serotonin

watson and crick were on lsd when they discovered the double helix of DNA.

eccentricities

following a rejection phone call from a sub par graduate program in Idaho, I nursed my ego back to health with a fifth and some blue powder. it was a speedy recovery due to happenstance that I met my soul mate and I decided I never belonged in Idaho in the first place, but my mother had already told me all this. fortified in my sanctuary I indulged this new romance, and all its plans and promis

deciduous

the last orange fell from the orange tree. it hit the ground rotten like all the others.

tetrahedral

a drummer, a fisherman, and a pilot. i'm guaranteed a good time.

a butterfly flaps its wings

parallel bubbles and M theory. all we have to do is find the particles that have disappeared.
i've know where they go... if you watch an airplane take off, you can see tiny portals opening in the wake of the jets.

i cut the flower's stem

at any moment this bridge could collapse. you are far too fragile, far too giving, far too vulnerable. i am more than grateful yet i fear this ten story house of cards will crumble at the slightest breeze, where is your flexibility man? your heart is the size of the sun but your nerves are hot wires. your body feels hard but your hands shake. why are you scared? be strong.

breakfast of champions

vitamins, amphetamines, caffeine, red wine, and toast.

vonnegut rock and roll

burning ears

furthermore why must everything always be so serious? most words don't have meaning and most songs are about nothing. you're half my size yet you're twice as heavy because you fill your blood and your brain with lead until you can hardly move. everyone wants to blame the world for their burden i can't stand the self pity. i married a pessimist, slept with a nihilist, held hands with a narcissist, bled from a fatalist, and laughed with an absurdist. i would love to meet a casual optimist.

open book

revealing all your secrets to a complete stranger washed our stars a dull gray, now i'm barely convinced that i am the exception it all seems more like circumstance. how can your words carry any weight if you are so quick to confess where you come from and where you're going to anyone who will listen at a drunken halloween party? your mystery melted quicker than ice cream on black pavement. caution flew back in the window on a broom last night. nobody wants to date an open book; tales are treasures that ought to be earned. for example:

" 'Why would you swear when I say I love you, Father?'
'You're the man who stands on a street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each square are the words, I love you. And each passer-by, no matter who, gets a square all his or her own. I don't want my square of toilet paper'
'I didn't realize it was toilet paper'
'Until you stop drinking, you're not going to realize anything!' "

[God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater]

patience

the end of a long winter when the snow froze all the parasites and the plants were free to grow anew. its easy to get wrapped up in you, i'll let you sleep in my bed if you promise to play drums for me.  if my dove flies away i've still left the rest behind, holding freedom for the very first time in the past 5 years thank god- i pray this color will not fade nor paint your face a fleeting shade most definitely impossible to erase fortunate i'm a widow bathing in a meadow of freedom and simplicity far away from the storm front careful not to lose my peace 

when I see their faces

it makes me laugh. no one knows how happy they make me and if they did they'd think i was crazy.

"Snow in September"

october 2009

sweep me up

tired of her dull life and the assholes upstairs, Lucy stole an old space ship from the Townsville airport to go visit her father.   last she heard he was heading towards the brink870 galaxy to sail alongside the manatanooses on planet Gomphtek. the manatanooses looked like 50 ton potatoes with whiskers but travelers claimed they made noises more beautiful than angel music.  

up for sale

the urgency to leave this town continues to snowball.   the people ive spent the most time with over the past three years are the people i should have avoided from the start.  i don't believe a thing they say,downtown, midtown, two blocks away, each in their own dome, they are all full of shit.  i drove over train tracks and wished this saga would end once and for all and that i could heed my mentor's words before i lose another year of my life on the same assholes.  drugs help a little but gin only makes it worse. 

3. Freedom Fries

"Today I worked an entire shift without eating any french fries."

