Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Journal Entries #2 ENGL 4210





Junk Yard Quotes

The World is ours if you want you can take it
Abuse tea
I’m a part time
You shut your whorish mouth
Hey because I’ve been on, my sweetheart bones sound track
The first Honduras drive by
Dirt Road Anthem
Mmm Mmm Mmm, he said in America! Only blue in America, special edition.

Most nights I don’t know

It taste like everything you didn’t like as a child
The Styrofoam breaks but the chicken doesn’t
I lit fire with the love you left behind
Flaw stubborn
Salt and pepper afro
Toenails stay forever
The leaves don’t want to lose their shadows at night
There was a dead bird at the bus stop. I took a picture, wanna see? There it is, see. Dana said maybe it died because of the cold. The blood splattered it’s lifeless beak.
He brought pizza and bread sticks and let me keep the leftovers
Like a broken record she repeats now I am at the point. Hand over chest
We didn’t know how to dance to country, but we were shaking it
Make fun of my gorgeous leg
Hand polish China
He needs no last name
I got in his pants without him knowing
And some days I can’t even trust myself
Brought me safe to shore.. ships hips
Feathers and twigs
I guess I could count the knots in the word again
It should feel a little awkward
Make me earn my keep, we have it too easy
It was a placeholder
I couldn’t get her off my head
How to rip paper with confidence
Stay strong stay hungry stay alive
Keeps me sharp when I’m getting dull
Conditioned to watch you
Your bathroom, you could probably private there
Not everybody knows what’s going on
Don’t let the bastards bring you down
In the end much of it comes down to personal preference
Every time you wear that sweater I just want to rub you, not in a weird way
And now one’s missing
Is anyone intended in
Each room decorated by different famous
Switch to families arguing normally at Christmas
Handle with care
Medicate yourself through liter
You are the expert
You are qualitative
Really think about it
Ask people questions
Come up with explanations
I’ve got it almost
Looking through old photos and feeling great about my life, not really
Let’s not be that predictable
There are moments when
Finished in 12-18 months everything is near normal color Do you sleep with the fan on?
Don’t nobody cut crust off bread anymore, we’re still in a recession. Don’t be wasting food.
Plastic sheets are on the table. I am ready to split bottle of Pinot Noir
If I wasn’t raised right that 60 year old woman would have just straight got cussed out

Skyline on a Sunday Afternoon

My voice is so deep it vibrates my chair when I speak. I would hat if I didn’t like vibrating chairs

A patch of Velcro

I obnoxiously clear my throat and then say nothing at all
They didn’t challenge him
I don’t know who they are or where they came from but they have damn good work ethics

Glass objects

Carving hookers is greater than carving pumpkins for Halloween because they just aren’t real people
Took peanut butter and smeared the windows (Jiffy)
Shallow-relief
World on the walls
Scratched in order
Only the dead have seen the end of war
It should feel a little awkward
For my lover returning to his wife
How to rip paper with confidence
You can’t cut balloons
Put your elbows up she giggles
Her elbow diggin into my skin
Hooks in her





IMPROVS

Medusa—Louise Bogan
Improv 1

The Cold Call of a War-Hero

I will never forget that day,
The wave-shapes
measured invasive,
into and echoless ring.

The shift in the air pressure
adjusting tongue and lip
·      weaken, his mother absent of words, understood.

The earth had to pause
to remember sun,
to accept rain
and organic toxins.

It had to child
his family, friends
and even the stranger
to hear his story
in the black and white
business section of the paper.

The world, a mutual fund
a national conquest
of produce people.
We kill for nothingness.










Women—Louise Bogan
Improv 2

Men

Men have narrow backs,
They are mainstream pornography,
content to pacifier lingerie lipstick
inside their lines.
They shape like cupcake Merlot
Brand by the stomach:
“our body’s sold”
no consequences for men.

They value minute rice,
bling and booty shaking
not trying hard enough
to have a good pair of jeans.

GQ sets the standards
As creators of such
less than human complexion
turn into paper crumbles.


