I like the Counting Crows, but sometimes. . .

Has modern technology sailed without me? I remember selling portable electronics at Circuit City in college and being up to date on technology. Granted, I hated most of it--still am not a big fan of cell phones--but at least I knew about them. Tonight, I couldn't figure out how to connect a DVD player to a receiver unit. It was for Hitchcock Night--a monthly viewing of a chestnut from "the master of suspense" and the wheels fell off the wagon early, and repeatedly. I spent a good 20 minutes screwing up the multi-cultural room's home theatre set-up. I expect a bill for damages to appear in my mailbox shortly. . . Meanwhile Mischelle is doing her best to stall and give an extended introduction to the evening's performance of Notorious. Worse, the audience is almost totally faculty--teachers past and present. In the end, we moved the show across the hall to the ballroom and used their big screen.

Thank God I'm used to being a f#&k up or else it may have been embarrassing!

Mischelle was very cool about the whole thing. I am glad I have gotten to know her. I have been very gun shy about making new friends (due in no small part to last year. . .Anyway). Jay and I have talked about this in the past--we have become pretty guarded when it comes to new people orbiting our social circles. I used to be so much more open but people mistook open for "welcome" as in welcome mat. This doesn't mean I distrust people more or have become some Swift-ian misanthrope, it's just a fact that not everyone gets access to all the rooms in the house.

Alright, here's where I sound like a pompous windbag, don't say I didn't warn you. . .

Over the last year (in particular) the writing scene in the area has begun to grow and thrive. I have been fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time--and my profile (along with several other talents like Andrea Talarico and Jennifer Diskin)has been on the rise. The more readings you do, the more people start talking, and the more people show up. Being a host and having a big mouth, some people have sought me out to pick my brain or just talk in general. I am very flattered and humbled by people who think I have anything worthwhile to say about writing--I'm just another guy thrashing it out, too. Anyway, whenever you put yourself out there for public consumption and you drop your guards on stage, talking to people afterward becomes a different situation all together. I have people who don't know me tell me they feel like they know me. In one way, I am blown away that people are connecting and listening to what I'm yapping about at poetry reading, but then again I don't know these people and they don't know me. And they shouldn't know me, at least not everything about me. . .

See, I told you I was going to sound like Adam Duritz for a moment or two.

Bottom line, being this open in public means I'm that much more isolated in private, which is cool. This doesn't mean I don't want to talk or hang out with people--it's the opposite, I love the interraction and being out and a part of life, it's just that I can't let everyone inside. I have done my best to close my open book, but sometimes I do miss out on meeting great people and developing great friendships. Thankfully I was smart enough to be friends with Mischelle--she is just a great soul.

the moral of the story: Get off my land!

today's soundtrack: Paul Westerberg 14 Songs; Rufus Wainwright s/t; Sugar Copper Blue; Secret Machines Now Here is Nowhere; Jesse Malin The Heat; Modern Jazz Quartet Django; Manic Street Preachers The Holy Bible

eyestrain

Spent the better part of the last 8 hours transcribing. . .pain. . .but at least the discussion itself was interresting. . .a good tired but tired none the less. . .



more way later. . .

pm soundtrack: n/a

on the corner of E6th and cooper square

NYC was awesome. I spent all day pal-ing around with mischelle, a professor at the university. we ate @ the Old Town Bar, The Tomato (7 minute dinner and power downed Winter Hook), and Cafe Dante (in Lil' Italy). Saw Sniper (my mentor's play) @ Center Stage--intense stuff.
You can check out more about the play here. The show is running until Feb. 12--go see it!!
Saw my girl Bibi @ The Strand, went to Final Vinyl, had a great time with mischelle--quality bonding, amazing art. . .life is great tonight!!!

today's soundtrack: Otis Redding Live at The Whiskey A-Go-Go; everything by The Replacements

quick on the draw, shooting yourself in the foot

Test Pattern was amazing. Jen Diskin was on tonight--she owned the evening like I hoped she would. I had a chance to sit down and talk to an up-and-coming writer tonight. We grabbed some coffee at a diner on the edge of town. From the first time she read @ Test Pattern a few monthes back Andrea and I have been blown away by her language, the layering of images upon images--amazing and very talented. It was great to sit down and talk in great length about what makes her writing tick et. all. The bonehead move; however, came in the fact that I gave her a poem of mine to read--and it had her email and contact info on it!! How the Hell am I going to be able to comment on the poem she gave me?! I don't want to wait another month. Shit. . . well. . . I did give her my phone number but not my email--hopefully she'll call or I will have to track her down to give her some feedback. It's great to see such talent developing out of the area writing scene. . ."it's all happening. . ." indeed. NYC tomorrow!!

