Aach...ye speak like a poet, but ye punch like one too...

PUNCH LIKE A POET

Friday, February 25, 2005
  
Son of Supersize Me

So the San Marcos High School baseball and softball teams have been competing for the last couple of days in a tournament up the road in Kyle, Texas. As a result I've been able to finagle a couple of long and lucrative field trips, each consisting of an hour of driving and about seven hours of sitting in a bus reading and writing, or wandering hither & thither to watch high school athletes throw balls around. All on the clock. Cha-ching!

The one drawback is that I've been eating where they eat (since I get my meals paid for), which means yesterday I ate Whataburger (not too bad, as fast food goes, but still pretty unedifying) and today ate McDonald's (about as bad as it could possibly get). Next time I think I'd rather dig charred rats out of the ashes of trash fires. Yes, to eat them. At least they won't have been anywhere near a McGreaseTrap (...shudder)

If you haven't seen Supersize Me you probably ought to. For your own health. Although plan on making a lot more of your own meals for several weeks after viewing it, because it will put you off your Big Macs. Fo' sho'. The gist of the movie is this: a very funny documentarian of above-average health goes for one month eating nothing but McD's, and nearly dies as a result. Yum. I'm lovin' it.

I ate two fish sandwiches and a thing? deal? container? of french fries six hours ago and am just now beginning to get over feeling horrible. Like I wanted to throw up. Like I'd ingested poison. In short, like ass.

Does anyone else find it incredibly appropriate that one of the McDonald's Playland characters was actually named Grimace? You know, the big purple bastard. Not Barney--more eggplant-ish. That's right--Grimace. As in, "I took a bite of that Filet o' Fish and just had to grimace." I think he had a friend named Ralph.

# posted by Daniel at 5:38 PM.

Poem

WEATHERMAN

Even years ago my favorite thing
was the front porch, waiting
on rain, winter wind, any change
of weather. Cold fronts
spread across the broad west
Texas sky like grain silos
laid on end or rolls of gray carpet
unfurled and tacked in place
across the bathroom blue
linoleum. They'd come all the way
from Canada: the weatherman
showed us with maps and blue arrows,
and could name the minute
the wind would start to shiver
hours before, like he cued it
himself, or read the news
in the entrails of some doomed,
prophetic bird. I'd be ready, tilted back
in a folding chair out front
with a Dr. Pepper and half-smoked pack
of cigarettes to hear the trees begin
to whisper, to tell each other
all about the rising wind:
they'd tremble--here it comes--
and shudder, creak: cold air
leaning through their branches, and across
the street a trashcan tripping
over the curb--blame the wind,
it pushed me. Then the front: a falling
hand, an ice chest overturned to spill
me from my chair and push the breath
back down my throat, to fill
my flapping shirt with foreign,
freezing air. That's the why
of my waiting, still: the sudden cold
like the handfuls of winter
water almost-frozen I rub across my face
December mornings; the wind's
descent, thrashing trees
like a galaxy of birds; and always
coming rain: the smell,
the promise, the memory,
the long-waited water.

(2/05)

# posted by Daniel at 7:06 AM.

Sunday, February 20, 2005
  
News from Ohio

Over the Rhine, probably my favorite band at the moment, has given March 29th as the release date for their next album, Drunkard's Prayer. Go to that link and read more, or make your day by downloading Born, one of the tracks. Seriously. Do this now. And then pre-order the album entire.

# posted by Daniel at 6:53 AM.

Friday, February 18, 2005
  
Poem

THE HOLY GHOST

If Brando's God the Father,
and a young Pacino's his much-beloved son
who turned his back on politics

for his father's will, then you're Clemenza,
doer of the family's dirty work,
good with a gun or shovel. You stir

the spaghetti sauce while the family talks
around the table. They name the hit.
You make it happen. You put the bullets in

what Saint Paul calls the old man, the body
of death, the flesh, although
you maybe chase him through the nightclub

or abandoned boathouse first and listen
to him beg you for his life. No dice.
Sorry. And then the hard work starts--

you've got to wrestle the body
into the car. By the time
you get behind the wheel you've sweated

through your suit, and then
there's the long drive on bad roads to the country,
body bouncing in the trunk,

and you've got to find a corn field,
and you've got to dig the hole so deep
that no one remembers what's been buried there.

