

3
At the end of running,
I let myself run. Not
fast but it feels that way:
a girl alone on a street.
With her gloveless hands
and her feet. What she thinks
of is bones: the deer
skeleton the dog found 
in the field, how naked 
it looked, stripped of 
fur and skin. For 
three hours I will run. 
It is March. The street 
almost snowless. 
Tonight there is one
more minute of sun.

 

~

Self-edge

by Courtney

1.
 
We live like pigs here
geese free of freezing mud above us
Henry’s snow boots a raveling of mud.
 
Now Henry is stuck in the mud beside deer droppings,
the yellow racing stripe on his pants brown,
his mouth open pink and clean.
He wants to go home, he announces to the wind,
though I’m not sure where that is.
 
 
2.
 
Morning ice-hail pelts the brown dog and the ice-mud
on her tie-out , a stripe of blue
her ears back, brown dog on brown background,
the foreground being window glass,
yellow interior light, infant in arms.
 
We won’t go out there.
Island of freezing dog, air-whining.
 
Who brings a baby outside in the ice
to spare a dog with her greasy fur,
a little fat and built for snow
though not for loneliness?
Baby tears are warm on my neck.
 
3.
 
Ana said that as a girl her uncle
let out his dog in winter
and forgot to bring him in.
 
Dog frozen sculpture in the morning light,
she saw him curled on the front stoop.
I check each night, ghost-wandering,
counting dogs and cats and children,
feeling fur and pajama backs for clean lungs.
 
Let winter be over so the grass can grow.

They Say

[We read Laura Kasischke’s “They Say”; for the prompt, we used the same title and same last line (“After that, too late”) with freedom in between the two.]

They Say
by George

They Say
We are free
Free to take the dog out
Free to pick up his poop
Free to breathe the air we breathe
Free to cough it up
Free to say the things we mean
Free to stretch the truth

They say
We are free
Free to pursue some happiness
Free to pursue some life
Free to pursue some liberty
Ain’t no one going to object
But then, that is what they say
Beyond that, tough shit

~

No title
By Matt

Run!!!

No seriously, you’re going to die.

Life is nothing but a stress-fracture, waiting to kill us, if we even so much as look at the wrong way.

Why is it, we think, everything has to be a presidential motorcade?

If what you’re doing right now is so important, why didn’t you do it last Thursday?

Mean people suck.

But impatient people really, really, really suck.

I think the happiest people I know right now, spend daily time with meditation.

Why is it we’re in such a hurry, when really we end up just leaping into the grave?

People who walk quietly and softly, are the power brokers of this world.

If I was a bandage, what would I say to the rest of the world?

Sloppiness is almost always underrated.

Skunks seem to know what’s best, patiently waited for.

And human beings seem to be in such a hurry, they don’t understand the wisp of air, that’s worth dying for.

Camouflage underground, is where the most truth seekers can be found.

Piss your pants to the next appointment, should be reserved for the gestapo of this world.

Patience, justice, peace and tolerance.

Highly underrated are the things we take for granted all the most.

Zen is the higest form of art form.

Walking shallow, slowly, into the ground.

~

They say:
by Donald

Oohhmay say they
did it, what say, who say did it?
him say ohhmay know how 2 play
some say ofay
it it at 1st did it
The 1st wit it, didn’t
fit it, dim witted


Him say, oohhmay
couldn’t walk David
walker way, all say
it away, omit; way
shit away 1st day, on the play

Anyway thisaway

~

They say
by Robyn

Everest is as large as the inside
of a skull, the way it’s white
against the sky.
Gray fingers mean open
someone’s jacket and press
them to the warm skin inside.

Outside the snow is melting
and I read about people dying
on mountains while the dog
shakes a stuffed monkey as
if it were something to kill.

A man says we climb Everest
because it is there and another
says this is wrong. Outside
my window the land is flat
flat, brown grass breaking
through the ice.

They leave bodies on the mountain
because they are too heavy
to bring down. This one called
Green Boots. One day a body
beside him.

They leave gloves, oxygen canisters,
noses, and shit. They leave
the blades of ice picks and brain
cells and food, and men, and rope.

The dog lies down with the monkey
between his paws, tearing
at its face. My whole life I have lived
at sea level.

