Ken Baumann & Blake Butler enter my dreams….

I went to Half Price Books and Barnes n Noble trying to find books. I took a chance and searched for Scorch Atlas. Still gotta go independent or search online for that thing, and where I am, independent doesn’t really apply to books.

I go to sleep that night and what the hell… because my dream makes HTMLGIANT a physical representation — an entire world. First a boat, and then an open field”. Or first an “open field” and then a boat. Open field is in quotes because it consisted of miles and miles of dorms and sewage rivers and dilapidated unfinished building sites.

I was running because, for some reason, Blake and Ken were sick and tired of writers. They hated HTMLGIANT, what it had become, or something. After they chased me through the boat, I waited in this construction site. Blake was throwing lightning through the metal grates. Ken was laughing, a little happy, but also worried about me. Luckily, there was bits of plastic insulation, and I kept stepping on these bits. Blake was growing anxious and quite pissed off that his thrown lightning wasn’t connecting. He thought it was cheap, what I was doing.

I broke for it and they chased me. I ran and ran. And lost them. But I could hear their voices. I hid in this dorm and this dorm resembled my school but also a set from General Hospital or All My Children or whatever. Some of my teachers were there and I was asking them how I get a part on one of these shows. I was thinking I’d act, get money, and start a new life now that Blake and Ken weren’t chasing me. I’d no longer be a writer. I’d be an actor.

But they found me again and I took off. I tried to escape through the sewage river but Blake and Ken had an off-duty police officer (some guy who looked like Shaq) guarding the exit. But he was slow and I ran right past him. I remember running, and running, and running slower, and Blake and Ken weren’t far off…

I woke up wretching, almost vomitting. I had to go to the bathroom and calm down. Then I took a shower.

back home

got back home a few days ago. kicked back. felt gooooood.

i checked my drawer full of mail (peple don’t know where I am), i found a package from Mythium Literary Journal, my contributors copy. Dag gon’ it I had realized it was out. It is. And it’s great. Pick one up.

Saw Avatar… There is no going back. I got goosebumps when they went to the Na’avi world. I mean, you can see the actor’s emotions through the CGI. It was beautiful. This is how it should be done in the future. I got goosebumps because this alien looked…. scratch that, felt real. Because now actors can *act* their parts under the CG. Though I knew how it was going to end, somewhat, through the established storytelling mythos’, it was nonetheless dope as hell.

New work up at Juked

You can find it here

I also really like Peter Funk’s work.

The hard living poet lives to see another small death

Ron Silliman posted this over at his blog.

An excerpt:

“As it happened, I never met Jack Spicer, precisely because alcohol killed him at the age of 40. Never met Kerouac for the same reason. Brad Gooch has detailed, accurately I think, how Frank O’Hara’s prodigious drinking made it impossible to keep him alive after he was hit by a dune buggy. Who knows what the impact of their habits might have been in the early deaths of Ted Berrigan or Charles Olson?”

I’ve been struggling with this since I was 16. Drinking a lot, smoking cigarettes and marijuana trying to self medicate, feeling things so intensely. I stopped once I felt the health tolls and told myself “its over, its over”. Then… I began feeling as if, not by the stereotypes of the ‘hard living poet’, but the fact that I was creative, that I shouldn’t give a shit about this temporary life. There’s another side, I’ve experienced it, so blah blah blah, right? Justifications that really don’t fit. I began drinking heavily. Finding any reason too. Wanting to stretch my limits; not only mine but my creative output.

I’ve learned since those self-destructive times. I stopped smoking, stopped drinking. I may smoke marijuana now and again, but. I find it interesting how many artists are self-destructive and I wonder about whether this is an attempt to balance the creation with some sort of deconstruction. There are many “non-artists” (the actual amount extremely low, as it seems creation is one of the gifts of human language) who are self-destructive, but the amount of those who desire none-at-all to create anything versus creators are unbalanced.

I find Ron Silliman is right. —- “The trick is always the same. I only have to go without drinking for one day, but it has to be today. ” —–

Today is today. Tomorrow is today and yesterday’s today is right now only older. There is an eternal umbilical cord between us and the past and the future-present. Everything adds up. One day at a time is cheesy because its true. Cheesiness is usually a byproduct of something being repeated so much because it exposes a truth to us that we just can’t shake.

