The Wake

I could write of the great divides.
In America.
Or the Americas.
But, rather.
I’d like to be with my selfish right now.
I would like to alter my state,
Of being, legally,
Become officially obliterated.
One night only.
Thanks folks, I’ll be here all week.
Herbert Hoover said:
Blessed be the young,
For they will inherit our national debt.
I say, Blessed be the embryos,
For we value their lives more than our own,
Than our poor.
Than our tired.
Than our weary.
Here I am speaking again,
Naively, foolishly, of the divide.
And on which side am I.
I still must get up,
And carry out my duties.
And carry out the trash.
I must face the faces,
I still must deface, to save face,
Public places. With a spray can,
I …

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I am a real man.
I know
everything.
I am a good Christian.
I know that the Great Gatsby is trash.
That Fitzgerald had a money fetish, and no more class than,
Charles Manson,
And no talent.
They had a knack to,
engage an audience.
English majors who dig symbolism,
And teen rebels who hate their parents,
All cream themselves simultaneously.
I don’t, I laugh,
“pathetic!”, I cry.
Give me:
Bukowski, and raw meat.
Season it with pepper spray, MSG, and aspartame.
Give me grain alcohol, LSD, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
I want:
trench warfare, heroin, and orgasms.
I want hardcore pornography, Shakespearean tragedy, and pyrotechnics.
I want hydroponic marijuana, Needles, and mentholated cigarettes.
I want cancer, photographs of the deceased
AIDS, and heart attacks.
I want scolding black coffee, …

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This gross thickening feeling
Collecting in my stomach
At my base,
I feel weighted down
She gives off a stifling musty air
Suffocating
My short little breaths
I do not want this
Pain in my legs
Below my waist
Tingle in my wrist
Disdain for my face
A reflection I can’t touch
A girl I couldn’t name
She swarms around me,
With her bony little fingers
Wrapped around my hair
Pulling back with ease
The strands slip through her fingers,
Coming out in clumps,
They fall loosely to the floor.
I stand abaist
Reflected in a frigid mirror,
Emotionless, cold
My head feeling like my soul exposed
Breaking points hang loosely in the air
And I’m just dangling
Waiting for my thread to break
It bends from my weight
A bruised discoloration of the skin…

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East, West are just words
Wind’s direction matters not
Lonesome traveller

Catharsis feels good
I bet you think that’s epic
But truth is, I’m fucked

Through skin translucent her heart
beat like a small strobe light.
Downstairs her mother kissed her
slippery cheek, a red brand of initiation. She wondered why someone with scales and webbed toes
lived in open prairie, the grass rubbing like
chalk and nails against bare legs, with trains
casting lines into the depths of the wide continent,
and long whistles into the night — She spent the day
drinking the rain, something sliding into her
rounded and present, a question mark. At the greyhound station her skin
stretched and rang — the late dampness,
the slight steam as she entered the bus
into the heat of eyes and breath
everyone lurching outward,
outward altogether hooked
on the dark magnet of freeway.These were ocean people; sleeping
ocean people, in the …

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My eyes are a bit glassy today
Whether from the wind whipping tears
Or
This physical sickness, born from that misbehaving cigarette.
Flickers on the security monitor
Make me think of barrels + counters
And their coming of age love story.
A purely mental headache develops.It’s this state of buildings
Changing the weather.
Twisters can’t even touch the ground
And the sky must hush itself.
To not feel the elements
Of that “Evil” they speak of seems unnatural.
Every “people” has been brought
Down on its knees in centuries.It’s not a matter of justice.
It’s not a matter of pure fact.
It’s not a matter of lacking compassion.
It’s Sanity vs. Insanity.
Cause we always pray to our God, Gods, Goddesses, or ourselves
Before battle with ourselves and his …

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I
She sits across from me all night engaged
the sounds of her voice, and the crinkles my eyes make toward her breast.The best state of affairs would have our smiles be white
glazed china masks, thin, the lips painted red.Beneath our masks would be draperies of flesh, plastic moments of
writhing heat and black tufts of hair. Beneath
our masks would be a locus for this steaming rhythm
of words, bandied through our porcelain mouths.At the end of the night when she unclasps her bra, I think
she’s lying, but for an inexpressible moment, breathing
into each other’s ears, with our hands immersed in shoulders I
glance to the side and See two cold masks
forlorn on the floor.
II
The bed …

