Crazy Trolley Man

Singing a throat-throbbing dry song, veteran,
your faded army cap shades your eyes, watching
your index and thumb, so poised in space,
a ballet trigger practiced stillness,
pulling the invisible string of a chord
along in the air

Now, shaking cracked hands, you know both ways,
a loose pleading gesture, up and down
as if you're centering a pot - but stone,
not soft mud and clay, never in those hands,
always the rought, sedentary edges.

Lean back onto no pillow,
lean back into space and sleep.

For Love of Sleep

I started to study,
already read a few pages, so,
now I know more than I did before,
and will do better on the test
than if I'd done nothing at all.

That is logical, for love of sleep, yes, sleep.

Do You Taste Organic?

I'm only writing short prose observations of crazy people right now. what is that about? im really accumulating a bunch of them... "crazy veteran on trolley", "blind flute lady", "ms. tired eyes", and on and on. i suppose i am putting my people-watching skills to some good use, but... good use? really? what does an observation peice matter? what does it add to art? does everything have to mean something? Answer: No, no, no, some things are vegetable broth, some things are duck soup. Remember? Yes. I remember.

School related stress right now. That's no good. I really don't believe in it. I can't wait until these college applications are gone gone gone. Maybe this warrants a blues tune.

This morning someone was blasting Hendrix in the hallway at school. A stereo plugged into the wall just sitting there by my locker, didn't seem to belong to anyone. It was there when I left, all untended and loud. Did you know that I listened to all and only Jimi Hendrix for a good few years of my life? Fact.

Today some health food nuts came to CAPA and gave a huge bag of apples to each advisory. I stole the bag for advisory number 304 and ran around the lunchroom throwing them like money. That felt good. Except they weren't actually apples, they were bags of sliced apples that had some additive to keep them looking fresh. Amber said "these don't taste organic".

Oh, and: Pomegranates are native to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and North India.

Tea Person 2

Shaking words, "just shows you the boss is listening", referring to the rain and God and our complaints. His teeth are really everywhere, leaning in every direction, swinging when he speaks.

The light is somewhere between his ear and balding skull, coming in to shine in my eyes, in that place where magicians find quarters and handkerchiefs. It is blinding his face from me. Maybe he is Jesus. Might mistake him for homeless outside, but here, he finds the perfect Assam, like a king, pointing, chin up, summoning forth each tin, too fat, too skinny, just right. He smells it tenderly, Sessa, over and over, as I count up change for his fifty dollar bill.

Tea Person 1

A curled old woman, skin flaking in drops from her chin and nose-tip, eyes so glassly, like she's about to cry. What is this condition, disease? A charcoal line on her eyelids, a perfect curve, as she looks down to count her dollars.

get pumped.

(I'm going to try to post pictures of my bruises later.)

(i got into 2 bike accidents yesterday.)

Short Story in Jumbles

My hair sticks to my cheeks when I whip my head around,
trying to watch all of my sides.

A shopping cart flies across the parking lot
as if posessed, a great hand of wind and rain tricking it into the side of a van,
whose alarm sounds, threatening the thief, the rain, the shopping cart,
all turned over and shaking, now, wheels spinning.

A blurry man with a beard and a stuffed car asks if I need a ride.

This strip mall, a few hooded figures running between their groceries and their trunks,
trying to keep the bread dry, perhaps, trying not to crush the eggs, trying to keep the ice cream
cold. It would stay cold, this night. My shirt soaked straight to my skin, pink and satin,
that felt like a cut, and the rain stinging its walls like peroxide.

A pencil grey cross hatch surrounding everything. A bus in the distance
taking so long, it's name and number like a fog light,
orange, casting sickness across my face.




ALRIGHT, feel bad for my sorry ass.

LONG AND ROUGH (is how i like my poems)

Jessica's breads in a tin foil bundle,
the banana candy insides, all wafting upwards -
Do smells disappear?
Do they land on the shoulders of boys,
who carry them so far as the swimming pool,
and later, so far as the locker room shower,
and still later, to the ocean's edge.

Or do they separate and fade, like couples,
continents, the words of a poem.
If so, then, where are their graves?
My grandfather's cigarette train,
my sister's vanilla garden,
Cara's basketball sweat embrace,
where do they fall, where can I go to visit them,
with flowers and stones?

----

**and then maybe this additional bit:

I remember the passenger seat of our dust blue Nissan,
the straps pulling at my neck when I'd ask
my driving mother to please explain the science in everything.

Do smells disappear?

She told me to keep a notebook of questions.

**and somehow get to:

Many poems are only questions,
many words separate and fade,
many words stick to the pockets of my jeans
through the laundry, through the walking of three days,
and rediscovered..

**what?

Running Water is Also Evil

Reed interview today - went well. Probably because I danced for a good half hour beforehand to Taj Mahal. He really brightens up everything, I always have a good day when I listen to him in the mornings. Anyhow, me and this Luke person talked about biking and poetry and gentrification and West Africa and it all felt good good good. I was really happy about the interview. He encouraged me to to send poetry with my application, and said that they'd rather have a great, interesting student who looks mediocre on paper than a bland person who looks perfect on paper. Word.

Also: Looking at chocolate bars at Penn Bookstore Cafe beforehand. One of them had like.. chocolate related astrology things? "Aries: Will eat the entire bar on the way home from the shop." And I did just that. (Sarah - the Libra one said: "Will buy two bars, to share with someone." You punk.)

Now for the homework.

(Afterthought)

What is there to say about four women,
strangers to each other, sitting together, staring
at computers.

I wish we would stare with that dedication
into each other's faces. To learn them.

