World of Warcraft

I'm on again. Yes sir and ma'am, I'm on. I've started a dwarven priestess on Shadow Council. So far... not so much roleplaying has gone on. Too bad. I can't wait til I get a /tell in L33T Scottish. And when I say I can't wait, I'm stone cold lying.

Lamprey

Little sleep and no clean shirt

Despite staying up until birds started chirping, I'm ready to go to class (although I am unwashed and in a dirty shirt).

More of "The Tain" today. That's exciting.

I don't want to go to bed

I'm doing silly online surveys at Liquid Generation dot com:

Your Dad

He doesn't accept compliments, your dad.
If a job is done well it'll be "There you go"
never thank you,
because he wanted to do it better.

His hair began to dwindle.
Black tufts gave way to silver filigree
and he joked about how he'd have a stroke
and you tried to find it funny too.

Together you watched Hitler documentaries
and visited airports or caves,
(breathing paraffin and guano)
and scraped your knees...

And you cried when he laughed at your busted knee
(the one that still clicks when it bends)
and when you fell off your bike
and swore you'd never ride again.

Because you wanted it all to be better,
you wrote to him, but you cried then too,
hearing his laugh, that click in your knee,
and wished you could laugh too.

Post

I have done very little over Spring Break. This is a good thing.

I visited Kristina, celebrated a birthday, got my computer fixed up (well, my dad did that, really) and now I wait for school to start.

Yeah, that's all.

"101 of the World's Funniest One Liners" tract

I got a tract yesterday, but it wasn't about Jesus or the evils of roleplaying. It had jokes in it. Hidden in the middle I found a meagre paragraph about obeying God. This is by far the sweetest tract I've ever seen. Let me share with you some of these one-liners:

4. Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at maths.

26. As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools.

40. Nothing is fool proof to a sufficiently talented fool.

43. God made mankind. Sin made man evil. (*cringe*)

63. Eschew obfuscation. (I normally choose to Eschew Materials)

89. Who is "General Failure" and why is he reading my hard disk?

Well, those are the ones I liked. There are several mildly nasty anti-Atheist / anti-Evolution / anti-Big Bang one liners, which I thought were unnecessary, but what can you do? I think it's time to listen to Gretchen Wilson now.

A distraction courtesy of Jessa

Something is compelling me to skip class and do this. Here's Jessa's.

Three Names You Go By:
1. Carl
2. Cee
3. Burgers

Four Screennames You Have:
1. drdung
2. tolvarin
3. burca newgo
4. kiki kook

Three Parts of Your Heritage:
1. Anglo-Saxon
2. Judeao-Christian
3. African

Four Things That Scare You:
1. lampreys
2. Horror films
3. the dark
4. psychologists/psychiatrists

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
1. underpants
2. socks
3. earmuffs

Four of Your Everyday Essentials
1. conversations with people I care about
2. time with God
3. avoiding other people's noise
4. creating my own noise

Three of Your Favorite Bands/Artists (at the moment):
1. Tom Waits
2. David Kramer
3. Postal Service

Four of Your Favorite Songs at Present:
1. "Don't Go into that Barn" - Tom Waits
2. "Onner Water" - David Kramer
3. "I Can't Get Behind That" - William Shatner with Henry Rollins
4. "Such Great Heights" - Postal Service

Three New Things You Want to Try in the Next 12 Months:
1. pay off my credit card
2. start a masters degree
3. write a book's worth of poetry

Four Things You Want in a Relationship (love is a given):
1. respect
2. trust
3. flexibility (with regard to differences)
4. same goals (spiritual, financial, experential, etc).

Three Things You Just Can't Do:
1. be on time
2. stay motivated
3. clean my bedroom

Four of Your Favorite Hobbies:
1. imagining
2. acting
3. writing
4. games

Three Things You Want to do Really Badly Right Now:
1. skip more classes to get ready to visit Fort Smith
2. buy 1 million things
3. give away all the crap I've wasted money on (esp. Heroclix)

Four Places You Want to Go on Vacation:
1. Home (Cape Town)
2. The Maldives
3. Peru
4. Scotland

Three things you hope to do/be in your career life:
1. a good teacher/mentor
2. prolific
3. good at what I do

And now I will procede to skip the rest of my classes. I'm going to trade some games in at Game Exchange and then get some petrol.

untitled

That bay ate ships
and the blood would froth
in the breakers which are her teeth.

Wooden or steel
swallowed with snaps,
crumbs of sailors dripped down from her lips.

Spat up on the sand:
boot with foot still inside,
a radio plastered white with barnacles.