Chaplinesque—Hart Crane
Improv 3

“The tide that left and never came back”

We walk the streets by four,
forceful against the forward whispers
of banana nutmeg bread
·      once a favorite grandmother
recipe, now economic repeat.
She wants the heterosexual child,
the knowledge taught brag,
the successful Audi now.
She wants tiffany frost on her wrist,
she wants the sharks
to take her tome to the waves
that  crush the earth into grains
of souls that follow you home
and carnage the wooden banister, scars
of childhood mind of switches,
body twitches in innocent play.

At Melville’s Tomb—Hart Crane
Improv 4

Certified Non-toxic

October 6, Stone Wall Street, Flux Night Atlanta
On the corner a man with a vendetta mask
Asked me to coin change but damned
Me to bequeath chaos,
He said:
“The paper print birds,
words—
journalistic lies,
absorb oil.”
In the thick, mark typeface,
tells the truth of turtle necks,
scarves and scar city tracks,
underground points,
Smeared cannabis smoked mirrors.
I want to find my way to you.


Ode to the Confederate Dead —Allen Tate
Improv 5

In the fall the leaves, leave
Behind the world. The burnt
Orange crayons pick the green
And eventually crumble


The Weary Blues—Langston Hughes
Improv 6

First Sway, then swivel
Then bounce, then sleep
So below the sands curl

He matches the beat to lead
Bleed words, tounged gums
And aired vibrations;
A leader, a thirty second
Sell, sold…
The ferr

The Negro Speaks of Rivers—Langston Hughes
Improv 7
I’ve known woods:
I’ve known woods los into the most advanced framework teak shadow boxed with purpose.
Life allows the outside world a sketchpad.
I play in the reds­—purple hues of the Japanese Maple.
I handful the rainfall yellows and garden in patience.
I strip bark and deeply divide, the more popular, lacy shrubs.
I reflect heat in partial sun, propagate quietly in late summer
somewhere, and hope that every imagined problem change the behavior of young people.
I’ve known woods:
Twisted, branching woods.
Life allows the outside world a sketchpad.
Theme for English B—Langston Hughes
Improv 8

The top dog, the freshman dictator,
It’s my year.
The year of the Dragon,
Only because—it’s my year
Trade mark my holiday
The scent of roasted edamame,
Let the seapoint perfect,
Let it curl like ringlets.
I know everything.
Then I don’t.
I reduce risk
Of heart disease
Forget waxy blood
I’m oxygen-rich
Let me in,
We can go a long way
Learn the subtle differences
of rhythm peak and valley.


Yet Do I Marvel—Countee Cullen
Improv 9

I have a faith, but to what?
A book thin, weaker than skin,
Ink formed lines that word:

“I shall mark

or disposition” A God?
Before this it was a different narrative
Befor this scarring of skin
Was a mother that said
“There are good
There are bad
Don’t be afraid”


The Hard Structure of the World—Richard Eberhart
Improv 10
I once saw a possum involuntarily give birth
Off Bethlem road, some winter night.
She might have been scavenging for food
To have been surprised by the yellow lens.
Her marbled red eyes, stone, sharp teeth
Her back horizontal against the asphalt,
It was nothing I’d ever seen before,
Until I saw the woman
The ’82 Buick blue finish
Dissecting the stomach, reaching in
And pulling out the only surviving baby.













Missing Dates—William Empson
Improv 11

Play Time, All the Time

On Tyus hill the sled could no longer climb, The twigs and feathers were too thick For children to famish time.
On the tree-top heard a faint chime
A warning that town was sick
And not even a mother could flutter climb.

They are functioning on “scene” time
Cutting wrist with a flick
Dancing in sweaters I just want to rub sublime.

In Memory of W.B. Yeats—W.H. Auden
Improv 12

Pulling Weight
I wish my job would stop feeding
me. I will never reach my weight-
less then the camel back store
milk. Thick curdling milk, sick.

I want to be thin like the garter
Around a stripper’s thigh, high class

well paid. I want to smear thick
censor lines about my eye,

No not that eye but the vagina
I have no respect for. It’s depressed

Not even Channing Tatum could dance
His way inside—Tatum so much man

He’ll have his way with me, eventually.