On Everest for two nights, it is negative
sixty degrees and the tent is torn,
the oxygen is gone.

For three days the melted snow
has made puddles for the dog
to sip from in the front yard.

At the mountaintop they
say memory is different.
At the mountaintop they
say only halfway.
At the mountaintop they
say let me place my cold
feet against your throat.
At the mountaintop where
is the path when it is too snow
white to see your own hands
inside their gloves, the dark
hooded head in front of you.

On the couch, I sit
beneath two blankets,
with the dog and my tea
and my book.

Some people climb mountains
because what else is there
to do: sit on a couch, read,
watch the dog watch the snow
seep outside.

They say two fingers are worth
a mountaintop, or every toe,
or a glove.

On Everest it is night.
There are still two miles to go:
eight fingers, a nose.
Three climbers in their black boots.
Then too late.  

Long Sentence

[We read Anthony Walton’s “Dissidence”; the prompt was to write poems that were one long sentence.]

Chief Definite Him
by Donald

1. 1 long sentence why/short
2. it takes juices 2 go long, it helps 2 have a song
crafty says come along, duckin’ its/wrongs
3. the main thing is plan 2 go long/strong in spite o

~

Art Stream
by Matt

Life is a continuous motion, up and down, backward, forward and sideways, illuminating the continuum of what we have and what we wish we did, instead of moaning for things not found, but then we pause, instead, looking ever more for what would close the void, instead of thinking about what we should have done, rather than taking the longshot of simply being, knowing that we could have things we needed, if we simply paused, to darn our socks, and thinking of what we have rather than something we should have known, alas, the lamp of reason, scurries into our subconscious, rather than trapping us, looking from below, where the want of commodities outshadows what we knew we know, shining for the lamplight of what we could’ve known, scraping for the things that shouldn’t have been, knowing the beastial limits of what should’ve been, rather than groping for what’s found, down the other, foreshadowing the claw-tooth hammer of what needs to be done, illuminating the shower of things forgotten, making money instead of taking pills, when what we should’ve known is how not to offend our neighbors when we preened for reason, rather than looking for the things we need to interact with the most important things and ignoring the basic facts, where we should’ve been instead of yearning for the tall skyscrapers, which will make us nauseous, from the clay of rhythm, which is what we should have known.

~

When the snow melted,
by Robyn

When the snow melted
Teresa looked at sky:
the way blackbirds unspooled
like a thin thread, knitting
out the light, the blue ceiling
of sky disappearing beneath
each black wing, beneath
each eye like a smooth-polished
stone, each feather, each claw -
the way one day in Darjeeling
the mountains became not fists
but lungs, grass-covered and
breathing, and God’s voice
sounded like sun or the feeling
of skin or how spring means
light comes one minute earlier
each dawn, then slowly time
sews over it with its black thread,
with its blackbirds and crows,
until all you have is March:
the tangled knot of night,
your hard heart, your cold
hands, your boots in a puddle
of snow melting into mud.

~

 

Borrowing Phrases

[It worked so well last time to borrow phrases from our prompt poem, we did it again. The poem was Elena Sikelianos’s “Survey: Phototropes.” We each chose a phrase or single word and then created a group word bank, the prompt being to use those words however we choose in the writing that emerged for each of us. The work was really powerful, bonded by the game of fitting in phrases that mattered to each of us now.]

________________________________________________________

Stop Making Sense, or, Chaotic Envelope

 by Matt

 Everything must be organized.

A, B, C, no wait, C! BOOM, you’re dead.

 

Anal rententivity is a habit, only reserved for

vacuum cleaner salesmen.

 

If I’m so wrong, why does it always seem

like I could care less if I’m right?

 

The drum beat of reason makes me want

to gag.

 

If I had to pick between poetry and

engineering, I’d pick poetry, because poetry

lasts forever, and, maybe, engineering will

last till the end of this century.

 

Why does everything have to be boxed and

packaged so neatly?

 

And why is it that the most important thing

you have in life is that first crap you

take in the morning?

 

Oh my 50^th birthday, what I have most to

look forward to is a colorectal exam, or better put

looking forward to an anal probe, or even better

yet, having an exam up my Hershey highway.

 

Why do we care so little about what God

cares about the most?

