February 2012
15 posts
3 tags
Letter from John Steinbeck to his son Thom
New York November 10, 1958 Dear Thom: We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers. First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you. Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses...
6 tags
Trouble
Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter hung in the Tahitian bedroom of her mother’s house, while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes you can look at the clouds or the trees and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground. The performance artist Kathy Change set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s...
2 tags
I said she’s definitely interested but her hair is unkempt and indicative of her desperation. She raised her head a little bit that’s definitely a good sign. You left for a try and I poked the cubes with a straw. You hit it off and I glimpsed over my shoulder at the TV. Sportscenter. I kept biting my lips and you kept getting those smiles. Another round. Clicking of pool balls and...
2 tags
I chuckled at the sticker left on the plastic newspaper dispenser two blocks back because I just figured it out and you were mumbling about getting laid. There was an urgency in your step I wished you had when you woke up. Like leaving pieces of yourself in the cement because you can’t feel it in bed.
2 tags
That Tree
There’s this sewer manhole that sticks out of the creek that runs behind this house. It’s right where two creeks meet. Sometimes when the water level is high enough there’s water on all sides of it. I always thought it would be cool to brave getting on top of it when the water is up there and get a sweet panoramic shot on top of it. Going down there after it rains is cool seeing...
2 tags
Valentine's Day
When I think of Valentine’s Day I think of an old couple strolling through Poet’s Walk Park in the fall with a bunch of colored leaves. I don’t think of the pre-teens giving each other construction paper cut-outs of hearts with glitter glued to them in big blobs of Elmer’s glue when you know they should have used a glue stick instead. It’s something about that aged...
2 tags
Hugs
Never been a person for birthdays. I’ve always preferred a more casual setting with a few close friends reminiscing and perusing ideals in metaphors and similes. There’s those all-out extravaganzas some people do at bowling alleys and karaoke joints renting out the whole place. Heard of churches and high school theaters before. For a birthday. I mean, it’s nice that you want to...
2 tags
Went walking through my middle school’s parking lot kicking a piece of cinderblock through the empty spaces misaligned to try to compensate for different sized cars on each side. Found a hula hoop in the football field I strolled through because the gate was unlocked. I like abandoned things. Houses with boarded up windows in the proper part of town can be like heaven if they haven’t...
2 tags
I remember the cafeteria in High School. There were a few different lines. Two of them were speedier and had the food carried out to them because they were the mobile stations on wheels. One of them was a bit more serious and embedded into a wall that you had to go down into and back out of. The one in the wall was the only one that served rolls and the little cartons of milk so that’s the...
2 tags
Titanic
I wonder if I would have let a girl chest deep in freezing water swing an axe at the handcuffs holding me to a sewage pipe. I wouldn’t have known that she just punched a guy in the nose in frustration for me. But the ship is sinking and she left her man to come back for me is probably what would’ve flashed in my head. Here I am, abandoned and about to drown. Breaking my own thumb in...
2 tags
Water softeners make skin feel strange, I can’t tell when all the soap is completely off. There’s something about Ving Rhames being raped behind muffled sounds of a blaring saxophone and some guy making cowboy noises with Bruce Willis in a bloody shirt, a broken nose and wielding a samurai sword. Playing drums in the living room of the house I went to high school in when I never played...
2 tags
Rain Driving 2
If the rain isn’t coming down in sheets, you’re going fast enough, and the wind isn’t blowing in an odd direction it is amazing to drive with the windows down. The smell is something like a freshly cleaned kitchen mixed with a sanitized hospital room. When it’s dry you have to worry about all the other car’s pollution and little particles of trash and dust getting...
1 tag
mattiepoo:
Dimly lit bridge, this…
…bag sleeping man newspaper clad behind the plants, curled up to keep from the wind.
Lips cracked, dried down wind, light’s distance resembling it.
It, strewn too broad, lost and untended, an ancient measurement.
2 tags
flimsy whimsy: Maybe if I met you in another life.... →
mattiepoo:
Maybe if I met you in another life. One where I wasn’t in pieces on the floor being stepped on and discarded like playing cards or cat food. One where everything made sense and we didn’t have taxes. I hate myself most days. I feel like a fool that’s been played ten paychecks in at the craps table. Everyone I know gives me strange looks, it hurts worse than you could think of, but I...
January 2012
23 posts
3 tags
Rain Driving
I like driving in the rain. I’m never satisfied with the windshield wiper settings and always end up shifting it around as the car speeds up and slows down and picks up more or less rain drops or the rainfall just becomes less in general. It’s great after a nice solid rain when the ground is shimmering with oil and you see little refractions of headlights in different colors. The way...
1 tag
Was…
What was it? A slip or loss?
