i mean all the time

2010-01-16T00:07:00.001-06:00

2010-01-16T00:03:00.001-06:00

D8

2010-01-15T23:52:00.006-06:00

i went on a date with you today.

while you were talking,

i asked myself if i thought you talked too much

and i responded, yes, to myself

i laughed when you told a joke

but only because i was imagining that your chair collapsed when you said it

"the most lonely moments have been those when i am staying at a friend's house and they are still sleeping, everyone sleeping"

2009-12-14T00:30:00.003-06:00

okay, here's a remix thing i made from pieces of facebook messages zach sent me last fall/winter. it's like distorted nostalgia i guess:

We got really stoned one morning.
how fucking starry-eyed,
I listened to Lake Michigan.
you found a sex theme, chastity in annihilation
and then did what for hours
eating potatoes, drinking peach absolut, and walking
everyone sleeping, and the sun rising

this is my body in a movie:
three days for the skeleton to calcify.
i had do sit ups to stay warm,
a week to add the muscle and such.
i had to buy teacher clothes
and about two months to add all the delicacies
like the eyes and ears and genitals.

all this assuming:
you still have the poem,
that my life is a piece of writing,
we know something or see something special
and didn't lose it in drunken walking confusion.

read read and read and listen
I want ideas and things to be one
send me adderall and coffee grounds

2009-12-13T23:38:00.001-06:00

coffee-shop window sill micro-narrative

s000 xxxcited!!!

2009-12-13T19:33:00.003-06:00

I totally didn't realize that facebook saves the private messages you have with people even after they delete their profiles. I feel like I wanna write a remix-esque poem comprised of things that zach has said to me via facebook messages that neither of remember or probably want to acknowledge. I'm not sure if this is just another spur-of-the-moment/never-gonna-actually-happen idea or if maybe the fact that i'm posting this will force me to do it.

The Softer Parts of You

2009-12-04T12:21:00.002-06:00

We haven't made love in a while and it doesn't really bother me. It bothers me in the way that Christmas bothers me, or grandmas. But it doesn't bother me.

It's like we've become this thing. Like I'm this thing, and you're this thing, and now we're this together-thing. We're a blob or something. Love-making used to fill the all the little voids between us. But now that we're a blob, there are no voids, because the blob fills them in.

The blob is great sometimes. Sometimes you used to say things to me and I didn't know how to say things back. So there was this empty space just before I figured out what to say. "Oh," "Cool," and "I dunno," were my three default phrases for filling in the empty space, but then you got mad at me for saying "I dunno," too much. It made it seem like I didn't care. Now I've replaced "I dunno," with "Really."

"Really," works pretty great because it usually causes you to expand on what you were saying, and it makes the empty space go away for a while. But like I said, it's really not something I worry about because the blob fills everything in now. It's great because I can be doing something by myself, like reading or something or looking at magazines in the living room, and you could also be doing something like sitting in the kitchen or looking out a window and there won't be this feeling between us that makes me feel like everything is about to collapse.

Poemte Teaser #2

2009-12-02T00:32:00.003-06:00

When I was in 10th grade we made heads out of clay in art class. My teacher said not to make your head hollow, or, if you do make it hollow, make sure to create a small hole for the air to escape, so that the head won't explode and destroy other heads when they're heated in the kiln. I made mine hollow - without a hole - and put it as close as I could next to the head that was better than mine.

2009-12-02T00:31:00.000-06:00

Teaser to Promote Upcoming Poemte

2009-11-30T22:43:00.008-06:00

When I was 17 I went to the library and checked out a book of love poems by Pablo Neruda.
"Pablo Neruda," the librarian said. "You must have a girlfriend."
"No," I said. "I'm going on a road trip and I want some poems to read."
"A road trip? You should read Jack Kerouac."
"Yeah," I said, pretending to laugh, and thinking 'Call of the Wild?'

Then I met Zach Zimmerman...

2009-11-25T01:12:00.001-06:00

two poems about my euthanized dog

2009-11-23T00:56:00.005-06:00

trees try

bees buzz

dogs die

buzz buzz

flies fly

round round

dead dog's

eye.

leaves lie

round round

dead dog

why?

