Observation

The bridge to Jonsi's "Boy Lilikoi" sounds exactly like the verse to Kings of Leon's "The Bucket."

I found her.

Midterms, Midriffs and Midazolam: Reflections on the First Four Months of Adulthood and the Last Four Months of Sanity

College
is hard.

The end.

Bullets in a River

a stream
of water, no doubt
water, unconscious water
in a conscientious stream
moving its molecules
across millions of others

millions of brothers
lost in battle
longing to rise
and be recognized

among millions
of brothers

millions of molecules
moving themselves
across millions of brothers
lost in a stream
of water, no doubt.

'Leven Forty

by Edwin Carrlington Thompsinson

Whenever Frame’s kids write ‘bout poetry
We paraphrase and we procrastinate
We do it late at night, while watching Glee
But we don’t care, it’s time to graduate

And we always make up last minute BS
And we always print our essays in the core
We start to write when West Ranch TV says
“Good-morning,” – let’s face it, the rest, even I ignore.

But we are smart – yes, smarter than we appear
And committed to school, even if just for the As.
It’s time to have some fun – and by fun I mean “lots of beer”.
Just kidding, Frame, you know we’re all lightweights.

So on we worked, great things we pretended to write,
And analyzed poems we’d barely even read
But at ’leven-forty, late one Wednesday night
Some bonehead kid wrote this nonsense instead.

Sonnet 18 Redux

Shall I script one last poetry essay?
Thou art assigned, though my efforts abate:
Our calendars lack only two ‘til May,
And summer’s dawn hath all too soon a date:
Sometime too close our graduation shines,
And often do the teachers try to fight this;
And every grade from great sometime declines,
By now they ought to know, ‘tis senioritis;
When reading this, thou might scowl unimpressed
And curse my interruptions with a grimace;
Apologies, I learned from Kanye West,
But you’re not Taylor, so I’m-a let you finish:
So long as Ke$ha tiks and Tiger grins,
So long lives us, the class of 2010.

No one depends on me
and none can I depend upon.
Read this when you're ready
I won't be moving on.

5746, Slaughter House

The plan was great, a masterpiece;
perfect in two dimensions.
For man, for market, for industry –
best were the intentions.

A blueprint for a work of art,
beautiful and impressive.
A blueprint for the future;
painstakingly progressive.

Sketched and measured, clean and true;
a label on each item.
Blackened lines, crisply drawn –
with enterprise to guide them.

Sixteen by nine by twenty-four,
efficiently designed;
but efficiency bears so many costs –
and torture’s so refined.

From without, a house of bricks,
fit for mom and daughter;
but from within, a musky hell –
a building born for slaughter.

A concrete floor, on paper, white;
in reality cold and soiled.
Click-clack, click-clack, hooves and metal –
a steak that’s soon to spoil.

A roof to keep the weather out,
the squeals and crying in.
A chimney for the farmer’s warmth
and plumes of burning skin.

Hooks and slabs, a scalding vat,
and dampers for the smoke.
A perfect plan in blackened ink –
a life with every stroke.

10 Minutes, Redux

Ten minutes 'fore midnight strikes.
I am awake, awake I'll stay.
I write and think, I hear and feel.
No time to sleep the night away.
Because ten minutes of expression -
of thought, of silence, of boundaries freed -
is more refreshing than ten hours of sleep
will ever be.

Carr, among other things.

I hate my name. I hate its immaturity, its naiveté. It is childish and unimportant. It is careless and lackadaisical. It sounds like it belongs to a cartoon character. I’m not a cartoon character. Not usually.
I’m told it means something in another language. It doesn’t matter. I only speak one.
Carr. The r’s seem to roll on forever. A pointless, incomplete thought with no destination or definition. If you’re not paying attention, you might write too many. But who would pay attention to a name like Carr?
Children would. Young children. Young children who think they’re funny.

“You mean like the car that you drive?”
No. Not like the car that you drive. But thanks for playing.

“Do you have a car, Carr? Cuz you’re name’s Carr. Get it?”
Yes, Jack. I get it. I got it the first time you made that joke, I got it when your mom repeated it to my mom at baseball practice, I got it when you whispered it to my first crush (Chelsea or Rebecca or something, I’m terrible with names.) I even got it when you ran into me on the playground so you could say you were hit by a car[r] and I told you to upgrade your next wreck to a big, yellow school bus.
And whaddaya know? I still get it.

