Monday, March 28, 2011

Wall of Discarded Art (a Capital Hill Tourist Stop)

 
The cows on the wall
munching on dry leaves

In the first year in my residency in Seattle, I lived a few doors down from the Wall of Discarded Art. I found it fascinating, because I'd never seen anything like this before and it was genius. As a writer I know, it is hard to discard even one scrap of paper with a scribbling scrawl on it. Yesterday, I sorted through and tossed a whole paper shopping bag of these precious scraps of ideas. It is easier to cleanse yourself of these musing if a year passes by. And I have the sinus headache today as proof.


I suspect this process could be different or harder to do with visual art. Therein lies the beauty of this wall in the alley on the Union-Spring 14th - 15th Avenue block. Here an artist can hang their masterpieces of disaster and let the power of nature take back its resources.

Cubed balls. This one looks relatively newly hung.

What's behind those bug-a-boo eyes and who's blondy saluting?
He must be spying this merry making scene

I brought my mom here when she visited last fall.

It's the cows. They've come home. To the pasture.

And look, there's a little person from the Hollow Earth Here too!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Time Masheen II Dusty Forgotten Utterances from the Spring of 1996

 
Angels Were Singing

The first time I saw you
I had a special feeling
I didn’t know your name
But I knew you knew me

I imagined you in my arms
On Mount Zion under the stars
We tangled tongues
As angels sang a sweet song of love

You said, I had a fire in my eyes
And a passion in my heart
Every time we twined
I was a Saturn Five on the fly
My legs would quiver
And my guts would shake with vigor
When our lips embraced
I knew you were the one
And angels began to sing our song of love

Many wonders and mysteries
Strange things I could do and see
When I touched you
My skin would liquefy
Our bodies melted together
Our souls became one
My vision grew dizzy
The angels sang that same old song of love

The day you abandoned me
For that other short man
Was the day I damn near died
Slashed my throat or cut my side
The angels up in heaven
All around swimming in the sky
Stopped singing that sweet fresh song of love



Wow! What a find! I was going through this journal I wrote for a graduate course I took at George Fox University in 1998 on Spiritual Formation. This was back in the day when I was studying theology. Keeping a daily experiential prayer, reflections, and reading journal was the primary focus of the course. The journal’s intention was to bring the student, me, into a state of mindfulness to the ever-present mysteries of the now. At least that is how I interpret it today fourteen years after the fact. Well, anyhow, stapled onto one of the pages was a heartbreak poem I wrote two years prior about the only woman I ever proposed to. The reason I looked into this journal is that I’ve been compiling past papers and writings from that post undergraduate era into a singular work, which I’d like to self-publish as an e-book. And my intent here is to experiment with this particular medium of expression. Also, I am actuating my dream of being a professional writer. Furthermore, I am in the process of writing an experimental novel (my friend with the publication of his book Super inspired me), but I estimate the first working draft to be roughly two years away. 

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Neurosis A Free Written Impression of a Sludge Metal Song During a Concert

 


An introverted Neurosis bears down into the sludge of the
sound of a black sun rising through an event horizon of madness



 







 

A beautiful creature dazzles the eyes of a child. She smiles into the eyes of the creature and takes a gadget from a jewel-adorned hand. The creature smiles as he draws a crooked knife from an oiled leather sheaf. She delights in the gadget and runs around the room spinning. The creature approaches. She does note anything amiss. This creature is her friend. Her father. Her mother. Her brother. Her sister. Her lover.

The creature laughs and gently strokes the girl’s curly blond hair. She giggles and squeals as the creature draws the wicked knife across her throat. Her silky buttery flesh parts like a plow cutting furrows in a well-tended patch of soil.

Her green laughing eyes turn to stone as her blood beads up on the blade, she gives up her last breath without a whimper. The gadget clatters to the ground untarnished.