2.

at dinner my dad said he had counted how long it took
it took six seconds for the anesthetic to go from her paw to her heart and brain

i said that i think only four tears came out of my left eye
but five tears came out of my right eye

then i asked my dad what it would feel like to have your eyes and ears and stuff
disconnected from your brain so you're just a brain

but he was too tired to think about what it would feel like to talk about that.

then my mom said that sometimes it's important to just completely fall apart
and for some reason when she said this, the word "poser" came to mind

three spi/rituals three

2009-11-13T13:44:00.017-06:00

3. three different colors within a watercolor painting occupying individual planes of the page 0ccupy the same piece of paper.
3. a person eats an apple, thinks about himself eating the apple, and thinks about himself thinking about himself eating the apple.
3. two people kiss each other underneath a linen bed sheet which is between their faces, one of them thinks the bed sheet is not there.

3. i'm so high that i've reduced existence to a terrifying sexual metaphor/the sadness of being made of a material. i play the piano, and then pretend to fall asleep so that my friends leave.
3. i have a vision of stephen hawking reciting beat poetry in front of a projector screen, which is really the reverse side of a jackson pollock painting. the image projected on it is a basketball eternally spinning on the tip of michael jordan's middle finger, extended, as if to say "fuck you, pussy," to one of my friends.
3. my roommate comes into my room and recites a fascinating news headline from bbc.com, all i can say is, oh, cool.

3. two people on opposite sides of the same lake both dip their feet into the water
3. the realization that the atlantic and pacific are just two sides of the same ocean
3. seventy-two individual oxygen masks melt, connected to the same air, stuck to people's faces

3. the realization that the redness of the apple is not a part of the apple, but a part of your brain
3. the feeling that you are nothing more than the convergence of your senses
3. the thought that the redness of the apple exists only between your eyes and your brain

3. the constant inevitable process of you becoming yourself against its will
3. you becoming that which you hate, you becoming yourself
3. a video projected from an anti-camera onto a mirror

3. a microphone connected to a hearing aid
3. reality creating an exact replica of itself inside of you
3. your inability to create an exact replica of reality outside of you

2009-11-13T00:05:00.005-06:00

2009-11-11T01:46:00.002-06:00

la musique un peut

2009-11-10T12:37:00.004-06:00

i think people should listen to le loup. do you listen to le loup? specifically the song "forgive me" is incredible. i think if Panda Bear and the Arcade Fire wrote a song together it would sound like this song. it makes me imagine people with djembes dancing around campfires, and all the children of the world holding hands and singing.

the sky looked like a sky

2009-11-09T09:11:00.003-06:00

October is a nice month to ride a bike. October is the month I'm riding my bike in. On very pretty days I look at the leaves and wonder if they experience emotional breakdowns after losing their color.

The leaves have changed from green to orange and red. The trees look like trees and the sky looks like a sky. The grass looks like grass and there are kids walking back to their homes.

Sometimes I don't wear my helmet; I am not wearing my helmet. My helmet is in my backpack. As I bike toward a quiet intersection a few blocks from my apartment, I imagine a car running the stop sign and hitting me from the side.

My knee is instantly crushed against the frame of my bike, and I am flung gracefully but violently onto the concrete. My head hits the pavement first and my skull becomes smushed like a malted milk ball or a hard-boiled egg.

My brain is still intact and functioning; my eyes are still connected to my brain and still seeing things. Another car approaches the intersection and, to avoid the previous car, swerves and crushes my entire body but stops right before my face. My body looks like raspberry pancakes now.

I lie there for a while until one of the drivers calls the police. Blood from different areas of my body is soaking into the asphalt, and into the nice leaves around my body, turning the already red leaves into a different red. I am still alive a little bit and I can still see the sky. It still looks like a sky, but there is something else in it, coming closer me. It is god coming to take my soul away.

