i don't know what this is continued

thirteen
einstein middle school. tristan writes doctor seuse book. flunk math.

fourteen
i baby-sit younger brothers and sister most days. this is true of last five years.

fifteen
shave my head

sixteen
first job second job. full time summers

seventeen
full time job plus school. seldom home. buy my own food. move away.

i don't know what this is

one
i don't remember

two
i don't remember

three
i don't remember

four
golden gate bridge. dad throws cigarette out driver-side window. cigarette returns through my window. plastic-hole jacket. candy corn. "ward" license plate.

five
freemont elementary. riding bicycles not has fun as i hoped. friends: rudolpho, megan, shawna, athena, heather, dominic, ...

six
blessed sacrement elementary school. can't take communion. not really catholic. friend: frankie.

seven
viewlands elemntary. Ms. Hallie. Comet. hike carkeek park. never got origami star. friends: can't remember names.

eight
echo lake elementary. aurora village. free popcorn. frozen yogurt. perfume fight nordstroms. frogs. friends: tim, justin, dave, justin, others.

nine
candy theft.

ten
hit girl in head w/ baseball bat. accident.

eleven
i did my homework but left it at home award. new friends: don, robb, jason. tree-house smash up. football after school.

twelve
einstein elementary.

something else

i'm reading 14 Stories by Stephen Dixon. i like the first three stories pretty well and i think i enjoy how dixon seems to write from the point of view of someone very obsessed. it reads very thought-like sometimes.

i'm listening to hip hop daily. when i was young i loved hip hop and mainly listened to 2 short, nwa, ice cube, snoop, and kid & play for some reason. now i listen to the geto boys a lot and a little jay-z, a lot of just what i'd consider pop music now because i think any music designed for popular consumption must generally be pop-music.

everthing is pop everything.

this is boring post.

sorry

lazy

i'm lazy. i sit around watching youtube videos of the geto boys and then i cry for a while for no reason and then i stop & watch the x-files.

list of names of kids in trailer-park i grew up in:

big tim
dave
andrew
justin
big justin
dana
timy
mat
ed
amy
candace
damar
courtney
shelby

there were probably some other kids, i've forgotton most of them

fond memories:

trailer park was next to echo lake & on the grass in front of the lake we played a lot of football. when i first started playing i dropped the ball when tackled but learned to hold on to the ball. the grass was covered w/ slimy green duck shit. i was tackled in the duck shit & everyone was tackled in duck shit & we smelled like duck shit & also grass stains. also some baseball w/ tennis ball instead of baseball. playing hackey-sack w/ lowlife early twenties neighbor [we were 10-14 yrs old]. learned about sex from said neighbor. learned of said neighbor's desire for large & bouncy boobies. removing hood ornaments from cars. vandalizing cars, w/ crayons & eggs & toilet paper & stolen nail polish, etc... stealing things, candy, lighters, stickers, watches other things.

kids that were a bad influence on me:
don
robb
tim

name of trailer park: holiday resort trailer park - i think it used to be a vacation spot.

i was once menaced by children & told that i lived in the "projects".

i feel like this shld be good writing material but it's not it's boring.
bye

ofelia

ofelia has a bloodless coup at bear parade.

ofelia is a genius, and other stuff.

...

["I sound authoritative there but if you are paying attention you will know I am being sarcastic, that 'everything I type, say, or do is both meaningful and self-aware of its own meaninglessness,' and the part I just put in quotes is also both meaningful and self-aware of its own meaninglessness, and the part I just put in bold is both meaningful and self-aware of its own meaninglessness, and so on, repeating itself."]

I think this statement is pretty much true from my frame of reference and interesting. Everything else might be solely based on his context. Free will is an abstraction. Any argument for or against it is an abstraction. Abstractions are abstractions... It's times like these that I feel that everything is true and everything is false. Meaning is made, etc... My girlfriend hates that about me because I will argue about anything from any point of view and any context (I find it enjoyable).