(2/18/05)

# posted by Daniel at 12:51 PM.

Thursday, February 10, 2005
  
The truth about college

"Bus driver, are you in college?"

"Um...yes, Leslie. Sort of."

"What's college? Is that where you have boyfriends and girlfriends?"

"...well, yeah, sometimes. I guess."

# posted by Daniel at 4:00 AM.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005
  
Poem

Feedback please, especially negative.


SEVERAL BRIEF AND UNSATISFACTORY REASONS WHY THE BUS DRIVER'S A SON OF A BITCH

Well,
of course I know
the fascist impulse, the secret dream
of symmetry that loves the children
facing forward, aisle unlittered
by legs, backpacks,
butts rubber-cemented
to the cracked vinyl seats--

that's what I say,
that I'm going to glue them
in their places. They don't know
how literal, how unfigurative
I sometimes mean it.
Like they don't know
how they look in the mirror, fighting
across the aisles, or over
seatbacks, or beneath,
thinking I don't see. That's how
rules get broken: sharp,
invisible as the glass
in the half-open windows
they throw their graded homework from.

They don't know how deeply
they could cut, how red
the blood, that one of them
could lose an eye--I mean
a real eye--these myths are birthed
in incidents--or stopping hard
how paper-airplane-like they'd fly
up the aisle and crack the dash
or windshield open. Sweet Jesus,
there's not time or quiet
to explain these things:
the air's too full of heat and voices.
And anyway they'd never guess
or believe how breakable their bodies.

They'd laugh. And they'll never
know the satisfaction in the view
those afternoons I've threatened,
begged them into brief order,
like some harried, halfway painter
who stands back at last, the scowling figures
smeared in place, safe from motion,
change. He brandishes his brush:
a nightstick, magic wand
that might misfire, and entreats
the people already running
down the canvas Stay in place.
You don't know how good this looks.
Trust me, already.
Just trust me.

(winter 04/05)

# posted by Daniel at 6:54 PM.

Monday, February 07, 2005
  
Coming out of the woodwork

I'm not sure how to explain this phenomenon, but it seems that all manner of Priests and Priests-to-be are jumping on the blog-wagon. My brother Christopher recently founded 10 Minute Oil Change (one of the better blog titles I've read in awhile--kudos, Chris), while his fiance Heather just got started with Begins of a Writer. Go and extend them a hearty salutation or something.

# posted by Daniel at 1:51 PM.

Sunday, February 06, 2005
  
...and a new blog

My dad, Ed, just started his own blog, called Think a Little More! I suggest you go check it out.

Also, I'm taking the opportunity to add my friend Jen's blog Desiderata Feminalis to my blogroll. I've been far too negligent in giving her a permanent link. Maybe if everyone goes and pesters her she'll post some more.

# posted by Daniel at 12:27 PM.

Good news

Yesterday I received notice that not one but two journals have accepted poems of mine for publication.

You might remember a little over a year ago I posted my first rejection letter, from a journal in Austin called Borderlands. Well, yesterday they let me know that they want to publish "Because This Could Be Sunrise." Then later in the afternoon I received an email from Red River Review that they're interested in "After the Workshop." Red River's is an online journal; their next edition will be up on the site sometime in February [UPDATE-I just checked, and it's already live]. Borderlands will have their next issue out in April. Anyone interested in buying a copy can do so off their website.

(sidenote: I noticed there's a poem by the professor of mine who told me about Red River Review up on their website. Read Leap Faith, by Roger Jones.)

These are my first "real" publications. I had one in the now-defunct journal Little Brown Poetry, which published a real stinker of mine called "breath of dharma" back in their first or second issue. And then I landed a poem called "allison krauss and the voice of god" in the second volume of In Our Own Words, an ongoing series of generation X anthologies. But I don't consider either of those to be really "real," mostly due to the (lack of) quality of what of mine they published, not the journals/books themselves.

So yeah. Thought you'd like to know, o hordes of devoted readers.

# posted by Daniel at 11:19 AM.

Saturday, February 05, 2005
  
An observation

Reverence towards scripture is fine and good and proper. Obsequity is another thing altogether.

# posted by Daniel at 5:54 PM.