bigtyper

Q. Are you angry?
A. Now?  Right now?
Q. As an artist.  In general.
A. ...
Q.  Good.

You can recount every injustice and relive every embarassment, but what does it matter when the morning will burn it all away?

I wanted something new.  (k).  I wanted discovery, and if you're not finding new things to exult in then they say you're dead.  Maybe I'm dead.  (But).

2nd paragraph.  I feel like I've done everything or I know.  I didn't-don't want to do anything (because) but the sunrise at least is new.  Something ingrained all of this.  I want to be alive dancing with fire.  my throat.  But I don't know.  It gets tiring and isn't the point of discovery to find something that will last.

I cut that line from my poem, I know.  "It's kind of a creole."

Following the darkened lights.  Coursing through the night.



See: Basquiat, esp. scene as he's walking away from show & scene with stork.  I could've sworn...

He says he's jealous of the moon, because you look at it. He's jealous of the sun, because it warms you. He says, "I feel you, even when I'm not feeling you. I talk to you when I'm not talking to you. I love you, even when I'm not loving you."

Someone I've never written about before...like Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day, and sometimes I feel like Bill Murray but I'm more of a realist.  That means lower highs and higher lows, if you've been watching the waves.  That's why I dropped my glass a few weeks ago when she told me she'd been fooling around with someone who has a girlfriend.  Holmes, there's no such thing as an Andie MacDowell, and there's only one Bill Murray.

She (another girl, y'see), on the other hand, may have called me Impervious and she may be right, but she's given me no reason to break for her.  I've gotta see the holes in a soul before I open up mine.

Here's hoping these girls never find this blog.  Make me a shirt that says that.  Or even better, a shirt with magnetic words.  Yo.

What is worth our short while here?
Any story worth telling.  Anything anyone out there wants to hear.

In any given year of our lives, there are so many lines
people deliver to you.
Things that they think will stick.
The one I remember most
Was my friend Thomas
Who told me,
"I don't think I'll graduate before I die."
. . .
Eliminate your desire and you will become master of your own life.
Close your eyes.
Want more.  Stay hungry.  Be the fire.
. . .
And in my freshman year, we read about Tibetan monks
And there was a Tibetan girl who cried in class
And later talked about getting "so wasted!"
like the signs posted on bathroom walls in colleges
tell you not to do.

And we read about Africans transported to the Americas
And there were Africans transported to the Americas beside us
And we read about Jewish people
And we were Jewish
And we read about Japanese people interned in Canada
And I was Japanese
We read about the race riots in LA
And I was Korean and Caucasian
But come to think of it
There weren't any African Americans in that class

And when I took the drama class
And we were reading Amiri Baraka's play
The Dutchman
About a ghost ship, a ghost slave ship
That wasn't defined by Wikipedia at the time
We had me read the part of the embattled,
embittered African American heart
Because obviously a white man can't read a black man's part
And I didn't tell the white woman I was reading with
or the rest of the class
as I shouted Baraka's imprisoned words (em something)
that I'm actually part English and part Irish
And when I did voice concerns about authenticity
the woman I was reading with said it was okay
Because I was Hawaiian.
And I wasn't sure if I liked that or not.

And there was this Irish woman
A diaspora Hawaiian
. . .
So when I said Ua a'a ka pu'u
My throat really was on fire.

When words are not enough...
I let the silence seep in.
That's not true.
I let the silence surround,
And inside I'm full of sound.

I'm trying to break from the rhythm I inserted in myself hours ago.  I got on a stage and read a poem and it felt damn good.  But nothing else.









I wrote about ephemerality, and I feel like expressed it to my fullest.  But what comes next.  After you acknowledge that nothing lasts forever, you're supposed to try to make something that will last forever.

Maybe it's the ego...something.  Why am I so concerned with making each act important?  What was the point of my poem tonight?  I was asking questions.  But did I spend any time thinking about them?

I wrote an e-mail a month ago, or perhaps three weeks, and I got the response but am only re-reading what I wrote now.  I was writing about poetry and novels and what's important and what lasts, and apparently I haven't figured anything out since then.

And maybe the answer is I don't have that much to figure out.  Teaching lasts.  Family lasts.  I haven't seen my father's side of the family for much of this month.  Truth to tell, a lot of what I remember of January culminated tonight with the reading of this poem.  My father called me up today and asked me to help out with the kids tomorrow.  This is something I'm glad I'm doing.  Truthfully, I know I should've been going over more.  Something to work on.  It's hard when the energy there isn't the most positive.  Maybe I can change that.

Faradineh said I should write in Hawaiian.  I can't.  But it makes me think maybe something that will last, at least for me, is learning Hawaiian.  Learning about my valley.  Eventually coming back to teach here.  Palolo is important to me.  I know that.

