Andrew in the Rye

Whenever the Spirit Moves (Two Poems)

2010-09-13T20:10:00.002-04:00

Drowning in the Baptismal

I baptize you…

I saw nothing
in the rich baptismal,
with the pastor’s rough
right hand over
my 15-year-old face—
his fingers extended
like giant bratwurst.
The water swirled
beneath my weight,
tickling and tugging
at every corridor of my body,
rising up around me.

in the name of the Father…

I felt my lungs constrict
and my head
Clunk against the porcelain bottom.

and of the Son…

There was no glory,
no dove to twitter
and spiral down
like a divine church bulletin.
No great light to sever
the ceiling, to dangle
the harp of David.

and of the Holy Ghost…

And in the blasted cinema
of noise and applause
I remembered being small,
sitting in the pew,
following the complex grains
of wood and seeing airplanes
and warships and rockets
in their strained lines and knots,
with a Pentecostal preacher
pounding the pulpit two times.
Two times for the second commandment.
Two times to stress ‘in vain.’

Two Boys

In the gravel parking lot
of Christian Fellowship Church,
Benton, KY, one wee boy stands,

shuddering to lift a crate. He props
it up with a piece of pipe he found
bobbing out of the creek.

To the pipe he knots a ragged yellow rope
and ties the rope to his wrist. I’m setting a trap
for God, he says.

Meanwhile, in a cardboard shanty in Acuña, Mexico,
a gaunt boy is napping. A strong gale
comes knocking, and he is buried

beneath plywood and mud, held captive
by the spell of a jealous God.

4th of July

2010-09-13T20:09:00.001-04:00

Ghosts on Independence Day

The Queen Anne's Lace,
the white heat bees
and the weeping flowers—
these we are partial to.

And they spread over the heavens
like you spread over her the night before,
soft in your sweat,
in an act not of love,
but of paying tribute.

It was another decision
in a long line of decisions—

strings tied around each finger,
forming webs that fray
and slip off silently while we sleep.
They grow stronger amidst our neglect
and come to explode
before us tonight.

But it is their remains—
the hovering octopus ghosts
you call them
—that cling to us.

They drift in the sky,
concealing themselves
behind the curtain of night,
illuminated only by
new pyrotechnic tongues
honoring the forgotten.

Grandmother

2010-09-13T18:10:00.005-04:00

Preparing for the Death of My Grandmother (Never Enough)

Blackbelly moan of the night
train lurching into town
stirs me out of sleep; some mile-off
coal-burning beast infecting my dreams.

I sit up and look out my open window;
the steam rolls off the asphalt,
the night air pours in,
smell of rain and fresh lightning.

I don't want to think of her gone,
what her brittle body will look like in satin,
the stench of formaldehyde replacing
the stench of death; I don't want to think of it, but I do.

I walk to the kitchen.
Flipping the switch, the florescence shudders
to life she is waiting for morning dialysis; losing
teeth, glasses, losing her mind, all in the ruffles
of her bedding and hospital gown.

I pull from a jug of a water until my stomach swells and twinges.
What is one night becomes several.
What is one death becomes many imagined.
Months shuffle past like the turning of cards

until that fresh Sunday morning in March,
when the sun breaks through my sleep
and the telephone rings.

What Runs Out Makes Room

2010-08-30T19:37:00.001-04:00

What Runs Out Makes Room

Let there be light
to read by, to sing by, to flicker
at our sides, to illuminate all the shapes
our faces make after the sun goes
down. Let there be sound,

but not as much as before.
May we hear the rooster's throaty crow
in the city and wake--may it peel
back the scales from our eyes
and leave us honest with our own electricity.

Free from combustion and scalding tar
let us face tomorrow like sunflowers unfolding.
Let our calloused feet walk down new roads,
learning the blood and flesh of our city,
the fibers that define our breath.

Let the air clear and the cancer fade.
May our sweat be holy, o Lord,
when the oil is gone.
If Eden is our memory, will it remember us?

With heaven as the soil we stand on,
its mouth open to our dirty hands, we will plant
the seed of this family and that
to split with our family and yours--the abundance
for which heaven has no other name.

This is going to be published in the Plan B zine.

Working On (When the Oil Is Gone)

2010-08-25T20:40:00.003-04:00

Let there be light
to read by, to sing by, to flicker
at our sides, to illuminate all the shapes
our faces make after the sun goes
down. Let there be sound,

but not as much as before.
May we hear the rooster's throaty crow
in the city and wake--may it peel
back the scales from our eyes
and leave us with only our electricity.

Let the air clear and the cancer fade.

May our sweat be holy, oh Lord,
when the oil is gone.
If Eden is our memory, will it remember us?

With heaven as the soil we stand on,
the tilled, damp earth, ready
to dirty our hands while we plant the seed
of this family and that to split with our family
and yours--the abundance for which heaven
has no other name.

May what runs out only make room.
Let us stink well with all the earth.

Revision of very old poem

2009-09-03T22:36:00.003-04:00

tracing

some and day
when skin meets skin,
and no small light between

and rattled off
reasons for blood,
heat, friction

or unraveled threads
of hair and quilted
together our awake life,

and ghostly wind,
chlorine on the tongue—
when do we lose ourselves?

Climb Out

2009-07-28T23:06:00.000-04:00

I drank half a gallon of sweet tea. I looked out my blurry window at the concrete sky. I tried to sing but my throat merely shuddered. My harmonica took my breath away. I looked for a pen and found none. I got lost in my own hallway. I segregated my confidences from my uncertainties. No longer will they mingle. I read lamentations. I missed that soft and bruised little heart. Missed it so much I downed a pint of something Irish, then two sleeping pills. The night is a foggy extension of my own skin. I wish to be out levitating in the night so cool and wet and thickly dark. Some industrialized Walt Whitman caricature, hovering over this amphetamine city, clasping my hands together at the glory of all common pains—the shopping carts corralled under the overpass, chain-link fences peeled up from the ground, a payphone being stuffed with quarters by a bronze woman with split bottom lip. There are wedding parties out there, maids clad in neon, groomsmen like beaming marquees, all for the newlywed. They gather by the river. The Mexicans with poles and buckets full of worms, the kids with Detroit Tigers in their spokes, geese squabbling over Wonderbread, they gather by the river. I can see them from my window, if I stretch, just a bit.