As I Walked Out One Evening—W. H. Auden
Improv 13

As I Walked in One Evening

As I walked in one evening,
Into the limonite brain games,
You sat there in the plaid yellow grandpa
Jacket, coating your burnt knee.

The carpet of the second floor closet

You and her, the size two petite
Burning carpet for a moment worth
Jumping into the Alaskan Ocean.

The truth is, not even the cold

Water could forgive your vat coat
Heart, slowly yellowing to purple
All for that burning session on the floor

I turn my camera and there is no more talk

Only you and her scarring at the knees Physically branding the slut and the cheat.
As I walked in one evening, you
had nothing to say and it said everything.



















Musee des Beaux Arts—W.H. Auden
Improv 14

I don’t even understand me

The knit sock master: how well I or they understand
The marbled world meeting connections
In San Diego. “Handle with care” written
In ink across my wrist, and I wonder what people think About the quality of my painted nails, if they, The experts could see the boy who poured Sand down my pants ten months prior or the Hispanic Girl that placed the earwig on my shoulder So that it nest a life time of hate.
The experts want their reverse psychology—

Medicating those who are fine

To live their lives against the grain of concrete Those who recovered on their own Thos who everyone wants to get in their pants now.  The screams all sound the same.
Dolor—Theodore Roethke
Improv 15

Skunk Hair

Her hair looked fine all brown
But now it’s topped with blonde
And chocolately dark on the bottom.

She asked me how it looked
I said I needed a drink, Bloody Mary.

I don’t like olives
I only like celery,
Can’t do olives, can’t do it.

She asked me three drinks deep
“How do you like my hair?”
I said next time go olive.






Wish for a Young Wife—Theodore Roethke
Improv 16

Halloween Bum

I was fifteen when I wanted to be a bum
So for Halloween I tested it out.

On the ground I smeared the left over

Tuna black found in the dumpster by my side, That I crawled into, looking for a plastic bag.
I lay on the ground curled at the torso
Observing the passer placing cigarettes
Spare nickles, and Almond Joys in my bag.

What pity they must have felt for me,
A fifteen year old boy curious about urban
Life style under highway bridges.



The Armadillo—Elizabeth Bishop
Improv 17

Tera was missing her third
Toe on her left paw,
Her fight against cancer.
She was about 83 in dog
Years when the wild kittens
Birthed in the backyard
She collected them on her ribbed
Back, blanket them with her failing
Fur and dry rasin nose. She didn’t flinch
When the kittens knead knives
Into her bruised skin, instead
Licked their cheeks and fell asleep.
Tera stopped eating the hard
Mix from the Purina bag
And requested my plate
Her final days.




One Art—Elizabeth Bishop
Improv 18

The little girl at Clinton Farms is flying
A Dora the explorer kite
Chasing the unspooling white string, crying.

She doesn’t know at twenty four
The white string will take a bite
And this time her post card is flying.

This time the boy is worth trying:
The steady ink blots are right
There are no more broken phones, crying.



The Moose—Elizabeth Bishop
Improv 19

Children Playing in Jordan Park

The moose on the oven towel
Is burning on the magnesium stove
And the house sounds like and ambulance
And the children are rolling on the ground
And the smoke is thickening like London fog While London bridge is falling down.
Down, down, down falls the house
Settled on top of Tyson road.

Grandpas smoke pipe of mild peppermint,
The color of the photo paper illuminating
Spirals in the fireworks, the burning house
The little girls lungs are out of air.









Santarem—Elizabeth Bishop
Improv 20

I was born with a hairy chest
The month of jester hats
The year of the dragon
My life, generic role-play.

I’m too lazy for a job
But I don’t mind digging
The Burger King trash
For receipts for free burgers
Or left over fries.

I’m a scavenger myself
A regular nomad
A top hat and mustache
Kind of man. I like to wear

My pants waist high
Shirt tucked in
Suspenders and a back to the future
Hat 1988 made.

I’ll never grow up
To be a coffee drinker
A watch wrister
Or a cubical worker

I like my hair slicked
To the left with one loose
Strand standing straight













Manhole Covers—Karl Shapiro
Improv 21

The World didn’t End in a Break Up

When water vapor is visible
The blood muscle is vulnerable
The cover inside the body bruises
At just the right temperature
And though you can not see
Through the purple wrinkled cover
The redness is gradual healing skin
And if he does not call before the months
Have been too long
And the skin is near normal color
Don’t let the story end predictable.

