My Escape

Well, if it's freedom I'm going for, I won't neglect the sun's and planets' participation.
I will gladly thank them for their patronage of the solar system, but I have to fly away.
It's nothing against heat, oxygen, or the power of life. I don't hate the moons of Saturn.
Where I'm going everything is written in codes I don't understand. I'm looking forward to it.
Not being able to understand a simple thing, until it throws its tentacles over me.
Come here, pal, its monster will say. You can do anything you want and be eaten, too.

The Rambler

At last the midnight rambler had had enough. Too many thorns and locked windows. Too many fortresses he couldn't sneak into. All he wanted was to leave saliva on folks' toothbrushes and to poke around their book covers. It's not enough to be a creepy stranger anymore. You have to get training to invade other people's property properly. He was too old. Outdated techniques were all he knew. Now he just hangs out in apartment building elevators. Touches the button you pushed for the fourth floor. Licks his fingers. Eats the grime and dirt.

I'm In No Tell Motel This Week

I'm in No Tell Motel this week -- thank you Reb for putting my work on the site.
www.notellmotel.org.

Election!

YES WE CAN!

I Laugh

I began with crying, which people felt was dramatic but not really the thing they wanted. Too salty, too Lifetime movie. Barfing didn't do the trick, either. Though it made everyone sick, which was exciting, it didn't rid life of its ennui. That's why I yelled, "I'll laugh." People put me on a pedestal and readied their ears. I did a jig first, to warm up, massaged my jaws, prepared to hear my own giggles. When I did what they wished, everyone clapped without relief. They hands broke and their skin bled. I would've stopped. Even the clowns said, "no mas, no mas," running their unicycles into cars and walls.

The Disagreementing

We disagreemented the revolutackdown. It forumulationed the earbutton in our foreheading. We were scarified of what would happenate. Knowlating the papers in our briefcasement, we fulminaned our cariboots. Plent of disagreementing then in the lastfirstbasicexpert villagity in the univerounty. You can readabout itusyou in the magazinenewspapergraveyard on our tombmoodrings.

David Foster Wallace Passes Away

This is very sad news that David Foster Wallace committed suicide at the age of 46 on Friday. I took a graduate creative writing course with him at Illinois State University in 1995 and talked with him occasionally in 1996 when Infinite Jest came out. He had a big influence on my writing, and my favorite story of his, "Good Old Neon," hit me like no other piece of fiction has. I was not successful with fiction writing at ISU, but the fact that he liked a poem of mine (as a faculty advisory for the ISU literary journal Druid's Cave) helped move me toward writing and publishing poetry. His work went to some pretty dark places, and he wrote the best story ever about depression (The Depressed Person). In the class he spoke about addiction and success, how they can eat someone up (like they did Kurt Cobain). We read from Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" and talked about balancing experimentation/difficulty and accessibility/pleasure in writing. He wanted to write for the right reasons, to hit true feelings rather than just be ironic and funny. I hope that wherever he is that he is at peace. He has had a giant influence on writing and on the world that won't soon be forgotten. RIP DFW.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15kaku.html?_r=1&no_interstitial&oref=slogin