bumpity bump

http://www.helium.com/items/2255495-what-to-do-when-your-brake-fluid-low-light-goes-on

Just have to share this one

Another priceless elegant mistake by a first year writing student

 

D___’s order of sentence construction makes for a coherent pap.

My Nightmares

My Nightmares

To Andrew Hudigns

My nightmares. They’re nothing like the lonely dead
you wrote about, perhaps at night, late at night
when you couldn’t sleep. I don’t have trouble
sleeping. Only the dreams I have these days
are beginning to bother me. I am going
back to my old school and my old desk
and my old friends are there, but they are busy.
too busy to talk just now. And my old bosses
are glad to see I have returned. But they’re not
in charge any more, and they don’t much care.
And I’m left to walk the halls. Alone. Strangers.
Like some kind of fucking stranger hanging
on the brown banister. Lingering outside
the brown frames of doors, unable to enter,
or the mailboxes, greasy brown. Either that
or I dream I found my zippo but when I wake
I can’t remember any longer where it was.

debt collector poem

I have been advised
by our collection staff that
your seriously delinquent account
remains unpaid.

As you have been
previously advised we are
reporting members of national
credit bureaus and

your account is now listed
as unpaid.

It is our intent to pursue
all avenues available
to us in order to recover
the monies
due our client. You must act
now to resolve this matter.

Cordially yours,
Sidney Stein
Vice-President of
Collections.

2009

Tragedy Continued: Thank You for Smoking

I wasn’t sure at first why is seemed important that I was smoking when I came across this little scene, but it seemed important for some reason. I suppose that cigarettes and cigars can be tragic in that they effect the physical health of the smoker, who will be more likely to get lung cancer or high blood pressure. They are addictive. Well, cigarettes can be, cigars really aren’t. So maybe they are tragic in that they force the smoker to ruin his health  of his own free will.

Perhaps it is their tragic nature as much as their nicotine (and about 3999 other chemicals) that fascinates us about smoking. Cigarettes give the everyday person a connection with the tragic, the ironic. They are an attempt to create a small space of sturm und drang somewhere in one’s life. In the car on the way to work maybe, or standing outside the bar. If this is so, then I suppose the bans on public smoking which have swept the nation in the past few years, while clearly beneficial for our health (especially the health of restaurant and bar employees) could be taking something away from us as well.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure it’s for the better. But it’s kind of sad to see such a uniquely human failing fall by the wayside. When we have no more vices and no more fears, no more phobias, hang ups, depression or anti-social behavior, will we still be human?

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To live is Tragic

There is a point in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone where the chorus begins to talk about why we watch tragdies. “Tragedy is clean,” he says. “Tragedy is restful.”

This line came back to me today as I was driving to my favorite bar. I was listening to chet baker on the car stereo sing The Thrill is Gone and smoking a cigarette and I drove a couple of pretty young women. I didn’t stare but I did look. They were nice to look at so who wouldn’t. As I drove on, I saw that there was an old woman on the sidewalk. She was walking toward the two young women.

This scene, along with the soulful music of Chet Baker seemed to make the whole thing seem very tragic to me, which made me think of that line from Antigone

All of this made me think that in some ways to be alive is a tragic condition. We are bound to die. Those of us who eat healthy, those of us who don’t. Smokers and non smokers will all grow old and die. This is tragic

So I wonder if human beings are drawn to tragedy because we subconciously understand that the very fact that we live is a tragedy that is played out as our lives play out over time

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Ai Research – Creating a new form of life

Ai Research – Creating a new form of life

Shared via AddThis

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The Adjunct Teacher’s Complainte

My life is a procession
        of buildings and doorways
I have had my share and more
        of the shape of the world.
I am geography without
        a map. I am the man without
a country about which I dream
        at night, my country my land
of doorways and buildings.

2008

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To His Lover’s Stomach

To His Lover’s Stomach

Please don’t tell her
we’re having this conversation.

She would say we are fools
for acting like young lovers.

But you and I know better, I think,
than to deny ourselves the music

of my callused hands playing
softly across your skin.

2008

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Time to Start Posting Again

Sorry, faithful readers, for not posting anything. I have been studying for something that my college calls the “MA comprehensive exam” and it has taken up all my time. Now I am free from that burden and I’ll get down to some writing. For a little taste, here is a sample of a poem I am currently working on.  I hope you like it.

A Small Vespers
for Jennifer

I. The Litany of Peace

You need this. Asleep on the train,
you are at peace with the whole
world; at peace with the wounds
of the day; at peace with the hand
that stings; the nation and it’s institutions
for which all are responsible; at peace
with the demands of the exact time
and the gentle rocking of the 5:09
out of the city.

sing a quiet psalm to your heart
while you lie in the seat with your coat
half open and the windows of section
eight houses begin to glow, like candles
under the cradling roof of the Chicago
to Elburn.

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