An open jacket red rose display, wrist in the rain.
A shoulder peak back down the alleyway.
It was steam spewed rust, heel to toe splashes, blackened grates.
Chin to the collar popped, and a cigarette safe beneath the brim.
Anonymous asked: Would you ever date someone online? Is there someone on tumblr you have a crush on?
1 tag
Recovery
Sitting at my desk I tend to change positions quite often. Indian style is always appealing since the chair is one of those cheap rolling ones without arms so my legs don’t have to be confined on the sides. There’s four sets of speakers, three computer monitors, and two computers. One of the computers is a desktop I pieced together when I was living in San Diego about four years ago....
3 tags
Love
Love is a context, a habitual unconscious acknowledgement that this is enough.
A permanence put past glances.
The beginning, middle and end recognized and accepted.
3 tags
“Joe Heller
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and...”
– Kurt Vonnegut - The New Yorker, May 16th, 2005
1 tag
WatchSolange
2 tags
distant grasping pride every reach i try to make your thorns rip my hands
5 tags
“I had locked myself in the bathroom, and run a tub full of warm water, and taken...”
– The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
3 tags
Cowardice
Is cowardice a prescription? No, it’s a dangling reprise between happenstance and fast glancing arbitrary naysayers who didn’t know the blunt end of a stick they put too many notches in before they checked its strength. Met a lot of folk. Met a lot of people and they all have the same story. Heartbreak. Pain. Remorse. Shame. Betrayal. Not one of them did I tell they weren’t...
Anonymous asked: Why "-poo" ?
old resume
Met a guy in my class who did 8 years in the Army and it reminded me of the resume I did just after I got out. Thought I’d share for shits and giggles.
Objective: Seeking position as a PC Repair Technician
Qualification Highlights
A+ certified, 3 years PC repair experience
Government secret security clearance
Profound proficiency with Microsoft Windows XP
Supervisor...
2 tags
How many guitarists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
100
1 to screw in the lightbulb and 99 to say they could have done it better.
3 tags
“…but, so far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and...”
– E. E. Cummings - I: Six Nonlectures (via mattiepoo)
2 tags
It’s always in remembering.
Reminiscent memories of wishes of things of ways and naively expecting something.
So naive to think the sun would stop. To think my darkest days might trickle off if I ignored the void.
It’s better to remember tomorrow might bring something than pretend it isn’t coming.
2 tags
Pieces of a need,
an urge too strong to
satiate immediately and
yet ignored.
A crude lung to breathe in.
Something resuscitated slowly
behind the curtains.
Something done alone yet
in plain sight.
6 tags
Games
I like monopoly except there’s that weird rule where you have to go around the board once before you can buy any property. I was never really fond of that rule. Jenga is always fun, but it’s difficult to find a completely level surface to play on unless you’re on the floor or a countertop or something like that. Apples to Apples is one of my favorites, you get to the end and...
4 tags
Maybe if I met you in another life. One where I wasn’t in pieces on the floor being stepped on and discarded like playing cards or cat food. One where everything made sense and we didn’t have taxes. I hate myself most days. I feel like a fool that’s been played ten paychecks in at the craps table. Everyone I know gives me strange looks, it hurts worse than you could think of, but...
3 tags
forward decided endlessly searching for words diction in motion
3 tags
The way she leaned back from the sink to peek around the wall. It was the little curls of her lips, pencil thin between the edges. Forehead lowered with intrigue. Shoulder lifted with sass, almost inviting. Those eyes. It’s always the eyes that get me. Perfect squint-almost-glimmering gaze fixated on me. Such recognition in the simplest of gestures. This is all that matters. Eyes exchanging...
3 tags
continual dawn chasing illumination habitual gaze
Anonymous asked: I really respect you and your writing.
3 tags
try it on for size never know if it will fit might grow into it
December 2011
29 posts
2 tags
you have to start at the beginning
or the bottom
it’s where stories start
and you can’t fill a glass from the top down
.
you have empty pages
i cram the margins and scribble on scraps
you see an empty glass
i see something waiting to be filled
3 tags
the abysmal glare wandering inquisition question of questions
3 tags
Such speculation
thought as a necessity,
done without asking.
Anonymous asked: Credit the beatles for that last one bro.
mattiepoo:
i am you as you are me and we are us together
4 tags
Flushed cheeks and
Bones above
Dimples
Smile seen
Sideways, one
Eye’s glance
Recognition of
Self to
Self
We
Us
3 tags
Some vested pretense, a loss or acquisition. Why so serious?
3 tags
Merciless fervor, hardly worth it to dream of if you don’t do it.
3 tags
less fluidity quite rigid its permanence its continuance
Anonymous asked: Do you write poetry about sex? Beautiful job.