-Lucy

Lucy waited tables at a local cafe near her university. To work there, you had to have a really big attitude, a really cool tattoo, or armpit hair. She only worked night shifts because she was attending classes during the day. Three men frequented the cafe painting the rainbow of alcoholism. First there was the nameless, homeless, drunken hobo with a cowboy hat. He would come in hootin' and hollerin' and cursing everyone to hell; the kitchen boys would have to kick him out of restaurant every time. Then there was Jim. He'd sit at the bar and drink 3 pitchers of Bud Light and order a plate of celery and and carrots. Jim would flirt with the waitresses and insult the customers.

"May I have a styrofoam cup so I can take my glass of wine to go?" asked Lucy's female customer.
"Sure" said Lucy, "I'll be right back".
"What a lush" mumbled Jim at the bar.
"SHHHH!!" said Lucy, "Someone might hear you".

Another night, Jim threw a wild card out for bait and Lucy asked him where he came up with such nonsense. Without hesitation, he answered "ether." Jim believed that we are all human and neither race nor religion surpassed humanity. He called himself a Darwinist and with all drunken conviction rallied for camaraderie as the underlying theme of evolution. Lucy played the devils advocate and asked "what about competition?" She was a biology major but she knew that Jim was onto something.

Larry came in every night at 6:30 since 1978 and drank two pitchers of beer. The first pitcher of Budweiser, the next one served as two halfway. He only drank out of a small cup so his beer wouldn't get warm. He sat right in front of the fan, except when it rained. Lucy would chat with him while Larry criticized the absurdities of Townsville before the dinner rush hit. Larry pointed out the escort service the fat capitalist was running out of his building next door. He stared in silence when the alumni strolled by in their alma mater "uniforms" of maroon and gold on their way to the football game.

"Why do they glorify a child? He's a kid, not a gladiator" Larry demanded to know.
"Because they need someone to believe in" said Lucy.

Until he was thirty, Larry drove potato chips bags in trucks across America . Then he became a nurse in the neonatal intensive unit in the Townsville Hospital. Larry and Lucy loved to talk about Kurt Vonnegut and Denver and the shortcomings of Caribbean Nights at the Cafe. Tuesdays were always dead because the Cafe fired their steel drum band and no one knew about their 25 cent wings. The kitchen boys would come outside and smoke a cigarette and complain about how they made the special sauce for no reason because the only asshole that would come into the Cafe on a Tuesday and order the most expensive thing on the menu was the owner of the restaurant. Meanwhile Larry would collect pistachio shells in his cap and dump them in the hanging plants on his was out. The juniper plant next to the fan enjoyed the same diet as Larry for 40 years, beer and pistachios.

2. townsville, usa

" alfred is my roommate. we first met when i came back from working a night shift covered in dill and ketchup. i opened the shower curtain to hop in for a quick rinse and out of the curtain ran a hairy black spider, resembling a small tarantula with red lines on its back. i spent an hour looking for the fuzzy criminal in my apartment but he was nowhere to be found; i gave up looking for him because i wasn't sure if he was real or if i had imagined him so instead i named him Alfred. we agreed not to bother each other. my other roommate, karen, was never home because she had an internship on planet SIX2000 working for the Chief Adminstrator of the Bureau of Historical Accounts. karen managed the chief's files and brought him coffee until the sun went down and they would screw all night. i pretended not to notice because i enjoyed parading men through my apartment at will and using her dining room table for pouring cement and rolling joints.

i hated the couple that lived above me. i was learning how to play drums and i played the trumpet in my high school band. they hated me too, they would jump up and down on the floor and my ceiling would shake and the lights would flicker. my father phoned from the bo-OH-te3z0 galaxy where he was sailing the orbit of the Lockey comet. he was constantly afraid of danger. he wanted to know if i had become a rock star yet. i explained to him that i lived below two angry elephants and i could only practice my instruments when they were fucking and they couldn't hear above the headboard banging against the dry wall. he was outraged and suggested poison gas."