This piece was composed on my (now dead and buried) Pantech_C530 Slate telephone during a Neurosis concert at Neumos on December 30, 2010. As you can see I was standing very close to the stage. This was the second time I'd seen them. I was introduced to them when I saw Heaven & Hell (formerly Black Sabbath) play at WaMu Theater in August 8th, 2009. This show was a treat, because I got to see Ronnie James Dio perform before he passed away on May 16th, 2010. Ronnie James Dio's influence in Black Sabbath marks the beginning of modern metal. Black Sabbath with Ozzy was a heavy blues band and where most all the songs were about anti-war-ism and intoxicants; whereas Dio's influence injected fantasy illustrations into the narrative of the music form. Modern metal to me is the reincarnation of classical music and Ronnie James Dio was one individual among many who breathed this into the genre.

I wrote three impressions that night. One during the Wolves in the Throne Rooms' melodic black ambient metal set and two during Neurosis' sludge post metal set. The third band to play that evening was a Seattle band called Black Breath whose scorching sound is similar to Judas Priest ablaze. The above impression is my least favorite of the three I composed that night, but they all represent the meaning of metal to me.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Verbal Expression Laboratory Ahmed's Thoughts on Scarcity

 
Seattle People, it's not too late to sign up for an adventure in self-discovery regarding your writer's voice. There is no prerequisite; writers of all levels are encouraged to apply. 

The course is offered at Seattle Central Community College and the price is a steal at $70.00. The college gets most of it. Ahmed & I get to place this experience point on our resumes. 

Speaking of Ahmed who is my partner in this endeavor, read what he has to say in regards to scarcity one of the pillars we will be exploiting to draw out or to maximize your creative powers.



Eliminating the illusion of free choice to give real choice is scarcity. Without constraint, free will becomes its own worst enemy. Imagine the horror of immortal beings who have been around forever and will be here forever more: Everything has become banal to them. Choice lies in its own limits--like life gains meaning through its own finiteness, every part of which must be finite and therefore precious.

Another aspect of scarcity makes it an ideal tool for writing exercises: scarcity is too scarce for perfectionism. Under scarcity, there can be no room for revision, second guessing, searching for the "mot juste" rather than "juste un mot". Under time constraints, we produce just what we can before the clock runs out. Under word constraints, we use just the words we have to work with and can't wonder the option of the perfect word. Under style constraint, we fit what we have to say into the form dictated, rather than search for the perfect form to fit our content.

Scarcity is not just a writing tool. Scarcity is the source of the everyday improvisations we all perform to get from A to B, and stay within C. Scarcity is living life to the fullest with intelligence--doing the best with what you have. Scarcity makes art possible: finding infinite meanings in finite materials. Scarcity makes musics possible: finding endless variation of the small number of notes on a scale. Scarcity makes love possible: otherwise, we would always find another fetish in the newest object. Scarcity drives commerce and economics, and governs our day-to-day working world. Scarcity is this class: meeting only six times but attempting to impact your writing forever--or just the rest of your finite lives.

---by Ahmed Teleb

Monday, March 21, 2011

What I was thinking on March 21, 2005 (the day before my birthday)

 

Money is a fractional product of nothing times nothing divided by zero

The poverty of mediocrity does not task the tongue, enough, to be SILENT

Painful lacerations from one's own flog will always fail to satisfy the self's longing for acceptance

Lips swiftly in motion more often than not serve to cover an individual’s perception of inferiority

Obsessions give credence to anxiety by fueling fear with burning passion for a perceived object or objectified other

We will never have peace in our world or in our lives as long as we continue to surrender ourselves to anxiety and paranoia

Immorality builds upon immorality till an entire civilization re-rationalizes that which was wrong into virtuous behavior. One-day America will be remembered along side Atlantis, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Babylon, and Rome – as places targeted for annihilation
 
When humans lose sight of who they are, they begin to devalue people “deemed” lesser; social evils begin to thrive and become accepted into the common (wealth) fabric of society, as how things are.  The man laying under the doorway at washington mutual passed out drunk—on wine made in a bathtub from cool aid and moonshine—is equal in value to the president of the united states or the prince of a prosperous world bank

Monday, March 14, 2011

pen head press common search words or are they?