night soundtrack: Brendan Benson Lapalco; Damnwells Bastards of the Beat; Cave In Antenna; Jeff Buckley Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk

"The sky is a landfill" j.buckley

POETRY READING!
Test Pattern
Adams Ave.
Scranton
8:30

Tonite's feature: Jen Diskin

more later

today's soundtrack: snow patrol final straw; fastball all the pain money can buy; replacements let it be; jeff buckley sketches for my sweetheart the drunk

sinus, migrane, or blunt trauma

for the last two days, i have woken up to a headache that can only be described as soul-crushing. it feels like someone is drilling for oil in my skull and having a hard time finding any.

more later.

am soundtrack: clifford brown a study in brown

sketch 5

His eyes fixate vhs,
running time reverse.
three to four seconds
reviewed and relived--
three to four seconds
stretched into hours.
the eyes go white
noise and static
pours out his open
mouth. . .
his mother watches,
hears the whurr-
shut-click-and high
pitched hum of a
Zenith 4head world
repeat history
for her son. . .
the over and over
reducing time to
moments yoked
to a stretch of
magnetic celluloid.
movement reverses
truths and uncovers
a clean slate
where she is a stranger
walking backward
down the hallway
wanting to rewrite
the tide of her son’s
ever progressing
history.

pm soundtrack: bright eyes i'm wide awake it's morning; the replacements tim; snow patrol final straw; joni mitchell blue

things we talk about when we want to talk about something else

night soundtrack: bright eyes i'm wide awake it's morning; snow patrol final straw; jesse malin the heat

For those of you playing at home, today's entry is a piss-take on a great book by Raymond Carver, a old writing hero. I think, for the most part, I'm a pretty straight-foward cat. I don't do a very good job hiding my emotions--it's all in the eyebrows you could say. But I am not big on ambiguity in conversations. . . and yet. . .you throw a girl into the mix, and . . .

I think I'm still shell shocked form a short string of rejections over the last year--some painful, some mean, and some psycho. I feel like the guy on the bomb squad due for a vacation. I had hoped that this would've gone away by now but IT HASN'T. Instead. . .

Well, it's better now. I don't have that "no one will ever love me" mindset I had in my teenage tortured idiot phase. And it isn't that affectionate "nice guy/loser" tag I wear either--the self esteem is battered but honest. It's just that I'm still a shy bastard. Nothing else--just shy.
Oh well, f-it. Tonight is just rambling garbage. . .diversions I guess.

more later

Fire in the disco! Fire at the gates of Hell!

night soundtrack: elton john honkey chateau, ted leo & the pharmacists shake the sheets, gomez bring it on, promise ring woodwater, arcade fire funeral

so the neighbor calls me while i'm at a meeting.

"is our apartment on fire?"

the phrase: shit a brick comes to mind. . . so i say

"fire?!!!" in a crowded, upscale restaurant/cocktail lounge--a pair of waiters damn near jumped out of their skin--a couple began to look around--not the kind of thing you proclaim (hooray for my lame ass!) in a crowded place. . .at least it wasn't a crowded theatre, right?

anyway my neighbor goes on to tell me that a relative had seen an apartment fire on the news and thought it was our building. . . this is a simple fact that might have been better served as a preamble to the whole apartment on fire question--it definitely changes several things. most importantly, the immediacy of the question at hand.

the moral of the story is: a proper sequencing of facts when posing a question may in fact prevent cardiac arrest.

more later

tipex!

am soundtrack: Todd Rundgren: someting/anything?

i have to say the last week and change of not really doing anything with my mornings has been great--loads of me time and writing time for sure; however i am also becoming very poor. been thinking about getting a roommate but i dunno. . .


