Survivorman

by Sherman Alexie

Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror

While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.

In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother

And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?

Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.

Poetry verses Twitter.

I've start twittering. However, in direct opposition to the goals of the site, I only twitter poetry. Not strictly poetry, more along the lines of Ed Rusche sentences without the frames, or aestheticized sentences, or nonsense.
It could be any of those. It ranges.
If you are not technologically averse, if you like getting under the skin of the future and finding your word nuggets there, please, follow me on twitter.
Become my follower.
So that I can possess you.
So that I can look at my homepage and see an ever growing number of followers and grow stronger from it.

I saw a video on youtube of a 13 year old with braces talking about getting a different video more youtube hits.
so. definitely. it ranges.

on twitter as samalper
nice and simple.
it.
ranges.

Ouverture

I will point you to it. Only it can’t be so welcoming at times wading through that which isn’t for that. We sent for our brethren to beat back to come to and yes I have been planting my fist into the muck for some time now. Divisions like this are just so hampered with why exhaust the acrylics when the oil is underfoot. The larvae inch caped in corner thoughts caked in the sweat glands of my thumbnails.

Falling on the backs of letters scrunching wince eyelids machinated machines more or less come through these eyeballs and probably other pressed tears and garnished prayers. To point you to the letters like seltzer slenderizing a rock.

April 2009

[due to my embarrassing absence regarding this blog and otherwise, a poem pulled from the semester.]

A THREE WEEK PERIOD

She said The first time you go to therapy is like the first time you have sex
It's looking at each other and thinking
if we do this every week will it get
better?

She was secretly a big woman
you could only tell in off moments
like say she looked out the window
and suddenly all this size

She had a video camera and wanted to use it on me
I said no
It was from 1998, maybe, on a tripod at eye level right next to her head
Staring and
I wanted to say lady, think about it
you know
Get your brain in the game

I was alone
the other day
in the park eating a very simple
well made sandwich
prosciutto mozarella olive oil vinegar and really good bread
and next to me was an older gentleman maybe 50
also alone
and I asked him excuse me? what's your name?
and he said what?
and I said sorry. excuse me. what's your name?
and he said
Mr. Hart
and I said oh I'm sorry I thought you were someone else
when the truth is I didn't think he was someone else
I knew he was Mr. Hart the whole time

I'm beginning to understand the computer bars in Chinatown
Young men playing World of Warcraft all day
nonsensical slogans emblazoned across their chests and
greasy boxed noodles
in easy reach

Forget what they tell you
your time isn't precious at all.

350-Superduty...a poem by madisen

 

 

350-Superduty

 

This afternoon it had taken Lewis

an hour to drive home,

on account of the rain            the wind

and the lightning,

he explained to his wife.

 

When the sirens voiced their opinion

on the matter of cold and warm air’s

rapid, blue-eyed affair, crying

out for what felt like forever

Lewis proudly mentioned that the

pillows, the mattress

they was already there,

in the bathroom

next to the bathtub

waiting to comfort and protect

the couple

from the impending tornado.

 

This was all very true

and it was all very nice, considerate even

but his ol’ girl still ran screaming—

with paucity of reason, she panted

tracing out weather patterns

on the ceiling of their

trailer

opening and closing windows

screaming that the bathroom

did not have a bathtub after all

and for the last goddamn-time

a mobile home

is not a house.

 

Lewis, asleep already,

surrendering to some milky half-dream

about women he knew in high school,

in his dream, girls he knew in high school,

and about the beautiful house that he

and his high school sweetheart shared, just how

great it looked when it was wet,

the metal really sparkled something nice

in the rain.

So  lost, so enveloped was he

that when

the glass, the trailer itself

imploded

he thought it only thunder

and pulled another wet pillow

over his head.

the fourth

written just now............

The Fourth

on the fourth of her wine glasses

i wrote in permanent marker “say

sorry!  you must even if you don’t know why.” only

to find that permanent marker is

easily re

moveable when

scribbled on glassware.