Fall, 1961—Robert Lowell
Improv 22

I hold this pen, it moves around
The thoughts before they exist.
I make a wish to hear you sleep
Like lullabies you make me weep
And in the night, this lead
Does keep the secrets in my head
Will leak and let it bleed across the page
Let it sink into the stomach
When you think of me. Forget
Me if you can but I know you won’t.
So watch from a distance,
I will take you back.













Memories of West Street and Lepke—Robert Lowell
Improv 23
The screen-door was locked and I was too short to knob my way out into the street after you.  The man in the camo threw your Kermit green bag In the bed of his pick up truck and you waved A happy goodbye as the tears washed the dirt Backyard we spent playing in that morning.

You tickled my baby fat arm and I just knew

We’d be best friends forever, until fifteen
Tocks to the hour our door caged
And you walked away.


Skunk Hour—Robert Lowell
Improv 24

In the newspaper was a print
Of a blind man and his cane
The headline wrote: “Blind Man
Mistakes Taser for Samurai Sword”
And he fell to the ground
His skin Braille in the face
The Buckingham legal enforcement
Ignored the blind man’s eyes
And continued to arrest his ears
In contempt, his story was erased.

















For the Union Dead—Robert Lowell
Improv 25

Women Growing Up in the South

In the south it’s all about peach
Bubble fizz of a southern belle
Her great grandmother’s cobbler
Perfected by the word of God
And Mason jars.

It’s about the Monroe martini glass
Blush red and orange champaign
Tickling nose by the brim
The kind of tickle that fires a man’s
Masonry—his heart primitive
Pork, honey glazed bar-b-que.

That’s all she needs to understand
The mop buckets under the sun.



Those Winter Sundays—Robert Hayden
Improv 26

Everyone is More Alike than Different

I’ve grown to be the man
My father labored wood for
His persistent drives up windy
Hills on weekends warmed
The layers under the jacket
To prosper from boy to man.
That properly shook hands
Firm kept words and silver
Hand jewelry.








Traveling Through the Dark—William Stafford
Improv 27
Traveling through the dark I found a bulb Alive in a small amount of water—flickering In the mercury tube collecting smaller pieces of dust Little pieces of moss powdered from the inside bulb Stuff cardboard on the streets and my socks are soaked Sweating cold against the Chicago wind in December.

I cannot live the skin scathe local weather

I cannot continue to be ill-fated, clocked between trees And power lines, the thunder storm must move The politicians and city boosters must unsettle And warm humid air, the must march across The eastern states and jacket the broken glass Shivering in the canals before my tapered soul Foot the mouth of the suit that passes me as non-existent The eyelets across his face will prove me human.
At the Bomb Testing Site—William Stafford
Improv 28

In passing the raccoon’s tail bristled
Open with chilled pores gripping fur
The tomb of the soldiers

“We sleep here in obedience to law:
When duty called, we came.
When country called, we died”

The raccoon didn’t have to feel the Braille To brush the air marbled cold—the repository Remains of the dead, the bayonets enclosed By the Mason jar lid, prepared for any zombie apocalypses.









The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner—Randall Jarrell
Improv 29

LinkedIn

Your profile viewing mine
You endorsed my skills
Sarcastically, so naturally
I posted private photograph
The skills you lacked.
Happy job hunting.


Dream Songs 1—John Berryman
Improv 30

There are moments when the ribbon
Ribs the street, cuts deep
Under the peeled wallpaper
Curling nail, the girl
Barely seventeen lullabies
In her head while her body
Works the family bread
Fed to the minnows
Her skin desensitized
Lost in hammered eyes
The lullabies lull
Fairy tales exist for dying souls,
The last fading hope.
















Dream Song 14—John Berryman
Improv 31

Carving a Hooker is Greater than Carving a Pumpkin in October

There she is again on Spring street
Black laced and labeled, her skin
Organic cosmetic fiber-glass
Cut molds of clay, mushy and tasteless.
Men carve into her dry
Epidermis rind, she’s a service
Under sharp edges of Mascara
Weak metal remains, mastered
By-the-hand of a solider
A wife raised above artistic potential.

