32. 224. 1.

I went out with the Russian guy,
he told me he was rich.
I went out with the bartender
but all he did was bitch.

I went out with the thespian,
his name was Thakery,
but he became a lesbian
and he looks better than me.

I dated the lonely poet, and
he promised he would pay
tomorrow if I could just stick
around for one more day.

I wish that Walter was well groomed,
and this I must confess,
I wish that Howard had more hair
and Lou a little less.

I had dinner with the dancer,
I had drinks with the drunk,
I stayed out all night with the smoker
and played music with the punk.

I’ve been diving with David
and snorkeling with Stan.
I play tennis with Timothy
and lose chess games to Chan.

Andy was an airline pilot,
Matt was a musician.
Justin was a big ol’ jerk and
Philip a physician.

So many lines that it would take
before my list was done.
So many lips I could mistake,
but I have loved just one.

penguin dreams

Because he wanted to fly, the little penguin fashioned himself some wings.

He gathered twigs, some downy moss, and string, and whatever else he saw that he thought might make a wing. That he had been cold for a very long time was enough to make him believe that a penguin could fly. He spent endless hours watching the way the wind moved the clouds across the sky and he thought, Why can’t I?

While the dawn was just beginning to loose fiery tendrils streaming through the air, the little penguin trekked up to the top of a snow peak, and stood there. He put his wings on, those made from the scantest of things, and he thought, I don’t’ know if they’ll work, but I’ll try.

Hope is the dream of a flightless bird whose only wish is to fly.

in the beginning: a study in grammatical time

Part One: The Long Version

This is the story about the beginning of the stars, except there really was no beginning so to speak, at least not in the way that we say beginning, because that would imply that time existed before time existed, which it could have, semantically speaking—I mean, we could ask, “What was there before time began?” but this logical lexography just can’t hold up to empirical evidence, which is to say, it was more like a non-beginning with a lot of stuff going on all at once, but the stuff wasn’t there before in the same way that it was there after the big non-beginning of the beginning of the stars and then stars were born, and from star dust, on a molecular level, your hands, my eyes, this page, these words.

Part Two: The Short Version

This is the story about the beginning of the stars. There really was no beginning, so to speak. At least not in the way we say beginning. That would imply that time existed before time existed. It could have existed, semantically speaking. We can ask, “What was there before time began?” But this logical lexography leads nowhere. It just can’t hold up to empirical evidence. In other words, it was more like a non-beginning. But there was a lot of stuff going on. And everything was happening at one time. But the stuff before was different from the stuff after. After the big non-beginning of the beginning, stars were born. And from star dust came hands, eyes, words, this page.

letting go: a lesson in resumptive modifiers

She couldn’t have known how the stars would burst behind her eyes when she finally let the night fall, a night that would have been thankful for a moon or two to keep it from collapsing so utterly.

So this is the way it comes down, she thought, heavily.

So with the night fallen to its knees all around her, and stars exploding, she resolved to finally pick up some of the pieces of the day, pieces that had broken up and scattered themselves years ago in the pallid litter of a languishing room. But beneath the unbearable dark, her hands were hers, were responsible for letting go of the rope, were gathering shards of light and slivers of remembrance.

She searched for solace. She searched for some consolation.

She sought string and tail feathers in the ruble and promised to fashion a proper kite, a kite that was tangible enough to pull the night up off its knees, and fly through the prevailing headwinds, trailing the heft of time behind it.

Wings.

the orrery

Round and round
the planets go, the planets go
without a sound. Without a sound,
the planets go, the planets go
round and round.

Round and round
the moon circles, the moon circles
without a sound. Without a sound,
the moon circles, the moon circles
round and round.

Round and round
the sun spins, the sun spins
without a sound. Without a sound,
the sun spins, the sun spins
round and round.

Round and round
the planets go, the planets go
without a sound. Without a sound,
the planets go, the planets go
round and round.

senior thesis: not sure if this even remotely answers the question

I will be graduating this term with a BA in Arts and Letters because I never could pick just one discipline in which to focus my academic study. When I began my college career over a decade ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. The problem was that, at the time, Harvard was the only school offering a degree program in Ethnobotany. Harvard does not accept poor kids from alternative High Schools who haven’t taken a math class since the seventh grade and who still think SAT is short for satisfactory. Denver Community college does. So I began to study biology (the “botany” part) and anthropology (the “ethno” part) with great determination and even greater delusions. I wanted to become The Best Ethnobotanist in the World.

The idea is simple: Save the rainforests. The only way to save the rainforests is to find something that the world will recognize as a valuable commodity and sell it, without destroying the forests in the process. Medicine yields an extremely high return on investment and can be extracted from the vegetation with minimal impact. And everyone in the world needs medicine. So the really interesting thing about plant medicine from the rainforest is that the indigenous rainforest people are the experts. And the really interesting thing about indigenous rainforest people is, well, everything; not the least is a perception of reality that is completely foreign to a poor girl with a questionable education.