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Who: Ben Marcus; Heidi Julavits
What: The authors/editors discuss recent works.
When: Wednsday, Nov. 1st, 7:30 pm.
Where: Sundin Music Hall. 1531 Hewitt Ave (Hamline University), FREEWho: Evelyn Klein
What: The author reads from her poetry.
When: Thursday, Nov. 2nd, 7 pm.
Where: The Loft Literary Center, FREEWho: Bharati Mukherjee
What: The author discusses American identity from a transnational American writer’s perspective.
When: Friday, Nov. 3rd, 7:30 pm.
Where: McNamara Alumni Center (University of Minnesota), FREEWho: Laurel Poetry Collective
What: Poets read their work.
When: Saturday, Nov. 4th, 2pm.
Where: St. Paul Central Library, FREEWho: Anders Nilsen
What: The comic book artist/writer discusses his work.
When: Monday, Nov. 6th, 6:30 pm.
Where: MCAD Auditorium, 2501 Stevens Ave S, Mpls. FREEWho: Hanes Walton
What: Lecture on the crossover voting in African American senate elections.
When: Monday, …

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Turned onBy the charge of each and every electric packet,
winging their way from me to you and back again with
blizzards and monsters and imagination and sailing and Freud.By the sight of your shy smile leaning over my Coffee countertop
and the pair of trembling hands that made your tea and the pair of eyes
that sparkled and waited, that watched the clock, until closing time came.By the long walk that zig-zagged in circles around that square mall for hours and collapsed -
nestling gently head to head and flowing, dripping conversation back and forth and drifting lazily
until we took the long way back to a pair of cars in an empty mall parking garage and a 3 a.m. waltz.By the incredible sensation of warm hands and strong arms and soft …

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“aside from his defective vision, he also had constipation”
-musings on Love in the Time of CholeraWhat he ends up doing, what he’s
trying to communicate; language, we
are so
numb to everything except for
last night
trains un
thawed and …

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Who: Brandon Sigrist
What: Reading from his award-winning story published in L. Ron Hubbard’s “Writers of the Future Volume XXII”
When: Wednesday, Oct. 25th, 2:00 p.m.
Where: U of M Bookstore at Coffman Memorial Union, FREEWho: John Moe
What: The Author discusses ‘Conservatize Me.’
When: Wednesday, Oct. 25th, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Magers & Quinn Booksellers, FREEWho: Marjane Satrapi
What: The Iranian cartoonist discusses her comic book memoir, ‘Chicken with Plums.’
When: Thursday, Oct. 27th, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Lyndale Congregational Church of Christ, $5Who: Kevin Jennings
What: The author discusses ‘Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son.’
When: Thursday, Oct. 26th, 7:00 p.m.
Where: The Loft Literary Center, FREEWho: John Sweeney
What: The author discusses ‘Innovation at the Speed of Laughter.’
When: Friday, Oct. 27th, 12:30 p.m.
Where: Borders (600 Hennepin Ave), FREEWho: Victorian Ghost Stories
What: Costumed characters …

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I got a flat just as I was leaving Duluth.It’s five thirty, and threatening rain. 150 miles to Minneapolis, and the spare says “max 80km”. The jock at the gas station tells me I can probably get a spare at Sam’s, and where to find it, but it’s closed by the time we get there. Two Koreans at the automax next door help us patch the tire. They’re anxious but helpful. Annoyed at closing time by an embarrassed scruffmaster, in loafers and mismatched socks, eager with his parent’s visa. One asks me if I’m punk rock. No, I’m a mountain climber, but I have a Henry Rollins tape in the car.I’m tired from a night of climbing, starting at the base of the city by the water. Downtown Duluth of late night pick-up trucks and …

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feelin’ desperate
reelin’ from all the past actions, threats, and passing aspirations
tryin’ to connect a reason with breathe and the rest of existence
bobbin’ for apples in a sea of emotion
“persistence” she whispers
and i see a light while drownin’
then presence overcame the conscious
and i woke up floating,living life like a leaf on the current - searching for virtue
waiting for an angel to come hold me, take me home or show me
that there’s more to this body than the core
there’s more to a rose than the thorns
and though it feels like a conclusion,
that don’t mean it’s overor… maybe i’m just bored again…

We buried our ancestors here,
atop these bluffs
overlooking the river.
The ones who took this land and
made it holy,
we buried them here.
The mounds mold mirror images of
what we will become,
what we will hold sacred.
God doesn’t talk to me here,
but the Mississippi does so
we buried our ancestors here