Saturday, April 30, 2011

NaPoWriMo 30/30 Last one!

Whew.  That was tough.  I mean, the 20 poems I wrote were tough.  The ten haikus were not so hard.

This one's called Real America.  And it needs work.  But the other one I wrote was inconceivably depressing, so fuck that.


Real America is magical place.
Where peace, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Are tattooed across every new soul,
And in Real America there are no rapes and there are no regrets,
Every soul is carried to term.
Women are finely-turned baby factories
Cranking out children like sausage machines,
Having finally realized that a womb is a wound
That needs to be filled!
And there are no gay men, because
As Ann Coulter says,
This (fingers fighting)
Doesn't work.
So they stopped sword-fighting with their cocks,
And went to work producing what makes America great:
An unsustainable birth rate
And a cheap, easily exploit-able workforce.

Friday, April 29, 2011

NaPo...Just kidding, April's person who should at least be locked up.

That's right!

It's not a poem!
It is
  Yet another
Political piece
To pick up the pieces
Of shattered news stories.

Fuck, sorry, I've been writing in short lines so much I'm starting to forget how to do prose.  Anyway, so I really wanted to do this fuckface today:

But then I realized I don't care about him.

I decided I'd go a bit more small-fry with this one.  Because I feel like this asshole hasn't gotten the spotlight of criticism shined on him enough.  He comes from the great state of Arizona, well known as a haven of tolerance and respect...so long as you are not brown.


Representative John Kavanagh from Arizona's 8th district.  Note, that's Arizona House of Representatives, not the Federal House.  The Representative in the Federal House is one Gabrielle Giffords.  Yes, it is strange that a left-leaning district elects this wackjob for state legislature.  But I guess every district has its white-washed suburbs.

Anyway, Rep Kavanagh is known for being one of the leaders in the anti-immigrant streak of legislation that's been washing over Arizona like a tidal wave of racism.  He is leading the charge on a bill that would require one parent of a child being given birthright citizenship to be a permanent citizen.  Of course, this requires an overhaul of the 14th Amendment, but people like Rep Kavanagh won't let something like the bill of rights get in the way of progress!

That's right, Kavanagh is tough on immigration.  He was one of the sponsors of SB 1070, better known as "it's okay to harass citizens so long as they're brown" law.  And let me tell you, SB 1070 has really helped Arizona's economy.  Not to mention struck the fear of god into those terrible, evil illegals, who contribute nothing to the country.  Except, you know $11.2 billion in taxes.

The thing that turned me on to Kavanagh is this whole fiasco.  Rep Kavanagh felt that more important that Arizona's 10% drop in tax revenue and 7.4% unemployment rate were not as important as scrubbing a Sikh man's name from the 9/11 memorial in Phoenix.

The man? Singh Sodi,who was gunned down four days after 9/11 by a man who said to police that he was lashing out at Arabs after watching the twin towers fall.  Apparently, the shooter's only knowledge of Arabs came from watching Aladdin, because he took Mr. Sodi's turban as an indication that he was Arab and not, you know, a completely unrelated ethnic group.  Not that this is surprising.  Islamophobes tend not to be the brightest crayons in the box.


Apparently, Kavanagh had used something called the "internet" for a few minutes and found that it was "unclear" that Mr. Sodi's death had anything to do with 9/11.  Based on these findings, he suggested taking Sodi's name off the memorial.  I'm just surprised Kavanagh didn't follow that up by saying "Also, I found out that 9/11 was an inside job.  Probably Mexicans."

Kavanagh did finally meet with Sodi's family and apologize for introducing the bill, saying he "misunderstood the case".  Just like Sodi's murderer misunderstood that Sodi wasn't Arab.  Not to mention misunderstood that his actions were anything but idiotic and violent.

Yet.  Sodi's murderer is in prison.  I think, for consistency's sake, it might be worth tossing Kavanagh in there for a few years.  Maybe scrub his name from a few political positions.

But that won't happen.  With the amount of money he's made for the correctional institutes, they'd probably build him a separate luxury penthouse to serve his sentence.