 
Kirk versus Gorn Classic

star trek lizard
scrabble poetry
boner puns
fifth element girl pics
ginger candy experiment
jupe scrabble
ode to scrabble
penhead bill  
"Ahmed Teleb" Seattle
dragonfly poetry Chase Evans
canine fart vest
duet slam poetry
ode poem about toys
Gillespie's restaurant Valley Junction Oregon
chocolate ginger candy
penheadpress


This blogging is a grand experiment for me.My buddy Kirk suggested I try it several years (ago) before I finally  (actually) pulled the trigger and posted my first post last August about vacationing in beautiful Valley Junction and the sites I saw under a bridge. I kind of like its random topical nature; it accurately reflects the unfocusedness of my mind, which is probably why I didn't become a public school teacher. But I find it amazing that I am able to do bookkeeping and accounting work. That I can poor over columns of numerical without getting bored. Then again boredom has always been a foreign concept to me or at least I rarely ever experienced it and I never knew what it was as a child.

When I discovered the stats page, I became fascinated by how random people stumbled upon this site. It seems inconceivable that anybody at all could find it. It's like winning the lottery. I play and I fancy that I'll win someday, because I'm somehow special or I stand out in some unique way. But that's crazy. Me winning the lottery is nuts. And I am nuts for believing that it is possible. I started playing when the reality of my default GSL's became manifest (I now have $200,000 dollars of fees and interest tacked onto $70,000 of principal. It's doubtful that I'll ever earn enough to pay it back. You can help me out by clicking on ads. I've earned thirty-nine cents thus far. Oh hell...just send me money. I can be a tax collector if you want me too or I can write poems for tips. Send me six words and I'll write you a poem). But I digress.

fifth element girl pics


Keywords. Somehow all those words link to this page through some form of Al Gore magic. (I tried to insert a screen shot of a stats page illustrating keywords used thus far, but that didn't work) There are more, but like a dummy I haven't kept track of them till now. Penhead Bill doesn't quite work, because I rarely refer to myself as Bill in any of these posts. Bill doesn't look as good in print as William does. It's like that scene from the Jerk. "The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here! Nothing! Page 73. Navin R Johnson. I'm in print. I'm somebody now. Things are going to happen to me now!"


If you found this page through any other means besides fb please leave a note as to which search word you used and where you're from. Thanks. I'm just curious is all.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Only the Finest Country Wines For Me

 
 
 How about if you read this like a comic book. I'll number the 
panels for your convenience.

(1) Salem the smallest big city in the Oregon it's population is
1/3 the size of Seattle proper and it's cultural level is 1/3 the size
of Willamina. My great aunt Marie called Salem a cultural dark
zone sixty years ago. Not much has changed save for the numbers.

In college at Linfield, we called the store Beer4Less. I wonder if
they have the products I am seeking?

(2) Shopping carts stretch into infinity. They fatten the
bellies of an opulent America too large to rise off their couches
and walk to the refrigerator and grab a sprig of parsley. I wonder
what the size of a shopping cart in India is or in other places
where people starve?

In the neighborhood where I live, shopping carts are the size of
hand baskets. Very few people arrive in automobiles for their
groceries.  We shop often like Europeans.

The carts at most Seattle grocery stores are half the size of
Costco carts (except for at Costco where the carts are
universally the same grandioseness).




(3) lets see if they have what I want
...nope...not here...junior mints 99
cents is tempting

(4) not this way either...natural organic
gluten free ding dongs & twinkies.
...what will they produce next?

(5) Ahhh...the wine section...and all my
favorite memories are stacked here too


(6) Hopefully I won't draw too much attention to myself
(this effing editor isn't arranging the pics the way I
want them. It's placing them in wrong screwy places)

(7) I've been wanting to ride the train
since I came to Seattle, but none of the
stores in my neighborhood sell it, because
some nice voters changed the zoning
laws on fine beer and wines.



