poetics 003 - old flame II

i saw you flickering
in a steel pipe top inferno
waving seductively at me through maxi glass
and you burned in the eyes of a stick fight champion
chanting over bantu drums at the gayelle.
his sweat dripped slow like yours did
i bite my lower lip
and the memory of your salt is sweet
the moisture in the air locks its grip in my hair
and i can feel your heat.

random thoughts of the day 002

+ my dentist wears his white coat opened just enough so that some chest hairs and a gold chain show - needless to say it creeps me out
+ why are all the black people in these new orajel commercials yelling
+ it's pretty sad that a television network that's been on the air for 30 years has to rely on a show as low rate as "the game" to give it it's best ratings ever
+ it's pretty sad that that's the only show i watch regularly on tv
+ incoming calls from private numbers tends to anger/frighten most people but i will never turn down the suspense of a private call =)

poetics 002 - old flame

my old words find new meaning..

so long
friend,
foe,
you reap what you sow and
i cannot harness your harvest of heartache
anymore
but the earth, she turns
and the sun, he burns
and the stars, they may align
one warm night in, say, late july
when we both may awaken with divine
hope
friend,
foe,
has kept this flame in glow
now, to let it flicker
or, shall we blow?

sloppy love jingle

i was restablishing my itunes on my new laptop the other day and fell across my beloved gym class heroes albums. i relished in the awesome album cover art and my concert ticket stubs that i always slip into the back of the cd case for a decent amount of time before deciding it was time to do one of my estranged early high school "rock outs" in my room. mid heavy head nod and slight air guitar i accidently clicked the shuffle button on my itunes and, lo and behold, was revisited by one of my first favorite spoken word pieces, the "sloppy love jingle" series off of the "as cruel as school children" album. if you haven't heard it i suggest you do, it's simple but clever, entertaining and has a nice flow to it. as i'm seriously contemplating some of the great lines in the series i think about several things i've seen recurring all around me lately. first i thought of my four year long(?) infatuation with gym class heroes' lead singer/rapper travis mccoy and my extensive bad-decision loves and crushes record. so who made the cut back in my middle and high school days besides this rocking rapper with a slight drug addiction and tattoo fetish? take a look at a select few:

+ travis mccoy - gotta love those halvesies, slight unibrow & all
+ benny "the jet" rodriguez - my first latino
+ eric from boy meets world - dumb cute
+ a bone thug in harmony - couldn't tell ya which one
+ the lead singer of incubus - plugs
+ jeff hardy - plugs, tattoos, fish nets & neon hair
+ eye patch guy from immature - caca twists
+ the middle lawrence brother - whooa.
+ lil' fizz - caca twists jr.
+ marcus from smart guy - the start of my dark skinned epidemic
+ marlon wayans - shawn was always too pretty for me
+ that white boy from the first cheetah girls movie

actually, that last one still stands - kyle schmid can still get it. but yeah, you should get the picture by now. i guess i've always been attracted to the "something's slightly off" kind of guy but hey, what can i say, i'm addicted to "interesting."

now, my second point: naive lovesickness is downright sickening. one of the things i love about the "sloppy love jingle" series is that its very real in its description of attraction, i mean, it is a raw tale about a drunken fling. but what's so great to me about this piece is that it was written to sound like a love poem, some of the lines are pure poetic passion on the page. that's where it all comes together for me: the title says it all - "sloppy love." just like my unconventional crushes mentioned above, those "soft-spoken, heart-broken fellas like themselves, you better believe, the type to wear their hearts on their sleeves" who, upon first sight wouldn't seem to be the cookie cutter match for a simple pretty girl like myself (-eyelash flutter-) love is meant to be messy - NOT MUSHY, PEOPLE - messy. there's a difference. seeing all of these facebook statuses, hearing all of these stories, being forced to listen to other peoples' conversations on public transportation for lack on an ipod, and hell, living it myself really makes me realize that people are mushing the shit out of love. with "mush" you continually beat at something in the same way repeatedly, nothing changes, everyone involved is pretty much stagnant in their actions, so what is the result? it's the same crap you had before with a slightly different texture. but a mess? oh the wonders of a mess. a mess has different colors, different textures, you continually pile on new shit and rework the whole thing, it's constantly a mess but hey, it's changing. i swear, if i hear one more corny ass dude tell one of his boys that winter is "cuffing season" and they have to find girls to cuddle up with, or if i hear of one more chick who is naively chasing after some undeserving male because she "loved" him so much throughout their 5 month relationship (-"c'mon son" face-) i might just flip a shit. but i'm going to keep telling myself not to worry because i know there's some hope out there.

i remember conversing with a friend some time ago and upon being asked a question about it he told me that he didn't have a "type," there was nothing that he "looked for" in women and that he wasn't trying to "find" anyone. "when it's time we'll randomly bump into each other somewhere and that's when i'll know exactly who 'she' is." it was a beautiful statement to make. there's no "finding" in love, there's no chasing, no competition and no comparisons and there should definitely be no doubts or questions at the root of it all. love is deeply embedded in our innermost intuition - every sexy claw on your back won't scrape it out, no shiny necklaces will illuminate a path for you and every fluttering butterfly wing in your stomach isn't puppeteer'd by a heart string - you have other organs ya know, and whether its your mind or that junk up in yo' trunks, they will sometimes lead you astray. but there's nothing wrong with that, mistakes are made so that they can be learned from. so before you get all giddy about canoodling with a certain anyone by the fire with your hot coacoa and grandma-patched quilts ask yourself if they're there because you want really want them to be or because they're what's "in" this season.