So, one discipline led to the next in my quest to become The Best Ethnobotanist in the World: Biology led to chemistry led to physics led to astronomy led to logic led to philosophy, etc. And on the Arts side, anthropology led to politics led to language led to literature led to writing. . . Throw in a bunch of full time jobs, a couple moves across the country, military service, marriage, divorce, and a life-time of debt, and all this culminates in a Bachelor of Arts in Arts and Letters.

So what can be said about the perceptual lens of my discipline? My “discipline” came about haphazardly as a result of the desire to protect what I love. Throughout my studies I have encountered obstacles and opposition, but the original intent is still intact. I will graduate with a BA in BS, failed attempts, hard feelings, no math skills, my goals unreached and ultimately unattainable, but I still want to save the rainforests. And I know just how many disciplines it may take to reach the world.

taming of the shrewd perfectionist

I have a secret weapon against the shrewd perfectionist. A little tid-bit I was lucky enough to come across in a book about the publishing business written by a prominent New York editor: A good writer will write 98% total crap in his or her career and only 2% not total crap. That 2% comprises such works as Moby Dick and Sons and Lovers. But I suspect it took Melville and Lawrence a whole lot of crap to get there. This same editor (whose prominent name escapes me at the moment) also divulged the following gossamer shred of aspiring writer hope. Referring to the majority of manuscripts he receives, the author claims that “Yoda better syntax had.” Ha! Take that deliverer of non-encouraging words.

Since I now wield a nice percentage ratio, I figure I can commit to writing total crap for most of my career and somewhere therein should be a nice 2% of not total crap that I can extract, put on display, and say, “See, I’m a good writer!” and no one else will ever know the depths of the foul language from whence it came. Also, I’m quite certain I syntax have better than Yoda.

And so do you.

As a writing tutor, the most common introduction I hear is, “I know this is really awful. I’m a terrible writer.” Not even a hello or my name is. And this I have learned to respond to with complete silence. I hand over a pencil and explain that sometimes it’s easier to see things with a pencil in your hand. Something about putting the physical activity of holding a pencil together with the isolation that normally accompanies the writing process seems to bring about a keener awareness of the connection between the words on a page and the ideas in the mind. I try to make it clear that when we look over a piece of writing, we are trying to make sure that the sentence on the page actually says the sentence that’s in the head.

This is a two-way journey, of course. Sometimes you don’t know what your head thinks until you see it on the page. This is why I write: To figure out what the hell it is I want to say. And this is precisely where that 98% crap comes in handy. It often takes an entire essay of really bad writing to find out just what, exactly, your point is. And if you don’t spend that valuable 98% getting to the 2% that actually says something, how else will you ever get there?

Certainly not by believing that you don’t know how to write or that your writing is really terrible. Writing is a skill, just like cooking, that can be learned. Sure there are probably better cooks out there than you, a writer always has Shakespeare to live up to, but no one else can make exactly the same thing, ever. And no one else can ever think the same things in the same way. So, don’t stop yourself from finding out what you think before you begin. And then, when you know what you think, try to make your sentences reflect your thoughts as accurately as possible. We’re not aiming for world-changing grammar; just a sentence that makes sense. The rest will follow.

Remember, we have a nice and friendly ratio to work with. Commit to your own 98% crap with clarity and accuracy. Try to connect the act of thinking with the act of writing. Tell the shrewd perfectionist that you’ve got work to do. Then go to your writing tutor and learn about semicolons.

question, asked with as many infinitive verb forms as possible

I learned how to roller skate forward and backward and how to round my corners to pick up speed. I finally learned how to control the tips of my skis, although I never could understand how to make them come to a complete stop. I learned how to do long division and then I learned how to multiply fractions, but now I can’t remember how to do either one. I learned to sing in key, but only when no one was listening. I like to play the guitar, but I haven’t in a while because I can’t remember where I put it. I wrote a couple songs, but I forgot how to play them. I learned how to iron, get a job, wait tables in a fancy restaurant. Later I learned that I didn’t want to wait tables. But it was too late. I learned how to make the best of things. I wanted to travel extensively, but I settled for seldomly. I wanted an education but first I had to figure out how to pay for one. It took a while to learn how to work and go to school at the same time. I learned how to overcome obstacles. I wanted to defeat the dragon, but instead we called a truce. I learned how to bear impossible burdens. Then I learned how to adopt homeless kittens and feed them and give them a good home. I learned how to make lasagna and how to bake chocolate chip cookies. But what I really want to know is, does anybody know how to unwrap the damn CD celophane wrapper?

here's a little ditty with summative modifiers, can you find them all?