When the police and ambulance come, my soul isn't there anymore. They open my backpack, trying to find my driver's license or student I.D. to find out who I am. They notice my helmet inside my bag. They say to each other, "If only he had been wearing this, he would still be alive right now. His body would have been irretrievable, but we could have taken his head and built a small podium for it. He could still have been able to look at things and people could take him to art museums to look at paintings." I feel horrible and stupid about this. When they tell my mom that my soul isn't in my body anymore her tears make tiny crystalline patterns on the pillowcase.

a priori anxietism

2009-11-08T18:06:00.015-06:00

i'm worried we hallucinate too much
(i'm worried we might 'never come back' next time)

i'm worried we read too much bukowski
(and it's making us assholes)

i'm worried my dad can't afford next month's mood stabilizers
(i'm worried i'm worried)

but like, you don't need drugs if you just stay home and try not to think about anything
which is to say,
like, things wouldn't be that different if we weren't here

but i'm worried i've lost the ability to sleep
i'm worried it's november again
i'm worried it will be december for the twenty-second time

i'm worried how nothing has ever happened
and how i'm worried

and like

what if i wake up my parents and i'm covered with sweat and i show them how i jump off the steeple in my dreams and every time that we do it unprotected

i'm worried because i heard you can never experience anything outside of yourself

2009-11-05T09:19:00.002-06:00

reasons

2009-11-04T00:34:00.004-06:00

there's no me in mirror

2009-11-01T15:36:00.004-06:00

he wanted to write metaphors that were like similes

she wanted to type her name in helvetica bold

and print it out and cut it up and rearrange it

and stare at it for so long that it became something

so unrecognizable that it is beautiful

he wanted to take pictures of mirrors without himself in the mirrors

a nice day to spend at the art museum

2009-10-30T22:42:00.005-05:00

2009-10-30T00:24:00.001-05:00

wondering if it's bad that the best part of my day was finding a doughnut in the trash at work

one day last night

2009-10-26T22:32:00.003-05:00

I'm on the side of a grassy hill with my cousins from Norway. Zach Zimmerman is there and I feel alienated because my cousins are getting along with him better than they're getting along with me, because Zach looks more Norwegian than I do. His hair is much more blond and stringy than it usually is, and his head looks more alien-like. He looks like an adult with a baby's head on it. The hill we are sitting on is the hill behind my cousin's house in La Crosse, the hill where me and Zach met for the first time and hallucinated.

My cousins create an abstract painting out of acrylic paints depicting the hillside with a tree on it. They hand the painting to my father and he adds a few dots and stripes to it, making it look better. My father hands it to my sister. She adds paint to it too, and ruins it. She hands it to me and I fix it.

I go to Zach's house. He is there with Michael Hessel-Mial but Michael Hessel-Mial is in the form of Spencer Krug. This is to say that he looks like Spencer Krug, but his 'essence' is that of Michael Hessel-Mial. They are sitting on the floor of a room, which is covered in mattresses and blankets. The walls are a deep burgundy with mahogany trim. They have discovered a new way of getting high and invite me to do it with them. This method of getting high involves taking an electrical extension cord and sticking it into your back, not as to pierce the flesh, but simply to make contact. The other end of the electrical cord is dipped in cheese, resembling Velveeta or nacho cheese. You place the dipped cheese into your mouth and the cord in your back shocks you, evaporates the cheese, which you inhale, and get high off of. It hurts a little bit, and doesn't seem to work that well. I can't tell if I'm high, or if I just want to be high.

Michael leaves and it's time to go to bed. Zach's mom asks me to sleep with her. Not to have sex with her, but just to sleep next to her to keep her warm. She looks like Barbara Walters with bigger eyes and straighter hair. I look at Zach and Father Zimmerman. They seem casually "okay" with this. I sleep with Zach's mom to keep her warm.

The Shaking of the Hand

2009-10-22T00:58:00.004-05:00

I shook spencer krug's hand last night.
I asked him to autograph this thing.
It was a poster I had torn from the men's room wall.
He asked what it was and I said I don't know.
It's a poster.
He saw it was a poster
of a different band.
I thought he was going to refuse and say it's disrespectful.
But he didn't.

Then I bashfully but excitedly explained to him
how I had been kicked out of his show exactly a year ago.
He looked at me weird.
And said, "I'm sorry you were drinking from a flask."
The same way he sings
"I'm sorry I sang on your hands."