happy "cuffing" my friends. as for me, well.. assuming that this planet rotates, i'll just procrastinate until the day i bump into my soul mate.

semicolon cool

the new facebook layout has a funky set up that places your status in small font underneath your name. this is really inconvenient for my excessive use of the semicolon. my beloved punctuation mark of choice that was so strategically placed in between my name and my status no longer has a prominent role in the everyday monotony of my life. a few people had asked me why i used the semicolon instead of the dash (my second love) or the colon or the ellipses and my response was always the same: the semicolon brings two thoughts together, its like a bridge of association that links my name, me, with the quotes, thoughts or song lyrics on the other end - both ends can stand alone, yes, but connected together their meaning is that much more powerful (insert giant nerdy smile). i would just like to take this opportunity to say thanks for depriving me of one of my most recently discovered elements of (un)cool, mark zuckerberg & co.

black swan

between kanye west's runaway phoenix and my impromptu trip to the movies a few nights ago to see black swan, i think it's safe to say that i will be creating some sort of feathered get-up for myself very soon. but all in all, it was definitely nice to randomly see a movie as thought provoking as black swan (the additions to my mental log of "movie quotes i must find a way to use in every day life" was a plus too).

quick plot summary: it's a story about a painfully innocent ballerina and the crazy psychological trips that come along with her landing the lead role in a famous ballet "swan lake" which is about the ying and yang sides of a lovesick and seductive swan. but i'm not here to summarize so let's get to the good stuff.

first of all, i would like to applaud director darren aronofsky's use of only five colors throughout the film: black, white, pink, red and green (yupp - did ya catch that?). being a classy young lady who is obsessed with the polished look of beige pearls on black, white and creamy pink cloth, i was completely taken by the opening scenes of the movie that panned through nina's delicate and girly apartment and followed her through her daily ballerina rituals. once nina landed the lead role in "swan lake" (especially at beth's retirement ball) i realized that from then on, in every massive crowd scene, nina was the only one wearing white while everyone else wore black. red colors were present in violent and dangerous scenes obviously enough and green was present throughout nina's apartment (the celebratory cake, the rug in front of the door, her creepy mother's favorite bedside butterfly seat) clearly symbolizing her mother's envy of her career. although the color-as-commentary thing has been done before i thought it was a decent touch and worked well for this movie in particular - it was good to have simple sets to look at while my mind was looping around all of the wild plot twists and shit that was happening on the screen.

let's talk about said shit, shall we? what the hell went down in the middle of this movie?! can someone, ANYONE, explain it to me?! all i know is that she got high off some little white pill, had sex with a chick who turned out to be herself - at this point i'm still with it, still following along, still understanding - but then she woke up and BAM the broad's eyes start turning red and her knees start capping back, some sort of exorcism took place, she sprouted wings, shattered her mothers hand, beth repeatedly stabbed herself in the face with a nail file (seriously though, waayy too far), there was a weird shot where she sees beth/herself with a holey face in her apartment's dark hallway (this is when i got flashbacks to the sixth sense and that horrifying lady in the pink robe that just stands in the hallway puking on herself -shudder- ) and all i was thinking was "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!" in a matter of about twenty minutes i somehow went from watching a classic ballerina tale to watching a high budget, low taste horror movie without even leaving the theatre for so much as some overpriced popcorn and a quick whiz. needless to say, i HATE horror movies and find no pleasure in willfully causing myself anxiety or fear so this twenty minute segment was the first thing that ruined all chances of this film getting a five star rating on my scale.

even though this was more of an afterthought, the second thing that ruined the film were the few glitches in the writing. #1 was the "beth got hit by a car" scene. a ballet dancer with ruined legs? ya don't say? oh you mean like in benjamin button? you mean like in every other ballerina movie i've ever seen? (-eyeroll-) #2 was the "you are the only one standing in your way - lose yourself" scene. come on son, give the audience a little more credit in the intelligence department. they should've been picking up on the hints at that major theme of "losing yourself" throughout the movie, no need to blatantly state it in a cheesy mentor-mentee, monster-and-his-creator, let's-stare-in-the-mirror-so-you-can-see-who-you-are moment.

but on the positive side (and there's mostly positives despite the aforementioned ruins) what i found fascinating and brilliant about the movie was that it was a look into the psychological battle that comes along with taking on another character and perfecting an artform. most of the movie i kept thinking back to heath ledger, and many other actors before, who became so encompassed in perfecting certain roles, such as ledger's joker character, that it eventually (and allegedly i guess, but it makes sense to me) played a part in their self destructions. i felt like i was literally taking a step inside the actor's studio or something. following nina through her artistic insanity brought a very intimate and personal level to the movie that really wow'd me. not to mention there were some pretty damn good quotes for my inspirational quote book thrown in there. "you could be brilliant, but you're a coward" - i sat back and contemplated my life for a little bit after mr.le'roy barked this line at nina. one of my biggest fears in life is that my cowardice will covet my creativity and hinder me from being the artist/writer/extremely cool person that i know i am. but i guess now i know that the key lies in "losing myself."

overall rating: 3.5 / 5 stars
give-back: the nail file self-mutilation scene - too far man, too far.
take-away: "perfection isn't just about control, it's also about letting go. you have to surprise yourself as much as you surprise your audience."
fun fact: i used to violently scratch myself in my sleep and one time when i was like eleven i got an allergic reaction to only god knows what kind of dander in the air at some place i don't remember and one side of my face broke out into what looked like snake scales and for a good five minutes during the movie i thought "i am the black swan."