a child named vapor

the end is a beginning and beginning a is end the

2008-11-14T09:13:58Z

It crept in through the vents; behind my eyes. My mind. A million different fingers pointed in the wrong direction. Chanted a chorus of cover-ups. Control was lost.
Leaves caught in a breeze. Me. I passed the same point a hundred times until I heard a whisper. "Save your life with mine."

I unzip my skin and let my soul search for something else...

chicken-scratch schematics

2008-03-12T21:02:07Z

My wallet’s weight is miniscule compared to the weight of my eyelids. Searching for something to spark a comeback. Something to ignite a change. “You just look like a ‘blue’ person,” she says with a grin. Snapping me back to the world. My seat is suburban to her body; the city. Jokes of the “White Flight” come to mind. Our movements are mysterious; we children of the turning hands. Paper cup dreams and chicken-scratch schematics. Now we live at break neck speed. Believe. Belief. Belligerence.
I feel like I shouldn’t have to dig so deep to find Beautiful. I still need it. The day or the second where I hear her playing that song down the long hall. Echoes from the past. A note from the future. Phone call from now. I’m swaying with myself. He couldn’t possibly look any deeper, the water’s too dark. I’ll come with the light to bear, because I need it there. All we ever asked for was a little more. Don’t look back.

stiff like a satyr

2008-03-12T05:19:36Z

Poised. Balancing fine China it seems. I'm on the verge of something great...or a nervous breakdown. I wouldn't put this here if I didn't think it would help. You're probably sick. Me too. I want to wander in the woods a while, but they don't plant trees in pavement.

Not poetry...just metaphor. I don't want you to know.

confronting the familiar

2008-02-13T08:00:54Z

It doesn't make you any less poetic if your poem is based around a proven structure. If your lines sway audiences, make lovers love, make thinkers think, it shouldn't matter what formula you used to achieve it; you've served the ultimate purpose. Too often now are people overcome with a complex of coming up with only the "complex." Confronting the familiar is no less artistic than using the familiar to generate emotion. Everything has been done and re-done over and over again. Get off the pedestal you think you deserve to stand on because you've meshed a genre or created a hodge-podge of word.
This isn't making a case for structure, fuck the structure. But if your attempts at originality land you somewhere between the un-intelligible and the un-impressive, than what was the point?
Bottom line:
If the music, the poetry, the paint on canvas, the pen on paper...if it all was genuine, than it was genius. No matter what the means used to achieve it.

the nail that sticks out shall be hammered down

2007-10-18T06:15:50Z

You'll find me searching through the endless lines of text. Content with the content. If everything is this easy then I should blow above it all just like a breeze. But I'm somehow underneath. Just breathe. I came buried in sin. There's so much more to me than skin. So if I asked you for the time, would you grant me passage to the other side? Or leave me out to dry?
One day they'll sing a song like this. With melodies that seem to be the perfect fit. But in all the calling their will be a member that resides, in the shadows of their minds. That's meheeheeheeheeheeeeeeeeeeeee!

may your days grow shorter and your appreciation blosom

2007-10-09T05:10:55Z

"Fevral'. Dostat' chernil i plakat'!
Pisat' o fevrale navzryd,
Poka grohochuschaya slyakot'
Vesnoyu chernoyu gorit"
by Boris Pasternak

A very special person gave me this poem and it made me think a lot about the transition between the summer and winter seasons...Fall. This is the time of year when the leafs change their color, the nights get long and the discovery is overwhelming. I feel like a nocturnal animal running around outside with friends during October and November. Although, at this present moment it feels like mid-July outside. I wonder what I'll discover about the world or myself in the coming months. Hopefully something worthwhile

why's the pattern gotta change?

2007-09-02T21:33:05Z

"If it didn't you'd be like all the others." But you remain the same anyway. Just another All-American football proverb scribbled in chalk on the sidewalk. Conceived by an over-eager, testosterone driven Army officer. Find the love between the lines and everything will be just fine. Just fine.

shit sen

2007-08-21T13:39:41Z

It's sad that no American made computers have an accurate way of typing every character in the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet. I like this phrase though.