 

I lay on an bare mattress in

empty room

vacant house

everyone is interning for the summer

sleeping in their old beds

sleeping with old girlfriends

or the old girlfriends

of old

friends.

 

I am paying utilities for the first time in

my life

the whole thing makes me think the

way I thought I’d feel after a

graduation

or triumphant

promenade or

maybe even a success in criminal

activity (but I never felt this after any photographable event)

 

costly, I curl and ball into

invisible sheets drawing

invisible curtains so as not to

glimpse the cleared

out room where she used

to sleep

(she never read any

of the obvious signals)

(or

emails

I invisibly sent her) with the

backside of my eyes

and the frontside of my

surprising silences.

 

oh! the hobbies we hope

to tragically acquire from the dealers

of substances we are too

old to pretend

we don’t use.

 

the fourth of her wine glasses was only a fifth of my

problems, which maybe points to the

idiocy of permanence on glassware. yet the promise of

seventh chances remains

intact.

In a reclining chair by casey (from now on I'll go by "Cher")

God sits in a reclining
Chair in my living room.
Mom sits and cries looking out
the window. When I look
in the mirror I see the
Devil is my reflection so
Leave me in a garden where
the milk is. I’ll call you my savior
and pour out my wine.

THE LAST TWO DAYS

Falling asleep reading a book about falling asleep
waking up and reading more
treasuring the thinking dreamtime that happens at 8 o'clock over anything
losing nights-out to it
disappearing from companions becoming
sleepily hermetic
a shadow of a voice they knew now always half lidded
engaging in conversation with a sense of tired duty then shuffling to the nearest
sunny patch of grass or bare mattress
It could be a reaction to the successes of friends or eating too much dairy or just
some kind illness.

I am learning nothing except that
half-dreams are twice as hard to remember.

- sam

A poem written by Parker

When I left the Peninsula

When I left the peninsula

the fish were coming back

and ruminations of prosperity

were making every soup taste more like soup

neighbors grunted,

“Who would leave now?”

I said, “me” to myself

Now, I look at yonder young light

with some natural ambitions

a disheveled pencil,

a tune

For the first time in my life, I’m looking for a dog

he’d be a great friend now

two i wrote

The Rest of the City to You

While you were asleep
We the Rest of The City broke our backs
Having fun
Could no longer spit we had such a good time
And we called other cities
Met them at the corner
Walked some of the way together
Wound up alone in the backyard
Singing “Slip Sliding Away” to ourselves
And earlier we were eating “Crosstown Traffic” to ourselves
Oh you should have been there
Are we waking you up too early?
We thought you’d want to hear
About what happens next:

Picture dreaming about me every night
And know that’s how I need you
I wreck my head when I’m not with you
I want to kiss the town you came from.

We told her she smooched us.



I found this on the floor written on a slip of paper
it looked like it’d been there on the ground for months

When summer
Becomes winter
I will find you
We will supper
We will dance
Go to concerts
Buy a pet
Call it baby
Have a baby
Name him Spot

Titling

Hey everyone!
So happy this is up and running. Major thanks to Parker.
I realized, reading these posts, that one of the things i enjoyed most about our initial meeting was the way poems were discussed and how the bringer of poems tried to explain what they found attractive.

So don't be afraid to discuss those things, is, I guess, my point.

Also, Casey, Max, who were the authors of the poems in the posts you just made. I want to be able to read more.

And at Front, the Proxies

Afield at the pinnacle surface,

Marblehead Ohio is not

a peninsula.

 

What is it, you say, about Beijing or

a Rosa stone that manages to

make marble from mica--

an ingenuity from craftsmanship,

of words and metal?

 

My venture, you suggest,

should be a brochure

carefully crafted cloud cover

on the plane of your face, that

three students constructed

decently, without software.