This isn't a poem

2009-10-18T17:09:00.001-05:00

oh, this feels thematic

"upon meeting the golden hair'd prince of french island"

2009-10-17T14:00:00.001-05:00

ok, the disconnect between thought and expression

2009-10-13T17:31:00.001-05:00

2009-10-13T12:11:00.000-05:00

rsw promotion #3

2009-10-12T00:05:00.004-05:00

cat, visibly being 'weirded out' by michael hessel-mial's remix of zachary zimmerman's poem. feel like i don't know mhm enough to call him mhm, to blog about him.

Artifact #1 of Encounter #3 Between Zachary Zimmerman and Myself

2009-10-11T23:50:00.004-05:00

He gave this to me on a Madison balcony, denies memory of it.

rsw promotion #2

2009-10-11T13:38:00.003-05:00

cat, visibly excited about reading rsw chapbook vol. 1

rsw promotion

2009-10-11T13:33:00.002-05:00

cat reading 'you were taken out on a boat one day' by rsw poet/friend/person zachary zimmerman

2009-10-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

2009-04-13T19:11:00.014-05:00

caffeine

2009-04-06T14:26:00.002-05:00

when i drink coffee
my thought processes
turn into girl talk songs
that never stop.

and my brain
becomes a gymnasium
filled with bouncy balls
in a universe
without
gravity,
friction,
or
inertia.

2009-04-04T11:31:00.002-05:00

2009-04-04T11:19:00.002-05:00

I wake up
the sky is a piece of paper
with an airplane drawn on it
and a few birds.
my house is also a piece of paper
with a house drawn on it
and all my friends are pieces of paper.

for fun we draw things on each other's backs
so they can't see it
and then we laugh at it.

one day we were all sad.
so we cried as many tears as we could
and went swimming in them
and we all
dissolved.

i wrote this for the abstract concept of a person who might have existed or will exist but will never read this

2009-04-04T11:05:00.007-05:00

sound control
sound control
turn up my volume
i can't hear myself
i'm at church with my mom and
i'm singing but i can't hear anything.
i can see my mom and dad
swimming in rivers
in their underwear

all i can hear is paper rubbing against air.

i want you to be someone
who causes me to say 'i love you'
and mean it in the same way i mean '2+2=4'
i want you
to cause me
to apologize about things
sincerely.

i want you to come over tonight
my parents are gone and we could press our faces together
my lips could be fingers that tickle your ticklish places
lip fingers touching
your places that are ticklish.

i'm tired
of thinking
in reasonable ways.

nothing really

2009-01-10T18:05:00.001-06:00

a big stretch of land
a cup of tea
and three friends.

a pack of parliaments
a car ride
and a good talk.

me and my mom listening to the new animal collective record

2009-01-06T14:50:00.003-06:00

I knew it was gonna be good

my mom said

that the fist song
sounded like
my ultrasound.

I came home with a vinyl

my mom said

that we could borrow dad's record player.

my mom made a cup of chamomile
and some strawberries and white sugar.
she made me a turkey and ham sandwich

and we sat around and talked
for four albums

lots of moments
lots of kodak moments

my mom said.

we sat in the living room
and talked about my drinking problems
and talked about girls

and it was the first time
we agreed
on
something.

The Man Taking Pictures

2009-01-01T09:10:00.002-06:00

On my walk home there was a bridge
Before the bridge was a man taking pictures

of the sunrise
and
the art museum

I asked him if it was okay to cross the bridge
I didn't want to fuck up his photograph

he said yeah, and I told him the picture would be more beautiful if the wings of the art museum were actually open.

we laughed, and I crossed the bridge.

on the other side of the bridge was the edge of the lake
it was frozen.

I stood for a while and stared at the sun rising over the frozen lake
I almost cried, but it was too cold.

Then i saw the man again
still taking pictures
now he was on the other side of the bridge
with me.

i told him it was really beautiful because the ice was reflecting the sunrise and making it twice as bright.
we laughed again.

I asked him if he was going to put his photos up online

"No."