Smother everything in the name of poetry

2009-07-27T00:15:00.000-04:00

Grey Kitten

Smoke off
the blown out candle
—a grey kitten

at the edge of my desk,
floating quietly away
from the acrid smell of old flame,

past bottles,
burrowing into laundry,
hiding from hyperbole.

Creation

2009-07-20T01:09:00.001-04:00

On the First Day,
She laid down and parted Her hair.

The Second She painted
rock and mud and rubbed it on her forehead.

The Third Day She pulled a green chord
from Her throat, filled the air with jasmine.

On the Fourth, She plucked out each
of Her burning eyes, flung them away in fury.

She formed you from beneath Her left thumbnail
on the Fifth Day, wet and soft.

The Sixth, She blew life into the ear
of the wind, and finally opened her fists.

Youth

2009-06-20T01:42:00.003-04:00

Something I'm working on:

Youth of Michigan Summer

Tall blemished youth,
unshaken, but slouching
down the valleys of age,
casting shadows like clockwork
on the passing day—
beware of easy apathy,
stop looking down your nose at Pall Mall Blues,
throw out your opera and pick up a kazoo—
And hum three thousand miles
of shoreline, hum
like quiet Detrois
in overgrown wild-lace,
hum the language
of euchre, hum
for Motown-Soul-No-More.

Mouth open in Hoffmaster,
howl with the coyotes,
tall blemished youth, sound thrown
like a ribbon from your throat,
ignore Ionia St. bar crawl
like it were leprous—
but don't ignore the lepers,
pariah fringe slab sleepers.

Tall blemished youth,
c-lo grip knuckles,
burning away
the sweet incense of $uccess,
supping on Spinach Pie,
searching for the vinyl
heart of Sunday morning
—cherry-pick your way West,
open your heart to Rainer Maria
Rodents, throw Hemingway out the window
and read the sky—Clouds rolling
like laughing immigrants,
clouds sometimes blankets,
old family quilts,
clouds of rain for earthworms
and apple trees,
clouds rarely not at all.

Run your hands in the dirt,
form a world of reflection,
for the solstice passes,
the sun's gaze diminishes,
and with it, the world
you've run through becomes
something old again.

Sing

2009-06-10T00:08:00.001-04:00

when you cannot sing

when you cannot sing loud, sing
laced with tender notes.
make soft your everything.

when you cannot cry out, cry
wholly from your bones.
make soft your everything.

and fill your oven with eggplant parmesan, lay
the afghans across the sofa, for peace will come
walking slow out of the morning veils,
toward your creaking voice, hungry and shivering.

when you cannot dream, sleep
heavily spread over the humming night.
flicker your eyes again.

when you cannot run, walk
honest with a face made for the day.
flicker your eyes again.

and sprinkle cloves in with the cookies—you
uncorked refugee—scribble a joy on your wrist
for the humdrum march of tomorrow, turn off the lights,
undress, learn the tune of your skin.

Ghosts

2009-06-09T01:12:00.001-04:00

Two Glowing Ghosts (in a World So Tall)

Oh I glowed with you tonight,
rode a little hum song,
flickering pinprick song
of the rippled stratus sky,

song of joy from the daily mudly bravery
of rolling from bed and taking
root in the stark breath of morning.

We whispered this little hum song
to the laughing river, we peeled back
lichens and found faded scars—
the names of love.

And when we heard the drawling night train,
we laid on our soft bellies, smeared
in blue twilight, parted the leaves of grass,
ears to the sod—

two glowing ghosts
with clattering heartbeat
moving down the line.

Poem

2009-05-30T00:06:00.000-04:00

Fidgeting Spirits

We holding halos to the sun
to see if they cast shadows.
Unsure but not alone, we gnats
of the soulfood kitchen.
We bicycles chattering in the wind,
noses combing date-filled pastries,
same noses like rudders in neon musk.
Potlucking afternoons, we sons and daughters,
up to our eyes in watermelon rinds.
We 3 cups 4 cups 5 cups coffee,
lighting May rollies in bed.
Windows flung wide, bussing the day,
open-eyed, love-handled, calling
like birds to the immortal sky.
We saplings lifting our shaky fists,
petitioning rain's amen.
Slivering the light while we can,
stepping out into dusk, listening
for the reverb of dreams.
We soft hallelujahs at the riverside,
tangled in our old tadpole skin.
Itching to ride our thumbs, stare down
that dozing pink flame—

We pillars of salt at the city line.

So today I had a nice nap

2009-05-21T18:41:00.002-04:00

I usually don't post about what I do with my days here, but I think this is relevant. I took a nap today. I don't take many naps. I had a dream today during this nap, and when I woke up, I decided I wanted to write it down. So I formed a little story based on what I dreamt. Some of it is embellished/fabricated, but for the most part, the gist of the dream's there.

dream: There was a blonde little boy who had fits and bad dreams. At night he would be haunted by the last image that he saw before sleep, so he got into the habit of focusing on a picture of his favorite friendly duck.

But tonight, when the duck angel came to guide his dream, it spoke to him and said “You must escape your dreams on your own.” He adjusted his monocle, opened up a book sitting on the nightstand and climbed in, never to be heard from again. The boy's face flushed with fear. His dream turned empty and black and felt himself fall. His vision started to curl and blur into something new and next he was standing in the street of a giant city.

It was nighttime, so everything glowed like copper with the color of the streetlight. Just then a towering mustachioed man in overalls, bigger than anything else in the city, formed a ball of fire in his mouth. His eyes were small, straight black circles. His hair, black as his eyes, curled out from a tight red cap. All the boy could do was run as fireballs pummeled down skyscrapers. Before the boy knew it, there was another mustachioed giant, and a looming voice in the sky reciting some phrase in an unknown language over and over as each building tumbled.