more later

SC006-2

night soundtrack:
ben folds five s/t, the weakerthans fallow, nick drake 5 leaves left, chet baker with strings

watched almost famous director edition in about three different sittings tonight--kept getting interrupted by life and napping. . .serious stuff. . .the thing that always strikes me about that movie is phillip seymour hoffman's Lester Bangs. there is that scene near the end of the movie where Lester is talking about how the best art is made by people who are not cool, how art made by pretty boys would be fleeting in its resonance. there is this overwhelming honesty and sense of longing that takes the wind out of me everytime i watch it. chances are, as the night gets later, i'll go all emo over these moments and just watch it repeatedly. when lester says "of course i'm home, i'm not cool," it's with such verve--a humour that tries to soften his loneliness. instead, it just underscores the truth. honesty shared by uncool people in the unraveling flags of night. . .

when i think about writing i am sure that it is lonely but it is solitary. the loneliness i feel has nothing to do with the act of creating but more to do with my own personal core. i am used to being alone--only child born in the middle of nowhere--and my sense of lonely shifts from day to day. i write to connect--sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. does great work come from loneliness? i think once you begin to think about "being lonely" and how it relates to what you are saying then it becomes an artificial environment--a pretension--some artsy stereotype.
i don't know. . .just a thought. if anyone really read this, maybe it would make sense-- this is just self-indulgent bullshit passed off as an attempt to connect.

more later

i guess my tax dollars don't cover plowing my f@#*!ng street

click here to discover why we're all sad bastards

am soundtrack: morrissey you are the quarry

helllloooooooooo jacksonville

i was 5 when the philadelphia eagles last went to the superbowl. . .i have had plenty of time to get ready for another superbowl run. . . thank god they won--too young to have an ulcer.

afternoon soundtrack: urge overkill saturation

a bullet in the blue sky moment

sorry for going all bono there for a moment. sometimes the inner michael stipe crawls on top of the soapbox--too many fugazi and bad religion albums i guess.

more later

". . .and words are never proper words" b. mould

in bed by 6 this morning.
up by 9.

reading raymond carver's poetry anthology
listening to arcade fire funeral and husker du candy apple grey

in between all of this, overhead an interview on PBS about an Irish family and their autistic son. closed all my books and watched. . .his mother kept talking about her son falling "deeper into the black hole" and how there wasn't proper treatment for him. the house looked like a war zone--dry wall exposing bare wires and doors broken at the hinges. the last shot of the feature was the boy (11-ish i am guessing) kicking his father repeatedly as they were getting into the family car.

sometimes i feel guilty about being burned out by my job. i wish i could go overseas and set up a practice. it pained me to watch--i've seen the look in those faces before (child included) and it never gets easier to see. sometimes it does feel hopeless at times and i have nothing but respect and admiration for parents with autistic children. i get to go home at the end of the day, for them it's a way of life. the beautiful thing is just how much hope, love and patience most of these families provide their children and the world surronding them. it would be very easy to lay down and wallow in the difficulties of their situation, but most don't--they fight and most tellingly--they live their lives to a full measure. it's not all turmoil for these families, they have the resolve to be a family rather than a family with an autistic child. i wish i could be that strong just once in my life. . . it makes me work harder and also means i take less bullshit from someone whose bad day consists of waiting 5 minutes for a junior bacon cheeseburger and a frostie.

regardless of whatever happens with writing, i don't know if i could ever wholly leave working with autisim behind. i guess that's easy for me to say now. . .we'll see.

more later

sketch4

i love the stillness that a good snow storm can bring to a city
took a long good walk tonight
i walked around until it felt like i was inhaling broken glass
a ritual remembered as
romance against the pure white inevitable
like when breath mingles with breath in the surrounding air
the poetry is in the silence
a good still night can make two souls feel as if they are the only things alive
and the one is the only way for the other to sustain warmth
there have only been a handful of times in my life where i've felt so complete
longing freezes at the ends of tears, to break under the weight of heavy hearted branches
arms raised to embrace
lips to draw a poem’s conclusion onto tongues
private and passed to no other
a moment within a vaccum
honest and perfect

lenny bruce, david brent, and rev. lovejoy

i've spent the better part of the afternoon doing two things--watching the office and listening to lenny bruce "live at carnegie hall" the snow has been steady and consistant. i have been thinking about a lot of things today, namely the concept of normal.

