Exuberance

i wanted to write this down in some corner; in my own light occupying some imaginary my own space--romanticising; somehow I want to hold that feathered ink pen and jot away--and this keyboard, swivel-chair, and brightass screen is far from it; but what's so romantic about writing--about thinking--it's really as true to yourself as anything, without the cinematography.

I realize I have a bit of the Kay Jamison in me (I helped a customer find her new book Exuberance, and had a nice quarter-minute conversation about how I've explored Unquiet Mind, getting the jist of exhuberance which I have not read), and I've gone from some dark space to this high that flies unlimitly crossing state boundaries.
Yes, I am the center of the world. Is there any other way?

So you, me, didn't love me
but loved what you made;
and I the culprit of me all
--------------------this time
through inception, construction, solidification,
according to you.
I wasn't me
negated me
for you and I met me
tonight I
---------(had a good laugh,
you should meet him,
he's a lively guy)
found all the innards
trailing behind, forgive the toadish metaphor
and swallowed slimy them;
sang a glorious song
it lasts a stanza
in a voice that was de-
lirious, piercing
the air
------around us all
we were
-------flying
tonight

I sing

.
.
.

look at the colors.

So what's the sense
of lacking any humor whatsoever

The hours a.m. p.m.
switch one another noon, midnight

Who says? at 5:01am
I change into a butterfly, fly, fly,

There's lizard in my room
I thought was a mouse until I saw it

scatter, scatter. They
both have wiggles in their tails

I peered over edge
of my bed looking from my rowboat

Did I mention it was a.m.
and it's Christmas break where the

cous'es, friends of old
all come piling back, to where i' been all along

happy lizards, sad ones
tail less ones, frightened. The sun makes

its arrival soon--
latecomer. The ghosts of old pets

roam this house, the ground
fat 'ol cat indoor, on the couch'n table;

dog outside, mostly the night.

Eternal Sunshine (of a spotless mind)

which defines which--the words or the things describing the words; or the words--what if I talked in references, pieces of art--creations--but movies, songs really in today's medium: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (starring Jim Carrey & Kate Winslet) and I'm so forgetful; I wish it weren't so; I said, I wish this movie would go on and on when the credits came on--and I would watch there in that chair forever; I would / and the Safety Scizzors (song, now) by Method and Result, I'm so sorry, things are changing now; they must; at the least / those songs and Dave and those concerts jumping in light embracing against change under the night, making it all, making love to the memories from the speakers / that's me, Jim Carrey, and he is me

Here's a reference, a more conventional sort, literary alluding literary, from the Paris Review (will that become its own story, in mine, me being just introduced to it; later on, this as an example for now?), citing Faulkner

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely
ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream...Everything goes by the
board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book
written. If a writer has to rob his mother...

If a writer has to step over himself...

Question!

(What's the use of writing to myself?
Am I a fucking schizophrenic crybaby?
Am I a sentimentalist?
Does this mental working-out amount to anything?
Is my mind becoming stronger?
If so, then what?
What if I get Alzheimers?
What about then?)

Love War

I.
Being a journalist in this war,
who are you writing to--yourself or
readers--how can you be
objective? The daily agony
you witness--
the fucking up of a person, me,
that's more me than anything in your everyday life everyday before, and after,
jilting you my cringing body
in a day--who are you talking to?:
The war? Shouting at the fight?:
you chickenshit.


II.
When broken
last thing you see
is myself
enigmas
breaker be-
comes pa-
per


III.
The leaves are cold
they stay green in Florida
Decembers come, no wind
blows down the ochred, oranged
ornaments on trees
to leave their skeletons;
what has become of you and me
since I learned these things?

shock

W riting is like the pursuit of a girl
it's therapeutic, like really finding meaning,
life
and agonizing, until it's done, the relief,
whether failure (most of the odds, but it's part of the rules, eh?) or triumph;
they get intertwined,
and it's sad
i don't know where I'm going,
the writer says.

A Thinking Minute

Old-ness: it's a clock that you wind
and watch go,
according to your own time,
at the time,
depending on your mood,
how you're feeling about the lady you loved,
and whether the clock is an antique, ornament,
or of practical use.