I always considered giving up my jalopy of a middle name for my first name, Donald. Donald. The middle letters flow between the sturdy bookends like water in a stone basin, protective and unbreakable. Born from the names of ancient Gaelic kings, it melts dignity with durability and elegance with power.
Donald was my grandfather’s name. He was a highly respected lawyer and a fantastically charming man. People tell me he could walk into whatever restaurant he wanted, wait as little as he wanted and eat whenever he wanted. A mafia boss of prosecution, a Don of the Law.
I didn’t know my grandfather. He was killed by a friend of a friend of a convicted murderer Don had put in jail a few years back and the town wept.
That’s a lot of weight to carry on seven letters.

Plus, the name Donald does belong to a cartoon character. A pantless, hotheaded cartoon character.

“You mean like the duck?”
No, I don’t, but please continue quacking like a maniac because your humor is both original and refreshing.

Perhaps Carr isn’t so bad. It is short for Carrera, (or “race” to you Latinos and Americanos forced to take Spanish by the State of California) which is much cooler than most cars. People don’t forget Carr (maybe tasteless jokes trigger our photographic memories) and anyone who mispronounces it can immediately be classified as not-worth-trying-to-hold-an-intelligent-conversation-with. It sounds exactly like it looks. Read.

Alas! What’s in a name?
Kidding. Far too cliché. Clichés are reserved for people with names like William or Barack.
But you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Names are more than just easy labels. They inevitably become a part of our selves. They leave their footsteps throughout our experiences like an unshakable yet unthreatening stalker. They change the way we gaze at the world and the way it gazes also back into us. (Maybe if Friedrich Nietzsche had been named Freddy Nielson he would have been a pastor or a children’s book author.)
To my friends, I am Carr. To bankers, DMV officers and substitute teachers, my name is Donald – an anonymity I thoroughly enjoy. When I owe thousands in credit card debt and car payments, I’ll make sure to not answer any calls for Donald. He’s out of town for the weekend, but Carr would be glad to relay him a message via text or instant message or something juvenile like that.
To my dad, I’m DC. To my sister and my mom, I am whatever pet name they think will make me blush. All my names represent the same person, slightly tailored for the situation. My names shape me. They haunt me, they precede me, they define me. My name is me.
I don’t mind my name. Sometimes I hide from it, sometimes I hide behind it and sometimes I am proud of it. But it’s always mine. Nobody has to clarify it with a last name or a spelling variation. It’s just Carr. Four letters. Quick, easy and absolute.
I like my name.

I still hope Jack gets hit by a bus.