a couple of days ago i had company over to the apartment and they spent a good part of the time here taking in the living room. basically my living room is full of books, movies, and music--like a thrift store with a matching couch and chair. there are also comic books, posters on the walls, and simpsons action figures hanging out. i could tell whatever conversation we were having was almost secondary to the actual sensory processing going on. at the end of the night, jay and i were talking about it.

he understood the vibe i was getting, "hey somebody came over to our place when we first moved in and said my room reminded them of a little boy's room--not exactly what i was going for."

is it childish to be living like this? it never dawned on me that having these things out was odd or out of place, but i guess it is in a way. did i forget i was nerd? i mean, all my friends have shit like this out and about in their apartments--is it just a product of the subcultre i am a part of? how lame is that? and it's not a hipster-vibe i'm dropping here--i am not weezer-sheik at all. i've been this lame for years, even before it was a comercially viable path for up and coming rock bands. being dorky sans the irony. . .

i did learn an important lesson from this; however, whatever hole i've been living in culturally, i am going to stay in it. there is so much to be self-conscious about in the ever-encrouching march to maturity (bonus points for the catholic inertia) that having lionel hutz hanging near a lamp means nothing. it's like our version of pier one bric-a-brac, right?

there's no moral to the story here kids, just some awkward bastard rambling on--hell if you are reading a blog to find universal truths maybe you shouldn't be sitting at the big kids' table on christmas day.

sketch 3

my head is swimming from too much coffee and not enough sleep. the last two days feel like a vanilla trainwreck of bad ideas gone to their logical ends. i pretty sure somewhere there's a bonfire with my name on it, like viking funeral pyre rites of passage coming to haunt me. this is what insomnia sounds like when its vine ripe and poured onto a laptop. i am pretty sure when i read this later i will wonder who wrote it.

"the ashtray says you've been up all night. . ."

more later

new noise

someone who read my blog asked me about my sketches--they are not yet poems--they are what they are, just two clarify (as if anyone is reading this crap)

more later

the wing commander invited me over to have stuffed shells with him and his mom

did i happen to mention i'm a husky dude? for christmas, Jay's girlfriend's family bought him a deep-fryer: apparently they have all been plotting privately to kill me. so we started making wings; however when you venture into such a dietary adventure, experts come out of the woodwork: a better sauce here, the ideal cooking oil (peanut vs. canola), are boneless wings as satisfying as the old fashioned wing--basically people with too much f$#^in' free time. The world of metal shop is a virtual treasure trove of lost and staggering experts--guys who are always 12 oz away from the police blotter, a pfa, or being flung out of the club cab of their dodge dakota and onto the unforgiving asphalt of state route 309. . .they don't call-in sick, they call off drunk

which brings me to the wing commander. most of the advice we have received in our quest for the ideal wing-induced heart failure has come from a guy who has decided that finding the best watering hole wing is more important than finding a way to move out of his mother's house.

now this is NOT an inditement of all people who live with their parents--there are situations that arise, (finacial, health, emotional) by which living at home with mom and dad is the best option. that said, most people don't see the return to the nest as an endline--that's the difference. if you have never left your adolescent bedroom, then that's a problem. sure maybe you took the RATT and Elle MacPhereson posters down, but their ghosts haunt you--they sit, like the looming specter of "never-getting-laid-ever," square on your chest while you sleep the sleep of a single twin existence.

and i'm pretty much talkin' about the dudes here--because they are the ones who keep giving the rest of us comic book-movie-music geeks a bad name. for the love of GOD, please quit your job checking baggage at the airport, buy a can of gasoline and set yourself on fire on the lawn of the white house--at least in death you will find meaning. . .

sketch 2

carbon ribbons dance above the
wick, flame
burns impurities and waxy roots
hyperextended plant themselves

into the tabletop.
reading the poetry of hours in the spilt
and melted patience--such a surface
betrays time's accurate language.

numbers duck under thin silver twins,
paced by the metronome tick, a face
tries
to hide in embarrassment.

the stroke of an hour,
the feel of bloodrushing the funnel,
thoughts spillover and out,
lost and largely ignored.

with the death of oxygen
all the flames will flicker and
find themselves ghosted in the
folds of dead candle clouds
dispersing into currents of
ambivalent airspace.

minus 10

there is something to be said living in an apartment where all the utilities are included in the rent, but there is also something to be said about being able to control your thermostat. tonight is about as cold as it has been since i started living in the "O" (as in the building address 4O5, but somebody stole the 4 and 5 leaving. . .).