The Coquí (pronounced ko-KEE) frog is so named because that is the sound it makes. Or more accurately, that is the sound of its mating call (which leads me to wonder what we would be named if we were so named for the sound of our mating call, but that's another story). And if you are in the middle of a Puerto Rican rainforest at night, this is the sound you will hear—all night long—a moonlight sonata played by 2000 piccolos all tuned to a slightly different key. This is the inimitable call of the Coquí.

It is said that the call from a single frog, whose mature size rarely exceeds a full inch in length, can reach 100 decibels at only a meter away, a noise level roughly equivalent to that produced by a chain saw, jack hammer, printing plant, riveting machine, or speeding express train.

This sound will accompany you wherever you go and no matter what you are doing—to bed, or trying to sleep, for instance—but it is especially prevalent if you are in fact crouched amidst the wet, leafy understory where the population of human is outnumbered by Coquí 50 to 1 in a single bush, a good ratio if you are a human crouched in the bush for the sole purpose of spotting and capturing the tiny, bug-eyed amphibians.

Speaking of bugs, those are also in the bush with you and the frogs. However, because I spent a significant amount of time crouched in Coquí habitat, I prefer to remain ignorant of the actual ratio between human and insect population, surely some ungodly factor that one should not contemplate if one is to continue frogging in the Puerto Rican rainforest at night.

putting myself on: a study in creative ambiguity

She put on her raincoat and went north. “Going to see,” she said.

She had meant to say, “I’m leaving this dry-cracked earth, this red desert full of sun-scorched allegories, this perennial prison with prickly windows, the heat, you.”

She had meant to say that she no longer lived inside of herself and that she wanted to marry a birch tree instead, or a poem. But she didn’t. She had only thought about it.

She didn’t fill the locks or break up the ice trays. She meant to just after she tore down the yellow walls and painted them with sand to remind her of thirst. But she forgot.

Snowdrops don’t bloom here, she remembered as she lifted her head for the first time since she remembered. How long had it been now? A blazing noon? A suffocating century? One white enfolding? She had no way of knowing, only clocks kept time.

“This time,” she meant to say and turned away, burning.

She had meant to pull up the hot floor with her hands before she left, uproot the foundation, quake the heart, and heave the undone allocations into the sky. She thought for a moment it might look like rain. So she put on her raincoat and went north.

request (as politely asked for in trochaic prose)

You can smoke my cigarettes, and you can drink my finest whiskey. You can keep me up all night, just wasting all my time. Later, we’ll eat peanut-butter chocolate ice-cream. You can wear my fuzzy, bunny slippers if you want to. You can steal the fluffy pillow.

I will make the coffee in the morning and I’ll measure out the sugar just the way you like it. We’ll make Danish pastry as we listen to Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti album. You can look through my collection, play your favorite songs—Dylan sounds much better when you listen to the record—you can even sing along with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I’ll bet that you know every word to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Honey, when it comes down to it, you can do no wrong. There’s just one small exception: Please, don’t dangle prepositions, baby. It will drive a woman crazy.


Find out what trochaic is here!

garden party

If I were as red as the red-flame hibiscus, I would know something about freedom. Nothing could be that red and restrain itself.

I would arrive at stately garden parties wearing only my crimson petals, and I would need no introduction when I entered a room full of local flora. The hollyhocks, in their pale, ruffled blossoms, would rumor in pastel whispers. “Really,” they’d say, “we’re very distant relatives.” The old roses would blush with recognition—they were wild too, once, and red. But now they glance around, heads lowered, their hips just not what they used to be, they look so old-fashioned. The daffodils wouldn’t take any notice; they’re too narcissistic. But the bachelor buttons would. And as I promenade, petal-perfect, among the perennial favorites, the white-eyed violets would shrink.

If I were as red as the red-flame hibiscus, I would know nothing of self-doubt, or shame. You just can’t be that red and worry about what the lilies are saying.

I would mingle with the magnolias without the slightest hint of style envy. I would ask sweet William to dance, even though he’s much shorter than me, and I’d show him how we tango, stems entwined, under the tropical sun. The bearded iris would be jealous, but I’d save some twining for him. Then the boxwood would hedge in. And when I took them in my heart-shaped foliage, they’d beam, proud as poppies.

If I were as red as a red-flame hibiscus, I would be beautiful. There’s just no denying it if you stroll around in the world the color of sangria and summer kisses.

I’d lilt and saunter as if I were queen-of-the-meadow. I would step out in full bloom, and the johnny-jump-ups would not forget me.

If I were as red as the red-flame hibiscus, I would never wrap my fear around me and close up tight, like a tulip in the night.

kiss my funny, sarcastic ass, professor

Alliterative
rhyming haiku is fun to
do de do de do

alliterative rhyming haiku is cool no matter what your poetry professor may have told you

Sing long, silly songs
eat fudge, French fries, fried won tons
happy hedonist