The cat chases the end of my belt
as it slides along the bed
as I loop it through my pants.
I feel sad because
I wish it was for him,
but I’m just getting dressed.
(Source: sitlook)
Quiet and reserved.
Mystery Search Intense Ape Photoshop Mountain Shots Words I will answer anything you ask me.
Mystery Search Intense Ape Photoshop Mountain Shots Words I will answer anything you ask me.
September 19, 2012
December 1, 2011
Paper People
The quiet flock,
fully paper people,
gather
in the window
to nowhere,
eventual,
open,
unable to close,
dead.
The rough fibers,
smooth slick sketches,
patter
on the window
to nowhere,
welcoming,
cold,
never to warm,
hungry.
Do not cry
as your skin
turns to paper.
It’s been happening for years.
You will be among the paper people soon.
Safe and still in your myriad chlorobrimide graves.
November 9, 2011
The Mystery Search pt. 2
This poem sort of sums it all up. It explains the process of how stories become legitimized by culture, and how I’ve changed. At the beginning I was trying to create mysteries and force my meaning upon them. Now, I find happiness in spreading them around and keeping them alive, so that people can find them in the weird corners of the library and feel the same as me. The unfamiliar words are a reference to a story by Borges along these lines.
(Source: sitlook)
November 9, 2011
The Mystery Search
Somewhere
there’s a book
of everything.
Creep to
the corner
and see.
Slow fingers
over cardboard
and cloth.
We make
them when
we lie.
An alchemy
we’ve made
through progress.
Tlön,
Uqbar,
Orbis Tertis.
Creep to
the corner
and see.
Somewhere
there’s a book
of everything.
Lies pile up
and give us
meaning.
I’ll never stop
spreading
them.
(Source: sitlook)
November 8, 2011
New Ishtar pt. 2
“New Ishtar” is a reworking of a poem I wrote a little earlier in the semester. It fit so perfectly into the theme of this collection, and now that I’ve switched to the first-person and cleaned up the symbolism a little bit, it works within the whole as a version of the transformative process that I first tried in the second poem, but as a success this time. It only works when you don’t realize its happened until later, I think.
(Source: sitlook)
November 8, 2011
New Ishtar
The frozen day moved
as I moved
up the ziggurat stairs.
Dull thumps sounded
in the heart
of the stairwell.
Open stood the door
to the place
that was (not) Mine.
I walked into place.
01-C
Up the ziggurat stairs.
The frozen room sat
as I sat
and nothing moved for a second.
Down the hall,
past doorways,
in the darkest room sat a body.
It was exploded, a husk,
more empty than dead,
and its face was torn off of its head.
Alex considered
what had been birthed(?)
as he wiped the blood from our ears.
He went home to his place
and was happy(.)
2-B
Even higher up the ziggurat stairs.
(Source: sitlook)
November 7, 2011
Gold Mine pt. 2
This one is pretty straightforward. There’s another jab at time for ruining wonder, but basically this poem is about how religion isn’t satisfying to me because its old and boring. Answers being trumped by convincing lies is just another aspect of this transition from old religions to new ones.
(Source: sitlook)
November 7, 2011
Gold Mine
I look for meaning
in all things;
Death,
everything.
I do not often find it.
God
is a hard old mine,
emptied of its gold
by Time,
that vacuum of wonder.
The Answer
was formed into a coin,
long ago,
and spent.
Forget it.
Forget about money.
Read and tell lies.
They beg no Answer.
Lies are worth more than gold.
(Source: sitlook)
November 6, 2011
Prints pt. 2
There’s a sort of sequence to these poems sometimes, and this poem is absolutely the sequel to the previous one. I’ve taken the violently exploded form I left in the second poem, and created the baby who’s walked out of it. The Dover Devil is another urban legend whose legacy could be interpreted to symbolize how we’re willing to believe anything if it’s more interesting than what’s real. I wanted to show how easy it is for people to accept things, not because they’re convincing, but because they’ve got extraordinary though perhaps impossible implications to go with them.
(Source: sitlook)
November 6, 2011
Prints
I am exploded,
cloven.
And a zygote in this blood-sticky womb.
The Devil in Dover
was nothing but a beast.
I walk in those footsteps,
cloven,
flirting with the marks of evil,
true or false,
if it gives this infant some purpose.