Isn't that what this is all about?
Making things less strange?

(One of us throws her hands to her ears
when the construction machines sound,
it is such a fearful, immediate gesture..)

Revision - She'll Be A Church Lady One Day, But Not Today, Today She Has A Son

She is thinking about the expression:
"cling fast", as if holding on
is something that happens quickly.

The low waver of the church organ
radiates from her forehead.

Her ache sits still
between her belly and her thighs:
Her sun in half-sleep, fingers curled
around her braids, that crawl her back
like spiders, tickle her skin like
tall grass. His laughter hangs
from his chin like spit.

Folk Song Remix

When there is no more paper
left in my house, no scraps left
to write upon, when my walls
and floors are black
and my ceilings,
and the backs of my hands,
when my arms and thighs
are covered in script tattoos,
I will peel off my skin,
I will pile all the papers,
I will pull down the wallpaper -
those long thin Torah strips -
and in one cardboard box,
box big as a house,
I will send it to you,
the whole of it,
and this poem will be a letter
taped on top.
When you read it, you will understand
your duty to unpack.

Prayer 2, or, Angst Galore

God, I am naked
and all the water in the world
is too shallow
to cover me.
I've been robbed,
what shall I do?
I am here.
Can you hear me?
You have robbed me.
What shall I do?

CMON EDDIE LEMME SNEAK THIS ONE BY

ARGHH

i can't get any new books out

cuz i still haven't returned James Tate

(he is the shit. the depressing shit, but whatever.)

MOTHERFUCK.

College Essay Attempt #10,000,000

(On the blog because the library won't save your files.)

We've just taken our senior class picture: One hundred and fifty kids on the front steps, arms thrown up and screaming, like a roller coaster ride. The reality of graduation and college is muting everything - I can't hear the screams, the camera's clicks, the schoolbell ringing.

I remember road trips, when I was younger. I used to gaze out of the window, and the blurring trees and traffic symbols, and plot out my imaginary farm. Draw the plans for my future community center, my cafe, my bookstore. Awake, I could dream forever of college life. In these fantasies, I was my best self, curled up in a chair with a book, or involved in animated conversation with friends, discussing Locke, Kant, Shakespeare, Homer. I imagined class discussions: A bunch of students and our proffessor, searching together for the essence of some subject. This would be - not the life - but life itself. Living. Living is in spirited conversation and meaningful texts. I couldn't stop dreaming.

That living is where I wished I was, it was what I imitated when I skipped school to go to my favorite cafe and read.

I've hated high school. I've felt under-educated, uninspired, alienated. So I didn't try very hard. I was impatient. Early on, I began to believe in self-education, the way a scientist believes in Carbon. (See Exhibit A. **I made a collage of some notes I've taken in self-education, quotations from different books, graphs of plots, things from my notebooks, if you've ever seen my notebooks.) I read poetry, literature, philosophy, anything I could get my hands on, and researched a LOT about education theory and alternative schooling.

And oh, conicidence! Two women sitting across from me are discussing where to send their kids to high school. "Don't do it! Don't send them! Let them roam and study what their hearts desire!!" I want to tell them, "High school is an oppressive institution, it will ruin their minds, it will devour their inspiration, it will turn their thoughts into badly analyzed numbers." One of them is wearing a shirt that says "American Woman". Yes, this is correct, public education is an American problem.



And then I really begin to ramble about how shitty Philly schools are, and the causes (capitalism, racism, classism), so here I stop. Thoughts? Should I not mention skipping school? This is just a beginning, but it's the best version I've written so far. Also - should I mention how I am friends with the security guard at the library (above mentioned - Eddie)? And I need to work in how I left Masterman because I hated their philosophy, but how CAPA hasn't fit well because their standards are so low, and how I've been trying to work this education thing out my way, by taking classes at Rutgers this year, but it's all still so UNSATISFYING.




No college will ever accept me.

Revision!

His voice was once a silver trumpet -
all the pride of the shining band
was in his air song,
was in his dust stomp.

All gone to the mice,
to the blues, now, to Georgian heat
on the killing room floor.

The clock in his cab says
11:15 in the dazzling afternoon.
It says that. Though it is 9pm and raining.
It lies like that. All spelled out clear, in red digital dots.
Like the constellations in city lights this night,
that spell out line drawings
of the mythical heroes of America:

Wave-riding cowboys, freight-hopping vagabonds,
with bullets to spare.

This is not a voice to be won or lost, he thinks.
No, it is only to be dampened, to be moldy, a loaf of bread
on the sidewalk this night. It is only
to thin out like an old flannel nightgown,
to scratch last hollers to the moon.

i love the word "vagabond"

His voice was once a slick trumpet,
shining in an outdoor band.
His throat has since been scratched out
by malevolent mice, this killer sickness
that crawls through his cab, hides behind his wheel,
stares with him at his digital clock until three am.

All of his old Nigerian air song, gone to the mice.
Just blues now, just Georgian heat
on the killing room floor.

It is dark and raining, though his clock says
eleven fifteen in the dazzling afternoon.
It says that. It lies like that. All spelled out in clear, red digital dots.
Like the constellations in city lights at night,
the line drawings of the mythical heroes of America:

Wave-riding cowboys, wet vagabonds, with bullets to spare.

This is not a land to be won or lost, he thinks,
no, it is only a song, to be dampened,
to become moldy, to thin out like an old flannel nightgown,
to scratch last hollers to the moon.

Song 1

Hell is in the back pocket of her pants,
folded in a sqaure, a little letter to a man.
Hell, hell, hell in the pocket of her pants,
when I grabbed her ass, it burnt my hand.