Architected: An Aspiring Aesthete in the City

Poem for my Mom's Cousin

2008-03-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

Beneath theWheel for J.C

-for living in my room for two months while i slept on the couch
when i was 13. before you went to prison.

This motion of wheel
His life cryptic reels on the
Dromos of bottles
Guiding eyelids to reverse
Colors, knifing his reflection
Of home on the lam

Oh cyclopean rivermind
How many have you drown?
Liquid shaman of the truss
How polished your eyes are
The drift has taken your
Daughters in sepia

The miners of encapsulated
Snow have buried your wife
Your teeth have become black
Syrup in fruit bowls
And the sand is too quick
To balance your step
-after coming home cateyed
You used cane like bomb-threat

Oh how he waits for it's taste to
Air and tingle to
Shade the yard with the drumming
Of secret shrines and a ripe
Twitch
Into the shed:

He learns fists into chairs
He learns heels into pictureframes
He learns he is not a photograph
Oh but how he waits for it's taste to
Bury him
He wheels:

Like six-shots in an empty lake
Like bath drowned hallelujah
Like black-eyes from a can
Like crack-belt testimony
Like Jesus' son
He wheels

Boots into sand
This euthanasia of buried alive
He wheels.
Shit drunk.
And too cowboy to shoot.
God is only
Loud
With him

Im doing a feature at the end of the month at Out of the Blue gallery. I already hate blogging.
I need some new poems. This one is still rough. Any suggestions? Anyone around? Hello? god i hate blogging

Here is something

2008-01-09T23:07:00.000-08:00

(these will be edited, help me)

mothers bathe within their sons' laughter
be it lunacy or love the sailing is blind
and the streets run like saliva with tears or delirium
spilling gold into open mouths
kissing sacraments from those we love,
masturbating under sheets to expel of dead thoughts
one day there will be so much light our fathers
will come home charred and sentimental.
children will skip rope and the sky will
bleed its jewels upon those who are faceless.
the mountains will guide us into the earth where
those who have yet to feel love and madness will
soil in the dregs of minerals and Ecstasy.
the mirrors will be fervent with lust and we
can feel into this notion deeper than flesh
where seeing is not only revelation
but flowering patterns of the ink pressed mind.
i am not my mother nor do i have my fathers eyes
but my sister sings what my brothers do not understand
for there will be no more monuments unto this
and shaken statues of blood set long ago
where rooftops have dropped into living rooms dropping
into kitchens dropping down down down into watery basements
into water, into lake, lakes under the earth a lake
for those who want to not see
whom they love so much, for those who can touch
as we touch when we dream where i am you to everyone
and you feel just as i feel to the touch we all touch
our eyes that are of no use and wish
we could see but vanity of such wishes
we still wish wish wish for such glorification of self
such a match to bring forth illumination of earth and dirt
only to see we look as the earth, only to know
we were born of the earth and dirty fingernails
passed down from men with white hands.

Night Terror III: Holy Fuck, Why must i dream like this

2007-12-03T18:50:00.000-08:00

I am a good person. At least, deep down. I have a lot of good in me. But certain days, when i take certain naps, at certain hours, after taking certain medicines -my subconscious thinks it's hilarious to absolutely scare the living Christ out of me. This is starting to get a bit odd. I haven't had any real nightmares in over a year until about three weeks ago...What is my little head so goddamn worried about? absolutely nothing that i am aware of.

This one is accredited to two 350mg pills of echinacea w/golden seal (if any of that is relevant for any reason, people just shouldn't dream like this!)

I am hesitant to even write about this one, due to numerous reasons. I'll try to keep it short, but give accurate details of why it why so disturbing.