BODO LEAGUE MASSACRE

She slept with my
last Tuesday. so I told him to send a
S-25 Berkut. I loved
Jack the Ripper in
Korean grass, it was mutual.
1952 Friday, after a
we, dragg-
ing the whimper through the
morning of our O legs while we-
The ones remain applaud; we scuttle like our
crabs before the winds
carry our limbs off

drying my hands on Hiroshima’s apron.

###
I like this haiku:

so many flea bites,
but on her lovely young skin
they are beautiful
-Issa

Lynn in Giddy Mediocrity

when was the first time he

touched someone who responded deviously

leaving deep tooth marks or some terrible addition

to his vocabulary of innumerable vulgarities

he considered under the concrete of

the fifteen-year-plan of

this ‘burgeoning’ city

 

ever hated a stranger because you recognized

in them the sort of insecurity

that would have gotten you in trouble

in the fifth or something grade?

these tattle tales infest escalators after work

a high tide

he noticed aware of his (historical) weaknesses

in mischief

 

Entirely Allergic To:

Pollen / Percocet / Paul.

she scribbled on his expired napkins tucked in his

expired drawer, rotting

before she left town

and became Lydia leaving Lynn behind

Lydia the internet

conquering Lynn the typewriter

to his dismay

 

How many times have I shivered

In this exact park within this hour

And gagged at the same thought of

Losing my wallet with all six of

my membership cards

Or, terrifyingly, losing

you: hilariously, ripped from my brick

towards the good sense of others

(the communists the satanists the scientologists)

the other guys who

wear such crispy linen

towards some unknowable Lydia, please

stay here, stay Lynn in giddy mediocrity!

 

wakened in the morning-light by track eight of an acquaintance’s

“masterpiece” or “mix” or “demo” or “whatever”

blaring inside my cranium

you are! miraculously! beside me!

tangled in crushed linen inflating and deflating with

foreign dreams of future tattling, I watch you compress

and I , Paul of your allergies, deflate

to your unknowable bloating months

on some inner tube faulty with

bite marks and expletives

Cat Stevens / Solaris

I HAD FORGOTTEN THE WAY CAT STEVENS SMELLED

I had forgotten the way Cat Stevens smelled
Until one Tuesday in the shower
I’d bought a new shampoo
For dandruff
I had it on my hands to put in, you know, my hair
It smelled
Just
Like
Cat
And it all came rushing back her
Babyfat my
Inexperience
The secret elevator in her house that led to the secret room in the attic
Where she hid her
Secret bottle of vodka
Staring at myself in the mirror while she kissed me wondering
“Is this growing up?”
Her slapping me in –
Oh yeah this is a great story
In the face in the library
I was tired and I said “I’m so tired. I need someone to wake me up”
And she slapped me in the face
So hard my head was ringing all day
She had changed something in my brain
Every day from that day on was different and looking back I’m jealous
That I never changed her like that
I wanted to so badly she was drinking and cutting and the –
This is another great story
The day of our first kiss we were sitting with our friends and we were sort of joking and
She asked the group, basically, who wanted to fuck her
And I said “I want to fuck you, Cat”
And she said “really?”
And I said “Yeah.”
And her eyes welled up
And she said “That’s the sweetest thing
anyone’s ever said to me.”
Hearing that changed me too, somehow
But then I guess your first girlfriend
Always determines a lot.

- Sam Alper



SOLARIS [dialogue transcription]

Tell me what
Tell me what
You came before
He got rid of you
You what
I sent you away
Into space
Oh my god
Oh my god
No
Rea
Don't
Don't touch me
Rea
I didn't understand
Rea
Rea

- Steven Soderbergh

DO IT YOURSELF BUKOWSKI

http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1455

First Post

Hey everybody,

So I made a blog (like duh).

We can put poems that we wrote or poems that we like here.

I'm not really blog-savvy so it's not the prettiest thing, if it's well used and we

want it to be more aesthetically

pleasing then someone with the know-how can do that.

have fun

Parker