I haven't felt the devil in me for a long time.  I wonder if that's a good thing.  I miss it a little.  A glimpse into the darkness.

Are you blinded by rainbows?

You've got to be a cheerleader and a salesman, he said.  You've got to be a taskmaster and a warden, she said.  But all I ever wanted to be was the night.

"It was as if the night were only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a great arching line of which I couldn't see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars.  I think I turned away from he rand put my hand to my eyes.  I felt oppressed and weak suddenly.  I think I was making some sound without my will.  And then on this vast and desolate landscape of night, where I was standing alone and where [she] was only an illusion, I saw suddenly a possibility that I'd never considered before, a possibility from which I'd fled, rapt as I was with the world, fallen into the sense of the vampire, in love with color and shape and sound and singing and softness and infinite variation." - Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire

Exile in Guyville; Bird Songs the Why the Caged I Know; Whale Whores.

Finally saw Avatar.  It reminded me of a dream I had the other night, a dream I carried with me for an hour or two.  Something that should have felt primal and chaotic (Avatar, all feeling of floating aside, reminds of course of all the easily indigenous stories of freedom we've ever heard) but was simply peaceful and calming.  I was floating, if you've been skipping the parenetheticals.  The world I dreamt of was amniotic in an open, soaring kind of way.  I've always dreamt of water.  Perhaps when I die that is where I should be.  I could've sworn I was swimming with someone, but I couldn't remember who, and perhaps that's what made it carry throughout the day.

So many things to do/read/write/re-cite.  A three day weekend will do that to you, at least on its first legs.

I dreamt I was in a game shop, and I came across a set of puzzles in a box.  (I think you actually had to roll the balls into the slots, dream-style, and that would complete the puzzles)  The first one had a picture of me, but it was one I'd never seen and when you flipped it it looked like a woman.  I was in the ocean, streams of incandescent life stretched out behind me, and I couldn't see them but you knew there were turtles.  I tried to solve the puzzle, but as I flipped it, somehow it got shuffled with the other puzzles.  I could not get it back to the front.

Jody and Lehua and Melissa were there.  With boys.  And I think Jord and Ry were playing a fierce game of something like Connect Four meets that game where your two figures punch each other.  Me and one of the girls' boys were setting up to play volleyball just before I woke up.  Before I got to the game shop, I was in a waterfront skyscraper, and there was a button.  If you pushed it, there were three settings, and if you pushed it there would be a blast of smoke somewhere in the city or, if you pushed the higher level it would create an explosion in the ocean, on the horizon.  It also, I think, created an illusion of two of my students, two troublemakers who are always together, and often watch fights as if they're dictating them or studying the outcomes/causes in preparation for other fights.  The three young men I was with (was I a young man too?) climbed out the window.  I did not.  My slippers felt slick, and my feet even more so.

I think I dreamt of the same city as I dreamt of before, when I encountered Russian soldiers and oil tanks and icebergs.  Or perhaps it was the same place I dreamt of where I rescued Chanel and there was a seaside bar upon the wooden "pier."  All these seaside villages.  Separate from the faraway fires I dream when I am awake.  I also dreamt the mailboxes were turned on their sides, and on the bottom floor of a library that was at the edge of cancellation.  Pieces of 81/2 x 11 paper were pasted upon, our names scrawled in looping cursive, and I thought, "For us to draw upon."  I remember discussing commas and "into" and "upon" in Slagel's class, under the stairs if I remember correctly.  I remember getting sent from that class for not having read.  Inside my sideways mailbox were post-its, left by the previous owner.  I figured the mailboxes had been rearranged and no one bothered to give the same box to the same person.  But I wondered if I should find the previous owner's new box and post the post-its all in her new box.  She was a new student of mine.  Who is failing.

No one writes sleep like Hemingway.  I think, perhaps, I've always wanted to reach a place where I would need a Hemingway sleep.  One where you're not sure if you'll wake, and it's unclear whether it's a deep sleep or one that lasts one breath.  I told another English teacher about Kourtney saying, "Do you know what fitful means?  I slept fitfully last night."  The other English teacher didn't know what fitfully meant.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps:

Don’t make waves, they told me
But I’m not going to talk about waves
For another 21 lines

See I’m bad at introductions,
because I want to say too much
and in e-mails the entirety of what I say

is an introduction
and I always want to say too much
or stop too abruptly.

Write a poem, I told the mirror,
because they haven’t heard you yet
not quite.