I think even "pain and suffering" are abstractions.

the superbowl

i'm watching the superbowl. the superbowl is an amazing event. large padded men battle other padded men and assault each other in a physical manner and with strategy. the strategy is complex. like chess or war.

the commercials this year are subpar. my favorite shows various men slapping each other in the face rather than high-fiving.

but something else. i was emailing w/ a friend and she said something about people and class struggle and i thought this:

people coming out of a middle-class/upper-class background don't want to help poor people by paying taxes for a comprehensive health-care system or by subsidizing education expenses, food etc..., because they think something like, "i earned healthcare, a good job, etc... by myself and so why should i have to help someone else do what takes hard work. poor people should just work hard, then they wouldn't need my help." what middle-class/upper-class people don't understand is that this is a false thought. these people have had help all their life. they had parents who could afford health-care, childcare, healthy food, after school activities, homes, homes in wholesome neighborhoods, the schools that are in wholesome neighborhoods which are also wholesome, if not private schools, money for college, the time to complete college applications and to apply for grants, scholarships etc... if a high school student is working full-time, he or she doesn't have the time to take advantage of these options. then finally the money to not work when at college and to focus on studies, to get internships (unpaying internships that the poor college student can't afford to take). in high school i once asked my teacher for an extension because i had to work etc etc... and my teacher said, "you shouldn't be working, school is your job." i tried to explain that if i didn't work i wouldn't have clothes to wear or food to eat, and i certainly wouldn't be going to school but...

i don't know what i'm talking about.

i don't know how this relates to football.

i went to the dentist maybe five times from age 0 to age 27. never had insurance. my teeth aren't quite white and aren't quite straight. everywhere i look i see people with white, straight teeth and i think about how much money and time it took to get them that way. i see young people with new cars. it is a different lifestyle and mindset. the middle/upper-class person always knows that no matter how much they fail, drop out of college, choose and 'alternative-lifestyle', try living in various cities, try different carreers, that there is always a support system to help them. this is good, but it is wrong to think that all accomplishments are the accomplishments of one person alone.

this was boring.

there will be a monkey battle-royale later.

and kissing elephants.

...

i'm not sure but i think all writing i write that isn't about class struggle is probably some kind of sell-out. but i can't write about these kinds of things. it sounds lame and boring. people who are read are middle-class/upper-class people, with, of course, exceptions. i mean, generally, people who have time to read and to spend money on something as unnecessary as reading (or looking at art or whatever) are all in what used to be termed the 'bourgesoisie'. [i probably spelled that wrong]. if this is the case, and only this class of people are reading the [L]iterature then to write [L]iterature or [P]oetry is to cater to this demographic and ultimately isn't this the definition of selling out. Even to take the anti-mainstream/anti-bourgesoisie pose is really just a pseudo-rebellion against this class of people to entertain this class of people. are these readers saying, "check out this crazy shit this guy wrote about poor people". is outsider writing turning the lives of the very poor or whatever into a fetish for rich people? Maybe only genre writers are the true writers, and the voice of blah blah blah. i don't know.

this is all bullshit. ignore.

wheel of fortune

pat sajack doesn't seem into it anymore. he's mildly annoyed by his guests, talks over them, jokes a superior way. i like him more now.

i think wheel of fortune is probably more fair than real life

real life is probably fair

maybe

note

sometimes i feel strange when i'm on airplanes, like a 'business-man' will suddenly point at me and say, 'your teeth aren't straight.'

...

poverty is not having access to good health care, insurance etc... that is a lot of people.

...

i am watching jeopardy and i am bored. i have quit writing. i want to become a data entry artist. i will enter data into computers artistically. i can enter all kinds of data. i am almost a specialist.

i'm sorry. i shouldn't have written of that because it's not entertaining.

i grew up very poor (if you are reading this, chances are you know me, and aren't surprised by this). my parents owned a small two-bedroom mobile home. the mobile home had no wheels. my parents paid rent (about 250 dollars a month) for the land that the mobile home sat on (on cement blocks). there was a yard smaller than my bedroom. there was a very large tree. there were other trailers, a little brown lake, and ducks that shit everywhere. we played football on the grass in front of the lake and rolled in little green duck turds.

i have two brothers and one sister. we shared the same bedroom. i often slept on the floor (really only room for three beds).

it is strange and distant now. i can barely remember that. i had a bicycle etc... i stole many things, many hood ornaments. i vandalized many things (houses, trees, streetlights, roads), with friends and alone.

this is all very boring but i want to say that really none of these things that i've typed means i was poor. people who are poor don't have homes, can't find food, don't drive to work. my parents drove to work.