Night terror 3:

I was home, and by home I mean at my parents house. All of my relatives were there, and a few of my close friends too. I don't remember much of what happened before the power went out; that is when my memory kicks in. So the power is out. My house seems much larger than usual, a lot more shiny, and echoey, like every room is a bathroom or kitchen. I remember i was up stairs, talking with some of my closest friends back home, in the dark, sitting on beds in a larger room. There were lights flashing in the hallway, flashlights maybe, and the clacking of heels, laughter, small screams, humor etc..We continue or conversation as if the lights were never on. A few of my older girl relatives rush in to the room ordering us to leave, panicked, not sounding the least bit sane..I start to take alarm, as my friends casually start to rise still envoked in easy conversation. Next, someone with whom i am completely unfamiliar with enters the room. he seems like a police officer, but more like FBI or something, he orders us to leave as he to is well shaken, but trying to hide his emotion by yelling words. There is much more chaos once we leave the room, flashlights flicker everywhere...adults chasing children in the dark. My strangest of all friends starts to amuse us by rolling on the floor doing somersaults crying in a little voice "help! i neeed heeeelp..help me!" as we laugh and evenly disperse throughout the house. I follow the winding staircase as my pace quickens, i start to a run, i'm not sure why, the front doors are wide open. It is a cool autumn night it a pitch-black childhood neighborhood. I ask the older cousin i spoke of before what is going on, why is everyone out side? She grabbed my arm and tryed to whisper "The US airforce has been patrolling due to the local Hill Airforce Base, try not to act scared Chris, be brave, we cannot tell the children what is going on" ....I lept back, staring at her, and then the sky, the dead light city, back to her, to my family, back to the sky. I start frantically walking throughout my relatives gathered in our small alcove of a front yard, everyone is there. The kids are playing with scooters and toys, as the older-kids are playing basket ball and we're all just biding our time with one another, most of us unknowing why. One of my youngest cousin runs a small toy into my left foot, i instinctively stomp it due to the playful flashing lights. She starts crying immediately, I kneel down to her and finally, really, breakdown into a swell of tears, trying to piece the toy back together. She calms down to see me in such a state as another small cousin comes to me in awe "chris? it's ok, it's just a toy..are you alright..why are you crying?" I decide to pull myself together and find my father..where oh where are my friends i thought, i think about calling them, but i need to see my father. He is playing basketball with my other two younger brothers and my sister, as i approach them he asks in his usual manner "How are you chris?" cheerful, and dad-like..i know he too knows. I answer after a few false pauses "i-I don't know." I don't know dad" I pull him close and ask if my brothers know about all this, he tells me no, "And Mom?" I ask, he also replies "No". He starts to update, me on what hes seen in the sky and from what direction, and how soon he thinks they will be here. We both walk to the edge of the driveway together, for seeing this likely death, gazing at the black hills where the city sits. We here ripping and tearing in the distance, it is coming now, still black, and no light. the ripping gets louder, the neighboring houses shake, and the ground rumbles things start to light up a few shades. There is a deep velvet cloud in the distance, more rumbling, like a machinist thunderstorm, lighting that is not lightning. We both know it is only moments away, more ripping and tearing of the night sky. The valley below us is erupting with fire and explosions, airplanes are rushing overhead. In this moment i feel the heat, our faces illuminated, a small breeze from the front. in moments we will be dead. I think of how this image of destruction is so real, so vivid, such a fucking hallucination to see. I think of all the drugs i've done. I think of everything. The bombs are dropping. I think of LSD, i think of Ecstasy, i think of everything and nothing that i have seen with these eyes. I look at my father in horror, his eyes are closed. i imagine his face being ripped off by shrapnel. i revisit every single bit of war footage i have ever seen. all the horror that people have been subject to. witnessing their family's suffer through fire and hell. Watching the children, mothers and fathers, innocent people being mutilated in the most terrible ways possible. I wanted to die first. i wanted to be the first. I did not want to see my mother. I did not want to see my father. or my sisters or brothers. i did not want to see anyone. I kept waiting for my father's face to melt off. I realised that it is real. it is very lucid, and very, historically real. I started having picturesque hallucinations of how it would happen, what would crush who, and how. It was as real as the approaching hells. Right before the pain was upon me, i awoke..Almost in a dry heave, shaky, snapped, like a fucking WWII flashback.