Dream Song 22: Of 1826—John Berryman
Improv 32

Revenge of the Vodka Club—Is there a Better Way to End the Weekend?

I am the out last of your day.
I am hydration for wrinkled eyes.
I am the soft waved curl in red hair.
I am your casual style during a Thursday rise.
I am fashion and fit in silk seem tear.
I am facts on 42 shade, a magazine I lay.


Dream Song 29—John Berryman
Improv 33

Fox Earring in Zinc

18k gold-plated with glass detail
so crystal, I’ll follow works.
In a magazine’s finished touch
A muse inspiring budget.
Girls fingers continuing to lurk
Always amazing with metal lush.







The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower—Dylan Thomas
Improv 34
These guys are Marine’s
Trained to watch death
A compromise to early bed
And continue writing those times
Most fit in a run against
The God awful bat
That traveled thirty
Minutes to revenge.


A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of Child in London—Dylan Thomas
Improv 35

Only the Dead have Seen the End of Divorce

Footprints in the snow, I watched her monkey booties Frost by the ears and crack like the tree boughs Too heavy to listen to the morning cardinals chirp Truth of the window on the third floor Open for eyes above treetops.

A Song in the Front Yard— Gwendolyn Brooks
Improv 36
I’ve been running my whole life.
I want to slow the screen
find a still frame moment and reflect in the lake.
A boys growing beard.

I want to walk the moss path
And maybe sail the Magat river,
To where my mother risked odds
On a brat like me.






Boy Breaking Glass— Gwendolyn Brooks
Improv 37

The Amount of Ink I Want is Ridiculous

Using only one color on paper,
The ink plays off pen tops and blank
Space marking modern attention
To what’s going in discount stores.
The copyright batfish kiss
By order of request.

We Real Cool— Gwendolyn Brooks
Improv 38

In the spring, or maybe it was summer,
The venomous pups mate annually
With low cost and convenient art making
Pectoral fins sheath sloughs while swimming Synchronized, wing beat under the channel Rocky-bottomed shorelines sometimes Use oysters to live dangerously subclasses.
An African Elegy— Robert Duncan
Improv 39

The dusty holster of the south can take the wild life City of Atlanta and drive the five miles with hand-fed City dwellers on paved road, individually seating Park benches with insured fast quality food.  Five different species: White, Black, Indian, Javan and Sumatran, critically endangered To live consuming both insects and sidewalk water.











Underwear— Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Improv 41

The world with its marbled perceptions
An individual’s choice in how to live.
So unfortunate to survive Friday night
Hangovers, wander the Publics aisles
Reading brand after brand: Lays, Dorritos,
Cheetos, Fritos, Sun Chips, Baken-ets,
Cracker Jack, Islen, Matador, Rold Gold,
Spitz, Stacy’s, Sabra, Ruffles, Funyuns.
Choices, no wonder life is so difficult.


Love Calls Us to Things of This World— Richard Wilbur
Improv 42

My Feet Were Cold and You Brought Nordstrom

With free shipping you brought me knit
Thick diagonal cotton socks, and I blushed
Next to the furnace as you placed little-by-little Over my hands two socks.
The Baroque Water Fountain at the Villa Sciarra— Richard Wilbur
Improv 43
Double fisting wine, I’m a real Itallian
An Intense tree climber by the Arano River
My fluent English is like sweatshirts and patches on admirable fur coat.
Church-Going— Philip Larkin
Improv 44

Germany Has Been Practicing All This Time for the Perfect Twenty First Birthday
I thought I lost my shoes until I saw them by gathered Conversations locked in horror stories about a specific person On a particular day(s), an event and celebration Of keg hair, piles of shoes, and lost pocket watches The world watched as little boys in stripped suit Inhaled clear, tasteless liquored vapor Wiring throats and eating bones.
High Windows— Philip Larkin
Improv 45

Here I am stringing together the words
we once whispered as two teenagers
making out in a field fifteen minutes
from home on Villa Road

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
settled in a French influence estate
vintage with blood plumped harvester,
everyone young is going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;
a baby and a money hungry father
and an assistant in scantily clothes
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of an antique window:
chippity yellow with rusty handles,
And beyond it, the metaphor of his broken relationship
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.



