Poetry ie Angst ie Abstraction ie love: A Series

Here are some poems about things that don’t exist.

Self-taught

I wanted to know, what
is the meaning of life?
so I swallowed three
pills
like fish bones.

I wanted to learn, what
does it mean to be alone?
so I wrote a letter
a lie
to the only people who loved me.

I wanted to discover, what
is empathy?
so I smashed your forehead
brainless
with my own.

what?

Creepy Crawly

Why is my lip bleeding?

Her leg was clammy
as if it were the hand of an unsavory gentleman,
which it was not.
It poked up translucent hairs
into my unbidden palm
which was dry,
savory,
not sweet.

I squeezed her leg because it was too
thin and
she startled up and kicked me in the lip.

Dorm music

I meant to hate Vampire Weekend, but I don’t.
I hate seeing them on the cover of Spin magazine looking like they just finished a Land’s End photoshoot.
I hate the idea of them, those Ivy League pansies, but I don’t hate their music.
Considering that I actually attend a rich little liberal arts college, it seems kind of hypocritical to want to hate them, but I can’t help it. I don’t think it’s a rivalry thing at all– I never meant to go anywhere but where I am– I think maybe it’s left over from Kansas.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, because that’s some pretty good pop.

And since I’m so ok with Vampire Weekend and their social status and their educational status, I guess it’s ok for me to make music too. Not that these are analogous situations, because I know nothing about music or Afro-pop, and I only wear polo shirts once a week.

But it’s the New Age of music (as always) and it’s coinciding with the New Age of my life (whatever that means), so let me present Three Good Men. The band name is supposed to be two jokes, one about gender dysphoria and one about Flannery O’Connor. I’m glad I explained it so it could still be funny. The album is (will be) called Famous Austin Goes to Town, because it is a children’s tape at heart.

Broken Toes and Racism

I broke my toes. Just two of them, the third and fourth on my right foot.

Luckily this has not yet impeded my dancing ability. I’m beginning to suspect that they are not in fact broken, but it is also true that my pain receptors do not work correctly.

This is not about my toes. This is about LIFE.

So speaking of things that are broken, I know this really great guy. Yeah, he’s really great and smart and a little obnoxious but funny enough that it’s ok. Anyway I also know of this really cute girl and she likes him, but he has said he won’t date her because she’s white, so they must be culturally different since he’s black. That makes very little sense to me. He grew up in the gol durn suburbs. He doesn’t even suck, usually.

So that’s kind of stupid, and if you are bothered about that type of thing, you should read “Brownies” by ZZ Packer. It’s good.

Or you can forget all that stuff and listen to Say Hi. Umm… don’t let the comparison to Nada Surf fool you… they don’t suck, ever.

Running Track: A Study in Masochism

In track, the best masochist wins. That is to say, rather, the most versatile masochist wins.

I am an expert on this because I just joined track, which means that I know all things about it.

Here are the two kinds of pain a person must embrace in order to win at track:
1) Sustained, throbbing, lifestyle pain. In addition to the nasty slogs of endless training runs, you must not forget that homeless, hungry ache of lactic acid in well-worked muscles. This is the pain that haunts you to classes and makes you wince when you walk down hills. It reminds you not to smoke cigarettes or drink carbonated beverages. It’s delicious for its reality, a comfort and a blight, like a beloved stuffed porcupine (cute!) with real quills.
2) Vivid, intestine-rending race pain. This is where classical masochists differentiate themselves from the pack. In the interest of comparative language, this basically feels like bullfrogging, except that it is self-induced, sans alcohol, with perfectly earnest intention.

And that, I think, is a fair summary of track. So why do it? Well…
1) It introduces great chemicals to your body/brain. Free.
2) Group showers.
3) Maybe you won’t be so fat anymore.
4) You’re a masochist.

As any logical person can see, the pro to con ratio here is 2:1. Which means that surfing the internet is rationally the wrong thing for you to be doing right now.

Dude, go.

Electrofailure

So when I switched states last week, I forgot my Zune charger and my phone charger. Not only does this failure add to the accumulating incriminating evidence of my idiocy, it also leaves me feeling really unprotected.

In the past, when I woke up every morning, I would make sure my Zune was in my side jacket pocket and my phone was in my back pants pocket. That way I would never be stranded. I could never be bored.

Now I am both.

Yesterday I went adventuring through uptown, and while I still brought my two favorite items, they were entirely useless. When you aren’t wearing headphones, it is distinctly more difficult to pretend that you didn’t hear the middle-aged sketcher ask for your number. When you can’t access your music collection, it is confoundingly frustrating to accidentally wander into a coffee shop with poor taste in music. Could I get a to-go cup after all? And frankly, it’s almost depressing to shop for music, knowing that it will be literally days before I can put the discs in my digital collection.

The phone is another issue. I am cut off entirely. I do not know if anybody wants to talk to me, but in my imagination I am wildly popular when my phone is dead. I’ve probably missed a hundred calls, and each of those individual callers probably hates me for failing to call them back. Now instead of being just an insensitive, over-assertive ass, I’m an elitist, insensitive, over-assertive ass.

This is just Perfect, to draw references to my previous posts.

Fame and Veganism

I’ve been talking a lot about fame, and I think it’s time to explain.

It might not be fun to be famous, and it’s really not even that enjoyable to make fun of specific famous people (although a lot of people do it), but it’s really, really fun to laugh at fame. Like veganism.