"It's just for fun."

the only one awake

2009-01-01T09:01:00.002-06:00

the next day
i was the first one
up.

i think i was the first person alive on new years day.
at least in milwaukee.

i walked past libraries
courthouses
city halls:

places i used to skateboard.

art museums.

i peered in the windows and wondered why they weren't open twenty-four hours a day.

Never look back unless it's beautiful.

New Years Eve and No TV

2009-01-01T08:57:00.004-06:00

She hadn't paid her cable bill
it was apartment eleven-eleven on the
eleventh floor.
We listened to records all night.
Vinyls.
And it was really

new.

We smoked my last two Parliaments
and I walked home at 7:30

Because why stay up to watch the ball drop
when you can wake up to watch the sun rise?

Greetings from Six West Psychiatric Ward

2008-12-22T15:31:00.018-06:00

Part 1.

The prettiest view I ever had of Milwaukee,
was from the sixth floor of the psych ward.
I live here.
With a guy named Sean who drinks way too much alcohol all the time.
A girl named Anita who has codependency issues with males.
And an old woman named Marie who doesn't think she's good enough
for anything.
And there's a few other people here who are
just
plain
depressed.

I'm standing in my room, alone. My urban outfitters jeans are too loose, so I rip a strip of fabric from my E.R. gown and tie it around my waist.
it fits.
there's a knock on my door.
"Come in."
It's a nurse with my morning pills. She sees my belt and asks me what it is.
"It's a belt. It's a piece of cloth."
I'm not allowed to have it because I could strangle myself with it. I take it off and give it to her. My urban outfitters jeans are loose again.

She gives me my pills and I swallow them.
One pill stabilizes my mood. This means that I can't get too happy or mad about anything. It's okay, I never used to get too happy or mad about anything.
The other pill reduces the grandiosity of my thoughts. This means I can't think about God, quantum physics, the history of Western civilization, or the
flaws
in modern psychology.

She tells me it's breakfast time.
I go to the lounge and eat breakfast with all my friends. We do everything together.
we watch movies at 7:00 PM.
we eat dinner at 5:30 PM.
We sit down and talk about our feelings, even the bad ones.
We sit down and talk about how we're depressed.
We sit down and talk about how we need drugs to be happy.
We sit down and talk about that one time we got really drunk and took three hits of LSD and thought we were Jesus and almost jumped off our balcony onto to the green Ford Focus parked below.

Sometimes we make art projects together.
Mine are always the coolest.

After breakfast I'm, back in my room, alone. I look over at my boom-box. I like my boom-box. The only reason I'm allowed to have it is because there's no cord to strangle myself with. What they don't realize is that I could easily pick up the boom-box and smash my skull in with it. Or grab one of these wooden chairs, break the window, and dive head-first out of this building. What they also don't realize is that I like being "alive." And I'm willing to put up with these dumb nurses and dumb pills so I can get out of here quicker.

I didn't want to do anything with my boom-box except listen to one of my CDs. I had three CDs:

1. Everywhere and his Nasty Parlour Tricks by Modest Mouse
2. HELP! by the Beatles (my parents thought it was funny)
3. A Putumayo World Christmas

Part 2.

Once Sean had gotten sober and figured out where he was going to go, they released him. He slapped me on the back and told me never to go back to Madison if I ever wanted to stop drinking. He told me never to do cocaine, and I told him never to do acid. We both smiled at each other and laughed. They released him and he didn't even say goodbye to anyone before he left. I was glad he was free. He was a good person. He was a carpenter. He was a skateboarder.

He had a girlfriend that he loved enough to flee his home-state from a pistol-swinging ex-boyfriend.

He had tattoos on his arms and back. I liked them. I might get a tattoo when I get out of here.

Part 3.

Now it was me and 5 black women. Sandra, Catherine, Chevy, Anita, and Eloise. We were all friends. They were all my sisters, at least to me. I'm not sure what I was to them; maybe a little brother, maybe a son, maybe a little wolf pup that they were taking care of. All I know is that they had great stories to talk about. Especially Sandra. Every time Sandra spoke, everybody listened. I think it's because she made you feel like you were a character in To Kill a Mockingbird. She made you feel like you lived in a house with a white picket fence and a backyard with a garden that had spinach and watermelons and pumpkins. And you could go outside at midnight and it would still be as hot as day.