My joints don't work well

2007-12-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

It is Decemebered and i cannot tolerate this bone jarring weather. I have no money. I also put in my two-weeks at my ill-paying restaurant job (yes i am employed, no i don't have any money). I also am now realizing that if you're bored enough to start your own self-righteous internet ego, you'd better well keep bored enough to write about it, which leads me to my next thought..I am now obligated to do this blogging thing. this is pretty much how i approach all reality, where do i fucking sign, sign me up god damn it.

Anyways, last Monday i happened to do a last minute feature at the Stone Soup Poetry Reading in Central (last minute as in Chad calling me at 3pm to go on at 9). It was my first feature, and you bet i wore a tie. I did way more than wear just a tie (tell em Sam). I figure if i am going to have my first feature, I am at least going to have to make a few bad decisions in preparation. Not to say that i wasn't wearing a tie. There are just certain things that make you feel important while wearing a tie. And no I am not talking about illicit drug use. I am talking about the aftermath. Either way, thanks to everyone who made it out to see my own beheading of sorts. I guess it was good? I've been invited back at least, sometime in March i believe. I'd better have me a damn good Chapbook by then. If not i'll just plagiarize one of Jade's.

Here's a poem for being cold i guess, although it's not even about being cold nor is it extremely new. go figure.

Eskimo Drift
We drifted these secret days into eyelid ticks of bashful gaze; with an appreciation for things
When I am with us, I find things too easy to sleep
My eyes become detachments of bells and mercury leaks in heavy
I peer from dopamine hills until I find the namelessness within the ceiling.
I make believe the walls are not walls, and climb into my hips for one last look from the Eskimo's jaw. Ever since I learned to dream I have to tell myself to fall asleep. The jaw growls in my ear when I am alone, eating my hands until touch is lining the cages of not my bones but the afternoon. I find rest during daylight when I can ignore things with diligence and self-admiration. Within the evening I tend to spite myself for having such carelessness upon the recognition of fleeting moments.
I do what ghosts do, the same as lawyers and waiters, murderers and housewives, dragonflies and snapdragons. Sometimes while this jaw sings to the moon, my fingers dance –we forget about one another for hours.
I've never thought much of cycles or paths or divinity, now leaning into winters inscripted gown -Her escalator dreams humming passages through the unknown god. Breathing Siberia's glitter down my chest like schrapnel/appley crisp. She swept up my morning legs as basement floodings' bail.
There is a slowness about this.
To know cold is to feel not of taste but of rust - A jarring/seasonal erectile dysfunction. A casual toast to unbecomings and Lemondrop kissings Received through the eyes. Knuckle deep with twisted wrists and dusted ribbons, Rising through contortion, palpitating like wet dreams in office buildings, down staircases, under desks and mattress drawers. This letter is as operatic as bloods copper. This letter is always a beaten dove. This letter hangs from sad closets -Hidden like vices, filings to that of human beings, being human, boiling tongues-stiff legged coffeehumans
Things are never fast enough being arthitic human
So we had an appreciation
Like the crumbling leaves of new illness- or simply a Pseudoephedrine massage beneath the trees.
Like reflective television through the idlings of rooftop glow.
Like trumpeted flashings Of the mirrored self found within other things. And of
All the walkings and the fallings and the water falling always falling now from gifts and lips falling not upon lips but that which are not lips, falling is too simple . so
We had an appreciation for things
-the comforts of skin and light, nothing more.