Here’s why:
Everybody knows that fame, power, and money are supposed to be the three driving impulses of human carnality. First of all, this is stupid because it doesn’t say anything about sex, except that I guess some people want to have sex with famous people. But then, some people want to have sex with teachers, and barely anybody wants to be a teacher.

Power makes sense because if you are powerful you get what you want. This is like a tautology. Of course people want to get what they want.

Money makes sense because you can buy things, and things are cool.

Fame doesn’t make sense. Who wants people watching them? If it’s just for the sex, then the big three should be sex, power, and money. Not fame. Fame is useless. It just means that people know who you are.

Which, incidentally, is why I frequently refuse to distinguish between fame and infamy. Infamy is just as effective at getting known, if not more so. And you can’t say that the difference between fame and infamy is that infamous people have fewer friends, because famous people have zero friends, so that’s impossible. Famous people can’t have friends because everybody is jealous because fame is part of the big three. That’s pretty funny.

And veganism is funny too.

Summer in Seattle

I want to live in Seattle.

I’ve always wanted to live in Seattle.

But what if I go to Seattle, and it’s no good. What do I look forward to in my life? Portland? If we could please just recall my virginal post about perfection, we’d know that perfection is stupid. Is Seattle stupid?

Okay, so it can’t be as stupid as NASCAR.

I think I’ll go.

Anti-Choice or Pro-Death?

Do you enjoy killing babies?
Are you a whore?
Are you attempting to skirt accountability by betraying your very spawn?

or

Are you a religious zealot?
Are you a sexist pig?
Are you stuck in the past?

For a second, forget about the spin.
There is one issue– one debatable issue– and that seems to be:
When is it alive?

“It” is clearly human. But when is it a life? Somehow, it seems like this should not be that difficult to resolve. There are certainly enough scientific capabilities available to distinguish living things from non-living things. But that’s what Terri Schiavo said.

Regardless, if abortion isn’t murder, then killing a pregnant women shouldn’t be double-homicide.

But then, I’m obviously just exercising my gay privilege to discriminate against pregnant people.

The fates and my Zune

Yes, Zune. Yes, I am less anti-social than you. No, I am not more practical than you.

In a somewhat frightening move, I put my Zune on shuffle while I watched Davidson upset Georgetown in the NCAA tournament play. Like that surprise rotten Easter egg you’ll uncover in a couple weeks, this allowed me to discover some tracks that I used to think were great but stink now. The cool thing about this analogy is that it can also be expressed this way:

rotten Easter eggs : today’s tracks :: Kansas University : 2008 Men’s Basketball National Champs

That is because they are the same. Or rather, will be.

Anyway, this whole music experience was fairly upsetting, so I naturally responded by forming what is probably the most sustainable playlist ever. These are like plastic Easter eggs. Or maybe like oysters with their regenerating pearls or something. Oh. Like argyle sweaters obviously. This site is tedious already.

I promise I will still listen to this playlist in 10 years if I am not dead.

1. Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games -Of Montreal
2. King of Carrot Flowers Part 1 -Neutral Milk Hotel
3. The Needle Has Landed -Neko Case
4. Reservations -Wilco
5. Shasta Heavy -Foot Foot
6. Metal Heart -Cat Power
7. Slow Show -The National
8. Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby -The Islands
9. Carolina -M. Ward
10. It Wasn’t Me -Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
11. Freeze the Saints - Stephen Malkmus
12. Stuck Between Stations -The Hold Steady
13. Indian Summer -Pedro the Lion
14. Knife -Grizzly Bear
15. Rebellion (Lies) -The Arcade Fire
16. Jerusalem -Mirah

Perfection

One of my extremely famous friends has recently decided to adjourn on the path to perfection.
Besides for this being a stupid idea, it brings up a very boring question that everybody always talks about. Still, this is not the fanny pack page, it is the argyle page, so it is thematically defensible to explore threadbare but strangely enticing subjects.
So, what is perfection?
For a while I figured it was just an American spelling of Obama, but recently I’ve been having second thoughts. I don’t like rich white people either, but they do wear a lot of cool sweaters, which is a point any rational person would consider.
At one point it seemed like perfection was Michael Jordan, but his stint with the Wizards made him look about as magic as Shaq.
I’m pretty sure, ultimately, that perfection does not exist in any form more pure than The National’s most recent album Boxer. Paste Magazine calls it the best of 2007, but the biggest trick of perfection is longevity. The National’s layered instrumentals and deep, resonant vocals get better with every listen, so allow me to mystically predict that it will also be the best album of 2008. Which doesn’t make sense, until you admit to yourself that the listening experience is practically reinvented with every listen. It’s not lyric-driven, but the words are every bit as poignant as The Mountain Goats… just with a far more ambiguous application.
The music sounds at times like an orchestral waterfall, crashing into the undercurrent of singer Matt Berninger’s rumbling vocals. Listen to it during thunderstorms, on too-bright mornings, on gross muggy nights, or on glorious walks through meadows of dainty, effervescent (?) wildflowers… you won’t find any weather or mood that can’t be considered in conjunction with this sound.
Excuse the previous poetry. It is idyllic because I am sullying The National by calling them Perfect.
Don’t worry about it. They will rise above my groveling words.
Maybe my famous friend’s next viral video will sound a little more like this