alice blue

returns

contest

in the comment field, pls make a list of clues dirk shld discover in 'dirk discovered'. best clues will be included in novel!

novel notes

the novel:

genre: hard-boiled mystery

-hero will have sad literary aspirations & a strange obsession w/ charles bronson/hollywood action heroes in general

-hero's name is dirk (maybe)

-whenever dirk meets a new character, the new character will comment on his name in a humorous way, but uniquely humorous

-to be written in first person (for ease of writing)

-to be written in present tense (immediacy)

-overuse of flashback to be an annoying trademark

-tentatively titled 'dirk discovered'

***if anyone can think of anything else that should be an overall characteristic of this project let me know

poetry through the glass partition!

been kicking it w/ maddie my dear, old, college roommate. the other day we wrote a poem together (while driving). here is the original version:


pilot armada

two lane interstate now solid
orange bifocal in brush
herds salivate under ruddy bombs
seeds scatter among rocks
stamp kittens coolly over reptiles
used dead as rafts
stall tricycles for antique replicants
vomit in the driveway
yellow antic wildebeasts
cackle like washing machines


then, on a whim i edited it thusly:


pilot armada

interstate
now solid
orange bifocal
salivate
under ruddy bombs
scatered
among rocks
stamped cooly
dead as rafts
or tricycles
for replicants
yellow antic
driveway
cackle
washing machines


don't know how i like it. i plan to run it through the old babel fish & reedit for fun later, maybe cut up & mix with something funny, but mostly enjoying the co-writing (which always comes out wacky, maybe?).

now dear maddie's making dinner (a kind thing out here in montana for an interloper such as me) & we will relax w/ the crickets or whatever.

i'm sad tho, i can't read amelia's blog right now. all i see is a blank page! has it died? say it ain't so amelia! that wd be too sad for words!

but dinner is steaming & we have another poem to write!

ALICE BLUE FOUR

S H A Z A A M

all up in yr grill!

the big sleep unslept or something

Hello Gleasonites!

This is a short hello & good bye. I have abandoned my home in Houston in search of better digs, better people, & more money. I have loaded all of my flammable furniture into one big truck & hit the road. I have dissolved job & lease, etc... In short, I am a free agent.

West coast here I come! (Probably Portland, OR, because I like foggy hippy towns...but who knows? America waits!)

Ward

my triumphant return

I have been in Pittsburgh. Sorry.

I've recently been reading over at Amelia's & noticed that she's been weighing in on Spicer & bookburning. This is not to say that Jack Spicer's been burning books, or that people are burning Jack Spicer's books (they'd have to find them somewhere first, & after spending fifty bucks on his collected books I'm not offering mine), but that people are burning books & Amelia's reading the good ol' Spicer biography.

First off, bookburning is senseless & any argument for or against is senseless, whether in jest or not. No object is sacred. Immolation is nothing more than burning, a process, or "rather, it is an exothermic chemical reaction accompanied by intense heat released during a rapid oxidation of combustible material. Fire may be visible as the brilliant glow and flames and may produce smoke" (wikipedia, here). Arguing that the immolation of a text renders the said text sacred, is similar to arguing that death in the name of god is somehow more sacred or more more. Fire is fire. Death is death. One cannot distinguish between ashes as one cannot distinguish between corpes, & why would one bother, other than through some sentiment for the book/person.

That aside, Jack Spicer is not rapidly oxidizing. Instead, he is my poetic hero of the moment (falling somewhere around Frank O'Hara, Lisa Jarnot, Alice Notely, & Ted Berrigan, in the Ward's poet hero of the week sweepstakes). I read his biography & though it was mostly rumor & innuendo, & it seemed to make him out to be an A1 jackass, I still hold him up on my hero pedastal (on my kitchen counter). I'm beginning to write more poems in series, & enjoying that more, freed, I suppose, from the drive for some kind of singular perfection.

I'm listenting to Slint now, while I type, & thinking about will reading Zukofsky all of sudden, & about, I suppose, to become a regular poetry blowhard, an outsider academic, or, gasp!, an MFA student. Don't do it will! You can't handle it anyway.

alice blue three arrives

with new work by daniel borzutzky, derek white, kate pringle, tao lin, kari edwards, bob marcacci, nick antosca, sean kilpatrick, & others.

read it all here