Sandra wanted to have a birthday party for me. We were all going to be released on Monday, and my 21st birthday was on Tuesday. She started calling me "Mister Mike." She was planning something. I'm not really sure if I wanted a birthday party. I had been planning on going bar-hopping with my friends, but that wasn't going to happen anymore. I couldn't drink alcohol anymore. We figured I might as well make the most of my birthday with my 5 black sisters who couldn't drink either.

There were other patients at Six West too, but they weren't my friends. There was an old man named Mike. We didn't talk. We just sat around in the lounge, him watching TV and me writing or looking at magazines. There was another old man named George, but he was deaf so no one really talked to him. There was also an old white woman named Marie. I talked to her sometimes but every time she talked she just talked about how she wasn't good enough for anything.

Part 4.

There was a man who I talked to on the first day. His name was Pete and I think he was released the day after I was admitted. I was eating dinner on my first night, and Pete was sitting at the table next to me with headphones on. He always wore headphones. And he always screamed out these, loud, absurd, sentences, usually relating to war. It was like he had Turrets Syndrome but with coherent phrases instead of obscenities. He told me to sit down next to him. He unhooked a little machine from his belt and put it in my hand. It was a microphone.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Michael."
"That's a good name... my friends call me Pete. Y'know what my enemies call me?!"
"No."
"PETERSON!"
"Oh."
"Y'drink milk?!" I was drinking milk.
"Yes."
"GOOD. We're friends then." Good. I had a new friend named Pete who drinks milk and listens to all the noise around him through a microphone that's connected to his headphones. I could hear that the microphone was getting feedback, so I put my thumb over it to stop the noise.

Pete was gone the next day. I assume he either died or was released. Either way, he was in a much better, colder place.

Part 5.

I sat around in my room waiting for dinner. My feet were freezing so they gave me some socks to wear. They gave me the kind of socks that have little rubber patterns on the bottoms so you don't slip when you walk. I don't know why they gave me these; everything here is carpeted.

I put on some Christmas music and started looking through a book of Edward Hopper paintings. I felt like an Edward Hopper painting. Except without the colors. I felt like those lonely, empty 1940s American roads that connect all those lonely, empty 1940s American motels with that weird lighting in them.

I felt like that but in black and white.

I think I went pee.
I think I took a nap.
I think someone came in and took my blood pressure.

Then a loud buzz buzzed from behind my bed. It was 5:30, time to eat dinner. Sandra asked me if she could sit down and eat with me. I said yes. Sandra liked me a lot and I liked her. She had good stories. She was 45 years old. She was on the same pills that I was on, plus 3700 mg of 5 other types of pills. She seemed like a happy lady.

If I could, I would have gone on a date with her. I would have asked to borrow my dad's car, and picked Sandra up at her house. I would have shaken her dad's hand. I would have opened my dad's car door for her. We would have driven to McDonald's and both gotten a cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake. Then we would have gone to the newest movie. I wouldn't have held her hand, or kissed her, because I would have been too nervous. I would have her home by 9:00.

Anyways. We sat there eating baked cod and talked about antidepressants. She said she was making a birthday present for me. But it wouldn't be ready by my release date. So we gave each other our home addresses so she could mail me my present. Maybe I'll mail something to her too. Maybe I'll write a story for Sandra and mail it to her.

I was released from Six West a day before my birthday. And everything I had told them while I was there, everything I had told them about my drug use, my depression, my suicidal thoughts, was a lie. Everything I told them was a lie.

My urban outfitters jeans smelled like 5 days worth of shit, piss, and cum.

Why are my favorite things the things the make me tremble?

2008-12-15T04:52:00.002-06:00

i went to canada one time

2008-12-14T09:00:00.004-06:00

this is what parts of canada look like in the summer

soon things will look like this

2008-12-14T08:52:00.005-06:00

winter is pretty and so is my mom so when you put them together it's really pretty

Origins

2008-12-13T21:27:00.000-06:00

Today I decided to make a blog and I made a blog. Now I'll put some stuff up on it or something.