Friday, May 14, 2004

clear light, mostly

We drank the shrooms as tea in the back of the cemetery.
Only I knew how near my brother's grave we were.
As my fingers began to tingle and turn into balloons,
words became icebergs, divorced from sense.
My thoughts attained a strangeness reserved for dreams,
but these dreams walked among us, were embodied,
made manifest.
The stars pulsed through the pine trees
to the sound of our voices.
"Power is the real problem," I uttered,
a Marxist thought that astounded me with its spiritual implications.
For a moment, my friends are not there,
only myself, the moon, and the clear light,
and I'm dumbfounded into silence, staring,
the wind cold on my neck.

But then, in the houses next to the cemetery,
someone must have called the police.
Headlights came up the dirt road into the cemetery,
throwing up the smell of dust and rocks.
Robert, Les, and Snag tossed themselves drunkenly to ground
and cowered behind monuments.
I heard muffled oomphs.
I dove
out
and hugged the grass next to my brother's grave,
as the search-light stabbed out with an audible hum,
danger two feet over my head.
Waves of dancing sparks emanated from the center of my head.
I wanted to laugh, the moonlight cold on one side of my face,
the dewy grass pressing into the other,
but I did not.
The car drove by glacially, a shark gliding past unseen prey.
The distant street lights swirled and gathered into elven eddies,
and jumped in and out of my chest
as the car drove on towards the exit.

No, there is no one here.

Later, Robert, Les and Snag's beer left as a midnight offering,
we wandered off.
Air conditioners humming in the distance, cattle lowing,
the endless, atonal droning of insects,
the highway singing its deep, resonant song,
a didgeridoo from a lost, urban dreamtime.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Well I was going to post a link to the BBC about all the Iraq Photo Scandal stuff, but I'm too depressed today. Instead, I'm just going to post a link to Toothpastefordinner.

One thing I will say is this:

Lyndie England, or whatever the hell your name is, if 'I was just following orders' didn't work for the Nazis it won't work for you.

That is all.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Derek, who used to work with me at B&N, wrote me email:

I'll be back for a show on the 13th of May at George's Majestic Lounge on Dickson. That's a Thursday night, so if you've got nothing going on, come on out. I don't know the exact time that it starts, but I'm guessing around 8 or 9 p.m.

He's in the hip hop group BRU.

Check them out if you're free.
Oh yeah, almost forgot.

My brother-in-law and general all around cool guy, Collin, is in Japan! (Or will be very soon)

And this is his Japan Blog!

He left this morning, so he should be getting there very soon. Expect not to see an update for a few days until he's unjetlagged.

Monday, May 10, 2004

Well, I know most of you have already seen this over at Metafilter, but I couldn't resist. It seems this group of merry improv pranksters set up a fake reading by Anton Chekov at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square. Very very funny.

Oh yeah. Changed the layout of the blog. Hope you guys like it. That's my picture there.

Read this funny thread from Ask Metafilter. The question:
Could a typical young man, armed only with a knife, (say, six or eight inches long) be trained to consistently "win" fights with a grizzly bear? Assume no element of surprise.


Oh yeah, and Ink Mathematics is a cool webpage all about music and stuff. Via Monkeyfilter. It's kind of indie in flavor.
Awakening Haiku

awake but dreaming
above the trees slowly sway
mind undivided
Well, apparently the new blogger has comments available. So hopefully some of you people will start leaving comments.