1. Lucy

she's a radical hippie and a straight A student.

throw water on it

i'm hiding from this town in this town and everybody keeps saying your name these walls are closing every time they talk

get wise, listen to your friends

"i think

maybe

good people have nothing to do with anything"

pKa -10

when i was twelve years old i had these warts on the bottom of my foot. i tried duct tape, homeopathic remedies, the works, and they wouldn't go away. i let a doctor try to freeze them off with liquid nitrogen but a year of cryotherapy didn't get rid of them. finally, they were so fucking obnoxious that i let this doctor cut them off with a scalpel after sticking 10 needles into the bottom of my foot. after 2 weeks of not being able to walk or sleep because of the nerve damage done, the doctor lamented to tell me the warts were coming back. FUCK!!! so i said, fuck this doctor, he's no good, i'm going to try something else. i went to another doctor that a friend recommended, and he tried to burn the warts off with some extremely concentrated acid. one day the doctor used too much acid and it dripped down the side of my foot all the way to the front leaving a 2nd degree burn and an 8 inch scar on my right tootsy. so i said FUCK THIS, fuck these doctors, i have to get rid of this shit myself and i went to the pharmacy, bought the strongest o.t.c. acid i could find, and nuked the shit out of the devils on the bottom of my foot everyday for almost two months. i couldn't walk sometimes, i couldn't sleep sometimes, bits of previously applied acid would frequently meet with a nerve ending sending excruciating pain up my leg and straight to my brain, and i didn't care how bad it hurt as long as those fucking warts wouldn't come back. my mom always felt bad for me because i was limping, but i told her it was no big deal, that i was temporarily engaged in chemical warfare with a nasty virus but i was positive i would win. well, now its been over 10 years, i still have the scars on the top and bottom of my foot to show for my victory and suddenly i realize that certain people in my life have become like these warts and other nastier people are the acid, and if it wasn't for their repetitive causticity i might still be screwing the warts.

dope

Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida.

noise

how does a mother feel when the world is cruel to her son?

dear john

your message made my day. also, i am looking for freedom, ethics, and the little prince, do they have those out west? i'd like to stay out there with you.

slander

you shout about morals but where are your ethics man?

chamomile pines

everyones off flying solo through mangroves and mountains sending messages back home. the doers the chasers the dreamers, the ones who get excited, beaming with elation and wonder, they are so alive abandoning chains and committing to spontaneity. i find solace in their freedom and chastity links their success in an unlikely way; happy, peaceful, pioneers, reliable, adventurous, well-read and untame, they are the one-way ticket youth.

another one

bicycle letters

my friend likes to amuse me by sneaking pugs into bicycle rack designs spelling kurt vonnegut quotes. he's my adventure buddy.

let me emphasize

"I die a Queen but would rather have died the wife of Culpepper"

-Katherine Howard

found a match to light the fuse

this old flame is beginning to burn when i listen to bon iver and bee hives separating myself from things past i'm interested in rekindling a romance that won't leave me with empty hands, black and white will lace my fingertips pulling melodies out of the universe bringing me to the pinnacle of evolution expression emotion something that i never gave up because you couldn't possibly understand with such a cold heart the ecstasy dripping from each note. now i feel closer to who i was and who i will become with the help of metal strings, a metronome and a boy that can sing. floating through fields of red poppy flowers and lavender breeze where the clouds admire the earth they swing low almost within reach the words scroll through my head and commit to memory replacing far less lovely things. this seed i once sowed is now ready to grow carrying a familiar tune of excitement for original sounds that paint images of new dreams. absence makes the heart grow fonder i miss my music box and i'm grateful to be consumed by something finally worth my time.

benedict

adding insult to injury

how can you sleep?

cinderella

why didn't you pick up my bags?