A pity.  In any case, Representative Kavanagh, you should (at least) be put in prison.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

NaPoWriMo 27/30: Crazyland

This got emotional, real fast.  It's also a true story.  Weird, huh? Maybe my life is interesting, who knew?


Crazyland.
A planet floating lonely in the middle of space
Or, floating surrounded by other planets
It depended on how social I was feeling.
It spun slowly,
But sometimes quickly,
Because there’s no astronomy in third grade
And I didn’t know what gravity was,
How it pulled invisibly at all times
And kept everything close to the ground
Like some cosmic lawnmower.

Friday, April 22, 2011

NaPoWriMo 22/30: Cupful of Apocalypse

That's not the name of this poem.  But I thought it sounded funny.  Which is appropriate because this poem is actually weirdly sad.


Whether the glass is half full
Or half empty
Doesn’t matter to the empty half.
It’s still unfulfilled,
It sits next to occupied space,
And it’s jealous.
Half-full, half-empty,
All disappointed.
The gloating, bloated half
Fat with liquid,
While half the glass stays dry,
Feeling only a trickle
When a glass is tipped,
Emptied.
Inches more unsatisfied,
Still wet with lost dreams.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Cha-cha-changes!

Some blog style changes here and the addition of a self-aggrandizing banner.  Badass, huh? It's what happens when I get excited with photoshop.  There's like every filter ever designed on that thing.  I think that makes me a good artist.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions for how to make this blog more...I guess, legible, let me know.

Also, all apologies for posting nothing but bad poetry for the past few postings.  Whatever writing time I have is taken up by this NaPoWriMo stuff.  But, I mean, you got a Lincoln rap out of it.  So, you can't really complain.

And yes, I'm aware no one comments on this blog and for all I know, no one reads it.  But talking to myself sounds so much more official when it's typed up online.  There's the POTENTIAL that someone might, you know, read it.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

NaPoWriMo 19/30

Oh good lord.  What have I done.

This is what happens when I write 19 poems in a month.  My brain just says "Fuck it."


Four score and seven years ago
Our forefathers…
Got funky.

(Start beat)
Yo I’m the rockin’ Abe Lincoln
And I know what you’re thinkin’
Man, forefathers didn’t rap
What the hell he been drinkin’?
Well, my style is wack, but my beats are phat,
From size 14s to my stovepipe hat.
So if you feel my flow and you feel the burn,
Then sit right back cause it’s time to learn,

Friday, April 15, 2011

NaPoWriMo 15/30: Writing an anti-war poem

Whew.  This was a little exhausting to write.  It needs work, but I'm liking the concept.


When writing an anti-war poem
It’s important to be abstract.
10 thousand soldiers killed.
Put on their uniform
To do their duty.
10 thousand men and women.
Try not to think of them as mothers,

Fathers, brothers, sisters,
The family opening the letter
Typed with flawless political -correctness
And how the world feels when it’s taken out from under you.

Monday, April 11, 2011

NaPoWriMo 11/30

Oh hell yes:

Update 4/13: Added a title.  Also, realized that everyone in Japan's last name is NOT Akaiwa.


Aita 愛他
Hideaki Akaiwa proved something.
So did Susuma Sugawara.
And the Fukushima Fifty.
They proved that no matter the odds
When disaster strikes…
People go absolutely insane.

Friday, April 8, 2011

NaPoWriMo 8/30: Dirt Hill

Hm.

I don't particularly like how this started, but I kind of like what it became.  True story, actually.  I could conceivably turn this into a story-telling bit, I think.  For now, a poem.


The hill was torn down.
As much as a hill can be torn down.
They carted it off by truckloads
Mounds of crumbling brown like chocolate cake
Speeding off down the road
To wherever dirt goes to die.
Dirt depots.
Grime garages.

I didn’t see it, though.
I just came back one day
Walked through outstretched branches
Empty bottles and used condoms,
Past the broken brick of the old school,
Through the criss-crossed dead trees.
And there it was.
Or, wasn’t.

The field was empty, still littered with brown
Like the world’s most popular dog park,
The sky too empty above me.

The first time I saw it,
I hated it.
A pile of dirt obscuring the green grass.
It was pollutant,
Thick brown pox sickening the sky
The choking smell of earth.