And none of that flimsy, watered-down stuff
You processed in your words
Three weeks ago

Because if it was a real poem
wouldn’t you remember what you wrote?
Wouldn't it resonate,

Shouldn’t it re-sound?
Is there such a thing as a real poem?
And is this actually a stage I’m standing on

Or is it simply light reflected in waves
particular to your eyes?
Or, is this the bathroom sink I'm standing on

And you, the audience, are my mirror?
Anyway, I tried to write a poem
that would crash upon ear drum after ear drum,

And the reverberations reminded me that nothing lasts forever.
That’s why you have to strike tuning forks
again and again and eventually

the song changes.
That’s why no one is building the statue of liberty.
They’re just living out their lives and their right to pursue

anything that might be blowing in the wind
which includes anything you have loved and "let go"
and anything that has ever been referred to as "the American dream."

Anyway, three weeks ago (twenty one lines back)
I started writing about a girl
Who was a statue of liberty

And I named her impervious
As if I was the first man
And she was an idea

And like a wine still corked or casketed
She needed to breathe
But couldn’t because she was impervious.

And she wasn’t impervious

Because I wasn't...because she wasn't...

See we’re all islands

And most of us are adrift
Not even connected to the sea floor
We just roll with the punches,

Ride the waves instead of making them.
And some of us are made of an impenetrable rock
Not spit from the earth, boiling

But pushed up by the movements of great tectonic plates.
Some of us are impervious
And some of us are porous.

We are pahoehoe, paddling above the waves
Or a’a, cracked and craggy
Like the sound of sound becoming letters.

See I named her Impervious
Because I was trying to write a poem that resonates
And I thought, We're all trying too hard to be too hard.

But Impervious was special
Because she would talk about faraway lands
And lovers left cold

But when we went dancing
She wouldn't make a sound.
Only her body would move me

And she would pour up against me
Such that the holes in her soul would push holes into mine.
And she would leave etched on my skin

Ua a’a ka pu’u,
The throat is on fire
And we are all holy when we dance.

I don't dance enough, but when I’m up late at night
Trying to write poems that reverberate
I’m spending the dark hours searching

For something that is alive and moving.
Not a statue, something cool to the touch,
something stone to show we were once alive.

No, I want something now.
I want sand such that we might be washed away,
Such that every breaking wave

Will not obliterate us,
No, but will sweep us up, immerse us
And sing with the ever-changing movement that makes us alive

a song of hope and fury and now.
I want dead leaves to dance
Even though they have lost their trunk.

I want Burning Man in the desert,
And I want the trash of today
To become the fertile ground for the trees of tomorrow.

I want something to remind us that we’re alive While we're alive
Because what’s the point of living
If you're not going to laugh at the joy of being right now

See I’m bad at introductions
Because I’m sorry but I’m always
trying to get to know you.

And maybe that's why I named her Impervious
Because I'm always looking for that one dance that will last.

They told me not to make waves
But how can I not
When each and every beam of light,

Each sound that bounces off the walls that can’t hold you,
and Each and every one of you
Has made some kind of impression just by being you.

We are all waves of each other’s experiences.
Slice the water with your hand,
Break the ice and wave.

I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died --
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air --
Between the Heaves of Storm --

The Eyes around -- had wrung them dry --
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset -- when the King
Be witnessed -- in the Room --

I willed my Keepsakes -- Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable -- and then it was
There interposed a Fly --

With Blue -- uncertain stumbling Buzz --
Between the light -- and me --
And then the Windows failed -- and then
I could not see to see --

-Dickinson

I don't know that I could ever be that tight, that focused.  At the same time, it allows for a kind of expansion as if one molecule of oxygen burst into water and became enough to...drown a tomb.  Me, I don't believe there's any kind of stillness except the ironic kind, which, perhaps, you forget how funny Dickinson is, if wry that.  I sought out this poem today, because I thought how still this room fills, how devoid of movement but for the mosquito.  But the air pushes in from outside, and in it there are dogs and leaves and birds and rusting tire irons or what have you young world.  I sought out this poem, perhaps, because I was looking for a stillness next to reality (a stillness next to a real stillness, next to death...but I parenthesize because I don't really mean those things, I merely mean for my words to glance off each other and leave us all reeling and wondering in time), and instead I found my way back to words.

You don't just become someone else overnight.  Still, eliminate desire (what does that mean?)...maybe.

The other night, I got low.  Real low.  But nothing to spout, because only washes of gray and purple in the dullest of tones and combinations.  But I thought--and the thinking persists, so perhaps it rises from the sea and remains--wtf we really doing this for, madchild?  If everything's systemic, and everyone catches that, why isn't there more explosion?

No one changes,
Except you and me.
Everyone else, they're stars of light
only dying when I close my eyes.
And we are like sunspots

Everything is eternal
But we last but a second.


caliban
Originally uploaded by shehal

"I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears.  I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist.  All the rest, I saw, is merey what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly--as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back.  I create the whole universe, blink by blink.--An ugly god pitifully dying in a tree!"  - Gardner/Grendel

I sifted through the lies and the masquerades, the flowers in bloom and the memories, and this is what I came up with.  It's hard to see forever.