possibly maybe...probably, no

I keep wondering when my luck is going to run out, now I love the tune of this new company but its something almost too familiar that makes me weary and makes me want you that much more and somehow I think you might be the only person in this world that could possibly know yet I hardly know you. i keep telling myself that this time I am older and I won't be as careless. everything becomes more and more tenuous as we grow older and as we move our separate ways how are people supposed to come together? yet somehow I met you amongst fountains and monuments and my godmother tells me there are no coincidences and I desperately want to believe her because then maybe we could both sleep peacefully or I could stay awake and keep you company through your insomnia and you could wait for me to come home. I can't believe you are so amused by my most ridiculous indulgences or that I actually believe any of this is a possibility. I am wildly optimistic constantly finding myself in trouble when things come crashing down like they were always meant to.

you say gravity is heavier in this city but maybe it was gravity that brought me here...

jenga

how can you lament the loss of something that was never yours?

this time

climbing through castles thousands of miles away thousands of years old without regard for the floating straw from across the ocean that broke the camels back. because the camel doesnt give a shit anymore and he'd rather be broken than fighting sandstorms for someone else who's too weak to cross the desert on their own.

romance has new meaning in an old country. i'm loving the final words of King Henry VIII's fifth wife, Katherine Howard, upon the scaffold..."I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpepper."

down the valley

I met you on the Summit County bus, as I walked towards the back I caught my first glimpse of your western boots and dark brown hair and I all but lost my breath. you sat back deep in your thoughts as I carried on a shallow conversation over the phone I was so embarrassed, you embodied my ideal of hip, you screamed sexy in tones I had never heard before and I found myself instantly wondering what you were thinking while completely aware of my homely appearance. I turned around to ask if you knew where my stop was and you had no idea, you were a traveler just like me and to be honest I didn’t care if you told me get off in Dillon because I only asked to hear the pitch of your voice. You wore dark sunglasses like Elvis Costello but I was lucky enough to catch a glance from your piercing almond eyes before you hid them behind black curtains. I moved to the front of the bus to ask the bus driver where I should get off yet I could not help but look back as I watched you indulge a child and ask him his age (he held up four fingers) and whether he would ski or snowboard (he said ski). you cracked a subtle smile of amusement laced with mystery more intoxicating than cocaine soon I tried to guess the contents of the bag you carried and I gathered it held an adventurous melody with a chip of apathy and a grain of sorrow. I lament that before I could devise a clever plot to make you fall in love with me the bus slowed down and the driver hollered the name of my stop. so long handsome traveler…

coffee rinds

taste bitter but make the soil fertile and the trees grow.

i'm sitting in starbucks, a place i avoid because i can't afford a 4 dollar hot chocolate but i've found my way in nevertheless at the bottom of the hill and i'm staring at piles and piles of white snow, contemplating capital letters and fortune cookies. i envy the lion for its ability to roar and scare the shit out of everything in its way and i need more than a prayer and a shot of whiskey to purge me of days past. things become more interesting when i hear nina simone sing lilac wine over the speakers at starbucks and i start to think that everything can be made cheap and commercial and that nothing stands for anything except for a mother's love. the sun just fell behind the arapahoe courtyard giving mercy to the snow until it rises again tomorrow to melt its perfect crystalline structure. have you ever looked at a snowflake? it is the tiniest fleeting miracle i have ever seen and far more charming than a drop of rain. i'm living a fairy tale and i keep letting in monsters that fuck it up, but they have something i want, like music or books or love so i put up with their terrible manners.

My friend writes well

Joe Goosey

Little Minx Exquisite Corpse

and she stares longingly at what she has lost...



Pay attention to the dog barking and pulling against the chain when the child is taken away by the mysterious man. This image reminds me of a Kilgore Trout(Vonnegut) book I am reading except in Venus on the Half Shell the dog barks at spaceships instead of perverts. The protagonist Simon is chased by an invisible spaceship in outer space and it is his dog who first notices the presence of an evil spirit:

"Every Earth ship that put out to space beyond the solar system carried a dog. Radar, being limited to the speed of light, was not good for a vessel going at superlight speeds. But a dog could detect other living beings even at a million lightyears' distance if they were also in soixante-neuf drive. To the dogs, other beings in this extradimensional world were ghosts and ghosts scared the hell out of them."

Argentina

making its way into the hearts of rockstars...