More Light! More Light—Anthony Hecht
Improv 46

The Manila Slums are viewed through cheap window seals, Seen as trash, sustainable trash in the darkness.  Natural light only exists in the favorable smile Of the child featured in Impact your World Unaffordable, native families chore in the simple Fixed holes and iron roof tops that leak in seasons Of the sea.

In Class Exercises

Text with in Text Exercise:

Magazine

The world wrote:

“These fattening hogs

Have had too long
A rest”
And the women
They did not argue
But instead cleaned.

In the absence of lips
Their bones bruise
As their backs narrow
And their breast
Augment into things

But just one part
Of a thing
The focus of lips
She won’t talk back
She’s no consequence for man.

These girls, they’ve got it
The outside smiles
The primary message
In the Istanbul eye
The wear between thighs.




Magazine

The world wrote:

“These fattening hogs

Have had too long
A rest”
And the women did not argue to clean
lips, bruised bones and narrow backs
their breast augment into things
a part of other things that focus
on lips that won’t talk back
She’s no consequence for man.

These girls, they’ve got it
The outside smiles
The primary message
In the Istanbul eye
The wear between thighs.

Magazine

The world wrote:

“These fattening hogs

Have had too long
A rest”
And the women did not argue pencil
lined lips that kissed the bruise bones
on the hands of a narrow ring turn back
against the focus of  a no consequence man.

These girls, they’ve got the outside smiles

Between their thighs with the primary message:
“I’m looking down on the world.”


Reversal Exercise:

Agenda

Everything she wears is brand
Being watched and correct by crossed ink
Taking precautions, premature chandler
Events, every detail matters
Divided in months and color sticky notes
Abbreviated by the tabs she looks
For the circled numbers
The Friday night silverware
Bold across seven boxed lines
Which ever one she choose- the details
Are critical to the time of year
Trying to put out the history
Three business cards organized
Ink bullets magnified with plastic glass
Frames and set aside spelling arrangement
That doesn’t say much.

Agenda

On the cover she wears Lucien Piccard
Detailing the months on colored sticky notes
Trying to put out the details for a Friday
Night in gorgeous Battenber lace wrapped
Around silverware and premature chandlers she choose- the details so critical to the time of year that the ink from her floral patterned pen three business into spelling arrangements that didn’t say much.

Agenda

On the cover she wears Lucien Piccard
Detailing the months on colored sticky notes
Trying to put out the details for a Friday
Night in gorgeous Battenber lace wrapped
Around silverware and premature chandlers she choose- the details so critical to the time of year that the ink from her floral patterned pen three business into spelling arrangements that didn’t say much.

Two POV Exercise:

Crocks

I look the same on every foot
Male or female
Stylish to some degree, I guess.
Walking on cobble stones
I work better than the ballerina
Extending her right leg
Painting the bricks purple
And red, a hurt foot requires
Purpose for the weakened board
Members so unprofessionally
Peaking out holes with their big toe

Crocks

On odd man he was with his curled
Lip hair and curiously bulged eyes,
his eyes only saw me fit for horses.

I look the same on every foot male or female with style to some degree, I guess.
Walking on cobble stones in Figueres,
Spain with its lonely landscapes
And shattered paint, Melting pocket
watches into pools of shadowed sky.

I work better than the ballerina
Extending her right leg over the wall
Of purple and red bricks

a hurt foot requires
Purpose for the weakened board
Members so unprofessionally
Peaking out holes with their big toe.



Crocks

The tail of a peacock will watch
The odd man with his curled lip hair
Curiously with bulged eyes, his eyes
Only saw me fit for horses.

I look the same on every foot male or female with style to some degree, I guess.
Walking on cobble stones in Figueres,
Spain with its lonely landscapes
And shattered paint, Melting pocket
watches into pools of shadowed sky.

I work better than the ballerina
Extending her right leg over the wall
Of purple and red bricks throbbing

Purpose for the weakened  and aged
Big toe exploring the world.