The Felt Shape of a Human Life

“Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like a diamond-cutter's tools. Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey-castle sequence of bumpings-into and tumblings-apart.”

     -Salman Rushdie [The Ground Beneath Her Feet]

Who Hates Best

"If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing."   -Jean Rhys

Yusef Komunyakaa

Not enough people know who this man is. In the '80s, he developed this brand of poetry that combined jazz rhythm/syncopation with modern, colloquial language and some ridiculous imagery. I'm going to resist the urge to bold and underline the lines that make my eyes pop open. Getcha mind blown:

Safe Subjects 

How can love heal

the mouth shut this way?

Say something worth breath.

Let is surface, recapitulate

how fat leeches press down gently

on the sex goddesses eyelids.

Let truth have its way with us

like a fishhook holds

to life, holds dearly to nothing

worth saying -- pull it out,

bringing with it hard facts,

knowledge that the fine underbone

of hope is also attached

to inner self, underneath it all.

Undress. No, don't be afraid

even to get Satan mixed up in this

acknowledgment of thorns:

meaning there's madness

in the sperm, in the egg,

fear breathing in its blood sac,

true accounts not so easily

written off the sad book.

Say something about pomegranates.

Say something about real love.

Yes, true love - more than

parted lips, than parted legs

in sorrow's darkroom of potash

& blues. Let the brain stumble

from its hiding place, from its cell block,

to the edge of oblivion

to come to itself, sharp-tongued

as a boar's grin in summer moss

where a vision rides the back

of God, at this masquerade.

Redemptive as a straight razor

against a jugular vein -

unacknowledged & unforgiven.

It's truth we're after here,

hurting for, out in the streets

where my brothers kill each other,

each other's daughters & guardian angels

in the opera of dead on arrival.

Say something that resuscitates

us, behind the masks, 

as we stumble off into neon lights

to loveless beds & a second skin

of loneliness. Something political as dust

& earthworms at work in the temple

of greed & mildew, where bowed lamps

cast down shadows like blueprints of graves.

Say something for us who can't believe

in the creed of nightshade.

Yes, say something to us dreamers

who decode the message of dirt

between ancient floor boards

as black widow spiders

lay translucent eggs

in the skull of a dead mole

under a dogwood in full bloom.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

-Charles Bukowski

Breaking Boundaries

"I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will."  -Kurt Vonnegut

An Open Letter From Comic Sans

Listen up. I know the shit you’ve been saying behind my back. You think I’m stupid. You think I’m immature. You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.

You don’t like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don’t like that I’m all over your sister-in-law’s blog? You don’t like that I’m on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I’m pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don’t all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can’t all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I’m standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once.

People love me. Why? Because I’m fun. I’m the life of the party. I bring levity to any situation. Need to soften the blow of a harsh message about restroom etiquette? SLAM. There I am. Need to spice up the directions to your graduation party? WHAM. There again. Need to convey your fun-loving, approachable nature on your business’ website? SMACK. Like daffodils in motherfucking spring.

When people need to kick back, have fun, and party, I will be there, unlike your pathetic fonts. While Gotham is at the science fair, I’m banging the prom queen behind the woodshop. While Avenir is practicing the clarinet, I’m shredding “Reign In Blood” on my double-necked Stratocaster. While Univers is refilling his allergy prescriptions, I’m racing my tricked-out, nitrous-laden Honda Civic against Tokyo gangsters who’ll kill me if I don’t cross the finish line first. I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.

It doesn’t even matter what you think. You know why, jagoff? Cause I’m famous. I am on every major operating system since Microsoft fucking Bob. I’m in your signs. I’m in your browsers. I’m in your instant messengers. I’m not just a font. I am a force of motherfucking nature and I will not rest until every uptight armchair typographer cock-hat like you is surrounded by my lovable, comic-book inspired, sans-serif badassery.

Enough of this bullshit. I’m gonna go get hammered with Papyrus.

[courtesy of McSweeney's]

untitled

They say that I'm a poet
I wonder what they would say
if they saw me
from the inside.
I bottle emotions and place them
into the sea
for others to uncork on distant shores --
I am unsure
as to whether they ever reach and
for that matter
as to whether I ever get my point across
             or my love.

In the desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter – bitter", he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

-Stephen Crane

Happy Anniversary, NYCM

I just realized that I started this blog a year ago. I can't believe it's been a full year! We've had some ups and downs, some lulls and some highs, but we're still here. I've wanted to give up a few times. More than I'd like to admit. But it's been a year! Anyway, here's my last web piece for Cosmopolitan magazine, ever. Enjoy! (sarcasm)

Catcher in the Rye

So I just finished reading "Catcher in the Rye" yesterday while coming home from work. The 1 train pulls up at 59th street and I get on, stand somewhere in the middle of the car and pull out my book. Then I notice that this guy sitting right under me is reading it too, which is kind of awkward but no big deal. Then a seat opens up -- right next to the guy. So there we are, sitting next to each other, reading the same edition of this book (with the BRIGHT ass yellow and red cover). More than a little awkward. I couldn't even concentrate. Am I obligated to somehow acknowledge that I know we're reading the same thing? Make some clever joke about what great taste he has in books? Turn to him and smile knowingly? I didn't want my eyes to go too far to my right when I was reading because I was afraid he'd think, out of his peripheral vision, that I kept looking over to see which part he was up to in the story. Then I noticed people around us looking from my cover to his, and back again. Yes people, we're reading the same book. And sitting right next to each other. Okay? The worst part was just as I was finishing the book and starting to put it back in my bag, he was getting up to get off at his stop, which totally made it look like the only reason I took my book out in the first place was because I saw HIM reading it. Perrrrfect.

The Truth

"The truth is like the sun in that its benefit is entirely dependent on our distance from it."

Probably the realest statement in the history of all time. Kind of stings a little, huh?