foresight or the love that was never made love

turn me
inside out
baby doll
(my head
falls from
the neck
after dreaming
you were
not real)

turn me
on as
you walk
away then
back again
(into my
skin you
go, a
needle searching
for more
than blood)

turn me
over, spread
the root
(bark spills
from my
eyes, leaves
sprout from
your breasts)

what music
dangles from
your lips,
a time
signature frozen
between our
whispers (stars
fall just
to see
our invisible
dance of
soul a
little closer)

we move--
(as thunder
through cloud
as thought
in air)
to being
nothing more
than memory

how will
we forget?

orgasm

her moan is a somber soprano
melody i playback on nights
when the stars hide behind
their lonliness
--

my fingers play carousel
between quivering thighs
that struggle to contain
the secret of being pure

as her lips part--
body wraps around the little
death undertaking exploding nerves,
i understand now the palindrome

of our ever meeting in a life
before--in being born, again

i speak:
"your vision went golden didn't
it baby...heart skipped a beat,
felt the center of everything was
breathing in your womb, defined heaven..."

she speaks:
"mmmmyeahummmhuh...i was grinding
down a waterfall, watching your face
at the bottom, your voice speaking
a somber staccato, reminds me of
the first time, the very first time"

i remember
her voice
and the song
my hands made
as she danced
us both to sleep.

Denise Duhamel

...Between his songs, the silence
of the city is so full and tenuous
that it can't be called silence at all,
but rather the sound after great sex,
the sound before a great war.

from 'Testament of Sex'

baseball history

Carlos Beltran (Houston Astros) - second player to hit 8 home runs in one postseason (Bonds) and only player to homer in 5 straight postseason games

Bernie Williams (NY Yankees) - most home runs in postseason history (22)
Hideiki Matsui (NY Yankees) - first player to have 5 RBIs twice in the same series during postseason
Mariano Rivera (NY Yankees) - first time in career in which he has blown two saves in a row

David Ortiz (Boston Red Sox) - first player to hit two walk-off home runs in one postseason
Boston Red Sox- first team to force a game 7 after trailing in a series 3-0

Red Sox v. Yankees - Game 5 - longest game in postseason history (5 hours, 48 minutes)

i lost my wallet

for the second time this year, i've misplaced my wallet. a check card. driver's license. 17 dollars and some movie stubs/receipts. carelessness? maybe. or it could just be another sign that i'm a total loser. either way, it is gone and now i must buy another one. more pressure to find a job :)

it could have been us

Brandon, Mom, Dad and I said a prayer before I took my little brother back to Philly. The ride up was nice, it was sunny through Baltimore all the way to Philly. Brandon slept the last leg of the trip which was cool. I would look over to him every now and then just glad that he was there...he's growing...he's a college man. I just sometimes have to sit back and think...wow, my brother is growing up too, my height now, not so little anymore :)

anyway, he needed to get some clippers from a Target up there but we got lost on the way. This added about an hour on my trip. I was a little frustrated but in hindsight, it was just more time to spend with him. Well, on the way back I'm driving along at a good pace, anticipating an arrival back in DC around 10:30...I happen to see a prompt about 20 miles north of Aberdeen saying there was an accident on I-95 and that all four lanes are closed (use exit 85 or 80). So, I stop at the Chesapeake house for gas and some food, call home to get directions on the detour. People are at the rest stop talking about the accident(s). Apparently around 5 or so there was a major storm that dropped visibility on the highway to 0. I didn't really get a grasp of how bad things were until I got home but there were 11 separate accidents involving 50+ cars on a five-mile stretch of the highway. All night, many scenarios ran through my head. What if Brandon and I had left earlier (which was the plan all along)...and I had been going through the White Marsh area of MD (just north of Baltimore) around the time of the accident. It could have easily been me. So, for once, my oversleeping served a higher purpose in a sense. I just remember taking exit 85 and going over the ramp staring south and seeing all those red lights...cars stopped. I got off the highway just in time...although the detour added a few hours on to my trip, I got home in one piece and in the end, that's all one can hope for.

back to haverford

i'm taking brandon back to school today. he isn't packed yet so we're a little behind schedule. i guess i'm not in a rush really. we'll get to talk a lot on the way back and i probably won't get back until sometime this evening. i think i'm going to be missing the red sox v. yankees game. stupid rain delay last night. anyway, the sun is coming out, time to roll.

the new danger

The new Mos Def album is live...cop that joint, early!

i'm listening to it now-- track: Sex, Love and Money (the hotness)

i give it 4/5 mics

always room to grow but it's a solid sophomore album

i'll discuss tonight's activities in more detail tomorrow.