(8) I started gulping this brand at 12
when I was confirmed into the Lutheran
Church...mmm...mm this was good stuff


(9) Strawberry Hill, I drank this by the
case load in High School after my sis
started college at George Fox.

(9) I graduated to Mogen David wines in college...the price...
$3.64 a quart...you can't beat that and 20% alcohol too!
 Tastes like candy and goes down better than cough syrup.

(10) Kiwi Lime was swill, but grape was great. I used to drink this
stuff under the train trestle in McMinnville. I wonder if Banana
 Red tastes better than Concord Grape? This is wine like my uncle
Leonard makes down on Wino Alley in Grand Ronde

(11) But driving Thunderbirds and Riding the Train at Night
was the best...the king of wines. There's nothing like screw
caps. Corks are for dorks. Tabs and screw tops are for real
people. You don't know a train till you've been hit by one.
(12) lets find an open register...hmm...
not here.









































(13) This is it...the only line open
everone employed here was Latino
save for the manager. He was the
only white male present. I wonder what
the disparity between his wage and
everybody else's is? Hmm...



(14) Well, here's my ride for the day...
a Buick Century....this wine sure is
tasty. It sure beats that expensive stuff...
Too, bad I can't have it on the bus.









Did you know that Penhead Press has recently become a publisher? Well, it has and its first publication is now in amazon's kindle store. It is called Randomly Accessed Poetics, Issue 1: The Texture of Words and you can find it on the merchandise page (above)!








Follow Me on Pinterest

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Krell Gorn the Lizard who Blindly Fingered a Villanelle

 
 
the Latifa vrs Ahmed vrs William 03/12/2011 Racer Cafe Scrabble Match


William Krell’s Villanelle (Scrabble Score 142):


It Can’t Get Any Worse Than a Poem Titled Krell Gorn at the Zoo

On the axe, Fae jotted a deft weld
Zee at the Zoo signed a Gorn navy pact
Agouti axed a hen with a hard sell

Does a tree make a noise like a bell
A silent ring in a forest is a fact
On the axe, Fae jotted a deft weld

Gorn of the lizard race beat up a Krell 
In loud gaud the rubber suit lacked tact
Agouti axed a hen with a hard sell

Green blood on the axe formed a gooey gel
 Heil the orca bum sang, but failed to act
On the axe, Fae jotted a deft weld

  The axe was sharp, Fae made an easy kill
A baby Krell head plopped into the sack
Agouti axed a hen with a hard sell

Note: Gorn, the lizard, was readied to geld
Zoo Krell thumbed through the gaud of evil pact
Agouti axed a hen with a hard sell
On the axe, Fae jotted a deft weld



Latifa’s Gothic Villanelle (Scrabble Score 185):

      Blind Wind Seeking the way

Lo, the blind wind sets the way
Rattling its stolen gaud
Their fingers deft and cold as day

Over loam and broken clay
It sang again of pact and fraud
Lo, the blind wind sets the way

Past tree where danced the darting fae
The shadow murmurs the hidden fault
Their fingers deft and cold as day

It darts where axe fall marred the way
Past field and wold churchyard broad
Lo, the blind wind sets the way

Here men with bank notes faces grey
Their cracked hands dark with broken sod
Their fingers deft and cold as day

Their lifetimes jotted in the fray
Wait in their pints, forget their fraud
Lo, the blind wind sets the way
Their fingers deft and cold as day



Ahmed Sang a Desert into a Villanelle No Oar Has Dipped (Scrabble Score 246):
He did write a poem, which he promised a week ago to email. His scrabble villanelle wasn't bad. It was his typical style of using English words to sound like foreign words by the context in which they were arranged. I should have insisted through his impatience to write it down like I did the last time. After all, scrabble poetry is Ahmed's invention even though I thought about it a decade before I ever met him.



