body like traffic

what are these pieces

stacked up folded
catalogued locked

on top of one another
as i cross the street

organs

heart and lungs and coccyx

skin and blood and knees

put together with breathing

and a jigsaw

these parts that move together

sway what membrane

what elbow
in gleaning

what measure seems slipping

what formidable system

what of these pieces

these shards of light

that walk me

through traffic

i was a whiz at programming my commodore 64

my apologies to anyone who has tried to link to some of the fine sites i have listed in the sidebar.
i am what one might call an html tard. please forgive my stupidity and link away! they have been corrected for your viewing pleasure.

2+2=5

repackaging nostalgia

About seven years ago, my mother bought a book from a variety shop and rather excitedly, one Sunday afternoon over meatballs, shared it with us. She and my aunts oohed and aahed over an Americana that "no longer existed" while my brothers and I expressed our outrage. "Can't you see what's happening? They're selling you your memories"we said. Well, they got pissed off. Of course, who likes a self-righteous twenty-something know-it-all asshole jerk?
So, they dismissed our collective indignation as our "need to be different."

Well, I guess I still need to be different. I was on this popular website the other day and in the course of one hour, counted ten posted nostalgia survey bulletins from friends and acquaintances whom I consider to be of above average intelligence.
Don't get me wrong. I get just as warm and fuzzy as the next product of the 70's, when I see the cover of Duran Duran's "Rio" or hear the beginning guitar solo of "Sweet Child o' Mine." And I admit, lately I've been enjoying old movies. Nevertheless, how unfulfilled are we that we must perpetually seek out and revere the past? What is it about the past that we perceive to be consistently better? What are we doing wrong? Obviously, working sucks in general and working out of cubicles sucks even harder but people, come on. Can't we spend our time avoiding one another more fruitfully? Like, maybe by reading books (ahh ahh!! he's crushing me... i said the b-word) or preserving our own memories by taking pictures with film (you know, that stuff that Kodak used to make). I know. I'm an asshole. Call me nostalgic, I like books and celluloid between my fingers. I like to be able to ride my bike without getting run over by DPT.

But today, we repackage everything that means anything to us. We hold on so tightly to what's dear to us that yes, dear friends, we, the misguided poets are sampling dialogue from movies, poems and various other artworks. Call it ekphrastic, call it stealing, call us nostalgic. We're guilty too.

showering in an incubator or menses have tangled my uterus

perhaps i'm a copycat after all and all i do is steal other folk's ideas. oh well, right? i mean, it's oh-so-cool now to re-tell other people's stories. that is, unless YOU actually have something to say in which case everyone should just shut and listen, shouldn't they?
well, shouldn't they?!

perhaps my introduction to the concept of how the shower can act as an incubator is indebted to jane's addiction's catchy "standing in the shower thinking." songs and movies and books and ideas float down get passed around and voila! copyright infringement.
nevertheless, i continue to get blasted by a frenzy of random images and monkey mind crazies. especially when i'm the shower. i often find myself racing through the last step in my OCD cleaning ritual to quickly dry off and make it to my notebook before i forget some of the crazy shit i just thought of or worse yet, tamed it down to a dull nub of a ne'er-do-well nugget.
then i'd be another has-been coulda shoulda woulda fearsome fake corporate make-money-or-die suit in a barrel. "i don't mean to get off on a rant here" but i'm so tired of listening to sob stories from co-workers like "i love music but i quit my private high-class education to study accounting so i could get a real job." it scares the shit outta me but mostly it fucking pisses me off. another sellout fat fuck behind a desk doing absolutely nothing for a paycheck. just keeping his big fat fuck mouth shut. that's all these mofo congloms do after all, pay people to keep their mouth shut and pretend they never wanted, pretend they never dreamed.

perhaps it's my re-introduction to corporate land via the soma suits this fine summer, but this shit is tired already. these are the same mofos i saw as a 15-yr.old high-school dropout forced to "get a job and contribute something to society." these are the same corporate coke-snorting asshole fucks who sell, sell, sell and buy, buy, buy. sticking it in their teenage daughter's best friend, smiling behind a desk for the life he never allowed himself.

so. what am i doing here? there are similarities. there are differences. mostly, i'm just like them in that i'm here out of self-preservation, pretending i deserve my fat paycheck, so i can go home, hump my husband, cuddle with our cats and watch "the teevee." only, we don't watch tv. we're snobs. we read books and steal movies and sometimes rent them from the library. we write and sculpt and make books out of shit on the street and draw and sometimes paint and sometimes draw on the cats.

plus, i'm part-time so i'm only part-sellout. i'm getting paid to write this and i can provide my own medical benefits, thank you.

i'm not defensive. really.

if i could live in my shower, if i could pretend i were a plant that needed perpetual watering, i would stay home.

oh yeah, go see this movie and stop fuckingdriving.

(end ramble / jumps off soapbox)

have you noticed how static has changed?

there are new particles inside the in

between the boxes of shade and silver

the noise no longer white or grey

no longer an assault of aggregate but simulated

no longer reckoning the hour

for sleep but silence

no longer a wail but a whine

muted in muted rebellion