A Dear, Sweet Woman Who Will Soon Move to LA to Teach Acting

Hi I was told you call the shots around here!

Well I had an idea I wanted to run by you, if you have the time to listen.

Right, I'll be quick so you can do your thing. I have a tape of Neil Sedaka and sing a few of his songs and I was wondering if I could perform it maybe after this.

Well yeah I mean in the next episode... yeah as part of the show. I have my own radio and I sing the whole song.

No it has his vocals on it... I mean I know it's a little weird because he's a guy and all, but... it's- I performed it at an open mic the other night at, umm, what's it called... Fair Trade Cafe, which I also hosted because what's-her-name was out sick and I'm who she chose to host in her absence, and the audience really reacted to it, y'know they just didn't expect it.

And that'd be perfect too because I would need to use the time during sketches to recover, you know it's very tiring to sing like that.

Yeah, I would do like a few songs. But like you said, between sketches. If there's time.

Yeah I'm also going to do the weather!  Did they tell you that? Yeah, so there's that and I'll be on the show then, y'know?

I auditioned to be in the cast for this show, did you know that? I didn't get called back, I don't think you were there.  I did an impression of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy... "Happy birthday...     Mr. President...           Happy birthday...  ...  ...     to..." of course you know it.  I also did an impression of Farrah Fawcett. I think I look like her, I've been told I look like her when I do this.

You know she died the same day as Michael Jackson.  Farrah Fawcett.  Nobody talked about it though, and she wasn't mentioned, she got shut out on the memorial reel at the Oscars, did you know that? Oh it was terrible, it was a big controversy. A lot of people were very upset about that.  Did you watch the Oscars that year, do you remember?

Through a Long and Sleepless Night*

*Obligatory "It's Fall, guess I'll read a bunch of Poe and instead of feel humbled by the (somewhat misogynistic) brilliance, try to imitate it with my shitty verse".

My brain attempts sleep by centrifuge of its contents
But a cliffhanger of my senses' season
Teases my mind into wakeful treason
Jasmine and orange released a deluge of their strong scents
Why are they flowering now?
Like hounds in temperament
But sunshine in their intent
The smell wafts against my windows
I bury my inlets in my pillows
And close my eyes against themselves

Into fabric I gaze
As my nose plays
Notes of a song whose words elude me
They grant me the yen to dance
I beg of my thoughts to for once exclude me
And give melatonin a chance

I keep reality tied up for its own protection
From a chemical I once freely squeezed hard enough
To milk, but not keep
And from which I hide in distraction's bluff
But since I cannot sleep
Up, and up, I'll take to the street
And set my course
To this aroma's source
Or until my curiosity feels remorse
For its assault on my circadian beat

The aroma hovered over a certain spot
Around an overgrown abandoned lot
So, dizzily, in that direction I dithered
Like a lucid dreaming sleeper agent
Whose will for wakefulness has withered
Like fire with a prior engagement

I had earlier taken a strange path home
Past a new building overlooking this empty lot
The intent of its construction still unknown
Where once...
Where once my every atom had flown
Had I, in my olfactory drunkenness, forgot?
What once happened in this very spot?

Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Who planted the fragrant blossoms of March
To whisper softly into my ear
Having stalked the following seasons' arch
To approach me undercover
Of a sweet anachronistic smell
And know I would its source discover
By bidding me return to the very site
Where I was vaporized in tremulous light
Where from my freewill said "Farewell"
And from which I'll gladly not recover
I smile with the fixed eyes of an intern in hell
At the first rays of sun, numbing and so bright

Sheets on a Plane

We are sheets on an endless plane
Nothing but our own fabric to restrain
Change is a breeze unevenly released
Love is an ephemeral fold that,
Even when wind pulled flat,
Forever feels creased
Time blows its shape into the sheet
And only forced flatness is exposed
But memories of folds unceased
Foment a crippling repose

That's awful.
Yeah, wind is time and change? Way too broad... and "foment"? I mean-
No I mean the thought of that.
Well maybe, but we can't just use words to run away from-
Lets try again
Sure

We are sheets
Wrinkled by relentless agony and heartbreak
Against which we fight
Pulling taut with sharp angles
We sprout kites
Gliding til our strings tangle
And we may as well talk
Until the tangle is tamed
And the wind we named
With our words and made
With our breath
moves us apart
And we sprout more kites
To carry more pain

I don't like that either
Yeah, we're really embracing cleverness and straying away from the insp-
Can't the pain be more... heroic yet tragically flawed?

We are all sheets
Habitude forms staples against
The winds of change
That temper a love laboriously forged
Like refined steel
Staples are also made of steel
On both we are engorged

Good, but not quite.
ok

Love is a sheet
That we staple to our bodies
And we're flying kites
And there's a storm at sea
Dredging up sand and shellfish

Almost there! I think if you hide the pain, but in plain sight

Like a scallop in the wind
Drizzled with staples
And sheets tempura
Love is temperature
And wind
So cook this scallop
Cook it good

Yes! We nailed it, that's exactly how I feel right now: like a scallop in the wind! Thanks for the help. Hey, where'd ya go?