Eventually the boy made it out of town, but not without the two giants following him. He ran with all his might through a sage-green field, fireballs lighting things up not too far from him. His chest heaved and his lungs burned. His little scrambling legs carried him to a cliff, where the ground just cut off into nothingness below. The giant brothers came closer and closer, mouths full of fire. The little boy had no choice but to jump. Fright filled his little bones. He closed his eyes, balled his fists, and leapt from the cliffside.

Falling, he kept his eyes closed, he whimpered a bit. Earlier that day the boy's father had told his grandma over the phone that the boy had been diagnosed with epilepsy. Epilepsy. Epilepsy. The word rang out over and over, was spelled in the sky above him in magically glowing script. He had no idea what it meant.

A small speck in the blackness beneath grew and grew and he realized he was falling straight for a meadow, his velocity ever-increasing. He tried to scream, but all of the air was shoved back into his throat, so he started to flail, as much he could. A blur of white suddenly swept in front of him and he hit it, or rather, it caught him. This blur of white was what looked to be an albino flying moose, with eyes pink, but strong.

The little boy held on strongly to moose's long hair as he galloped across the sky. Opening it's mouth, the moose began to sing a long continuous note that turned into another note, than another. A slow, continuous song that parted all of the fog from the boy's dream. The peered over the moose's shoulder and down below him he could see men and women with wondrous faces, wearing peculiar clothes, and playing even more peculiar instruments, joining into the moose's song, making it their own.

Little Song

2009-05-21T10:06:00.001-04:00

Oh I shine with you tonight
in these woods, breaths riding
everlasting song, flickering
song of celestial expanse,
satellites sailing across the sky,
song of rest from daily mudly bravery.

"Show a little faith there's magic in the night."

2009-04-20T00:52:00.004-04:00

Let's go, the sky is getting dark. Let's go
like streaks of lightning through fields
of Meadow Foxtail. Let's wrap our freckled
arms around Cassiopeia, let's greet her with a kiss.

Let's run to the Dancing Lawn, uncurl our fists
to the sky, yell until our throats crest, shrill,
push against the clouds. Let's tear the old skin from our backs.
Come on darling, let's cut out and meet Bruce

on Thunder Road, don't bother with your shoes.
Or let's clutch the 12:15 freight to Detroit
—the old Paris of America—
where any golden green's shriveled away by now.

Come on, I want to strike a match on my bare,
calloused heel and light you up and down
each block. Let's go—with no care where or how
or why—the sky is getting dark.

Charred Hamburger

2009-04-12T02:32:00.000-04:00

Steven

Is this the naked best of you?
The craned arch in the foot, continually
denying gravity―the ghostly webs that stretch
from body to body, only seen in a fountaining
silhouette, rippling from your arms
like the rings of a tree. The only prejudice
is the truth you have written in your senses―
the tugging gut, last night's melody whimpered low―
the way back to clattering your teeth
in dandelion greens, to your hand-claps for the naked
best moon, the way of the unkempt, frilled intimacy―
these veins stretch out like the countless roots
of wild fig trees, clutching firmly in the rutty ground.
But here in the raisin-sun mornings like this one
where you sling your song to the streetlamp and leave it,
and swagger your derelict tongue to the road―
you are merely black hair and smoke.

Thou Shalt Not Mix Fibers

2009-04-12T02:30:00.001-04:00

Indian Summer Prayer, 2008

Dear Lord, you are weightless
in the morning fog, you dropped
your shadow and called it good.

Thank you for your shifting moods,
reaching behind yourself, coaxing

Forgive me—I want to feel your
hand smearing the lamb on my forehead—
for all of the masturbation, intellectual or otherwise;

Please don't confuse my nerves
with vibrato as I fumble through the dresser
drawers where Mom and Dad used to tuck me
in for the night, asleep on a mattress
of polyester and wool.

I am sorry

2009-04-12T02:23:00.000-04:00

Young Woman with Epilepsy, I Am Sorry

You are out in the ether. Your head thumps
the hospital pillow, your arms across the hospital tray.
Dust rises like snow in reverse. Dust:
all the pieces that have flaked away.

In the past the doctors would have consulted spirits
would have smeared goat's blood over your forehead.
Now they've brought you here to the fluorescent,
sterile room, laid you in this pneumatic bed,

pinned diodes to your temples—to observe you sweat
and shiver and moan, to watch you set fire to your spirit,
and eventually climb out.
But as they monitor you, you are out searching

in your tremor, full of the same vigor that makes thunder
open its throat, you are out there, passing through pools
of white light and white heat.
If only you could know how electric you are.

A Menthol Winter Passover/Hem and Haw

2009-04-05T23:24:00.005-04:00

Two poems tonight. The first is an edit on an old piece of writing I stumbled upon and the next is something I just finished.

A Menthol Winter Passover [The typeset/formatting is different on this poem on the page, and Blogger doesn't like it, so it's all aligned wrong.]

My accordion body
shivers from bed to bathtub,
slipping into the water's ebbing topography,
reciting good graces to cold enamel, and under
the steaming water I am
grateful for every sleepy nerve
coaxed and flickering
to life
like a struck match.

Hem and Haw

From fog comes land, shape and shadow.
The croaking night births each morning ray,
some mother's little lambs full of romp,

the stratus pearling across the sky.
From rot so cross and scattered rise
dandelion clocks, small winged seeds of dream.

And the egret's plumage hides on the crook of her neck
waiting for its time to curl into a snowy bouquet.
All these ounces of joy are to be stuffed in the cracks

of the windowless schoolyard wall and left to sprout,
in between the slats of the soup kitchen floor to pillow and bloom.
There is no doubt one of us must sow them there.

And as for the moon, and its scoffing mouths all filled
with pull, rest your head head on my shoulder, darling,
watch as dawn crosses the windowsill.

