Some Poems I Wrote in Beginning Poetry

Hoop Earrings

“Bitch!”
How a crazy woman on the BART
Gets everyone’s attention.
“BITCH! MotherFUCKIN’ BITCH.”
Impossible to know who she
Was talking to.
Never make eye contact.
Her red bandana. Her light
Jacket. Sweater in lap.
“I ain’t in enough pain, you gotta
Bump into me? Bitch-ass!”
The trash bag full of something
On the seat next to her.
Her head bobbed and weaved
As she cursed everyone and no one.
Her gold hoop earrings danced
Ferociously, and gorgeously,
To the music in my headphones.

Weekend at You

I won’t always be there
To prop you up.

Sooner or later, they’re going to
Find out that your legs don’t move
Unless our shoelaces are tied together.
And that lifeless expression on your face
Isn’t just aloofness.

My ridiculous popped collar
On my tasteless Hawaiian shirt
And my artless 80’s sunglasses
Can’t hide the fact that I’m
Stapling your toupee to your head
And smacking flies off your body
With a rolled-up newspaper.
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New Theme

I liked the old theme, but it was a little too Mac for my taste.  I’ve switched to the new default WordPress theme, which I happen to think is pretty nifty.  The cereal on the side reminds me of the cover to the novel Mysterious Skin. I’m up pretty late but it’s been a weird night.  I have a cat now.

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Welp, Here Are My LOST Thoughts.

This is my LOST post.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I avoided watching LOST for a long time, despite knowing that I would enjoy it somewhat.  I didn’t know back then the extent to which I could enjoy a television serial.  I had up to that point read books, watched movies, and played games during my considerable leisure time and I didn’t relish the idea of adding a new FORM to the fold.  That changed when I started watching Heroes at the suggestion of my friend Erik.  He described it as a live-action comic book, and it delivered on that characterization right up to the part where it eschews clarity of overarching narratives for short-term flashiness and started to suck major balls.  When Heroes went on a mid-season hiatus, I decided that I was quite a fan of the hour-length serial drama and I started watching LOST.  This was during season 3, when the consensus was starting to form that the show had begun to lose its way, if it wasn’t full-on jumping the shark.  I caught up in a matter of weeks, and the first live broadcast I caught was “Exposé”, one of the most polarizing episodes in the history of the show until last night.

I bring this up because I fucking loved “Exposé.”  I loved Nikki and Paulo, and their stupid little sexy diamond subplot and their grisly demise under all that dirt and rock.  I really enjoyed those self-contained flashbacks in season three, a time most fans would rather forget.  The story goes that the producers intentionally made “Stranger in a Strange Land” so awful to help negotiate an end date for the show, and that it worked.  These are the types of stories you’ll get if you don’t let us control the pacing of the end of the show.  Sure, “Stranger” was a clunker, but I was totally down with the episode where Sawyer conned that guy in jail, or Locke in the weed commune.  I look back on that year fondly as I reflect on the reveal of last night’s season-long troll.

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Consolatio Jobio

This was written for a class called “Bible for Students of Literature.”  It ended up being more like “Sit Around and Listen to a Brilliant Professor Read the Bible Boringly.”  In addition to the wisdom books of the Bible (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job), we read this book called “Consolation of Philosophy” by a 6th century philosopher dude called Boethius.  In it, Boethius is in prison waiting for the death penalty and lamenting his fate when he is visited by Lady Philosophy, who is much more Philosophy than Lady (or even human).  She uses rhetorical strategies and Neo-Platonic philosophical ideas that weren’t invented yet in the Old Testament days to convince Boethius that God can exist in a world where bad things happen to good people.  The assignment was to have Lady Philosophy come and visit Job.  I think it’s funny even if you’re not amazingly familiar with the Bible, but obviously it would help.  Somehow everyone was British in my head.

Eliphaz saw her first.  Bildad was embroiled in a long diatribe condemning Job for pretending to know something or other, and Job and Zophar were watching him intently, either nodding or shaking their head as they approved or disapproved each statement.  Eliphaz tapped Bildad on the shoulder and pointed out the window.

“You guys,” he said.  “I think there’s a personification of an abstract idea outside.”

“It’s not Death, is it?” Job said.  There was hope in his voice.

“No,” said the woman at the door.  “It is Philosophy.”

“Well, come on in I guess,” said Job.  “I would take your coat, but my house doesn’t have a roof or all four walls.  It’s more of a rubble pile than a house these days, actually.”  He gave a half-smile which cracked his brittle skin and caused him to wince.  “Have you come to yell at me, too?”

“No,” said Philosophy.  “I’ve come to Philosophize at you.”

“Well, go ahead,” Job said.  “These guys’ circular arguments are adding nausea to my list of maladies.”

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What I Do Instead of Posting on This Blog

You’re probably wondering what I’ve been doing instead of posting about movies on this blog.  My last post was in May, and the last post that was worth a damn was part of a 2008-in-review series that I never actually ended up finishing.  I know this eats you up inside.  What could be so enthralling that it would divert my attention away from delivering to my adoring readers my honest  and insightful opinion on the latest releases and golden oldies?  I’m going to set aside the serious, unfunny answers to that line of questioning and just get straight to a couple of the joke answers.  Since we last corresponded, I packed up my shit and left dusty old Rancho Cucamonga and now reside in a town that people have actually heard of!  When I told my mom that I was going to move to Berkeley to live with my girlfriend and go to school, she was so happy that I had finally lived up to my potential and commended me on being accepted into Cal.  After I explained to her that I was actually going to be attending Cal State East Bay (a half hour South in Hayward), she still tried to pretend to be proud.  She’s a trooper, my mom.

So, the answer to the question of “What the hell do you do all day?” is pretty different in a lot of ways now.  Before, the obvious answer was “I watch movies and then post about my experiences in watching these movies on the internet, and then sometimes I watch movies and neglect to post about my experience on the internet and instead use that time to watch another movie.”

Now, I do these things:

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