Squanderings

She looks

Then he looks

Those people moved.

She touches

Then he is touched

They decide on an order.

He grabs

Then she is grabbed

They wait for their order.

He whispers

She hears

Oh, those people.

He releases

She is released

Their coffee is ready.

She walks

He is behind

Seating is scarce.

He holds a face

She scans the room

The couch is ideal but her drink is not.

He sits the weight off his face
She walks the length of preparation
Several times to perfection
Laugh away the chaos
Sub-nest hangs in the balance
One look

One touch

One order

One grab

Several people
Several paces
Two faces later
It's all ready.

The Old Roller Coaster

Saturday, August 17th 2013, 4AM

As a matter of fact, I did eventually descend Chair Mountain.  Upon arrival at the anti-summit, full of anti-summites, I consulted my pocket and learned of a great opportunity to ask someone else for a cigarette.  I inquired and was granted one cigarette but it was in the past. Next to me was a vine content to support himself, asking for gesture line drawings of lies about life outside the mountain, just good enough to pass a survey drawing course at CMCC (Chair Mountain Community College). The conversation was very facial, I went through several belts of Mike & Ikes until my new favorite band, "The Old Roller Coaster" played an impromptu set!  Sunned nearly raceless, his romping louted him a home at all times.  He sang my favorite hit tune o' his, "Here's Some Sentimental Bullshit (Whatever You Need to Hear, [Whatever Gets You Through the Night])" and I just about spilled my gazes!  Everybody else was trying to figure out what they were there for, and when I told them it was The Old Roller Coaster, it all made perfect sense, and a violent letterbath ensued.  In the depraved squalor remaining after the show, people were hunting for names.  After a night of finding the next brightest object to follow, the sun ruined the job market.  For riches or worse we escaped, and shuttled on foot to our lair, where we didn't know we had to be insulated from the OWW! Box, which functioned as the SONAR answer to a question we would never ask without it.  I wandered to find the just right distance from the OWW! Box, walking in a nautilus pattern until I realized I am not all that different from The Old Roller Coaster, just trying to find the right distance from the sun.

Blank Day

Nudged awake by a
Uniformed morning
Rolled into an oyster
Fitted, organs replaced
Carried limply by shell
Selected a soundtrack
Trying to identify a scent
Gave up
Head retracted
Fart
Content for now

The State of Pop Music

In the wake of the VMA Miley Cyrus thing, I have overheard a plethora of conversations about "the state of pop music".  What follows are select clips from these conversations, except I replaced "pop music" with "room temperature", and took some creative license with the adjacent factors.


"I don't know, room temperature seems to be out of the hands of the people, it's really all about what 50 year old Jewish men in LA think 15 year olds want the thermostat set at when they go jerk off."

"It's true, it's totally true!  You gotta- if you're on a first date, the best topic of conversation is room temperature.  You gotta work with the shit you got in common, y'know?  You don't want to scare someone off..."

"That's always been the case though... good room temperature is all about gettin' it on.  Room temperature is a safe bet for setting the mood."

"I can't go out anymore.  They just, these places just turn the room temperature up so I can't even talk to someone.  This current room temperature is like, made to be turned up and like, suck the conversation of the room."

"Room temperature was great until around 1994."

"I think people these days, y'know they need their room temperature too warm. I don't want to go into those rooms, y'know? Hahahaha!"

"Oh I let the kids control the room temperature in the car once... it got so cold, I wanted to wear earmuffs."

"All the room temperature feels the same these days. I can't tell if I'm at my girlfriend's house, at work, at the bar, or even in my own room.  I do like me some room temperature!"

"Person 1: All room temperature has always felt the same, relatively I mean.

Person 2: How can you even say that with a straight face? Room temperature meant something back then... I think I'm dating myself a little here, but back when I was into room temperature, it was about 72 degrees Fahrenheit."

"Well now that wasn't really room temperature, was it? That was heat, which would later influence room temperature because it was rebelling against cold. Your typical person back then wasn't comfortable at those temperatures.  (some mumbled rebuttal, I think Velvet Underground was mentioned)  Yeah, I'm sure my dad has never even heard of those temperatures."

"I just shake my head thinking about what room temperature will be like in the future."

Halfway Through the Wood

I take steps on my walk through
like a scalpel
wearing cake shoes
And every sound startled
another slice out of me
Until I was 196 seagulls
I escaped them
each
Lord, what I had to do
Escaped and reached
an island
it was desserted
ok it was Manhattan
And I was living comfortably in the middle of a large busy cake
Then I learned it was a sponge
And I kept asking folks to squeeze exact change for my thoughts

Happiness is
Built from
Everything
Left or right of the tight rope
But our hands are tied
And the people before us are
tie dyed and
walk-thru
I am amazed
Every time
I need to find a transparency provider
The paradox thus exposed
When sweating polish remover
It's best to keep ones' eyes closed