AWP Intro Award

2009-04-03T00:11:00.002-04:00

Sooooo, guess what? My poem "Archipelago" just won an AWP Intro Award. And they misspelled my name.

http://www.awpwriter.org/contests/intro01.htm

Sacrifices

2009-03-29T22:46:00.001-04:00

Sacrifices

It was at the fishing hole a worm
squeezed my knuckle. It was September,
I was 6 and toeheaded. The leaves in the trees

turned red and shook at the concrete sky.
Fully aware of the life wriggling
around my finger—if I am honest, I will tell you I sobbed

lightly when I pinched it in half,
threaded the hook through its wormy body.
And as if in an act of bitter defiance,

I flung the line with vigor.
My bobber rippled the water's surface,
a fluorescent twig in the mucky pondwater.

I had not yet learned of twelve-bar blues,
gasoline, an empty tummy. I only knew two things:
my bike and my fishing pole.

But I only knew with training wheels.
I only knew to yank and reel
when the bobber plopped down beneath the water.

And when I cranked up that shimmering silver fish
out of the pond it sent tiny quakes
into my pale wobbly thin arms. I could only look at it,

the red flesh under its gills, shock
filling its gaping body. I lowered it to the dirt,
watching it flail and pad against the earth.

My teeth clenched tight. If I am honest,
I will tell you I knew it was dying
in all this air. I waited for it to settle down,

afraid of its stark fight for life, and as it began to rest,
I looked down on the fish, its mouth moving
like it searched for words that could never

be spoken. I imagined the frequencies humming
around in my blonde head. And then there was quiet.
I whipped my fishing pole and freed the lure

from the cheek. The lure flew above and behind me,
got caught in the hair of our willow tree. I struggled with it,
but the willow was persistent, so I laid the pole at her feet,

picked up the still, oily fish and flung
it into the water, watching silently
from the grass for it to come alive.

Today

2009-03-29T16:10:00.003-04:00

Doe Bones

2009-02-28T21:18:00.001-05:00

Doe bones,
how you budge in your sleep,

your anxious ghosts
stirring in your mind,

your tendons constrict and release,
sudden, small flinching.

And you sigh, a pinkish moan,
as if a horsehair drawn

across your throat.
In tender dark, streaks

of halogen laying
across the blankets,

I will pull you tighter,
twin stars orbiting,

and creak a tale in your ear.
Let the words cascade and blur

into whatever machine
makes sleep—may your quick breath

soften and as I whisper
through these clouds

of your jasmine hair,
may the casual

movements of our bodies become
the melody of your dreams.

Sonnet 2

2009-02-25T02:11:00.002-05:00

Sonnet 2

I wish to fill this white earth day with song,--
rising from bed with a mouth full of alphabet soup,
placing letters in the air with my tongue;
I will watch every plan turn to soot
when my toes press the winter-bitten carpet
& my throat will crack on regardless
of how the tracks on the ground below fade like jet
contrails; & I slip back into dreaminess----
But around around around goes the prickly sugar
outside my blindless window; spit & wound
in its dance, so unaware of time & nerves
only existing as a descending heavenly neighbor
caught up in its own weight & sound--
I pray I learn to curl my voice to its curves.

Sonnet 1

2009-02-23T01:42:00.001-05:00

Sonnet 1

Origami cranes fed to the sunset
folded with arthritic knuckles tired
with gunpowder eyes staring out
over to the window prying the blinds out
past the rotting fence the red barn
all the fool's meadows lined with sunset
It would be useless to run now
setting down your paper wings
bushmills and k-hole in-tow
a blown out throat singing
of a sky as grey as God's own dream
that echoes in your lowdown rumble
you dance with all your loose seams
dance waiting for the room to shrivel

New Poem

2009-02-17T01:07:00.004-05:00

Something new I've been working on:

Human of Senseless Fire

Is this the naked best of you?
The craned arch in the foot, continually
denying gravity--the ghostly webs that stretch
from body to body, only seen in a fountaining
silhouette, rippling from your arms
like the rings of a tree. The only prejudice
is the truth you have written in your senses--
the tugging gut, last night's melody whimpered low--
the way back to clattering your teeth
in dandelion greens, to your hand-claps for the naked
best moon, the way of the unkempt, frilled intimacy--
these veins stretch out like the countless roots
of wild fig trees, clutching firmly in the rutty ground.

But here in the raisin-sun mornings like this one
where you sling your song to the streetlamp and leave it,
and swagger your derelict tongue to the road--
you are merely cloth and smoke.

New Poem: Deer

2008-12-12T16:48:00.001-05:00

Deer

It's the refrain of life that keeps humming
your doe eyes, hoofs, your freckled coat.
It's the ghost of a smile draped from your snowy
lips. These tender circadian frequencies―
your den is nestled under heavenly wing.
It's the early dawn you slip out into, casting shadows
on the dew, while the lost nocturnes drift overhead.
The chatter of the leaves as you bend your neck,
put your nose to the ground. It's the crack of a twig,
your stiff jaunt upwards, your bristling ears,
your whisper, Why?

Two Poems

2008-11-24T02:44:00.002-05:00

October Moods

1.
sticky, massive Indian Summer,
mosquitoes reawakened, rising
like carbonation, their blooming
limbs made of nothing more than
false hope

2.
spent the morning bartering
with the sheets, now I must droop
two sacks of English Breakfast,
because the moon shifted in the night
and frost will soon graze
these feet like cacti needles―
that plant, so fully aware
of the worth of its own fruit

3.
—I haven't had blinds since July,
that's four months, that's four
months where you saw me,
in my awkward dance, sliding
one leg in, then the other, then stretching
the whole wretched cocoon over my head

4.
tonight, the sky,
a salmon shimmering
above the fog before
it settles on the soft pond
near all the identical houses
where whore is a word that hovers over

5.
I know you will passover soon,
Indian Giver, the welcome mat
has been dipped in tomato soup,
a contemporary metaphor
for the blood
you so rightly crave

Nick Cave Cento

Once she lay open like a road,
sprinkled with wedding confettis—I married my wife
on the day of the eclipse. Torn to pieces
by her long-fingered hand, her hair was falling
down her shoulders, she stroked a kitten in her lap.