(Source: sitlook)
November 5, 2011
The Cottontail Axe pt. 2
This one’s my first attempt at giving myself meaning through a kind of rebirth. Here, I thought Easter would be an appropriate metaphor, but I was sort of unsure about it, and so I can’t help but comment on the weirdness I felt. “Tail” and “nose” fall into this line of thinking, as they’re supposed to draw your attention to the fact that I’ve sort of forced the poem into the physical shape of a rabbit. The Bunny Man is the first urban legend I mention, which I tend to do because they seem to me to be sort of modern religious figures that we’ve created for ourselves without really trying, and we even sort of worship them, so I tried to link him to mythology and religion. The axe is a tool of violent death and rebirth.
(Source: sitlook)
November 5, 2011
The Cottontail Axe
tail.
The pale white rabbit,
quiet and slow,
lopes towards His cave.
Holy rebirth,
a pagan herald,
the significance is forced.
They say the Bunny Man’s
crazy,
frantic, guarding nothing.
stay off my land! he says
where is your land? I say
The cottontail axe
splits me right open,
all the way from Virginia.
I peel back the skin,
the blood-sticky skin,
the skin of the rabbit, outside of the cave.
I climb inside,
I pick up the axe,
I cut myself all the way open, spilling my guts.
nose.
I am (not) the Bunny Man.
The significance is forced.
(Source: sitlook)
November 5, 2011
San Pedro pt. 2
This poem is about not having a home anymore. San Pedro is the name of my actual home town, and recently, some of the seaside cliffs in the area have actually begun to fall into the sea. I thought this was an appropriate metaphor for myself. I also played around with some references to St. Peter and the rock, and first introduced the idea of time being related to the loss of wonder in life.
(Source: sitlook)
November 4, 2011
San Pedro
The layers of old rock
uneven
make up the face
decayed
and the coastal cliffs of San Pedro
tumble
crumble
vanish
into the sea.
No church there.
Never was one.
Instead my faith built a lighthouse;
a fortress filled with wonder
so that the gates of Time
would not prevail against it.
Cold little white legs.
Varnish taste in my mouth.
Grandpa is dead.
The land shifts. The lighthouse flickers.
Hold me in.
Inside.
Hold me inside.
You must go, Alex.
It’s Time.
And so the cliffs begin to
tumble away.
I call back to San Pedro.
I am denied.
(Source: sitlook)
November 4, 2011
Poetry Week 2K10
So I’m back after a shitty two weeks. Hi there. I’ve been gone because I’ve been working on some poems for a class I’m in. So now that they’re done, here they are. Each day I’m going to post a poem and its explication. Sorta weird, but maybe you’ll FUCKING LOVE IT. MMM.
Anyway, here’s the introduction that I submitted with them to my professor.
Lately, I’ve been at something of a loss for meaning in my life. I recently ended a relationship which, for most of the four years I was in it, I thought was going to define the rest of my life. My parents are separating, my family is poor, and my mother recently told me that she’s moving out of the house where I grew up, and I’ll have nowhere to stay if I run out of money, which is extremely likely because at the moment, I’m self employed and business is not exactly booming.
These poems are only slightly about that. Mostly, they’re an examination of what I’ve been doing to stay sane in spite of everything. I wouldn’t say that I’m obsessed with my own death, but rather, death in general, and its role in the process of living. I’m also completely transfixed by the idea of mysteries, and how regardless of whether or not they’re true, if they’re repeated enough, they gain a certain realness. To me, and perhaps this is at least slightly tied to my preoccupation with the morbid, there is a parallel to be seen between this actualization of certain fictions and personal rebirth, something I long for. “The Mystery Search” is an attempt to capture and describe this parallel.
Also, there are two more things I’d like to say before I really get into this whole explication situation. Firstly, I’m incredibly self-conscious as a writer, and while I feel that these poems are something I can maybe be proud of, there is a lot of self criticism within them, built in. They’re works in progress, I think, and attempting to make something with so many references and symbolism built in is hard to do without becoming self-aware and, cynic that I am, it’s sometimes been tough for me to write without considering myself a joke. Secondly, this is not my normal style of writing, and as such, I think these poems can sometimes come off as awkward and unnatural-sounding. I was inspired by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, so I guess take these with a grain of salt? Maybe I’m just second guessing myself again. Anyway, let’s get going.
(Source: sitlook)
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