Nothingness

Nothingness
There is a road that winds its way across the Santa Clarita valley, snaking around shopping centers, restaurants, neighborhoods, and business. “Valencia Boulevard will be extended as part of future development” reads a sign propped effortlessly against the railing that marks the road’s present end. The powers-that-be plan to extend the road over the mountains to connect it with the rest of the world, but, for now, the road simply ends. Thousands of cars approach this sign everyday and thousands of cars U-turn in disappointment, unaware of what lies just out of their reach; the dusty Eden just past the gravel.
If a boy were to plant his feet at the base of this railing and toss a small, shiny rock nonchalantly past the road, it would land on a hill. Not a towering Rocky peak or a sloping Appalachian mountain, but a small, rather unimpressive hill. A hill fit not for repelling or hiking, but for tossing small rocks over. The rock would undoubtedly clear the top of the hill and skip once or twice through the coarse underbrush, perhaps settling beneath a thin layer of sand and dirt. And the boy might wonder where that rock decided to make its final resting place. And he might cross that railing and climb that hill and explore that underbrush. And he might be led to the top of that hill, with nothing above or around him but an infinitesimal sea of oxygen and freedom.
On top of Nothingness Hill – my own name, free of bureaucracy – time is absent. The overwhelming heat provides an alarming reassurance of the awesome power of nature. A tense stillness filters the air of its impurities on an early summer afternoon. I am overcome by the feeling that the hill’s existence is only defined by the time I am in contact with it; as if it comes into being the moment my shoe first touches its soil and flickers out of reality as I return to the road. The first few minutes of this existence consist of my scratching and clawing over the rough bushes and dead undergrowth to the very tip-top of Nothingness. One quick circle of my feet tells me that I am above everything. No buildings pierce my view of the horizon, no lampposts obscure the flawless blue sky, no chain-link fence teases me with empty promises of exploration. Nothing.
The faint chirping of a car horn drags my eyes down from the brilliant blue space above my head to the unnaturally colored civilization below. Then the familiar yet regrettable smell of car fumes and asphalt creeps into my nose followed by the conscious cough that such smells evoke, and I am reminded of the alternate reality that strangles the rest of the world. Traffic lights blink in and out of agreement, directing the masses. Lines of crimson red brake-lights paint roadways with the steady glow of frustration. Everyone is headed somewhere, looking for something, convinced of their need to understand somehow.
An unnerving silence accompanies my life atop the hill, similar to the silence one experiences in the seconds following a power outage, when your televisions and your pupils submit to total darkness. You cannot help but feel wholly emancipated from all humanly concerns up there. Nothing and no one is present to judge, interpret or acknowledge your existence. It is liberation at its core.
And yet, in this moment of absolute freedom, a pervading sense of emptiness swallows my thoughts. It seems my entire life I have imagined Nothingness Hill as a nirvanic state of existence, where nothing happens and nothing is wrong. But once up here, I realize what is missing. Absence of all means absence of good. Surely we cannot live our lives hoping merely to escape them?
A whirlwind of dusts tears at my legs. I glance down instinctively – could that small, shiny rock have landed right here – right where I landed? A moment of chaos at my feet ends with the rejoining of earth and ground, drawn together by the natural forces of attraction. There is no rock. Just earth and ground.
I decide to leave the rock in the place to which it was naturally drawn, also, (best not to upset the nature of things) and begin my steady descent of Nothingness. Twenty breaths escape me, leave me standing with my feet planted at the base of the railing that marks the end of the hill and the beginning of the road. As I step over the boundary and onto Valencia Boulevard, the hill flickers back into nonexistence just as quickly as it had appeared.
Will I ever return? Will Nothingness still be there? Will I be drawn in by its liberating emptiness? I don’t know. Nor do I care.
Nothingness is still nothing without the people who mean everything.

Dragons in the Night

I was lying in the grass,
Staring at the sky.
When I saw something
That brought a tear to my eye.

Above me was a dragon;
His wings spread in flight.
His shadow floated across my face.
His scales glittered in the night.

His eyes were glowing embers
Resting on his head.
When they turned my way,
My face shone crimson-red.

His scales of many colors
Reflected rainbow light.
As he settled down beside me,
And rested from his flight.

He spoke of things long past;
Of a land so far away;
Of unicorns and elves and dwarves;
And where hidden treasures lay.

Of heroic kings and knights,
And of old Camelot.
Of stories and songs that children sing
But adults have long forgot.

He spoke of a time so long ago,
When diamonds filled the sky.
And I was filled with sorrow
Because the time had passed me by.

For a dragon holds the dreams
Of a time and age long past.
To remind us of the joys we had,
Before life goes by too fast.

I felt a tear land on my cheek,
As he flew off through night,
For the stories locked away
To never see the light.

In a world of hustle and bustle,
While running left and right.
Stop, remember, never forget
Your dragons in the night.

Breath, for a girl

It is vivid, it breathes

can be at once visible, tangible

or floating in evanescent air

alive in silence but living in sound

can be the bite of raw wind

that breathes, never blows

awake and alive, it breathes through your eyes

the cold of cognition

withers, whips, rises from dirt

is vitreous and imperfect

falls (does not break), awake and alive

skyward, forward and on

excited – what was that?

I heard it, did you?

it spoke, in a whisper?

it spoke in a dream

I hear it, do you?

it cannot be far –

(perhaps, in time

but the distance is close)

it breathes through your eyes

do you hear it too?

it is awake and alive

it is love, and for you.

Actionless

To laugh, to cry, mimics the mind

To an emotion,

And singular, the outline;

Collectively, its notion.

Behind each expression, the

Most hidden of clues;

But scratches from the surface,

The answer, to the few;

The body, closer, enemied by fear,

And within, the hero,

Holding on for dear.

But panic and it fails,

No longer the mass proud,

So alone, enshadowed, and

Still, in a crowd.

