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

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5878844718264559163It’s the year to be first

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

by their humor

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.