I climbed it,
Because that’s what you do as a kid.
Whatever you don’t like you stand on.
Show it who’s boss.
And the view changed things.
I saw the world unfold at my feet,
Watched the cars I couldn’t drive,
The kids that teased me,
The adults that knocked me aside.
All of it shrunken toys beneath me and my mound.

And I thought
Hey, this could be fun.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Depression interlude

Just thought I'd take a break from all the good stuff happening and all the crappy poetry to express my complete awe-struck horror at some news I learned about last week. I didn't really want to get into it in the middle of an already eventful week, but now I'm free to stress myself out about it.

This shit. This horrible and, worse, not unexpected shit.

Our soldiers taking pictures of themselves after killing and mutilating innocent civilians.  Like they're so hardcore, man, gunning down a small child from behind cover must take REAL guts.

But the truth is, it's not the soldiers.  It's the situation.  The torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the water boarding of detainees in Guantanamo, the bombing of civilian targets during the Persian Gulf, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.  That's just a few of the AMERICAN atrocities.

And what's the common denominator? It's not the people, what is socially acceptable changes constantly.  So does leadership.  So does the setting.  So does the enemy.  The common denominator is war.  The fact of the matter is that there is no way to wage a humane war.  You put people in insane situations, you can't be surprised when they act insane.

You have to be crazy to kill someone.  Murderers are either placed into impossible situations or are just completely insane.  War cultivates this insanity and we act surprised when our soldiers return and are all kinds of fucked up.  We ENGINEERED that crazy and called it basic training.

The thing that's worse about this is that Obama's still harping on the same tired "America is making the world safe for Democracy" bullshit, when the only thing we show the countries we are safe-izing is a barbarism that puts to shame any of the dictators we oust.

Our soldiers gunned down innocent people and smiled about it.  I think a situation like this deserves a few years of reflection on what we're doing to our people.  Something's gone wrong here.  We've created something toxic in ourselves and until we fix it, the only thing we're spreading is misery.

Monday, April 4, 2011

NaPoWriMo 4/30

I wasn't planning on putting every poem up here, but I'm kind of happy with how this one turned out:

Lost Words
Words are never lost
They are delayed
Clog the pipes of flowing thought
Washed like sediment
Make words taste tangy, metallic,
They find their escape.

Words are never forgotten
They just get stuck.
Pushed to the edges of a smile
Lurking in the parentheses of what you say.
They pulse like stars
Light up the pathways of lost loves and angry ancestors
And they sparkle electric
Never forgotten, sharp and crackling until the day your power is cut.

Words are never defeated
They are just patient.
They are not censored,
They are versatile.
You guard against them,
But they do not relent.
They press at the boundaries,
The edges of your vision
And you can see them.
The lost half of your half-truths,
The full flow of your lies,
They never leave you.
They thicken your blood
Make your heart pound faster
The farther you remove yourself from them
The harder they pull.

Words are inevitable
They never get winded
They never get hungry
They never get angry.
They wait.

But words are not sinister
They’re just not chumps.
You can’t push them around
They come to you for a reason
Because your mouth can shape them best
Because your hand can trace them the way they want.
They’re more than your resumes
Your test answers
Your annual reports.
They’re yours.

And when you touch your hand to paper
They flow from you like blood,
The ink of them drying against the air.
They pass through us like air, like food, like love
Give us life
And then return to a circle older than us.

Our pages, our voices
Complete the circuit.
So you can offer your resistance
But the current carries through.
You are powerless against it
But it is powerful within you.
Plug your feet into the Earth
And let the sparks fly from your fingers.
Because bones decay
But words will stay.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Clips from Spit Dat Feature

Building a Bridge:


Pills Poem


More to come!

NaPoWriMo day 3

All right.  I lied.  I'm going to put this up here.


Sometime between her left hand on my thigh and her right hand on the girl’s breast
I realized it’s hopeless.
We are freaks.
We are masochists on Mondays
Transformational on Tuesdays
And just…weird on Wednesday.
The day-by-day tick of our mortal clock
The resounding sounding of our lives counting down
We do anything to drown it out.

