Things that have been fondling my mind lately:


~Why does chunky peanut butter smell different than smooth?


~I've been trying to remember skits I watched at the summer camp I went to as a boy scout, and all I
can remember is one of them's punchline being "yellow fingers!" I also remember watching a game that was a hybrid of baseball and cricket that was played in the knot fort.


~The power of a country road is different when one is walking along it from when one if flying over it by airplane. In the same way, the power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. The airplane passenger sees only how the road pushes through the landscape, how it unfolds according to the same laws as the terrain surrounding it. Only he who walks the road on foot learns of the power it commands… Only the copied text commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, the road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits to its command.

–Benjamin, Reflections 

(that quote is off of wewhoareabouttodie.com, weeks ago, and has been floating in my mind for awhile.)

~John Allyn Smith Sails by Okkervil River, who have catapulted into my fav. five bands.

~Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter- nothing bets shorts about using one's pet's electric shock to get off

~Hannah Pittard's short story in McSweeney's 

~The looseness of the floorboard trim of my front room. 

~Writing about missed belt loops.
~The perfection of Sarah Silverman's teeth 

~Neighborhood cats getting it on in this weather. Stop moaning outside my windows! I'm trying to write!

Btw: I attempted a magic trick poem, well, a poem about a magic trick and my lack of clarity resulted in a funny stanza, that wasn't meant to be funny. 

I present to you:  

Ching Ling Foo

I hide a goldfish between my legs

at all times, but that isn’t the saddest

thing about me.

I’ve spent half my life acting as if

I were crippled, hunched over so

my whiskers touch the ground.

The saddest thing is the that the

goldfish has more freedom than I,

and the trick has turned on me. 

The poem completely collapses after the first stanza (granted it is only a rough first draft) but looking at the first stanza, it has a affect that I did not intend. Ching hide the goldfish in a jar, jar being the key word missing, (the reason for the humor) and the poem also collapses upon itself without that knowledge. I desired to write a poem about the sacrifice that, in the book and film, Ching made. He committed himself to the magical trick he was most known for, on and off stage. He was so committed to the trick that he endeared himself crippled for most of his career. The same can said about both magicians in both film and novel. But, from just looking at Ching's wikipedia page, there seems to be quite a story about him and one of his rivals. Ching's rival seems to lived most of his live posing as Chinese magician (he was white) after a feud with Ching. I wanted to capture all those elements in a poem: the deception, the sacrifice, the glory, the conflict and of course the reveal. I don't know if it can be done, and I most likely  will have to narrow my scope.        

While poems about magic have proven to be difficult, so have shorts about western shootouts. I attempted one last night. It is untitled:

~ Four cowboys ride out minutes before sunrise. One lone rider is at the opposite side of town. Blood orange is rising above the tallest saloon. The lone rider keeps his eyes ahead, draws one of his pistols and shoots the rooster climbing up the building to the right of him. A tumble weed skirts across them and picks up in the wind for a second. It comes back down and two cowboys drop dead off their horses. One of the cowboys looks at the others, faints and falls off his horse. The last cowboy goes for his pistol and as he draws, the lone rider fires a bullet right into the barrel of the pistol. The pistol explodes, and the horse throws off the last cowboy twenty paces away. The lone rider rides up to him, and fires four bullets into the other hand. He puts his pistol away, rides up to the fainted cowboy and unpins his star and drops it and rides off into the mountains. 

Screw roosters. I want a better ending though. Rooster zombie?