 

Why is nuisance such a higher crime, whereas

doubting is treated as an absolute luxury.

 

You can kiss my ass, you jack-booted plack-

leather wearer.

 

If a swastika is indeed a broken cross

why don’t we send it, merrily, rolling on

its way?

 

Messiness is an art form, with chaos as its

bedfellow, waiting for another day.

 

Rotting stump, or nutrigrain, which would you

rather have for dinner?

 

If simplicity is punished by harshness,

then what are you waiting for?

 

I want to create piles of rubbish, before dinner.

 

Photoshop. Test and prop.

 

The organizational dead.

 

Scotland is death.

 

Hope is almost always forever!

________________________________________________________

[The words are beautiful not for their accuracy]

— by David KE Dodge

“The words are beautiful not for their accuracy

but for their dream,”

As are all words uttered not to express knowledge,

But with “perfect” sound,

Expressed by the Goddess of the Muses,

And rendered by the poet as a

“Photograph of her thought;”

Rendered in a twinkling

As “the future does a backbend toward you,”

Like moments, in being lost to the past,

Enable a tenuous grip on the future

In a forever now.

_____________________________________________________

 

THOUGHT-PHOTOGRAPH

by Courtney

 

Cut the body, an onion,

he pushes the pain and vices past

muscles into my blood.

What perfect cancer, niggling.

Radiation: bodies turned toward radios.

Blood like a river rushing out.

Photograph of her thought:

Prayers color patches

cushioning, buoying. Silk thoughts.

Hot-air balloons surrounding.

The prayers are beautiful not for their accuracy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A POEM OF PLACE

[We read Bob Hicock’s poem “A Poem of Place” and talked about its theme of place as well as it themes of ambiguity, release, and acceptance. We also picked out a word or phrase that struck us and tried to use it in our own poem. A double-prompt, really.]

___________________________________________________________

“Composition on Four Extracts from  ‘A poem of place,’ by Bob Hicock”

By David KE Dodge

 

“It’s not that I believe or don’t believe:”

But what else is there?

Are there Sundays without meaning;

Sunday mornings without destination?

Fridays devoid of purpose?  Without goals?

What is missing, if you believe; what

Is present, if you don’t believe?

“There was a deer.”

Certainly believers and non-believers alike

Can understand that sentence.

Perhaps Jesus and Mohammed

Are pleased to step aside for

Belief universal:

“There was a deer.”

A belief Universal, like

“They (the stars) are only suns.”

What gives ground for Universal Belief

Once escaped us.  For eons, the

Stars were not seen as suns,

But rather as bodies distinct from

The daily solar presence.

First comprehension; then, perhaps,

“I believe.” The start of a Credo,

The basis for wars, before the

Coming of Beliefs Universal.

“I believe in Jesus.”

“I believe in Jesus Christ,

(God’s only son,) our Lord,

Who was born of the Virgin Mary,

Suffered under Pontius Pilate,

Crucified, dead, and buried;

On the third day…

‘There was a deer.’”  It escaped.

That’s all Bob Hicock reported.

First comprehension; then,

Perhaps, belief.

That I believe.

But that’s not all I believe.

And that’s not all I believe-in.

I believe-in God, the Father Almighty.

And that’s not all I believe-in,

But it’s enough.

 _______________________________________________________

A Poem of Serenity
by Matt Hiccup

Follow me.

No, seriously. I have the ultimate answers to everything.

When I was younger, I believed in the absolute answers.

Now that I’m older, I believe the answers are vague.

People who say they have the absolute answers
to everything scare me.

I believe that totalitarians bring the worst form of sorrow.

Maybe that’s just a way of saying, if God does
exist, as I believe he does, He must
be up in heaven looking at the dictators
and laughing hysterically.

I put more favor in a wandering cow
than I do with Zeus.

Why, if you are so right, have you left
so many people complaining.

This is a plea for democracy.

While food is not with us, it is the best
form of making us behave.

I believe to worship an onion is far better
than to be beholden by a dictator.

I believe the ultimate punishment for Hitler
would have been to douse his head with
PineSol.

I was talking to somebody yesterday about
how scared we were of people who think
they have the absolute answers about God.

Maybe God left it this way, to make us
find God for ourselves.

I’m comfortable with a little uncertainty.