Upon viewing them in an 'I Heart Huckabees' Ad, Naomi Watts’ eyes speak in the kitchen scene of '21 Grams'

sean penn begins to grasp your grief
as the baby doll of your dead daughters
loses its head in your throat—there are not
enough words to cancel out the sun
or enough lies to trick your heart into
forgetting to beat, so you scream through
the doll’s eyes into your babies’ silent room
and out of their open window for a reason
that does not exist.

snippet

a red light
through a window
is witness to our first kiss

i see rubies in your eyes
lips play bridge
as hands play tag

god is watching
our silent prayer
for new love

monday

Christopher Reeve died yesterday. He was 52. I remember watching the Superman movies and loving them. It was very humbling and real to see him in a state where he could not even walk. Yet, the spirit in which he portrayed on-screen came to light in his courage and strength during the toughest times in his life. The real Superman...

I applied to a job today at the National Academies of Science, the same place Brandon worked during the summer. Hopefully, I will hear something back from them. I sent out my last recommendation request to Gray Stewart today and sent for a grad school bulletin from Columbia. I began UVA's online app. and should be starting American and NYU soon.

So, the plan is to really work on a routine, waking up, writing, working toward a job during work hours, going to the mall and writing more, going home, eating, reading, writing a little more, then to bed. It's the only way that I'll be employed by the end of the month, the only way I'll get this grad school work done in a decent time. I need order. Pops would agree. It's time to be a man about things, be about business. Ok. Enough talking for now.

friday night

there were no beautiful women,
no cigarettes flaming into themselves,
no liquor, no red cups stained with lipstick.

from a balcony, i searched
the city sky for constellations
only finding orphaned starlight.

there is this beautiful woman,
but she is not here, to hold, to kiss.
I rearrange the letters of her name—sail.

a light turns itself on and off in my head,
a watch light resides atop a broken
memory searching for a new dream.

some beautiful women know me
others want to—so i’m told or telling myself,
or somewhere in between, where she lives, loving me,

and many friday nights amount to
a poem unraveling across the cold floor
of my discontent, and others, fall through

into the laps of beautiful women that listen to
‘kind of blue’ as much as i draw their smiles
with metaphor, hoping they see opportunity

in the space between our lips--
air whispering of movement to
somewhere maybe even a promise.

brandon's home :)

I went to Haverford this morning to get my little brother (in age)...apparently no longer in size. Brandon is officially taller than i am. I'll give him a solid 6'4". It took all day to get up there and back, partially because I eventually scooped Brennan as well (from Delaware). We're supposed to be going to partake in certain acts of debauchery (sp) but I'm real tired and I think pops might try to put my lil bro on house arrest. plus, i'm supposed to be getting up in the morning to go to a business seminar sponsored by Primerica, an affiliate/offshoot of Citigroup. Tomorrow is the day of the Morehouse Alumni meeting, which should be a good way to network. Alrighty chums...to all a good weekend.

10:26

I am actually up. There is supposed to be a job fair not too far from my home so I guess I should print a few resumes out and head over there soon. I need a new suit. I need some pancakes.

my mind suspended

my mind suspended between shadow and sun

memory and dream
an early palindrome yesteryear

and the hollow existence of tomorrow

is enough to want for an end
to the voices behind the wall

a need to see through them

the comfort of knowing—
optimism is courted as the love of a lifetime

but

the only known result is the cynical clarity
of counting grains of sand on beaches never visited,

only seen in a magazine full of dead pictures
glowing neon against broken fingers—

the passing of time is an ashtray
of discontent as moonlight mockingly leaves joints

catatonic, a half-waking from
the blue-grey morosity of insomnia—

i think of dying as sweet laughter
buried alive,

or emptiness (as a room without windows
or doors)

the dead end of a smile
hanging from a lover’s lips,

a sorrow with neither beginning
nor end, only

now.

well.

we never change, do we? -coldplay

poem of the moment.

Insomniac by sylvia Plath

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole ---
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue ---
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

april 18 by sylvia plath

the heart split open. damn. her work is real.

APRIL 18

the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight

?

this weekend was filled with questionable decisions and i'm sure of one thing at the moment--this week will be filled with many more, that is, questions and decisions. i am starting to loathe i.m. conversations. i'd rather talk on the phone or over coffee somewhere. i think i will start to drink more coffee. that is decision no. 1 of the week--more coffee. yeah, we real cool. i'm the hippest of the hip, a real sleeve puller. and now--more poetry.


in september,
the highlight of
my day was
the release of
shit from my bowels.

(it should be noted
that this is not at
the expense of all
the beautiful faces
and voices i encountered,
it's just that, well,
the sounds in my head
often drown out even
those moments worth
remembering, even
mentioning later to
someone else, even to
myself)

in october,
what will be
?