back to writing things

for those of you who wonder sometimes, i am now living and working in eugene, or. i am back to writing things, if only for the moment, and would like to take this opportunity to permanently close the shutters on the lowercase blog.

for the last five years, the lowercase blog has been a suspiciously public dumping ground for my thoughts, feelings and realizations, my on-again off-again fling with poetry, philosophy and self-expression. when this all started, i was a very simple human being. it's fun to reflect.

this next part is a little throwback to the reverent beginnings of this thoroughly anti-capitalist endeavor. when my english teacher gave an enthused speech on the joys of blogging, i jumped on the idea. "three beautiful things," which i pirated from instructor raymond pert's kellogg bloggin',was the original format for this blog in 2008.


three beautiful things (9/10/2013)

- love
when i was 16, i worked flipping burgers at a gas station restaurant. one day i ran into a couple of filthy and smelly young adults huddled on the sidewalk out front. while i helped them find some cardboard for a sign, they explained to me how to jump onto moving trains with two heavy backpacks, a guitar and a violin. intrigued, i started hitching to work, school and eventually distant cities. i started hearing trains...

- haight
years later on the streets of san francisco, emotions blindsided me as i tried to cope with debilitating nausea and the fear of another cold, wakeful night. i huddled an all-night diner escaping the cold until the snappy waitress, mistook me for spun and threw my money back on the table. she told me to leave, and i stepped out into the chilly streets. there were old victorian-style rowhouses disappearing in the fog. i took an awe-inspired breath...

-human beings
my arrival at haight-ashbury loosened my mood considerably. still desperate for a blanket, i started befriending the street kids. some said 'go up in the park.' others hung around and tried to score pizza or warm place to sleep. suddenly, everyone was gone, out to crash in some van nearby. i shivered, slowly shuffling down the haight in half-despair.

on the right there were kids on a porch, drinking and having fun. no, they didn't have a blanket. but why didn't i hang out for a few minutes? soon i was cozy and safe, chewing warm and delicious food on my very own couch. there was kindness on my hosts' dreadlock-framed faces. why shouldn't they look out for me? we were all humans after all...

the sun sets on san francisco and the bay.

narrative

"killer" whales were so designated after brandon flowers and company officially named them nevada's state fish. 'those are some killer whales' flowers is rumored to have mumbled after watching six of the creatures devour 180 pounds of carp strategically laced with the fading memory of david byrne. he then turned to his drummer, who had just returned from a suspiciously long trip to the restroom to snort cocaine: 'the 80's is dead, man. i got rid of the evidence.'

an well-dressed group of homicidal maniacs.

the killer "whale" is not a whale at all, but actually belongs to the mollusk family, and is more closely related to the common bumblebee than any other creature still living. both species evolved from the same common ancestor, pop sensation david bowie. but the buck was never intended to stop here, folks, because evolution would never have happened if it weren't first discovered and painstakingly recorded by the 19th-century biologist and circle of life enthusiast phil collins.

a young bowie gives thanks to charles darwin for
discovering space travel. (circa 83780 bc)

to wrap things up, ladies and gents, all is not entirely what it seems. so you best keep calm and carry on, just as our ancestors in the animal kingdom have done for decades. we can all rest assured that we'll be fed and fed well, provided our zoo-keeper is not brandon flowers. buzz on bumblefish. buzz on through the night!

don't do it, man. he's just using you for your fatty tissue.

when everything was new

when everything was new
"and there was evening, and there was morning—the second day."

i clock out and free-fall
through cracks in my consciousness
and tiny chasms in my will to live this way

i find myself awake,
if not always alive
while everything is shaking,
wasting time, wasting time

in the spring in the morning on the banks of the willamette,
when the sun first caught sight of the rippling shallows,
and people learned to fish
to the poetry of birds in migration
--their songs, their formations, their
flightiness-- i tell my friend on the cellphone:
'i'm on my way to your part of the world'

'exploding like spiders across the stars'

roadlife

frust-ration! the things i put in my life that i no longer desire. the leaning posts, the place-holders are here to stay. and as i reflect on a short and passionate life on the road - an existence spent seeking out just what everybody's doing and listening to the roar of the interstate and looking up with surprise to catch sight of my first firefly and smiling up at the evening glare of the rockies (the rockies!) - well, i realize ex-actly why it is that i don't write anymore. i know why i wander around this city smoking cigarettes and then commence to hiding in my room.

thoreau said that "the mass of men... lead lives of quiet desperation. what is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

and there i was, reading eloquent and vaguely anti-social prose about "the mass of men" in the center of a river, in the middle of the morning in a great and rushing part of the world, where

we floated streams, and they left me on an island with the craft,
our intentions were sea-worthy if our raft wasn't

and there i was, learning why i always followed the mad ones, the one's who showed me how to "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles..." and there they were, extracting second-hand cigarettes from the parking lot and stealing abandoned clothes from a thrift store where i bought a long-missing notebook (and the world's maddest novel).

and here we are, with the ecstasy of everything hanging in the stagelights of the evening. and here we are, in memory and bland re-tellings of a life once lived in color and with fury. and wherever it may be

that i wear clothes made of expectations,
and parade through the rivery streets of raleigh,
knowing full well that prison is dry and warm,

let me go there again. but life is not necessarily a free ride. debts accrue and obligations accumulate, and the weather gets cold... then warm, then cold again.

and in the firming up of my resignation to the wealth-holders of this world, i have become only faintly aware that i once had dreams that weren't just place-holders, that weren't simply listings of passions & interests, career plans &
potential vacation ideas. there was a world to see. i was going to see it, when

i was going to the see the world,
but i can barely pay my bills

and here i am, with my backpack in the closet and all my books on a shelf.

(and imbalance)

for the robot

so who are these people, and how are we different from each other?
'who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy

  Bronx on benzedrine'

can we agree on honest, kindly differentiating principles

(so that you don't get your thoughts stuck in mine) please?!

'can i get a drink started for you?'
'ye must be born again.'

order and disorder, balance and counterbalance,
'moderation in all things,' 
except (of course): moderation

in love and divorce

we make legal arrangements for a while
and make-believe that we're enraptured
my left ring finger says:
'you are the real me'

but you aren't
no one is

but the river (water woes)

well

i want to see the river like i'm meant to,
in reverence empassioning moonshine,
but
my arteries are rushing on without me
their winter woes are never on their minds

i was blind, but now i
blindly make conjecture
-through flood season
onto memory banks
and cameras can't ascertain at all
on the bridge, from the shore, what we see
the rushingrivers soundingsinto fall

how dark and deep and dangerous
my ideas about the water there
but the river just doesn't care

like it used to