Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 6

1.  "...the world of empty celebrity" (from an Hrag Vartanian article on Hyperallergic.com)
2.  "...the ghost in the machine."  (Arthur Koestler's theoretical structures)
3.  "Color me cliche."  (from a conversation with a friend)
4.  "Time is the new currency."  (the motto of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency)

If Anyone Is Interested

I'm starting my own music fanzine (first, on blogspot; then, I'll hopefully be able to branch out to other mediums) if anyone is interested.

The link:

http://endofsongendofmusic.blogspot.com/

Sign-Inventory 1, Week 5

Yusef Komunyakaa, "Facing It"

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.    


Lines 1-2:  repetition of the color "black"
Lines 3-4:  colon between vague statement and specified value
Line 5:  consists of two whole sentences--two words each and begins the same
Lines 9 and 10:  vague directions ("this way" and "that way") followed with statements regarding the possessions of inanimate things
Line 14:  specific number of fallen soldiers
Lines 15 and 16:  juxtaposition between "half expecting" and "like smoke"
Lines 17 and 18:  time separated with a semicolon (present; past)
Lines 18 and 25:  repetition of the color "white"
Line 24:  the poem's only sentence fragment--"The sky."
Lines 29, 30, and 31:  juxtaposition between "black mirror" (see lines 1 and 2) with a mistaken description--"a woman's trying to erase names: / No, she's brushing the boy's hair."

Response 1, Week 5

On Queenie's free-write:

I think you should consider revising line 3:  "a ghostly angry whisper."  It sounds awkward and somewhat clunky.  I think it may have something to do with the juxtaposition between "ghostly" and "angry."

I absolutely love the lines "...a tombstone / that will summarize me."  You can't really get more ironical (postmodern irony, that is).  The idea that one's entire life span can become nothing more than a summation on a piece of rock is quite profound.  It comes dangerously close to cliche, but I think you nonetheless managed to avoid that. 

The incorporation of parentheses is well done, too.  It helps to enhance the point I addressed in the last paragraph.

Calisthenic 1, Week 5

Synesthesia exercise [revised since Tuesday's post]:

1.  I taste each rose of the dozen--a delicious aroma that departs from the garden and dies within me.
2.  Our relationship tasted bitter from the very beginning.
3.  I can see the wolf's howl as it caresses the soft underside of the moon.
4.  I watched as she packed every ounce of comfort into her suitcase, and I could hear the anger on her face as it rang aloud.
5.  You could smell the heartbreak on his breath.
6.  I moved my hand along the mist of disappointment to smooth out the edges.

Free Write 1, Week 5

[revised version of original post:]

"Bartholomew's Torture"

I don't know why I've allowed it to plague
me for so many years now--
the drowning expectation to carve a woman's image
into bars of cinnamon soap,

     perhaps to bathe or wash my mouth.

I don't know why I continually attempt to
rationalize a chaotic world,
perhaps to abolish the slave trade and drug cartel
     (well, maybe not the drug cartel).

I don't know how to commit--
to caress a woman's mind for longer than an hour
or two (maybe three at the most).
I don't know if her blood flows like acid rain
or hot lava, perhaps an

     exotic
     combination
          of the two.

I don't know how to love
my cat or myself or your God or myself or
my father or myself or the country or myself,

and she doesn't know how to love me, either.

I don't know why the country is falling to pieces,
while the trinity play chess with votes--
while the idle rich eat incriminating documents and
slice wrists wide open to drink the blood.

I don't know why Jerry Falwell's God hasn't eaten itself like an Ouroboros in the weeds.

I don't know why Arabic mothers praise their sons:
the infants that bench-press automatic weapson from their prams,
screaming aloud (so that all nations will bear witness),

     "Revolution!  Revolution!  Revolution!"

Yet, these same mothers piss and dance on the graves of other freedom fighters.

I don't know how to pray to God,
but--if I did know--
I wouldn't ask for
peace or money or happiness or love or
sex or love or drugs or money.
I would ask Him--It--She,
"Invisible Man in the sky,
where the hell did I park my car?"

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 5

1.  "cum cry" (Dr. Davidson)
2.  "I'll sit in a sink and mope" (friend)
3.  "My black face fades, / hiding inside the black granite." (Yusef Komunyakaa)
4.  "That happened, and we let it happen."  (from Family Guy)