It goes by fast,
tonight.

anti-feiler

There was this relief agency, that was going to come along and help things along, and so those that were the "things," just did their thing and went along so far without getting the help that they came to anticipate, and act according to, that anticipation; and so supplies, as supplies often and are bound to do, were being consumed regularly and had come to become meager, as is logical without resupplies--like expenditure without revenue--but the relief agency was soon to come, at least sooner than was before at the time they still had an unworrisome supply of resources, and the agency was in the distance and out of mind then. But the relief agency isn't, came the great silent shock of revelation, and it was so found that the word, They were going to come along, had been just wind blowing against flaps in the wind, and someone had misheard: the relief agency was just sounds formed across the air, by the wind.

lifenight miami

damn i went to I/O downtown tonight after work with colleagues, closing
with me, tagged along to one of their birthdays; and the club and the talk of
the lives from their stumps (like the stumps, all of us talk standing on top
from) told me a Miami I didn't think of existed--or, ever gave thought
to it existing, at least; the way i lived the social scene of college
partying and hopping sets across town--not here in Miami, where my friends and I
had such damn good times then, and severed from the pulse of the rest,
completely. Young people, us, we all find ways to gather, water holes,
classes we hated together, loved as an hourly family, lunch periods,
house hangouts--in others', apartment chilling--shows, drugs, tripping, pickup
sports at The Park, and the classic and universal, parties parties, parties.
There's always omnipresent search, all places, for salvation, and the kid
is as serious as the adult, although all the adult really is is the kid with a
different combination of letters.

New-York!

New York, you are a dream;
At days end, all the want is to hit bed
get there
marvel and sleep...
I know you are icy as steel wrapped in snow
I want the pain of cold
this particular kind diffuse
as cotton and clouds
bad eyesight--near blind--
is all good...
It's a pity
still from the city

And now December already.

American Pastoral

I used to think it casually, like the way of a joke, but more and more like freezing ice at decreasing temperatures, it’s become such symbolic truth & reality: a domesticated cat really can teach… well not so much teach as be wisdom—the way W.Faulkner most eloquent-strikingly put it having the rain outside shaping the wagon so as there was a wagon being there—teaching what is man-made, what is life, and what one makes of what is life all along, what is right and or nor wrong, what is leisure, what is purpose, what is to make of perspective; and what of it all, the compassion from the frame of this body to the suffering and admiration for this massive ground that we are myopic to stand on, save for this infancy-stage technology of communication; and what of comfort,

And what of mothers (or, as I will soon allude to, fathers) dying—in no tragic sense of the word, more so living towards death, the way an orchid in the soil would—to perfect comfort for their child—that has become their purpose—in this modern world,

and what of, them succeeding, their bequeathed child in this always-bloody world that all around & really can never near utopia, much less achieve it, much less, much, much, less…

I cannot see the standard of merit understood by the Pulitzer institution, I kept thinking… until the Chapter 3 of Part I of Phillip Roth’s American Pastoral, quite possibly the most jolting, timelessly (in my lifetime) consuming, memorable chapter I have ever read. And to think, I almost dropped the book before then to move onto next on backlogged-list—and now I have so much more to look forward to. The immigrant experience—shut up, already(*see below)---the American experience is for lack of a better word rich, and, second to love, is the reason why I itch a gigantic pain in my bones, to write, something in my eyes that deserves My Pulitzer—

*Maybe I realize, this to do, if I want to do: write American by forcefully—only because force is needed-having America under the feet, and start the footprints from there. Because I’m already here. Problem: Too obsessed, struck at getting the damn place under the feet

It’s mine. Stop fighting; or you’ll be caught in/stuck throwing punches in the dark instead of lifting my eyelids to see the light on.

back to morbid, blame it on the Herald

If you're bored with yourself, can you just leave? When the gruesomeness of the frontpage gets too real and mortal and evil, really evil, can I just stop reading, and will it stop--at least in my world, because of course it doesn't in that real one--? If I want to focus on my life, the path of it, the way painters... no, more so incredible paintings and poems and fiction is created out of focus, will I be able to just do it, or is it a state of mind, and a state of living that situates itself around you based on its whims?
terrible
I read it in a short story today--Palanuik, I think it was; but aren't sure; I read a lot of authors in a day when I work at the bookshop, none but few like sperm that make it past single digits page, because of the scattered windowslits of reading opportunities, and the on-hand-ness of them--and it's such a word that doesn't exist but for us. Terrible, no matter

what it describes it's terrible and I will never forget reading that word.