Poem/Thoughts

Listen

I think I would like to have been a knight,
but sometimes when I'm at concerts I always
think someone is calling my name from
somewhere in the crowd, and if I were a knight
I could have never enjoyed a concert.

I went to the Printers Ball tonight and sadly missed David Berman's reading. I didn't realize he was reading on the eighth floor and by the time I got up there it was too late. It looked like a good turn out and I picked up to past issues of MAKE and an issue of BOMB and many cool informative bookmarks. I also picked up this niffy button:


It was for the next One Book, One City selection for CPL. Everyone is supposed to guess who that guy is, but I got the inside track. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. Hugh Ingrasci let it slip on the last day of class. I guess they didn't tell him about the button/campaign.

I think most people usually have a song stuck in their heads over a day or week, but I usually have several songs stuck in my head at once. Sometimes, they overlap when they're stuck up their, and I feel like there is a DJ in my subconscious, mixing tracks.

Here's the tracks:

Don't Tremble by The Low Anthem
Before the Devil Knows Your Dead by Delta Spirit
Creature Fear by Bon Iver
Vesuvius by Sufjan Stevens
Killed Myself When I Young by A.A. Bondy
Smith and Jones Forever by The Silver Jews
Black River Killer by Blitzen Trapper

I've been on my toes lately. Trade deadline always makes me nervous. I'm scared the Sox will trade away some of my favorite players. And those Phillies, Christ! Thankfully, over the past week I watched the first season of Game of Thrones. I don't recommend if you don't like horses' (and peoples'- which was less disturbing; which is kind of disturbing in itself) heads being chopped off, incest and the words bastard/gimp being used. Otherwise, it was an intense drama, almost like Deadwood (with all the backstabbings and alliances), but with knights. Poor Sean Bean.  

Next: The long journey, after I finish watching Treme, of watching the first 4 seasons of Mad Men, which was just added to Netflix Instants. This will be hard, as I just started the anvil that is Underworld by Don DeLillo. I loved the first 30 pages, but have about 800 to go.

good night/good day

"...his younger brother who was missing that part of the brain that allows you to make out with your pillow."

Take 2

From "Governors of Sominex"

The man used his one phone to call

the governor and tell him, fuck you.

He had just been arrested for breaking

into Ikea’s and rearranging furniture.

In the cell, he argued with the others about

why a sweater should be really called a sweatshirt

and a sweatshirt should really be called a sweater.

One of the men had been arrested for stealing

batting helmets from the local batting cages

and he was picked up in an alley 5 blocks away,

wearing several of them on his head, stacked on top

of each other, chanting, the pigeons, the pigeons.

Another man was picked up for licking maples trees.

So they sat on the benches, daydreaming

about Raquel Welch and rock hammers. 

"I wrote a letter to a wildflower"

In honor of David Berman's upcoming reading at Printers Ball this Friday, I thought I would attempt to write a poem a day based off/jumping off one of his poems or songs.

take 1:

line from the "The Charm of 5:30" and mood from "Spine of the Snowman

and the wind is as warm as air from a tire 

but, Dave, what wind from tires were you letting blow in your face? 

There was this winter where I dug out cars and my thumb

became the size of a gourd and then I threw used tires

into the empty alley, and listened to the ice shatter, because 

I wanted to see snowmen do that drill football players do. 

Jenny tells me using coal is bad for the environment, so she

puts plums in their sockets. In my nightmare, the snowmen 

have the coal back as their eyes and they're glowing grey. 

One swallows me everytime, and I end up in a belly,

and sitting there is Teddy, wearing a rhino's head, and smoking a pipe. 

Pottered and Sawtoothed

I saw Deathly Hollows Part 2 tonight. As my friend Max said, it was like a LOTR film. Non-stop action, some plot holes (no one double checked if Harry was dead, and did he actually die? I never really understood it from the book either.) and a great supporting cast. I think it was the supporting cast (E. Watson and R. Grint and almost every British veteran actor) and the mood, that made the series. Harry always felt like an unlikable hero, mainly because, contrary to what everyone in series thinks, he is a very average wizard. No, he is more like the Forrest Gump of the wizard community. His friends, professors, and even dead parents are always saving him, in the books, as well as the films. The cast saves Daniel Radcliffe's shortcomings as an actor. At times though, I wonder if he is just playing Harry as the way I see Harry as a character, but there were too many times were Radcliffe looked like he belonged on a soap opera when the scene called for more.