Итьс нотхинг персонал, ёуьре ан ембаррассмент. Цонгратуалатионс, го хоме нощ.

moonchildren in the valley of elves

2007-08-21T13:06:05Z

It's 7:57 AM... I'm sitting waiting for the sun to warm the Earth so I can start my day that's been running on hour 15. The headlines in the paper are "Muck, misery, fear" describing the non-stop onslaught of rain that's pounded Wisconsin for the past three days. I read some mundane article about Little Norway's owner, Scott Winner, and how his great-uncle named the land Nissendahle (Valley of the Elves). I can assure you that I've been to Little Norway on several elementary school field trips and not once did I see an elf. I made new friends earlier this morning. Moonchildren actually. They were from the Northwoods. Big ups to Baby AG and The Lark. Hmmm, what more to say? I guess sometimes it's better to leave things at odds...

crepuscular circus tricks

2007-08-18T23:05:08Z

Mind of mine. Attacked on all sides. Sit there sifting through celestial laughter. Lubricate these senseless senses. Sentences sentence you forever to the same tongue. My sincerest of apologies. Everything is uniform and worn. Warm, warm, warm. There's that familiar water fountain. The top pans smaller than the bottom pans. Each open hand catching rain for the other. Trickle, trickle, trickle-down. The grass grows eye-high here. Smile. And you're alive.

when this began i was just a name

2007-08-18T02:49:19Z

So what happened when your feet touched the ground for the first time? Personally, I wondered why we were still hooked up to these machines that make us breathe. I could leave this behind, but it'd catch me eventually. I'm just hoping that this finds you happy and healthy. You know. When moving a muscle is an issue. It's just a technicality. I'm sure the strength I seek is stuffed between the seats. But, if I told you what this meant, it'd lose all its meaning.

what are you required to believe?

2007-08-07T20:51:19Z

She wrapped her heart in a clothe
Turned backed the numbers on her wall of clocks.
"They all must be even. They all must be perfect."
What she didn’t count on, what she overlooked,
Was the promise of such impatience.
In the passage she called her lungs
They came in one by one.
They’d destroy you too
If they ever knew what you’ve done.
So you must run. Little one.
They made it a point not to forget you at all.

if no one is really there, than nobody's real

2007-05-27T07:26:44Z

Recently, some things have happened. Not to me, but to people in my life. These things have happened from people who were disguised as friends. Just don't cloak yourself around me. I'm definitely not cool with people being fake like fruitcake. Nah-mean?! To whom this may concern: I hope you find yourself out there. But come home, dawg!

Seeing how worthless this was, I'm out.

red dirt road

2007-05-03T03:06:38Z

A short-fiction story I wrote, enjoy (or hate, I dunno).

The man held a gun to my head. His rough hand grasped the cold steel piece, his long finger on the trigger. He was nervous. I could tell this was his first time mugging a man. I smiled. “Gimme the goods!” the man yelled.
“Of course” I replied calmly. “Allow me to reach into my coat pocket.” I put my hand inside my jacket and pulled out four gold pieces. “Here you are, sir.” I said, handing him my gold. I dropped the shiny coins into his cupped hand and watched as they began to glow a violent shade of red. “What the hell?!” the man questioned franticly, “what kind of gold is this?”
I saw the skin on his hand begin to smoke, he threw the burning gold to the ground. He proceeded to drop to the ground holding his injured hand. “All of this excitement makes me quite tired,” I told him. I noticed that despite falling to the hard gravel, his gun remained trained at me.
“Who do you think you are?” he shouted. I calmly removed my hat, stroked one of my horns and said, “Come with me, Fred.”

you play dice?

2007-04-26T01:12:49Z

So as I was watching a documentary in one of my classes, I realized that I don't want to grow up regretting things. I know that everyone has a laundry list of things they wish they would or wouldn't have done in their lives and I think, so far, I've maintained a pretty short one. I feel like I'm at a pivotal point in my life and I don't want to make a mistake. But, at the same time, I hate playing it safe. What is life without risk? No life at all if you ask me. A lot of cool things have transpired recently and I really hope that they take me in a direction where I can be both artistic and successful. No desk jobs please :) I'd be much more happy in a van with five friends hanging out with people every night, If you know what I'm saying. Take care and stay true you lovely person.

welcome to the monkey house

2007-04-13T20:08:30Z

"Last night, the world got a little less interesting."
-Jon Stewart (the Daily Show) in regards to the death of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I'm going to use this post to pay homage to one of the most interesting authors of the 20th and 21st century; Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I don't know if there is an author who has inspired me more to think about the world and the condition of mankind. Ever since I read "Cat's Cradle" my senior year of high school, I've been addicted to his crazy plots, bizarre characters, twisted humor and prophetic speech.
Reading Kurt Vonnegut is like solving a puzzle. I assure you, the first time you read him you won't understand it, but you'll enjoy it endlessly.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Mr. Vonnegut:
"The 51st state of our great nation is the state of denial"

"Requiem" by Kurt Vonnegut (the last poem he published)
The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
"Forgive them, Father.
They know not what they do."

