If you see her, say hello.

Wordsworth

2008-05-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

"Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Full Poem

Fenway

2008-04-21T15:39:00.000-07:00

Its alive!

Virginia Tech Protest

2008-04-20T14:00:00.001-07:00

Photos courtesy of the Boston Herald and Associated Press.
Simmons 32 Easy Guns protest in Boston MA on the one year anniversary of the school shooting at Virginia Tech. Many of the participants were friends with one of the victims, Ross Alameddine.

http://www.protesteasyguns.com/index.html

Gunman kills six at US university

2008-02-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

What is going on?

"A gunman has opened fire on students at a university near Chicago in the United States, killing six people.
BBC News

And please explain to me why it is necissary to remind people of Virginia Tech every time something like this happens?
"Its been X months since the worst school shooting in history." Blah blah blah.
As if I need another reminder.

"The shooting comes 10 months after 32 students and staff were shot by a student at Virginia Tech University in one of the worst shootings ever at a US school.
It is also the fourth shooting at a US education establishment within a week."

I don't understand why this keeps happening.

Updates:
Illinois student killer is named - BBC News
Gunman Was Once ‘Revered’ on Campus - NY Times

Swan Lake.

2008-02-13T07:53:00.000-08:00

Photos by Patricio Melo of Ballet de Santiago.
Taken from The Winger.

Bukowski

2008-02-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

"I'm in love"

she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
piece of shit?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.

Bukowski

2008-02-05T20:40:00.000-08:00

"Raw With Love"

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
I won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
I won't blame you,
instead
I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons
our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and I won't use it
yet.

Mark Twain

2008-01-31T08:55:00.000-08:00

"She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot."

Boston.

2008-01-23T09:40:00.001-08:00

Bob Dylan

2008-01-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

"May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. May you stay forever young."

"Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them."

"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours."

"All I can do is be me, whoever that is."

"People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent."

"All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die."

"Blame it on a simple twist of fate."

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do. "

"At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage. "

T. S. Eliot

2007-12-17T18:10:00.000-08:00

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.*

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

___________________________________

*"If I thought my answer were given
to anyone who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stand still without moving any further.
But since never from this abyss
has anyone ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,
without fear of infamy I answer you." - Dante

Kerouac

2007-12-17T17:54:00.000-08:00

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." - On the Road

"Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization." - The Dharma Bums

"My witness is the empty sky. " - Some of The Dharma

"Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end. "

"My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them."

Watch me dance.

2007-12-06T16:14:00.001-08:00

I dance.

Photo by Zachary Virgilio.
Edited by me.

From the NUDANCO 5th Annual Winter Showcase.

Dance: "Epiphany" Choreography by me, music by Staind

William Carlos Williams

2007-11-23T15:20:00.000-08:00

"These"

are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.

The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night

to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought

that spins a dark fire--
whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles

to make a man aware of nothing
that he knows, not loneliness
itself--Not a ghost but

would be embraced--emptiness,
despair--(They
whine and whistle) among

the flashes and booms of war;
houses of whose rooms
the cold is greater than can be thought,

the people gone that we loved,
the beds lying empty, the couches
damp, the chairs unused--

Hide it away somewhere
out of the mind, let it get roots
and grow, unrelated to jealous

ears and eyes--for itself.
In this mine they come to dig--all.
Is this the counterfoil to sweetest

music? The source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped

that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lakewater
splashing--that is now stone.

Rimbaud

2007-11-23T15:17:00.000-08:00

"Romance"

I

You’re not serious when you’re seventeen.
- One fine evening, tired of beers and lemonade,
The noisy cafés with their dazzling gleam!
- You walk below lime-trees’ green on the Parade.

The limes smell so good on fine June evenings!
The air’s so sweet sometimes you close your eyes:
The wind, full of sounds - the town’s nearby -
Blows the smell of beer, and the scent of vines…

II

- Then you make out a little tiny tatter
Of sombre azure framed by a twig of night,
Pierced by a fatal star, it melts, after
Soft tremblings, tiny and perfectly white…

June night! And Seventeen! – You get tipsy.
The sap’s champagne and blurs every feature…
You wander: you feel a kiss on your lips
That quivers there, like a tiny creature….

III

Your mad heart goes Crusoeing the romances,
- Where in the pale lamp’s glare your eyes follow
A young girl going by with sweet little glances
Below the gloom of her father’s stiffened collar…

And because she finds you immensely naïve
As by, in her little ankle boots, she trips
She turns away alertly with a quick shrug…
- And cavatinas die away on your lips….

You’re in love. Taken till the month of August.
You’re in love. - Your sonnets make her smile.
All your friends have gone: you’re in bad taste.
- Then the adored, one evening, deigns to write!

That evening…. you return to the cafés gleam,
You call out for beer or lemonade…
- You’re not serious when you’re seventeen
And the lime-trees are green on the Parade.

John Ashbery

2007-11-23T15:11:00.000-08:00

"Retro"

It's really quite a thrill
when the moon rises above the hill
and you've gotten over someone
salty and mercurial, the only person you ever loved.

Walks in the park are enjoyed.
Going to Jerusalem now
I walked into a hotel room.
I didn't need any name or anything.
I went to Bellevue Hospital,
got a piece of the guy.
As I say, it's really quite a thrill.

Quite a thrill too to bend objects
that always return to their appointed grooves—
will it be always thus? Or will auto parts
get to have their day in the sun?

Got to drone now.
Princess Ida plans to overwork us four days a week
until the bracts have mauved up.
Then it's a tailgate party—
how would you like your burger done?

A little tea with that?

I saw her wailing for some animals.
That doesn't mean a thing doesn't happen
or only goes away, or gets worse.
What's the worst that could happen?

The midnight forest drags you along, thousands of peach hectares. Told him I wouldn't do it if I was him. Nothing to halt the chatter of locusts until they're put away for the night. He edges closer to your locker. Why did I leave it open? I've forgotten the combination. But it seems he's not interested in the locker, maybe my shoe—something unlike anything he's ever known. Sensing the tension he broke the ice with a quip about the weather somewhere, or maybe—maybe an observation on time, how it moves vastly in different channels, always keeping up with itself, until the day—I'm going to drive back to the office, a fellowship of miles, collect some of last year's ammunition. Then I'm definitely going to the country, he laughs.

What I did today

2007-11-20T23:02:00.001-08:00

Bukowski

2007-11-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

"an almost made up poem"

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter andI answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of themwere your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I’ not jealous
because we’ never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried about
their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awakens
in the morning to write upper case poems about
ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ told
us, but listening to you I wasn’ sure. maybe
it was the upper case. you were one of the
best female poets and I told the publishers,
editors, “print her, print her, she’s mad but she’s
magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn’ happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never
heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.

e. e. cummings

2007-11-10T22:51:00.000-08:00

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Memorial

2007-10-14T00:59:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken by my sister. My mother's family lives in western, not West, Virginia. Ferrum, Basset, up in the mountains outside of Roanoke. My father and uncle both went to Virginia Tech. My cousin is from Centreville in Northern Virginia; the shooter and two killed went to his high school. Ross, who I was in a relationship with for my entire sophmore year of high school and remained good friends with after we ended things, was killed on April 16, 2007.
My parents thought visiting the memorial would help me cope.