Secondly, I will miss the mood, the setting, of the wizard world. If you haven't dreamed about attending Hogwarts, I don't think you have a good imagination. Countless boys and girls will always be dreaming about finding Platform 9 3/4's, as the numerous directors, in my opinion, brought the books onto the big screen as good as anyone could.

After watching the film, I came home, and had myself a steak and a Left Hand Sawtooth Ale. It was a meal, and drink, fit for a great end to a series.

Dog Heaven

I found my notes for Stephanie Vaughn's "Dog Heaven" and reread the story this afternoon. I had wrote down "... a fact was something solid and useful, like a penknife in your pocket in case of emergency." That is probably still my favorite detail from the story. The whole story is great: the friendship, which is probably a boy/girl friendship instead of boy/boy, even though it isn't explicit and the way Vaughn does it is awesome; the doom about the dangerous current of the river from the opening page, the sad unexpected ending. The only problem I have with the story is the final lines: "It was a good day, it was a good day, it was a good day." Those lines are too close in my head to "they is, they is, they is" from "Bullet in the Brain." But, overall, the story is a touching childhood friendship/dog-loving story, rich with vivid and unforgettable details.

And a rough draft of a poem:

Peaches

I send copies of "The Colonel" in the mail to Hannah,
in large manila envelopes, with a post-it note telling her
I have too many copies. On each copy, I write notes
about how to do well in her class: talk about phone trees
or laugh after a story that should makes you feel sad.
And if there's a ear on the ground, pick up
and put it over yours, like a sea shell and listen.

Duck Snort

A duck snort is:

That surreal, sort of yellow color, before a thunderstorm splits.

The aloe Vera stains on your pillow case the next morning after burning your neck during a double header spent in left.

Dreaming about a plane hit a building and then seeing a second plane hit another, over and over again in your mind and each time you try to scream, but your mouth is full of sunflower seeds and Big League Chew.

Everyone screaming at Torre, because the infield’s in, and Mariano’s throwing that cutter of his.

Your father not being able to throw out the grey silk gloves that were given to him to use as a balm barer at his ex brother-in-law’s funeral.

Riding your bike, and hearing the crickets in their separate trees and as you glide past each tree, it’s like someone is playing with the volume control as their hum goes up and down and up and down.

Josh is harmlessly tossing a foul ball into the right field bleachers and then suddenly the flames along his forearms are changing colors and he’s back in his trailer hearing Daddy Daddy Daddy.

Having to tuck your batting gloves into your pockets when you’re pitching, but being able to shine your nose with SPF 30.

Watching a bee swim in a candle holder, while you hit balls off a batting tee in your backyard when the sun is rising, and wondering how Caribbean should really be pronounced.

Want to be able to do my amazing duck snort? Hold your hands to your mouth in the shape of a tepee and make the sound, duck snort. 

Texas Forever

This month, Friday Night Lights and the Harry Potter films, sadly come to their ends.

This Grantland article/interview transcript, http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6766070/clear-eyes-full-hearts-lose, summarizes my favorite drama on network television. I will miss a show that isn't about football, but about marriage,  a real marriage, above all else, but also about community- a new community for anyone who hasn't grown up in Texas- and the special bond between coaches and players.

I'm sad. I also haven't seen Deathly Hallows Part 2 yet. I would like to put it off for as long as I can, so when I watch it I'll have forgotten it is the last film. But, I will always know the truth.

lighthouse

i want to own a lighthouse:  http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/286133

Hamms

The night started off by going to see King Kahn at West Fest. He disappointed, needless to say. My buddy and I picked up a 6'er of Hamms. We went back to his place, drank, played some hoops and watched old reruns of Curb and King of the Hill. But, the entire time I could help but think about Dybek and his story "Breasts." How the lonely characters  sit at the bar, drinking and humming the Hamms theme: "from the land of sky blue waters..."

Yes!

Okkervil River are coming to Chicago!

New Tallest Man... song: http://www.twentyfourbit.com/post/7386449367/the-tallest-man-on-earth-weather-of-a-killing

So close to finishing Shoeless Joe. Desperately want to watch Filed of Dreams.