I put my hand over her; My typewriter turned mute
like dying moons. “I searched the seas and I’ve looked
under the carpet. There is a dead man
in my bed,” she said—the gaunt fruit of passion
dies in the light.

She put her hand over mine
while all the men and women slept under
fifteen feet of pure white snow.
And I kissed her goodbye, said, “All beauty must die,
get ready for love, praise Him.”

Just a few things I want to show off

2008-11-04T19:27:00.004-05:00

I played my first show last night at Mixtape Cafe, and I've got two more shows booked there in the future. I started a MySpace page for my music

Also, two of my poems have been published by the online journal Through the Third Eye. You can check them out here.

Things are in the works--I'll be playing more shows, writing new songs, new poems, new essays, new stories, and hopefully will be ready to record a full-on album of songs and poems come Winter. When it's finished, I'll be sure to post it here.

Indian Summer poems

2008-10-14T17:30:00.001-04:00

I haven't written any poetry in a long while. This is some stuff I started working on recently.

This is the first part of what will be a collection of short-short poems:

The Indian Summer I Wandered

1.
sticky, massive October night,
mosquitoes reawakened, rising
like carbonation, their blooming
limbs made of nothing more than
false hope

The next is a poem that was going to be the second part, but I decided to make it a stand-alone poem:

midnight driving barefoot,

rolling my own windows, wrestling
with a cardigan, there's a rambling radio speaking of stock market crash,

and I picture it like a spacecraft full of angels shuddering right
down into earth, the angels coughing up out of the wreckage,

only bruised, no broken bones, because they're angels and angels
don't have bones, and they're wondering why the hell

it had to be this sorry planet they crash-landed on, I share with Jeremy
my Stock Market Vision, he tells me to stop being such an eccentric

twat, I turn the station to funk, throw on a scarf, switch off the light
inside my mouth

This Blog Post Is a Pipe Bomb/A Reflection on Creative Academia

2008-10-11T11:36:00.007-04:00

There is something to be said about the academization of creativity. For most of the past four-and-a-half years I've been working on an undergrad degree in Creative Writing, and may in the not-so-near future spend more years in at least one graduate program. I am conflicted about the idea about spending further time and effort in the academic institution, however. On one hand, it is great place to learn guidelines for writing and literature. It's a nice, incubated community to gather feedback and grow in. The more I'm here, the more I hate it. I find that the rough edges of a lot of work I see in student's writing, those things we're taught to smooth out or "make work"--I find with several of these pieces that the parts that are unrefined are the most daring and exciting. I guess I'm compelled by works of art that break the rules.

In the 1950s these angelheaded hipsters revolted against staunch academia with stream-of-conscious spoken word and reckless disregard. Writers such as Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and so on created without care for whatever the academic world had to say. And the academic world largely ignored them much the same way, considering them low-brow and immature.

But over the past 50 years, attitudes have changed. Maybe this is due to the turnover of professors, where the people who understood and loved the Beats have become part of the system, and decided to teach them. Or maybe it's because now that their work has proven itself over time, the academics have deemed it valuable. Regardless of why, the fact is that The Beats have been absorbed by academia, a few of which are considered some of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

Similarly, before The Beats, the expressionist painters of the early 20th century were often considered revolting, fringe, and crude. From Franz Marc to Henri Rousseau to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Expressionism was a facet of the early 20th century art-world that challenged deeply-held boundaries of artistic value. But as anyone who's taken an Art History class knows, these painters have been judged worthy and important by academia and have thus become part of the snooze-fest curriculum of most Art History classes.

And of course there was DuChamp, Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Abbie Hoffman, and on and on and on--all sucked up by universities abroad, all resting in the cobwebs of the brains of snooty intellectuals and hipster literati everywhere. Nowadays as soon as someone breaks the mold, the mold closes over them.

The problem with academia is not that it isn't full of great art and literature; its fault is that much of this art and literature does not survive beyond its borders. Ah, but isn't that because of the dullness and ignorance of Western Culture? I disagree. Western Culture is dull and ignorant only because of the isolationism that art created in the comforts of academia promotes. And while I'm unsure about other fields in the arts, I know that good reading and good writing has become more of a club for the initiated than an open, communal experience.

So to those of us who do create and contribute, what do we do? Is pursuing a degree worth it?

Let me make something straight, I don't think my education was a waste of time--I learned a lot about literature, people, writing, myself, etc. I would not be the same person I am right now without the past four and a half years. But I went into this thing knowing that a Bachelor of Arts in Writing means nothing to me. I went into it knowing I write poems and wouldn't stop writing poems. I knew it would push me to write more, and in different ways, and that it would provide me with a place to show my writing and get feedback--this is why I chose to get a degree in Creative Writing. But in hindsight, I could have done much of these things on my own accord if I had the drive for it. I'm not entirely sure if I would have. Now that I'm almost through this degree-seeking rigmarole, the Dutch in me figures that it would be an awful waste of money if I didn't finish this degree.

Regardless of academia or popularity, everyone who creates must do so as an act salvation. All these thoughts I've been mulling over, they all can be summed up with a poem that speaks the outright damned truth, though your literary friends might scoff at the person who wrote it.

"So You Want to Be a Writer?" by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

-------

In other news, I'm playing some of my songs at at least one open mic night next week, maybe two.

The First Part of Something Larger

2008-05-18T23:33:00.003-04:00

Things have been busy these past few days. Quite a change from the fallout doldrum of the end of the school. I've started working again and it's good for the soul, I believe, even if the job itself is fairly sour. Anyway, I came here to post part of a poem I'm working on. I think it stands alone fairly well, so if you read it, I hope you like it, and if you don't, please tell me still.

1.

I spent the morning knocking cobwebs
from the metal rafters of the first Baptist,

and an early evening facedown in bed, four fingers
of bourbon in my belly, no blankets, no pillows,

stretching my limbs to the cardinal points.
Tomorrow I wonder when she’ll come home,

across the border, a daffodil behind her ear,
and show me how to pine for Guadalajara again.