The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

pantheism

2007-04-05T17:39:57Z

I'm not a religious person. Anyone who knows me knows that. But I suppose if I were to believe in anything it'd be something along the lines of this:

"An oft-cited feature of pantheism is that each individual human, being part of the universe or nature, is part of God. One issue discussed by pantheists is how, if this is so, humans can have free will. In answer, the following analogy is sometimes given (particularly by classical pantheists): "you are to God as an individual blood cell in your vein is to you." The analogy further maintains that while a cell may be aware of its own environs, and even has some choices (free will) between right and wrong (killing a bacterium, becoming malignant, or perhaps just doing nothing, among countless others), it likely has little conception of the greater being of which it is a part. Another way to understand this relationship is through the Hindu phrase, tat tvam asi - "that thou art," wherein the human soul/self or Atman is understood to be the same as God or Brahman - only people do not realize it. In this Hindu context, they believe that one must be liberated through enlightenment (moksha) in order to experience and fully understand this relationship - the part becomes no longer disimilar from the whole."

This goes back to my previous post of believing that nature and the universe are like "God" and we are all just sort of here because we are part of something much bigger. I don't know, I still have my doubts of this belief too, but it just seems to me that worshiping nature and the infinite expansion of the universe is more practical. I dunno, I'm probably wrong. I don't really care. The only way to find out for sure is to die. And I'm not ready to do that any time soon.

"Although individual interpretations of pantheism may suggest certain implications for the nature and existence of free will and/or determinism, pantheism itself does not include any requirement of belief either way."

sun and the moon

2007-04-02T22:15:40Z

So, how am I feeling lately? Let's see... Surprised, I suppose, at how easily I've adapted back to the college life after a turbulent spring break. I swear I partied or rocked it 22/7 -- I had to catch some Zz's every now and then. After being impaired for several hours on the shores of Lake Michigan I came to the conclusion that if I were to have a religion I would worship the Earth. That and the sun and the moon. My rationale for this is that without the sun and Earth, I wouldn't be here. From a creationist or evolutionist standpoint my religion is flawless. I was indeed created by the Earth and I did in fact evolve from the Earth. I'm not making a mockery of anyone's beliefs at this present moment, this is how I'm truly starting to feel. I'm supposing Nature is my Jesus, the Sun is my god. Just thought I'd share that revelation with you. I think it will just be a momentary feeling, because I'm still figuring out what I'm looking for.

i don't feel anything at all

2007-03-05T06:10:49Z

I don't know what it is exactly. Everything is moving a million miles a minute and I'm just stuck in the same place. Have you ever seen a movie where the character just stands in one placed with this perplexed, what-the-fuck-just-happened expression on their face, while everyone around him whizzes by like a streak of colored light? Yeah, it's a little bit like that. Except I'm not really sad or anything. Just a little confused about what I'm supposed to do next. Perhaps you're at that stage in your life also. Just kinda sitting back going "Well, shit. Now what?" -- If so, I feel ya. I'm contemplating maybe changing a few things in my life. Maybe moving back home and going to college in Madison. That'd be great. No more feeling guilty about my mom paying for my rent and me not having a job. I could just live at home for a little bit and see what happens. I really want to go visit Russia, but I don't really have the money and I don't want to make my mom pay for it. I have it planned out and stuff, but its expensive and I don't know who would go with me. So, for now, I'm learning Russian on the internet! It's a great language. It comes really easy to me. Sorry I can't show it off right now, I have no idea how to type half of the characters they have. Their alphabet is rediculous, but awesome. I feel really excited about my musical future. I know how stupid that sounds and I know that everyone has a band, but there's just something about mine right now that gets me excited. I really hope it turns out to be fruitful. Everyone involved is very dedicated and we gell together really well. We'll see what the year bring for me, and all of you as well. I hope crazy-good things happen to everyone. I know a few people who I'd like to see happy because they deserve it. That's all for now.