It is friday night 11:13pm. I am at home (sober). I am too afraid to leave my bed in this cold. I am too afraid to drink whiskey after Thursday (I was too afraid to leave my bed then for better reasons) After a series of small coincidences, and by small I mean one. Anyways, i ended up stepping on a piece of glass 'in my bed'..i was laying down..we we're punching each other etc. etc. It wouldn't stop bleeding. Last time she was here she broke a half-empty glass. The next time she came, i stepped on its' shard while in bed together a few weeks later. so this must be love

Night Terror: Dream Images

2007-11-24T13:37:00.000-08:00

I have accredited these horrors to an increase of allergy medicine upon sleeplessness ( whatever gets the job done?) Anyhow, after the deepest slumber imaginable i was so shaken that i was unable to sleep soon thereafter and proceeded to the local pizzeria at 3:ooam to fill myself with something 'non-chemical'. There is a whole different story in this adventure -let's just say there was lots of yelling and violence and police..Anyways, here is the first terror:

I was lost in an abandoned gas station midday in small town 'big sky country'. Dust lined the store and everything was rust beaten and cats littered the floor. I knew i was being followed and was rampantly looking for a makeshift weapon in the abandoned storefront. i was having trouble breathing throughout the kicked up dust, looking for a gun or at least a shovel, axe, something i can kill with. I was with someone, possibly a female, but i'm not positive. For some reason or another i felt inclined to take the initiative in defending the both of us. The cast iron door began to shake violently as i lept to brace the incoming assault. I kicked open the weathered door and was instantly shot six consecutive times in the stomach by an old man with a shotgun. I dropped my axe and stood in disbelief as i felt my chest rupture with each plug.
The man was severely old and half decayed with lead in his eyes, possibly of native american decent -his sockets caved with obsidian. He dropped his gun and picked up the axe which i had dropped, snickering and groaning with old age. He raised the axe above his head and i awaited the fall of the blade, for i was still somehow conscious. As he drew the axe down he lost his footing and the heavy tool lodged in the back of his skull. the expression i
witnessed was absolutely horrifying. A raven appeared on the crown of his head, tearing his wrinkled brow to the bone. We were both still conscious and standing arms length from one another. His face was contorted and seemingly stretched in a plaster cast mold. I could hear nothing of his self inflicted anguish. I was deaf to all sound. The raven was trying to lift the head off his shoulders. I was emotionless. I knew the bullets were in me. i knew we were to die with one another. I felt a sadness for the murderer. We fell to the ground together -with
a cinematic slowness, void of all sound like an old western film. I fell into his arms as we hit the dusted ground, waiting for death, I ontop of him, faces aimed skyward, breathing heavily or not at all, dust swirling all around us in the breeze.. It was then that i realized i should have been a landscape painter. I looked at the surrounding fields and sky through the dust awaiting my mother and father to pull up in thier car and help me to the hospital , oh how i should have been a landscape painter.

Knuckle-deep in 2007: Blog Episode Per Aspera Ad Astra

2007-11-24T00:26:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while now, not that i think i am important or cooooool or fucked-up or entertaining for that matter. I just really like the idea of it. So mark my words, as of November Twenty-Fourth Two Thousand and Seven in the wee hours of the morning 3:36am precisely I have fallen victim to that of another Internet addiction. And besides, we are all very bored anyways, let's just get that out in the open -otherwise you wouldn't be here. That is if you are in fact a You. Assuming that there might actually be one or two or maybe even six people who read this -I'll consider this journal somewhat of a success. In the mean time, expect to see items posted such as:

Grocery lists, monthly bill summaries, sleeping patterns, daily expenditures, laundry scheduling, lunar cycles and logs, constellation studies, fun games to play, recipes, secrets, imaginary loves, jokes, optical illusions,fun games to play, trivia, historical heroes, step-by-step day-to-day living in regards to routine, water and food consumption, shower and bath scheduling, extensive conversation logs (word for word, including all telephone, email etc..) fun games to play etc...

Even quotes such as this:

Already, in the past 30 minutes, I consider this journal to be highly
successful. I can actually taste the potential here...

On a lesser note, I will also try to keep this journal updated with such trivial documentation as new writings, artwork, photos, poetics, dreams, animals, dreamanimals, and the terror of working for a chain-restaurant in the city of Boston, MA.