Thanks,
Andrew

Ugh

2008-05-08T02:12:00.000-04:00

I've been having a rough time completing things lately, and I've spent so much time grinding away at this poem. It still needs work, but I think I'm going to just move on and maybe come back to it when I figure it out.

Protest Song ‘08/Old Noise

We are the little
squeaking ghosts
with cardboard mantras
and bruised pamphlets.

Our dissent
blooms in the pinched
ignition of paper
matches, deliberate

and bright, as if
they could speak
to slow us down.
Amateurs—yes,

we squeak, fists
in the air, and ruffle
the fuzz, whose parade
of peekaboo lights

and bullhorns add
only static. We invoke
the city’s whisper—
the unrequited pillow-

talk of blind justice.
We stir the old noise;
the murmuring underbelly;
the hand-me-down appetite

quieted by a night of cee-lo
and booze. Alone, we find
the slow vigor in our list of demands
that we don’t expect to be met.

First Light, Last Light (part 4)

2008-05-04T23:11:00.000-04:00

Eyes opened, head bent to the side, I saw the pale blue of the pre-dawn. Emma's head laid on Roscoe's shoulder. Roscoe puffed on the exhale. I got up and stretched. The aura of the sun was just penetrating the eastern horizon. Roscoe and Emma woke slowly as I was beginning to walk away. "Hey!" Emma shouted and came running after me, Roscoe following behind. The gravel road was in a thin haze of fog for all the way home.
The kitchen clock read 7:35am when we got home, with the small arrow casting a shadow in the white space between the 7 and the 8. With sun up and raining in through the living room windows, Roscoe and Emma crashed on the couch while I threw together a mound of Krusteaz pancakes and brewed a pot of Americana coffee.
Roscoe got up and put the needle on some dusty, Neil Young wax. I came out of the kitchen—hands full of flapjacks and plates, pot of Joe, one coffee mug—to “A Man Needs a Maid” and set everything down on the coffee table.
“Thanks a lot, man,” Roscoe said. Emma nodded.
“No problem.”
And that was all that was said until everything was devoured—just Neil Young, those pillows of fried batter, and black black coffee all for me.
I took a cool shower while Roscoe and Emma passed out in the living room, then put on my best clothes—a pair of black jeans and a burgundy polo. And I was out the door and off to the bus stop a block away.

First Light, Last Light (part 3)

2008-05-01T13:42:00.004-04:00

People often say autumn is the time of year where everything dies, where nature around gives itself up to the vacancy and frost of winter. In the orchard with Emma and Roscoe, I could have never felt that way. That thought misses the whole charade. It doesn't allow for the subtle grand finale of the turning of smells and colors. And not to mention harvest season.
All around us was the burgundy of Empires hanging from the vigorous limbs of the trees lined like soldiers in a grid. Roscoe was beginning to sober up.
"Maybe this wasn't the best idea," Roscoe whispered.
"Oh, who cares?" Said Emma, grabbing a nearly perfect apple from a tree. She chomped down on it, getting its skin stuck in her gums, and she wiped from her face its ample mist.
"You've got one silly-ass grin going there, Frank," She said.
I yanked off an apple for myself and didn't say a word. I took off my shoes and sank my bare feet into the tall, wet grass. Everything was crisp. I squatted against a tree and slid to the ground. Emma sat next to me. The moon had escaped the clouds and left her pale forehead aglow. She pulled her hood over her short, brown hair. Roscoe stood off a little ways, staring down a row of trees that looked like black licorice.
Emma leaned over to me. "I love you, Frank" and she kissed my cheek, got up, and danced over to where Roscoe was standing.
The last thing I remember before the alcohol fuzzed over and I fell asleep was the faint sound of them singing "That's me in the c-corner, l-losing my religion..."

Eyes opened, head bent to the side, I saw the pale blue of the pre-dawn. Emma's head laid on Roscoe's shoulder. Roscoe puffed on the exhale. I got up and stretched. The aura of the sun was just penetrating the eastern horizon. Roscoe and Emma woke slowly as I was beginning to walk away. "Hey!" Emma shouted and came running after me, Roscoe following behind. The gravel road was in a thin haze of fog for all the way home.

First Light, Last Light (part 2)

2008-04-29T11:55:00.006-04:00

I invited Roscoe and Emma over to celebrate. They were both old friends from art school--Roscoe was into large-scale expressionist paintings, and Emma did politically-motivated performance art. We often got together to enjoy the minuscule successes in our lives. It was an excuse to splurge on a jug of Carlo Rossi and spend the night lazying around on someone's couch or stairwell or whatever heaven we could find.
When they got here we sat down on the back patio and had some toast with orange marmalade and cracked open that bottle of wine. The sun was slowly lowering itself, becoming the hue of our marmalade.
"So y-you got an interview at s-Sears?" Roscoe asked. Roscoe was tall and blonde, with wide shoulders. Five years ago, just after graduating, he took a huge load of LSD and "w-w-wigged out on the sicky gnar-gnar," as he once put it. He was in some asylum for the next six months.
"Yeah, man. Tomorrow morning. In the portrait studio."
Emma smirked. "Oh great, really putting that photography degree to good use, huh? Helping out all those yuppie moms with brainwashing their children. Good for you."
I shrugged, we all laughed at our ridiculous selves. And this was how the night went on until well past sundown. At around 10pm, when the jug had a good 6 inches gone, Emma stood up, her cheeks rosy, and said "Let's go do something spontaneous. Let's walk to orchard and go steal us some apples!"
Roscoe and I grinned. It was too good of an idea to turn down.

The autumn air nipped at our noses as we set out, past my backyard, along the gravel road. Covered mostly in a thick cream of clouds, the moon was small and powerless. We wobbled and skipped and took comfort in the warmth of the alcohol and laughter.