Amsterdam (revised)

Pocked marble slabs
catch the drips of December rain
that smudge ink on paper signs
and resurrect
the freeze-dried stench in the cobbles' grit
that licks my nostrils
like an old, blind dog.

The churches are empty.
Like dead whales their ceilings arch and vault
while the meat drops off the bones,
to the land below the sea
in the deep pool of my heritage
where the tulip roots are
and the blood of slaves mingles with the flour.

Amsterdam

Pocked marble slabs
catch the eccentric drips of December rain
that smudge ink on paper signs
and springboard off my leather hat
to the freeze-dried stench in the cobbles' grit
that licks my nostrils
like an old, blind dog.

The churches are empty.
Like dead whales their ceilings arch and vault
while the meat drops off the bones.

And what of me,
alone on these wet streets?
Will the rain wash me away
into the earthy flood of these brackish canals?

I sink below the sea
and deeper
until I'm alone in the deep pool
of my heritage.
Here the tulip roots are
and the blood of slaves mingles with the flour.

Porku

Pork rinds are fried fat
blobs that I relish to munch
with my mouth open

I was wrong

I watched gran'pa gulp
his morphine.
Mom coached him
with each syringe,
"Just one more, Daddy."

The bed ate him
as I watched
and I said, "I can write
this."

I was wrong

Please Write Me a Ten Page Paper (Adrienne Rich revised)

I parked my car
behind the raw
construction site
up a sloped drive
it was staff only

black foundling
briefcase
held my unstapled
paper in its mouth
a morning's work

burning in my viscera
bile, vomit, anxious puke
like the smell of beefalo
hanging in strips
in Jeannie's garage

that later I chewed
approving the skill
of my father
not once tasting
the reek of the meat's

slow rot that kept
the car in the driveway
and drove the great dane
mad with lust for juices
dripping to that blue bowl

and now I wish
for discipline
when work glowers
like a parking ticket
or a hungry tree

Adrienne Rich asks me
where was I
and I tell her
I want to be sorry
but my scrawls seep

into the page and vanish
my maps, not her maps,
because the cartographer
lost interest and swam
back into the straight rivers

time is not abstract
it's the taste
in my throat
when I know
this life is rotting

and a tree-beast
chews me
like strawberries
and swallows me
into its cavernous tank

that gluts on my smiles
I soak there
in limey cave water
in no-bottom pools
that pull my flesh down

to the forgetful
river's bed
where I am mashed
and ground to grains
by those thick waters

No map helps me here
no echoes call back
my atlas is full
of white-white pages
and greasy meat-rot stains

2 Haikus

Rain doesn't need clouds
because sometimes the sun shines
through the Summer storm

That same afternoon
I took my vow of silence
you plucked out your tongue

On pondering that art

Blue-white, hairy arms
with bruises like brown roses:
That is my Ai Ki.

An oak broods in the yard

An oak broods in the yard,
empty arms outstretched
pleading Summer's return.

Tire gone
from his mightiest arm.
Picnicking Teddy bears
gone from his shadows.

His boughs rot,
gnarled face wrung
towards earthy feet.
His sap runs solid
in cold crystals.

In the forest, trees boast
in fiery voices.

Tomorrow he will shift
his roots and walk
to the where oaks
hold leaves in fists
like dollar bills.

Response to 'Don't Go Into That Barn' by Tom Waits

Farmhouse, grey rotting wood
maintains its shape to spite the rain
an owl roosts in the rafters
speckled bird with sorcerer eyes

the forest is taking the farmstead back
but not a single tree will tear down that shack

under the leaky boards of the kitchen floor
is where they buried that twelve-year-old-boy

Botswana Put Her Hooks Into Me

Botswana put her hooks into me;
grungy traipses in cramped buses,
frail men,
worn brown leather,
fumbling for pleather seats
while I stand and swivel
as our steel elephant glowers
heavy over the dusty road.

Here the mosquito bites kill
and baobabs hold up the sky.

Donkeys shade under thorn trees
as the desert swallows the ripe marula sun.
Around roadside fires tongues click against teeth
as old as Tsodilo where the painted buffalo sleep.

The distant swelling of the Okavango
babbles in whispers of promised fertility
as the last pieces of light roll off the world
beyond the sky and the rock
and the nodding donkeys under the acacia trees,
to where the eland and the San dance forever.

(untitled)

Inspiration
smothered
by post-
nasal drip,

my art deco
timepiece
keeps time
with a flick.

music is gone,
drummed out
of town.
just a drip.