Maybe the ultimate answer is trying to
find the right answer than than lazily
having it supplied to you.

Pomegranates for Peace.

Nothing is the actual slew.

If we are so right, why are we always
left looking for answers.

I’m more comfortable with a gnat at the helm
than the finest dictator.

___________________________________________________________

Mortality
— by Courtney


We are sitting at the dining room table
the squalling snaking through the room
two dogs four thousand short strands of
brown and black fur.
-6 degrees outside and the blind black dog barks.

Sweet potatoes mashed on my elbow,
sweet orange on the baby’s eyelashes and cheeks.
Bright orange like suns.
Napless, unblinking children.
Mashed potatoes on the brown dog’s fur.
They’re only suns.

I fold the woven dishcloth
until the edges align
before I throw it at the dog. Mean.
The husband says over the crying that
he doesn’t believe anyone returns
to judge the living and the dead. Dead.

The tumor in my friend’s
ovaries makes her swell like she is pregnant,
an immaculate conception of cells. It’s not
that I believe or don’t believe my friend will die.
Some people seem half not of this world already
so when you learn they’re sick it doesn’t feel like a surprise.
I don’t believe anyone will return

to judge my dying friend or her young daughter
or the mashed potatoes the brown dog is licking off her own fur.
The dog barks again.

Outside in the dark we finally see
the silhouette of a deer,
now two, now three. Replicated rising and bowing

in the snow. One is limping. So cold. I don’t
believe when we die we get these bodies back.

Talking through a jumbler

[We read Paisley Rekdal’s amazing poem “Dear Lacuna, Dear Lord.” I had no specific theme for the prompt, just the poem itself. We talked about its subject matter, unrequited love and talking to God / being heard slant. Plus the recurrent theme in the poem of fruits and vegetables. The poem is dynamite and the work followed.]

__________________________________________________________

Nuclear Vegetables
— by Matt

All forms of evasiveness.

Stop what you’re doing.

Hunt, fish and gather.

No, it’s really important.

Stop what you’re doing, and pay attention to nothing.

Like a rabbit out of a hat, is what we’re doing to each other.

Surprise, and then defy, all sense of reason.

Waste away, and let serendipity come to you.

Why to avoid, when simple reason would supplant mediocrity.

I can wait forever, though, if not for the want of simple drudgery.

Computers should be replaced with barnyard animals.

“Moo!!!” “Bah!!!”

These are the things I way to say to you.

Reckless denial is all I want to say to you.

And yet… without God… we are nothing.

To replace the shimmer of truth is to commit the greatest atrocity.

Why do we, therefore, have to dance around ourselves.

Why can’t we simply commit to all forms of reason.

Exodus wanting. The pilot light is out.

If life is so helpless, why do we continue to striving.

Fallowed leaves. This is the genesis of all reason.

Go to the dentist. Take a vacation.

These are the things that make me ultimately queasy.

Stop what you’re doing, and run your head into a tree stump.

Masochism is the greatest form of torture.

__________________________________________________________

Paranomasia
— by Philip


Paranomasia. Pun fun. Trope and play on words
Irony Ellipsis and Declamatory writing
Understatement. Smoothly stated understatement.
Let’s skip the rest.

Stay Open

[“Just before I doze off, I counsel myself grandiosely: Fuck concepts. Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.” — George Saunders, “The New Mecca” (from the Braindead Megaphone)]

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[Graffiti Whoops. Graffiti and play high rise!]
— by Philip

Graffiti Whoops. Graffiti and play high rise!
Be young while you earn.
The grandma from an early seventies poster
Saying: Express yourself!
Sheldon Kopp’s: If you meet
the Buddha on the road…
Carlos Castinada’s – Show me your claws!
Milton Hamlish’s – Isaac and dispute!!
That is our legacy
We disputed.
It’s American Graffiti!
We are the slaves of the phony leaders
Breathe the air we have blown you!

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[City of a soul made]
— by Mary

City of a soul made
your images that float amid
the stars. Open for claim
A knock a call the organ
large and whole is up
for bid

An island city of cities
churned away by earth
impertinent waters known and
realized only by its eclipse
is the city fabulous-cious
imagined by one for
we future of all like a
gaseous bouquet of
flowers that will sweeten
time untouched by
concept or the real.