First Light, Last Light (part 1)

2008-04-27T17:13:00.001-04:00

I set my lawn gnome down in the grey and white gravel next to the row of decapitated pink flamingos that lined the walkway to my home. I had modified them to spray and sputter cranberry Kool-Aid out their necks whenever some curious sap pressed my doorbell. It always made for a fun and sticky Halloween. I had just finished repainting Alfred, the lawn gnome. His happy blue shirt was stained black; his skin was made two shades paler; his eyes, once dark and beady, had become a dismal, reflective abyss of metallic silver sheen. The only thing that remained untouched was his silly red cap, which now appeared to be more like a road-flare.
I fold my arms and stood back to observe the suburban walkway. A grin crept up upon each corner of my mouth. “Satisfaction,” I said quietly to myself. I walked inside, kicked off my shoes, and laid out on our ragged sofa. It had several rips in the upholstery, and stuffing was coming out everywhere like extra appendages. I inherited it from my parents. Its springs made me feel like their bodies were hidden just below the cushions; resting on that couch was the only time I could remember feeling so close to them. I stretched my arms out and yawned. My eyelids closed, slow.
“Frank! What the heck did you do to Sebastian?!” Horace yelled as he slammed the front door shut. I would have sworn if I were him, but Horace never swore. “I leave you here, all day, only to come home and find my stuff ruined.”
“Hey, his name is Alfred now. For goodness sakes, you have a lisp. Why would a man, such as you, name his lawn gnome Sebastian? It’s masochism, and it’s torturing me.”
Horace let out a hmmph and stamped off to his room. He slammed the door. Or, rather, he tried slamming the door. It was too flimsy to cut through the air. He gave it a good kick.
I stared at the ceiling until the white-spackle made my eyelids heavy. The ceiling-fan whirred. Each second ticked from the kitchen clock. I shifted my weight a little. The couch squealed and giggled. But slowly, as if my ears were being packed gently, unnoticeably with cotton, the sounds disappeared.

===

A shove wakes me. I look up to see Horace standing there with the telephone in hand, tapping his foot.
“It’s for you.”
I grab the phone, lean up on the sofa, curling my toes on the other end.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Rita from Sears Family Portrait Studios. Is this Frank?”
“It is.”
“Well Frank, we have your application here and were wondering if you could come in for interview tomorrow morning, say, 9:30?
I didn’t remember turning in an application.
“Oh? Umm, yes. I guess that would work.”
“Okaaay. We’ll see you at 9:30 then.”
“Alright, we will.”
I sat up on the couch and rubbed my eyes. My stomach grumbled a little as my face was lost in my hands.
“Who was that, Frank?” Horace shouted from the kitchen.
“Sears” I groaned.
He stuck his head out from the kitchen, then walked over to the couch. “And what did they want?” he asked and sat down too close to me.
“They want me to come interview for a job tomorrow morning.”
“Really?! This is splendid news! Now you’ll be able to pay your rent.” He said that last part and slapped my knee. I gave him grim look.
“Umm, we should celebrate,” he said.
“I guess. Why not?”
He eased off, sipping on a large glass of iced tea. I grabbed an old copy of National Geographic off of the coffee table. I had bought a whole stack of them for twenty-five cents last week at a garage sale. The pictures always brought a level of comfort to me, particularly those of sea-life. Smiling seals staring into the camera, eyes like vats of chocolate pudding. Coral reefs swaying in the ever-moving waters, fish-heads poking out from the shadows of their cover. Caribbean fishermen smoking corn cobs through the gaps in their teeth as deep meridians of white splash across the pier. Angelic calloused hands, making ends meet.
I have been unemployed for the past two months. At my last job I pasted advertisements on billboards. I made good money doing that, but the heights were awful. Plus Larry, my broad-shouldered boss, caught me with my newly finished work of art—a William-Shatner-stencil-meets-Prozac-Ad next to which I had free-handed “Get happy!” Fortunately I made it back to solid ground before he found me, but when he did find me, he gave me a good round in the gut, and I got to know the ground’s solidity a little better.
Later that week I got a gig selling wholesale door-to-door. The boss decided to take the day and come train me. He was your average salesman scum. We took my car out to some suburban sprawl 20 miles from the suburban sprawl we were in, and went knocking. He sat there, smoked and talked about how awesome Survivor is. Eleven hours, two Scooby-Doo Educational Fun Packs and four Tom & Jerry Spin-O-Rama Top Sets later I was the worst first-day salesman they’d had. I quit and never got paid.

Come now and join the feast!

2008-04-26T15:22:00.003-04:00

Last night, Mitch, Amy, Mike, Jeremy and I dove about 6 different dumpsters around the GVSU campus. Our findings included:

-A box of pirated VHS tapes
-Tons of great artwork
-Two Playstation 2's
-The Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex
-A nice subwoofer
-A Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt

And you know, it was just a blast digging through trash to find something you can put to use. I think we may be doing it next week when Campus View moves out? You're welcome to come join us, of course.

So I caught up on sleep and I'm finally back in Grand Rapids. I feel like I went a little overboard on the sleep though. Let's hope it doesn't follow me around too much today.

I'm so glad to have music I love back in my life. After living in Allendale for nearly the past three days, I haven't listened to much music that I wanted to. But now I have my guitar and my computer and it's cool.

Speaking of music, you should check out www.muxtape.com and my mix on there. (Though it's not much right now.)

Quotes on Poets/Poetry

2008-04-21T01:53:00.005-04:00

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul." -Soren Kierkegaard

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing. -John Cage

I shall not write any poetry unless I conceive a spite against the readers. -Mark Twain

You can't write poetry on the computer. -Quentin Tarantino

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. -T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919

I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. -Robert Frost, 1935

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it. -W.H. Auden

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. -W. Somerset Maugham

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. -Jean Cocteau

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. -Salman Rushdie

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. -Novalis

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. -Carl Sandburg, Poetry Considered

Ha! Some of that's such crap.

New Ends

2008-04-19T21:30:00.005-04:00

I'm wrapping up my portfolios for the semester. I don't have much more writing to share yet. I'm planning a fiction project that I want to work on this summer. That's all the info I'm going to share on that for now.