If you want, you can try a Villanelle too. Refer to the previous post for directions on how to do it. Leave your Villanelle as comment and the geographical location of where you are peaking into this zone from.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Villanelle Pre Scrabble Poetry Post (AbA abA abA abA abA abAA)

 
On the next scrabble poetry match we will be doing another form poem. This one, the villanelle, is the same form that my favorite poet used to compose “Do not go gentle into that good night.” And do you know what this poet’s name was and how he passed? Yep…you guessed it. Dylan Thomas who died (on November 9th 1953) from pneumonia and from bronchitis due to breathing too much smog.

Dylan Thomas is proof that we need to clean up our air. Go backwards into the future. Get rid of the car and learn to walk upright. Get rid of the petroleum powered tractors and regive birth to the oxen, mule, and draft horse pulled plows. Muscle power and the crudest high school physics (that was replaced by internet porn, political correctness, and science fiction dreams) is the salvation of humankind. But I digress. I'll step off my soapbox and crawl back into the construction of a villanelle.

As you can see below, the form is not as difficult as the name “villanelle” could suggest. The form is similar to the pantoum in that it employs repeating lines and it is also similar to the triolet, because it has parent and children rhyming lines. The easiest part is that all you need do is compose 13 original lines with, more or less, ten equal syllabic counts.


1)      Workers are slaves to the tocking clock — (A1) refrain
2)      They moil without rest for a single bill — (a) line rhyme
3)      ‘cause a business man rules the weight of your sock — (A2) refrain

4)      A penny for the broke, down at the dock — (a) line rhyme
5)      one forward, ten back is a chocking pill — (b) line rhyme
6)      Workers are slaves to the tocking clock — (A1) refrain line

7)      Merchants hoard your wealth under a lock— (a) line rhyme
8)      and key; this secret hides under the sill— (b) line rhyme
9)      ‘cause a business man rules the weight of your sock — (A2) refrain line

10)  A man broken by years of laboring a block— (a) line rhyme
11)  is crushed with no reward, makes him ill— (b) line rhyme
12)  Workers are slaves to the tocking clock — (A1) refrain line

13)  Shivering alone, the rich fear to talk— (a) line rhyme
14)  Afraid the poor will pull the trigger to kill— (b) line rhyme
15)  ‘cause a business man rules the weight of your sock — (A2) refrain line

16)  A firstborn puts a father’s glock up for hock— (a) line rhyme
17)  toiling past dusk, his labor is worth nil— (b) line rhyme
18)  ‘cause a business man rules the weight of your sock — (A2) refrain line
19)  Workers are slaves to the tocking clock — (A1) refrain line

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Vacancy is in the Eyes

 
 
knock, knock...who's there...knock...knock


I'm sorry if I failed to be clever with my words here. Grace is my favorite cat at my folk's place in beautiful Grand Ronde, Oregon.

Every time I go down for a visit, I try to take a picture of this cat.. When I am lucky enough to see her still I either get a big blur or vacant eyes. I mean this cat next to me on the bed I slept in as a child seems like she's full of life. She's been purring away every time I stroke her tail. And my nose is getting stuffy. It must be the gray and white fur or the wood heat.

When I was a boy, dad rigged the wood stove to double as a hot water heater. We were the only house in the neighborhood with a hot water tank in the family room. And we were the only house to have hot water when the power grid went down during a storm of when a neighbor decided to wrap his car around a telephone pole. This happened a lot before the MADD came into existence. The drinking and driving laws began to stiffen when I was junior or senior in high school. I remember my homeroom teacher lecturing about the dangers of drinking and driving. I thought she was full of shit.