I hope I’ll live long enough to have kids and see them grow older and do better at life than I ever could. Hope I live long enough to kiss a woman everyday I never thought I’d meet and love so intensely.

Indiana Review rejects the same set of poems twice…

On April 27th, I submitted a poetry album to the Indiana Review. On May 3rd, I sent them a note that one of the poems had been accepted elsewhere. On May 26th they rejected my poetry album. On June 12th they responded to my email congratulating me on my poem being accepted and that they will still consider the rest of my poems. Four hours ago they rejected the same poetry album again. I usually never post about such things, but I find this series of events fascinating.

The Best Thanksgiving Ever by Jennifer L. Knox

On November 25th Barrelhouse posted a poem by Jennifer L. Knox titled, yep, yep, yep — The Best Thanksgiving Ever.

I wanted to post my ecstatic response to her poem, but you already know the story, but in case you don’t — I am blocked from all the dope literary sites because the government thinks literature, education, pornography, social networking, religion, and the news to be detrimental to our mental health on campus. I’m able to access sites using sly ways (as I’m studying to be a computer technician, I gotta know), but I cannot post comments, usually, unless the site doesn’t use verification words of CAPCHAs. Or use javascript. But even then I get error messages. Anyway…

Her poem is here:

A poem from A Gringo Like Me by Jennifer L. Knox

The Best Thanksgiving Ever

After the meal, Sandy decided we should spice up charades
by slapping the loser’s butt with a ping-pong paddle.
Whenever Ed got slapped, he farted because he was so nervous.
The ladies won, slapped all the men’s butts, but then what to do?
“Take off your clothes!” I told Sean, who didn’t seem like the kind
of guy who’d do such a thing–but he was, and he did. Then Jim
took off his clothes. Then John. And then the other Jim
who brought all the lovely bottles of wine. And finally Ed.
Deb came out of the bathroom and saw five big men naked in the kitchen.
They screamed, “Take off your clothes!” We all figured she would,
and she did. Then Sandy the Slapmaster, then me, then Tomoko
who kept her glasses on. We walked around the house naked,
talking about how it was to be naked with other naked people,
how none of the guys had boners, and how cold it was out in the garage.
Somebody found a big bottle of vodka. We made a no-hugging rule.
John kept trying to open the curtains and show the neighbors
what they were missing. Deb thought an orgy was imminent,
but since we’d all spent a lot of time in Iowa, I didn’t think it would fly.
Jim passed out. Ed put a robe on. I passed out. We woke up
the next morning in T-shirts, ate bagels from Bagel Land, and said,
“We all got naked last night.” That afternoon, on our way
to the Walt Whitman Mall, the ladies gave each other nicknames
ending with the word Bitch. Deb was Shy Bitch,
Sandy was Gentle Bitch, Tomoko was Slutty Bitch and I was Silent Bitch.
All the bitches agreed that slapping people’s butts with a paddle
was something we needed to do every weekend, that this was the best
Thanksgiving ever, and that Ed had the biggest dick we’d ever seen.

So, my response was:

uhh… best poem i’ve read in months. i read it three times, then spent another couple of reads re-reading my favorite lines.

a boner is obscene in a sense, when everyone is naked. because you kind of know what the person is thinking, or rather the body, and it isn’t that there is something wrong with it, but it is distracting because maybe then your body starts to wonder if it should get something going.

im rambling which means i adore this poem…

untitled poem in progress

{crumblecrumblecrumblecrumble}

an ugly poem used to be here
one word salvaged

News from ‘the waves’ — nominated for a Pushcart

Mythium Literary Journal nominated a poem of mine for a pushcart.

And I almost got into a fight with a friend’s roommate trying to tell him about it. Maybe Robert McKee’s negative & positive scene theories are true….

district 9 — the one piece of dialogue I wish I came up with

“Don’t point your fuckin tentacles at me!”

deleted line from a poem

“the gun in my hand isn’t a bunny”