Also, if anyone in the Grand Rapids area wants to make music together, or wants to hear me make music, let me know. I've got a song I'm working on.

"When the world is sick, can't no one be well?
But I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong."

I want to share this poem by someone else, though. It's from a book called An Architecture by Chad Sweeney:

5

We searched the cities
in ones--each

for the other, orphans without

memory, the divorced, the
prisoners--we

ate among cars and wires,
in the concrete was

no mother, in halls ten
floors up no

father--and sent each day
our children

into huge buildings

into rows. It's
how we lived.

Haiku

2008-04-15T01:14:00.000-04:00

Night Road Haiku

Varicose thunder south of any city light—among the mobile

Hiss of semi brakes, a fan of cattails, the only stop sign for miles

Cattle in the sprouting stretches, mouths stuffed with new romance

Fenceposts wrapped in barbwire—ditches of sprinkled dew

Deep blue of the eastern sky after dinner—full belly

Crooked dogwood with no means to bloom, crows in the branches

One still set of eyes in an all-night diner, no sugar, no cream

A gasp of headwind, steamy nostrils of a doe in the bean rows

Low hung half moon, a slice of lemon, night of bitter pull

Ghazal Poem

2008-04-14T23:33:00.005-04:00

Archipelago

This is how the body splits: on a sidewalk I can nearly brush
your arm with mine, the hairs turning like sunflowers to the day.

The last time I saw you, you gave me a knotted rope in a buffet line. Parmesan
scattered across my mouth, you showed me all the ways I could be unbound.

I know my span. I know how far I can skip stones, their ellipses
meandering. Today I’ll miss you by the length of your sternum.

You prefer the howling turbine to the clap of water, or bare feet and cool
September sand. Where I miss songbirds; you miss a clock telling you it’s morning.

Boats are a sobering thought. Even moreso, a man-made
Isthmus, silver and magnetic, stretching its spine in Sunday’s dawn.

You spread yourself on your bed like a patch of wood anemones on the floor
of a forest. You follow the faces of the popcorn ceiling, praying in your career.

I ride a red Varsity to the curves around the red-brick mansions.
Dogs bay at the city’s warbling two-note sirens just as if I was at home.

Yet you’re seeing mountains. Soon Lake Wanaka, New Zealand,
or Mt. Hook, where earth fails to brush the heavens.

I wish to be barefoot and poor, pulling open a fresh lacatan
in a muddy Filipino alley, each breath of me indulging in sweet yellow.

The radio says both doves and pigeons are Columbidae, familial
ménage, the holy and the common—both eat from the crumbs of day.

Poor?

2008-04-14T02:17:00.004-04:00

My bank account is dry. In fact, it's in the red due to a couple overdrafts. I barely managed to get home from work this morning, and I may not have if it weren't for the $3.80 I got in gas. ($.80 in cash, $3 from another now-empty bank account.) I missed out on a few things because of this, like having (fresh and healthy) food, and being able to go to church.

But it's not so bad living so basically. It doesn't bother me so much (perhaps not as much as it should). I have most of my needs met, and I'm fairly content just sitting here in my cluttered room, drinking some tea my mom gave me, avoiding homework and listening to M83. I spent nearly 5 hours curled up on our love seat, watching Star Wars today, right after a nice bike ride. It does bug me, though, to know that I'm going to have to put a deposit down on a new place sometime soon, and I'm not sure if I'll have the dough. I'm also not sure if I'll have a job this summer, at least, not right away.

I used to think having all of these responsibilities of bills and whatnot was such an unwanted pain in the ass, but they're not so bad (if you can meet them). Like my Grandpa De Haan and my dad before me, money isn't very important to me. Once I've met basic needs of food, shelter, and transportation, I'm okay. Granted, it's nice to have so you can bless others or live a little more comfortably, but I don't fit with this idea of needing success through money. Maybe that's the farmer or the preacher in me.

But I get paid tomorrow, and it's going to be nice to be able to pay Mitch for utilities, get some milk and bread (and maybe some bananas?), and put a few gallons in ol' Scott. The Lord does provide.

In the mean time, I need to get to bed so I can wake up tomorrow and get to campus to wrap-up a couple papers. I don't know if I'll be passing Studies in Nonfiction even if I do. Man, I just want to write poems or work on a couple essays instead, but I've been having such a hard time even doing that lately.

Goodnight!

(A Poem

2008-04-13T00:41:00.002-04:00

Here is a poem I wrote nearly a week ago:

Spring Prayer, 2008

Dear Lord, you are tight and heavy
and so loose with your coda; let
me be a vessel for your echo.

Thank you for a fuzz of sun;
the revocable winter and its meta-no;
for not allowing the Oscar Mayer Genie
to grant my wish; the shifting gravel
teeth in the sock of life which I swing
above my head in jest of the boredom
movement; the wooo; the yeee;
the rites of nowly mischief.

Forgive me as I trespass in the dumpster
behind America {the new Eden}; pardon
all the honey on my tongue.

Please be with all the children that are now
packaged meat; the songbirds, timorous
and fragile; the lichens; each botch
@ love; the holy ghost and her touching
and reaching and hushing;
and bless the comma fiend {who hates me};
the Sandinista who never knew history
could rhyme so well; the puddleglums;
the guiding-lights-or-suicide’s; the whistling
busdriver in his nausea salon of “Good Morning.”

And deliver us from the five-sided fistagon,
O Lord; from the triangle factory fire’s
ember joints; and the untrue bicycle wheel.

(An Introduction

2008-04-12T23:04:00.000-04:00

It has been over a year since a blog of mine has made a light impression on the skin of the internet. It has felt like much longer than that, really. (My old "blogs" can be found here and here.)

So I suppose I ought to explain why I have decided to blog/journal again in this form. Perhaps if I write it down I can figure it out myself. This is an effort to stay writing; an effort to defy boredom, duldrum, and de-motivation; a small showcase and diagram of extrapersonal and intrapersonal interests. Let's hope it pans out.