Back then it was easier to get away with stuff. I often wonder if we aren't living in g-dam police state. Especially, when we have such a lawyer and prison population. We have given up a lot in the last one hundred years. Hell, America invented fascism. The father of fascism was Woodrow Wilson who was the 28th President in power from 1913 to 1921. Who brought us such delights as the income tax, sedition act, and essentially changed the liberal democrat party away from libertarianism or classic liberalism (economic laissez fairism used to be the platform cry of liberalism. This must be why my Jewish grandfather switched his political view from being a democrat to republican later in his life) to what it has become today. He also locked away 150,000 Americans for speaking in seditious tongues against his presidency and the war. And he, like Margaret Sanger (founder of planned parenthood who by the way applauded the murders of my relatives in Nazi death camps) was also firm believer in eugenics, but then again so were many of the intellectual giants of the early twentieth century. Yes, Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler learned it all from him. It must be something about the "W" in a name to bring out the dictator in a president. I wonder how long will it be before we too have troops on our streets like Israel? They will say it is for our own security.

I don't know how I got here. I don't usually in this current era talk politics. I'm not a political person. My political beliefs border on atheism. All I wanted to do was talk about this cat and the seemingly vacant dull gray like shark eyes I captured in a photograph. I guess that means this cat is a cold blooded killer at heart too.

Well, at least now she is snuggling up to me. Snuggles today, nibbles on rigamortis toes of distant tomorrow.


maybe someone is home behind the cat eyes

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

A New Poetic Form?

 
I've been intrigued by the sestina and the concept of building narratives around preselected words. Yesterday, I designed a new form utilizing six words like the sestina, but shorter. My form is six stanzas of three lines where each of the six words are used in a different order in each set of three lines. I used a table to diagram out the word ordering (see below). Further, in the previous post, I did something similar with the Reverse Crossout (also a form of my own devising maybe or at least, I've never encountered it before. After all there is nothing new under the sun). 

The six words (rainbow, smut, bus, kitties, engage, and dark) were selected early this morning by an ex-coworker. He sent them at 3:04 AM via text. Here is the poem:

 

Rainbow Smut Bus drives while Kitties Engage the Dark


A rainbow appeared over the Smut Palace; the driver of the Jet City Bus
Co. couldn't believe it was a double D. He clipped a tree maiming two kitties
engaged in the act of creating something never seen before in the dark.

The dark was smothering when Kitty woke in a booth at Ben Dover's Smut
Palace. She was confused. Guilt churned the insides of the bus driver
as he engaged the machine. He had never seen such a dazzling rainbow

Engaged! It happened on the bus, their trust was sealed by a rainbow.
At first she was rattled but then something enthused in her by the smut
Kitty was reading on their new bed. Spinning, she made the room dark.

"Kitty's" she throated, my dark warm place aches. I want your lust to engage
magic in my body. I want to gaze into your green eyes ecstatic with rainbows.
"Bus six-nine," she whimpered repeatedly, “I knew you; I inhaled your smut.”

Bus sixty was graffitied with a rainbow badly smeared on the back covering a darkly
painted advertisement of a dorky Captain Picard fingering the word, "engage."
Smut Palace also requested an ad; but the CEO decided instead on yarn & kitties.

Smuttly slathered jam on his toast. He engaged his fingers petting his kitties.
They purred in delight by his touch. Sensing mice, they darted into the dark
A rainbow appeared over the stop as he waited too long for a number nine bus.


ok, the poem is not that great, but what do you expect for twenty minutes.


I'm sure the form is clear as mud, but here are the word orders in each line per stanza set in a table (Word 1: rainbow; word 2: smut; word 3: bus; word 4: kitties; word 5: engage; word 6: dark).
 

Stanza 1




Stanza 4



Word 1
Word 2
Word 3

Word 4
Word 6
Word 5


Word 4



Word 1
Word 6

Word 5

Word 3

Word 2







Stanza 2




Stanza 5



Word 6
Word 4
Word 2

Word 3
Word 1
Word 6


Word 3



Word 5
Word 5

Word 1

Word 2

Word 4







Stanza 3




Stanza 6



Word 5
Word 3
Word 1

Word 2
Word 5
Word 4


Word 2



Word 6
Word 4

Word 6

Word 1

Word 3


 

Maybe the end result of these experiments will be me busking poetry for tips at the public market with a manual typewriter. I wonder if people would grace me with enough to pay rent?