Journey well, y'all!

welcome to the human race, you're a mess

2007-02-17T09:30:37Z

I continue to disbelieve that any of you are real.

twilight army coming home. armor made of stone.

2007-02-13T10:58:59Z

So, my abilities to predict the future in an off-beat sort of way are continuing to astound me. I t's not so much that I predict anything its just that whenever I think of a certain person, place, thing it usually seems to manifest itself in some strange way somewhere around me. For instance, today I was thinking about the band Glassjaw and how much they were owning me while I was listening to them in my history class. (Note: in no way do I find the History of the 1960's boring, its just that I felt the need to listen to music while the professor told us stories of Civil Rights, Vietnam and hippies). Anyway, I'm thinking about Glassjaw, waiting my turn in line at Burger King (I'm a bad person) and then I look over my shoulder and see a girl wearing a Glassjaw hoodie sitting at a table near me. Coincidence? Yes. Is there a meaning? Perhaps. But I'm beginning to think that all these coincidences are going to add up to something. That's probably a bogus premonition, just like the one I have about me seeing the end of the world before I reach 40. Haha. It could happen! I hope it doesn't though. I think I'm staying up all night tonight, judging on how its already 4:57 am and I have class at 11. I guess I could get about 4 or 5 hours of sleep in if I wanted to...nah. Red Bull will keep me going. Rest your weary head, you look terribly tired.

Cash money.

strange happenings in space and time

2007-02-01T04:26:31Z

So some strange things have been happening to me lately. Its hard to explain. Here's a little laundry list of some of them:

I saw a bumper-sticker that said "WOOF!" and then I looked ahead and saw a dog. I was thinking about my hometown (Stoughton) and then I looked down at a car's bumper and saw that it was purchased at STARK Automotive in Stoughton, WI. I was having some thoughts about writing a book called "F@#!: Curse Words in America" (ahahaha) and then I heard someone in front of me say "Fuck!" Someone has the exact same winter hat as me in 3 of my 4 classes. There some more stuff but I can't remember. Who cares anyway.

you know what you have to do

2007-01-29T04:41:40Z

Spinning circles. Lay before me.
I've grown so sick of watching you turn
Turn away from me.
I am in two places at the same time.
What posesses you now? Does it still let you down?

I don't even know, or care to know, who you are anymore.

the paradox of repeating oneself

2007-01-23T04:39:25Z

Deja vu. It's an interesting thing if you think about it. A very interesting thing. The more and more I think about it, the stranger it becomes. Say you pass a single point on your way to school or work every day. Let's say you pass the same road sign twice a day, 10 times a week (if not more) for 13 weeks. That means you've passed a road sign 130 times. Now, two of those 130 repeats of that sign the activities in and around you felt exactly the same. Think of a lifetime of passing that sign. Its incredible. But a lot of times deja vu occurs when you have been doing an activity or anything else for that matter for the first time. This is the type of deja vu that boggles me. It's as if you have perceived the future. You know what's going to happen and when. Even if the entire event lasts no more than 5 seconds, you still feel like you knew what was coming.
Sometimes I like to think of a more fantastical explanation deja vu from "The Matrix." A deja vu in the Martix is really just a glitch in the system and, if my memory serves me right, something bad usually happens...I think. I've been getting deja vu a lot lately. Is it a sign that my life has become that mundane and repetitive? Or am I a vessel that can perceive events in the future?!?! I'm hoping for option B, but it's probably not likely that either A or B were correct justifications of my recent onslaught of deja vu. In all honesty its probably a random probability of space and time. There is a probability for everything, however slim that chance occurence might be, something can always happen again.

Turn out the light in the attic.

via monuments

2007-01-21T01:50:35Z

Crashing in the high tide.
A reminder from the moonlight.
We've seen you laughing from this view.
We've seen you falling from it too.
Always keeping time in the brisk winter night.
Just stumble to the beats of rhythmic drums.
We'll never teach you if you never listen.
Again, you'll never find it if you're looking for it.
Copy us with pen and brush.
Keep and protect us.
Sing our song; forget the words.
Misinterpretation. We smile again.
You ask, "Who am I? How did we meet?"
Led astray. You've been pointed in the wrong direction again.

I think there's an answer. But I'm far too afraid to ask this of you.