Eternity

Seamless blue sky
Pulses rising with the heat
Tempered only by the breeze
The horizon shimmers with the field.
A men collapses under his faithful tree
And melts into the grass.
There is no winter in his world.
As he revels in eternal warmth,
A single golden leaf
Floats into his refuge,
Crimson red and wet.
It warns shamelessly of changes,
Of copper colors and cold.
He clings desperately to the moment,
As fragile as the leaves,
Knowing with each passing day
Paradise flakes away,
Buried by a leafy avalanche
Lulled to sleep by the frost
Awakened only by the raging sun
An eternity away.

Lunar Dream

Longing for the lunar dream

It ebbs and flows inside your vein

Let it fill you, let it gleam

Float along your conscience stream

Between the ethereal and the mundane

Searching for the lunar dream

No fear or darkness will remain

Drifting through the hazy steam

Nothing is as it may seem

Release the pleasure and the pain

Yearning for the lunar dream

Enough to drive a man insane

Slide along the pallid ream

Hearts revel, minds teem

Slipping past the ascertain

Monochromatic

Inspired by a pair of speeches:
"The Ballot or the Bullet" by Malcolm X
"A More Perfect Union" by Barack Obama

Off and on.
White and black.
The future seems distant
When looking back.
To be or not to be.
That is not the question
But simply an expression
Of eternal indecision.
Live and let live.
Tolerance is relief.
Or maybe just refusal to
Stand up for a belief.
Life is not duality
Nor is it as it seems.
In the gray, not the black or the white
Lie the colors of our dreams.

An essay on "The Catcher in the Rye" in the style of "The Catcher in the Rye"

I’ll just tell you about this madman Holden Caulfield a little bit. Not his whole damn autobiography or anything, but just what I told D.B. Anyway, Holden goes around to bars trying to give girls the time. That kills me. And he always talks about his dead brother and how great his goddam sister is and all. I think he's some big phony. He's always talking about how annoying everyone else is and how he wants to run away to live in the woods and save a buncha kids from falling off a damn cliff, but he does the same thing everyone else does. I really get a bang out of that. You take a guy like Holden, he never tells the truth to people. What a phony. He's probably flitty. I mean he can never get really sexy with a girl. You know, really sexy. I can be very sexy sometimes. I once kissed this girl Jane Gallagher all over her face and all, but she didn't let me kiss her lips. She damn near made me wanna give her the time and all. Women kill me. Anyway, Holden really drove me crazy while I was talking to him so I just left and I figured I’d call up old Jane Gallagher or something, but after a while I started to miss Holden. You know, how when you have to shoot the crap with some guy about how they want to run off and live in the woods, but then you don't see them for a few weeks and you start to think what a nice guy they are and all that crap. You probably don't understand. You're probably just some phony who never does nothing you say you're gonna do. Reminds me of a guy I once knew, some kid who just wrote blogs all day long that nobody really gave a damn about. It was a sad thing to see though, it really was. You know the part that really got me? The part that sometimes he thought he was actually clever. Stuff like that always kills me. It really does.

At Tip of Pen

poets

tiptoeing

on the edge

of their madness

produce the most

fluid verse, much more

than the sane man ever could.

life and death at the tip of a pen

of the lives and deaths of ignorant men

but you know it is not acclaim that I seek

no, my verse could never be so bleak.

staring down these rabbit's holes, I know with any animal I'd go

bounding down into a world unknown, that for a moment I might know

that wondrous land of cats and colors and hatters mad, of caterpillars on lily pad

those moments we long to have had, when eyes and ears and mind turn bad

turn ecstatic urges sad, bleeding life at tip of pen

a poet on the edge, a mind on the brink

a man that wishes to sit and think

all these things I never would

write about or say to you

if I simply wanted to

be the fellow on

the bus, and

never ever

make a

fuss

A Momentary Lapse of Concern

A man
Stands at a deserted corner
Squinting at a flickering light
Just above the empty street-
Longing for the past
He has never seen.

A man
Lies on a frozen field
Staring at a glowing star
Through the dim twilight-
Longing for the present
He can never find.

A man
Sits on an empty bed
Gazing at a pale corner
Above the empty walls-
Longing for the future
He has already lost.

A boy
Runs through the cool sand
Dodging the icy waves
Snapping at his feet-
Living for the moment
He forever knows.