We listen to Justin Beiber.
Pay people to get on stage and talk about their feelings.
Turn the volume up on our impulses
And go to bed with people whose names we don’t know.

We make mistakes with the regularity of insanity
Doing the same thing expecting a different result
Because hitting the ground hurts
But falling feels so good.

We can’t just have a burger
We need it double, with cheese, extra bacon.
We can’t just have our portion
We need it super-sized.
We can’t just walk
We need to drive
We can’t just drive
We need to fly
Rage against the atmosphere
And stick flags into the moon.

After all.
Survival was never enough.
We made guns and bombs
With nations to use them
And signs to protest.
We made condoms so we can fuck more
And churches so we feel bad about it,
Installed God all-powerful
And bit-by-bit are taking his job.

We freaks march to no certain beat
Walk the knife-edge line of good and evil
Eat every goddamn fruit in the garden
And smoke whatever weeds we find!
We are the descendents of bad decisions
Of evolutionary screw-ups,
Living out our tradition of shooting first
And asking questions always.

So stay freaky.
Life’s too short
To just survive.

In other news, I have a youtube channel!

Friday, April 1, 2011

ALSO: NaPoWriMo DAY 1

Since, honestly, I don't have enough going on in my life, what with the Beltway Grand Slam coming up, the month-and-a-half West Coast trip, the move to Baltimore and the starting of my intensive MPH program...

Scratch that.  Since, honestly, I hate myself, I've decided to take up the challenge of NaPoWriMo.  National Poem Writing Month.  Where I have to write a poem a day for all of April or consider myself a failure forever.  I'm doing it with the rest of the DC peeps, so anyone interested should definitely sign up here.

But anyway, this is day one.  I'm probably not going to post everything I write, but for now I'm excited about it (and actually getting it done) so enjoy:

(The italics are sung to the tune of "God Bless America".  That's right.)

While stormclouds gather across the sea
Stormclouds!
Like the specter of revolution
Spreading from Egypt
Like the plague of locusts
Stormclouds!
Like socialized medicine
Spreading from…
Well…
Every first world economy.
And most second world ones.
But there’s nothing more American
Than dying from easily curable diseases.

Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free!
Free like your choice between paper or plastic
Like you can have your toilet paper quilted
Like you can have your Oreos in 100-calorie-doses!
Free like expressing yourself
Within the negotiated boundaries of your permit
And not too loud,
People are sleeping.

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair!
Fair like giving personhood to corporations
And taking it away from Mexicans!
Fair like the beaches of the Gulf…
Um..
Fair like skyscrapers!
Like super-highways!
Like mega-malls!
Fair like thick gray fogs
Because honestly you can see blue skies anywhere!

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.
CHRISTIAN prayer.
George WASHINGTON founded our country.
Not George HUSSEIN.
Or George Feldman.

God Bless America
Land that I love
Like a woman.
But not sexually.
Not until marriage.

Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
The light of Democracy
We shine like beacons
Like…
Like the end of assault rifles
Like the burning tails of ICBMs
We deliver barrages of freedom
Rain liberty like hellfire
Roll tank-tread jack-boots
Over countries with strange names
And we never are to blame
And we never are ashamed
We are stars and stripes and flame

From the mountains,
Especially ones with coal
To the prairies
Except during the dust bowl.
To the oceans, white with foam
And factory run-off!

God Bless Americaaa
And FUCK everyone else!

Feature #2: Doin' it right

Hell yeah.

I may have struggled in that first feature, but this second one I knocked it out of the park. According to all the people I asked. They smiled and said "Yes! You did so well! Gotta go now, bye!"

Obviously they were blown away by my talent. That's why they moved so quickly away from me.

But in all seriousness, I think the feature went very well. I really got a good reaction to my "Building a Bridge" poem. I think it resonates very well with the Spit Dat Open Mic audience. And the more it resonates, the better I do. Really, it's like this feedback loop of poetic validation. Especially when DC seems to have this tendency attend concerts and the like so they can stand COMPLETELY STILL in ABJECT SILENCE.

But yeah. Spit Dat isn't, well, dat.

And so ends my week of insane poet-rockstar-hood. It's a relief, but at the same time...

I want more.