Grizzly Bear_Plans (Band of Horses cover)
Mirah_Dogs of BA
Vampire Weekend_Mansard Roof

lemon drops

if in the sea you saw
a portrait of your mother
if in the leaves you found
an orange from your fathers land

i went to the dock last night
i felt the dust blow below me
how did those noble spanish
build this castle out of sand

glitter comes from butterflies

i think this video is cool too...

fem and me

el sol quiere amar

everytime i need to run
a little bird comes along

he gives me hope, and space to breathe
he carries me out to the sea

a kind old friend, hides in the mountains
he brings me to his snowy fortress

it's filled with warmth and friends and peace
10 days to seek serenity

starburst

at least we still gaze at the same moon

so fantastic

i'm leaning towards mountains but there is a microscopic shining glimmer of hope that would change my mind and cause me to forget everything and runaway to juarez. its the tiniest possibility drowning out all other prospects and consuming my breath. its a relentless weed infiltrating every thought and strangling bastions of logic.

best friend

the important thing is that you feel free.

write in the box

i can't decide how i feel about haikus. they made a fun graduation speech, they can be cute, and they can challenge you to focus your sentiments into a simple expression. but i also think they are gimmicky and serve as a formula for creativity. the jury is out on haikus. here is one i like...

always a critic
except when it comes to you
because i love you

On dating...

You can't be lovers if you're not in love.

vanilla

a common luxury, vanilla is pollinated by the hands of women and children in east Africa and Madagascar.
vanilla flowers bloom for only 4 hours.

a tiny window to achieve delicacy.

swimming

each year we wait for the next. we vow to change and we pray for forgiveness.

some years roll around and you hope that they'll be different from the last but you know its just more of the same. more of the same that makes you unhappy. nothing will change until you pull the courage out of your pocket. those are the years you remember with pride. change is a thick cloud of snow filled with the promise of adventure and the fear of failure but daring makes your failures seem like conquests. i've been rejoicing in the colorful laughter of the people i care about and reflecting upon those private moments of sublimity.

its only december but I feel like i'm already dancing on a clean slate.

and another one

some pieces you can't pick up.

tabula rasa.

your face

shut out.

where did i go?

day and night.

suddenly all the colors seem much brighter and all the smiles warmer and all the laughs louder. i have my friends back and one that means more than most things combined. i can't even begin to describe how grateful i am to have these people back in my life but i lament that i ever missed them. people get lost sometimes.

and now my nights are full of adventures and mischief and good company and new music and porches and fires and and and...

i think i'll knit for awhile. i know someone who's going to need the extra warmth.

Baobabs and Betula

who knows why some words seem monumental
and others hardly noticeable...it makes no difference anyways.

lets save our words for lyrics not fighting.

where have all the honey bees gone?

fixed

last night i fell asleep with gum in my mouth. i also had the best dream of my life. goes like this:

i was staying at a place which remarkably resembled 3rd grade summer camp when i decided i needed to take a bath. it was pouring outside so i sat down in the mud and it started to sink below me forming a de facto bathtub. suddenly i went from enjoying my luxurious mudbath to being totally creeped out by all the disgusting shit crawling around in the mud with me: leeches, ticks, worms, amoebas. so i jumped up and made my way towards the house to rinse off.

With each step i took, i felt a flash of pain in my right foot. at first i thought it was a tick trying to burrow its dirty little self into the bottom of my big toe. After I rinsed off, I took a closer look at what appeared to be a splinter or a small thorn. I pushed the skin around the splinter until the tip of it popped up.

With one big sweep, I pulled out the foot long branch covered in thorns that I have been walking on for the past two years. Whoever says that dreams are a bunch of random crazy shit with no meaning doesn't know what the hell they are talking about.

hot damn

maybe i just want to know what i'm in for.

he's a lot of trouble.

elephants should splatter paint

yup.

its funny how problems melt away when you stop caring.

my florida

breezy sway

b flat

we've painted ourselves melancholy