2004-04-11 - 9:18 a.m.

WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE CALLING THE OFFICE ON EASTER?

Rough cut (and I am most certainly not sold on the opening, but I haven't had a chance to edit it yet)

Two Bodhisattvas and an Existentialist Walk Into a Bar

The taste of Tim's lips upon my cigarette,
Like the end of a dry day,

But I forget,
It is the Universe's cigarette,
One cannot draw a line between the but,
And the totality,

The 21st century Bodhisattvas,
Intercourse across the table,
And I sit writing,
But if language is the chains that bind us,
How can we use it to free ourselves?

I am told that one knows truth when it is experienced,
Was is is what is,
And that that which is exists within the infinite,
Most of infinity is void,
A massive lightshow with plenty of free parking,
The universe's abscesses as far as the eye can see,
Emptiness expanding everyday,

Apparently then, true stretches itself thin,
Already it seems true is reduced to a veneer,
Covering everything to be seen,
But we can still smell what's rotten underneath,
Or perhaps the truth simply shrinks proportionally,
With an expanding universe,
And many hunt for it,

But maybe I can settle with a life,
Built upon pretty enough lies,
Drunk on self-deception,
And spending ignorance,

The universe's cigarette is burnt out,
Another minute off the time clock of totality,
Another nail in the coffin,
Modernity is building for reality.

OK, so it sucks, yes? Somehow these things don't look as good when you are sober. I think I've got some stuff there that can be developed, the last two stanzas in particular. I'm in love with "pretty enough lies," and the terminal line. I am not sold on the end rhyme in the last stanza, but I like the interior rhyme.

And, of course, the opening simply must change. There was originally going to be a sort of vague homoerotic theme, but that got dropped.

Ever get the feeling the muse only works half the day? That his job is done at the sketch level and that you are the poor, embattled draftsman that has to make sense of his scribble-scrawl?

(I suspect that, in this case, it isn't an issue of incompetence or job division issues. Rather, I think the muse was just really fucking high, but sometimes you need to offer some incentive to get the little guy into work. Thank goodness Jesse's Poetry Factory is too small for OSHA to notice )

No promises on poetry tonight; in fact, pencil me in for a no-show. I've got laundry to do, sleep to catch up on, but, hopefully, I won't have to go to Webster.

In between calls from idiots that can't wait till tomorrow to change the color on their Fast Lane tags, (I swear I got a call about this. No problem with the account or the service, but they didn't like the fucking color of the motherfucking tag. Like it is a fashion plate or something.) I'm trying to write this entry, thinking about rewriting the above poem, writing a new poem based on the above poem and this entry, surfing the web and reading Lamb, which seems correct for the day. Despite having like two hours of sleep, I am pretty wired. Two Red Bulls will do that to you. Regarding two hours of sleep, having Luke King over for a night will do that to you.

Right now I have about half a Red Bull that needs to last me three hours. Uh, right. Sure I'm going to be acute until two o'clock. Sure.

In other news, Li'l Bro's girlfriend broke up with him last Saturday (but I didn't find about it till after I wrote the journal entry), the night after he drank a magnum of wine. Which leaves me in an awkward position. See, I met Amanda's friends last Friday night and we hit it off pretty well, but now I don't know whether or not I should call one of them. Well, you should say, of course you should call them. The relationship of Amanda and Li'l Bro shouldn't matter when you are asking her friends out. Well, duh, of course. The issue is that I might not have their numbers, so I might have to call Amanda for them. That would be awkward, to say the least. I'm sure I could get the numbers if I called Amanda, she's such a sweet girl, but she seems to be taking breaking up with Evan harder than Evan is. Evan isn't helping this, though. Last Sunday, he went to yoga when he knew Amanda would be there. So there's my mother and I, waiting in the car for Evan ('cause, you know he doesn't have a car) and out comes Amanda, who was obviously shaken. We exchanged pleasantries and she moved on. Evan came out a few minutes later, beaming. What a fucking jackass.

The last bad breakup I had ended with me looking at my ex laying my friend's couch (my friend being my friend LONG before my friend was my ex's friend, and being my friend long after my ex moved away) telling me about how the ratty jacket she was wearing used to be her John's wife's jacket. I guess that wasn't bad so much as it was memorable.

"And she was a rare thing,
"Fine as a bee's wing,
"So fine a breath of wind might blow here away,
"She was a lost child,
"And as she was running wild,
"She says 'As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay,
"'And you wouldn't want me any other way.'"

Fuck Love. And, yes, I have every intention of being bitter over the same girl for years and years to come.

-Jesse