Everything has a credo
mine's elation
yours indian summer
theirs is We can’t get lost here
A water flea
can’t finish a human meal
humans can't stomach raw meat.
I once hallucinated to a red
alarm clock and a body
with toothpicks for bones.
Even then, words were useless.
A glance is majestic.
The tropics frenetic
whether foreign or old.
Typhoid is cured
reads the headline
thank god humanity's saved.
I once knew a man
slipped (sure footed)
backward into Canada
froze to a crawl
realized there weren’t enough
tokens for Yukon,
warm, golden.

This is my first attempt at some Emily Dickens- style poetry. Just an exercise, not to worry, like I'm sure you were.

She sits, a plant within these walls
a pot upon the shelf
but moving of her own accord
and breath of willful health.

Her hearing tunes acutely
to the tones and whirs and clangs
of all the cars and people
that midday traffic brings.

The sun shines down in fragments
upon the unmade bed
and mice race in and out
of the dreams within her head.

At night when we’re all sleeping
she stalks the shadows down
then curls up at our heels,
and joins this sleeping town.

Just to let the few souls know who happen to periodically stumble into this sight, DePaul accepted me into their Creative Writing program yesterday. Woohoo! Hooray!

I cannot speak on duration.
Gurus announce their deaths,
farewell, faithful public.
Another feast, empty/full,
a breeze runs through the
polished hall.
I cannot speak on duration.

I no longer work in a restaurant
but the fat lady woke me up
said time to get ready I was
in an attic. I got dressed appeared
in side door of this old
emplyment remodeled. I'm sick
of eating wooden almonds they
go in they go out they go in they go
out. And I'm an elf now, up and down
the stairs, wacking my head on the
ceiling of this elvish staircase.
Take orders, get the food this is
living. I'm sweating and it's only
when the toilet appears filled
with shit, long garden hosed sized
shit do I laugh, and it's out loud
filling the room, down the hall
tumbling to Bangladesh, dead
in the mailbox, spilt onto the stairs.

Here are a few images that Jen took of the Grunion Run that is taking place along the West coast right now. See okplusthree.blogspot.com or read the following poem for a better description...


Grunion!!!


Males and Females gettin' jiggy.


Fellow Venetians enjoying the miraculous marine biology.


Me enjoying some Paul Newmans Organic popcorn.

Best Regards,
Management

Standing
on the Western edge
of this continent
staring into the darkness
the soft, gray void where
sky meets water infinitely outward,
the ambassadors of the human race
wait with flashlights
and buckets
surveying the remaining dregs
of each retreating wave.
Thirty, fifty feet out to sea,
eight thousand translucent
hand-length Grunions
bob with the tide,
waiting for their brains
to respond to the conditions,
to set into motion a series
of instinctual reactions.
In pairs, they race
toward the shore
inside a breaking churning wave.
Their silvery scales catch
on the firm sand
In an instant, the male is on her,
his body bent around the female,
contributing his half
of the equation.
The female digs her tail down
into the moist soil,
laying her eggs, buried.
Meanwhile, beams of light
from the excited people, waiting
swing in her direction,
like spotlights on a stage,
her monologue
from one race to another.
She writhes free and shoots
from the sand, flipping,
suffocating, leaping toward water,
praying that the next wave
will carry her back to sea.