I feel assaulted by reality.  It's probably the virus inside me.  What it must be like to live through things everyday.  Are we?  The world is a graduated cylinder, and none of us are escaping the sea monkeys.

I wrote an e-mail about sticking, and now I'm stuck.  I got an e-mail about poetry.  I wrote an e-mail to someone else about poetry.  I don't really know what was said.  I don't know what sticks.  Maybe that's the theme for this young, arbitrary period of time.  This is what I have so far...


老梅石槽；Laomei Ocean-Erosion Ditch
Originally uploaded by a.lu.mi.

Don’t make waves, they told me
But I’m not going to talk about waves
For another 21 lines

See I’m bad at introductions,
because I want to say too much
and in e-mails the entirety of what I say

is an introduction
and I always want to say too much
or stop too abruptly.


mirror
Originally uploaded by nagaz14

Write a poem, I told the mirror,
because they haven’t heard you yet
not quite.

None of that flimsy, watered-down stuff
You processed in your words
Three weeks ago

Because if it was a real poem
wouldn’t you remember what you wrote?
Shouldn’t it resonate?

But is there such a thing as a real poem?
Is this actually a stage I’m standing on
Or is it simply light reflected in certain waves

to your eyes?
Or is it the bathroom sink
And you are the mirror?

Anyway, I figured nothing resonates forever.
That’s why you have to strike tuning forks
again and again and eventually

the song changes.
That’s why no one is building the statue of liberty.
They’re just living out their lives, their loves, their right to pursue


My Liberty i love you
Originally uploaded by cubn6

anything that might be blowing in the wind
including the American dream.
Anyway, three weeks ago

I started writing about a girl
Who was a statue of liberty
And I named her impervious

As if I was the first man
And she was an idea
And like a wine still corked or casketed

She needed to breathe
But couldn’t because she was impervious.
And she wasn’t impervious

Because she

See we’re all islands

And most of us are adrift
Not even connected to the sea floor
Rolling with the punches

Riding the waves instead of making them.
And some of us are made of an impenetrable kind
Not spit from the earth, boiling


Print of the Hawaiian goddess Pele by Brittney Lee
Originally uploaded by BazaarBizarreSF

But pushed up by the movements of great tectonic plates.
Some of us are impervious
And some of us are porous.

We are pahoehoe, paddling above the waves
Or a’a, cracked and craggy
Like the sound of sound becoming letters.

So this girl named impervious and me,
We would go dancing
And when she would pour up against me

She felt so close to porous
That the holes in her soul would push holes in mine.
And she would leave etched on my skin

Ua a’a ka pu’u,
The throat is on fire
And we are all holy when we dance.



And quite honestly? When I’m up late at night
Trying not to lose another day
I’m spending the dark hours searching

For something that is alive and moving.
Not a statue, something cool to the touch,
something to commemorate we were here
a million years from now.

Something impervious.
I want something erected right now.
I want Burning Man in the desert,

something new and renewed
like dead leaves dancing in the night
something to remind ourselves that we’re alive

Because what’s the point of living
If you’re not going to be aware
Of all the fun you’re having? (I like this as a first line)

And…

See I’m bad at introductions
Because I’m sorry but I’m always
trying to get to know you.

And small talk is for small people
But sometimes I feel small
And sometimes I don’t talk at all.


Urban Erosion, Homerton
Originally uploaded by Fin Fahey

Don’t make waves, they said.
But how can I not
When each and every beam of light,

Each sound that bounces off the walls that can’t hold you,
and Each and every one of you
Has made some kind of impression just by being you.

We are all waves of each other’s experiences.
Slice the water with your hand,
Break the ice and wave.

A song I probably will not buy...but y'know, I like the ideas that run through...feels like MMJ...

I feel good.  Lots to do.  Not much to write.  Ya know.  Just to say.

I don't know.  Did anyone show up today that was supposed to show up?  I guess.  I guess I worked through the day, got a bunch of stuff done.  Could've done more.  Life happens.  (which is to say, how many ways can you type a platitude?)  And yet, sitting atop my day of productive effort, I feel despondent.  I remember the day when I first started "applying" myself in college.  I went to my Psych class and actually knew what the prof was talking about, because I had read the night before, done the homework, cracked the book.  I guess I'm on the other side of the equation now, but that doesn't really matter.  It's all work.  Now, I've arrived.  I applied myself pretty much all day.  And yet I'm sad tonight.  Not because I didn't get anything done, because it was a nothing night, but rather because I did get things done, and it doesn't mean much, does it?

Someone get me a damn hill to sit on.