thankfully the cold really doesn't bother me, but tonight it's coming pretty close. . .very tundra tonight, i'm listening to Getz/Gilberto--perhaps brazilian samba jazz will keep me warm. if not, there's always setting stuff on fire. . .

went back to my day job today for the first time in a week. i'm only part time now, thanks to my grad. asst. job. i work with autistic children. it makes for some long days but it least the work is meaningful. Hell, when i graduated (the first time) from Wilkes University, i was selling major appliances at circuit city--sometimes i wake up screaming out loud the product code for maytag neptune washers (FAV6800AAW for those playing at home). . .yikes. . .

i don't know if i could ever stay away totally from social work. if i keep hangning out with my current batch of friends, i won't have a choice. . .more later. . .

purgatory

can't sleep. . .clown will eat me. . .more later

"Would it hurt to fall in love a little slower/I know it hurts at any speed."P.Westerberg

I am starting to wonder if I'll ever write about something other than girls. I can't go two lines without going all emo and wraping my words around arms that don't reach back. ARRRGHHH!
You tell yourself, "just a phase," but then you sit and watch Truffaut's Antoine Doinel struggle through four or five movies and you finally get it--the hapless and hopeless will always orbit the planets with the strongest gravitational pull. . .girls, man. . . girls. . .

I wasn't always, uhm. . .yeah I was always this doe-eyed when it came to girls. Not that I'm being Duckey anymore, not that girls don't look at me. It's just odd, I am just plain fickle--almost to a fault. A female friend called this trait "cute" and "boy-ish." Not sure if that's really a compliment.

I was walking to Taco Bell in the snow the other day talking about being childish with a classmate. We drew the conclusion that being child-like is different from being child-ish; however the jury is still out on me being "-like" or "-ish" when it comes to the child handle. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one paddling this boat. When the ship of responsibilty eventually sinks this schooner life, at least I know a person that'll get The Simpson's references.

"nobody likes a bi-polar clown" indeed. . .

sketch

the soft and faint truth washes away when

the sheets of night are dethreaded by daylight.

the best and most simple wish she can tuck into

the boom mic is to know what can be recorded and

preserved as silence,

a radiator exhales like a slender nicotine lover,

the window adjusts for bleary vision: condensation

has come crying home and collects in the sil.

she's been listening for days at a time,

this answering machine life offers no extrovert

expressions, it just captures thought.

wait for the tone.

closing time

So I'm informed by dim lights that it's time to exit the premises--there isn't much in the way of anything in south wilkes-barre. Donahues is the only something that's even really open. A bar who is the last man standing in a part of town best known as being on its back, kafka style. So it's closing time and I have spent the last hour and a half talking to Jay about writing. And it comes down to this--either you talk about writing or you write. I can't say anything about being a writer without someone (wait for it. . .) offering this same tired chestnut of personal insight:

"i always thought about writing, but I just don't have the time to do it."

A load of bunk. . .if any of these people spent their time actually writing in lieu of talking about writing then this conversation would be moot. The truth of the matter is that it's way easier to talk about doing than actually doing. Coulda-woulda-shoulda--none of us are Brando and contenders only move in two directions: up or down. But Hell, at least they're moving, not just talking about it.

je suis fatigue

falling asleep to edie piaf has triggered a memory of 9th grade french class--in my dream i actually dreamt in french, i just have no idea if it was correct. edith piaf is also as sad as billie holiday tonight, at least in my cd player. . .more later

new adventures in blo-fi

So. . .after losing my old blog, I am restarting the online diary experience.

Vital Stats:

height: 11teen phonebooks
weight: 98 fluid oz
sign: Sag/Scorp cusp
mutant power: folding clothes

Stuff I do/did/or didn't:

Host: Barnes&Noble Poetry Series
Host: Tudor Bookstore Open Mic Night
Editor: Broken Arrow Chapbook Series
Keyboards: Eddie Money (I Wanna Go Back Tour '87)

Alright, more later. . .





Later. . .

I am currently a graduate student at Wilkes University, studying for my Masters in Creative Writing. My first book of poetry Paper Hearts Made Easy is currently in production: hopefully to be released later this year.

Alright, more later, later.

Greetings

I love carpet.
I love lamp.
I am not original.